Once upon a time in God's playground-Chapter 91 - 90 : Distance

The walls still breathe with echoes.

The memory in front of me shifted .

I, an aged room steeped in spectral memory, remember the month before the annual exams, when tension ran like cracks across the floorboards.

Han ji-a’s footsteps had often lingered in library, her notebook resting on the desk where sunlight broke into slanted beams. She would hum softly, scribble, and sigh, dreaming of Seoul.

Yet memory does not keep only the gentle things. It keeps the nights of fear.

I recall the whispers of Han ji-a, the students who carried grudges against me for my past year actions. They wanted revenge against the younger me again and again

They had failed against him before, and so they sought revenge by dragging Han ji-a into a warehouse far from my silent watch.

I was left behind, but I felt the absence—felt the pull of danger staining the air like smoke.

When the younger me heard about this situation, he went blind by rage and anger.

When he stormed in without plan or caution, fists already scarred by old battles, the fight tore into the night.

"Let her go!" he roared, and the warehouse answered with chaos.

Fists on jaws, steel pipes cracking against ribs, bodies stumbling into shadows. Every shout was desperation, every blow a shield for Hannah. His voice split the darkness:

"You touch her again and I’ll break every one of you!"

But even with my younger self strength , he pulled out his phone, before entering. He knew that he can’t take out everyone inside so he called the police himself.

I still remember that it was my first time calling the officials for help first time.

His breath rattled as he whispered to the dispatcher, "Send the police... now."

Then the younger me just barged in and foughts against everyone inside.

Blood ran down his chin, his chest heaved as if it would burst.

But the younger me was managed to rescue Han ji-a.

Students laid around them, crying with pain. Boys or girls, it didn’t matters to younger Ye-jun.

When the sirens began their far-off cry, he turned to her, trembling.

"Ji-a..." His hand found her arm. "You need to leave. Now."

Her voice cracked. "No—I can’t leave you like this—"

"You have to!" His words came like lightning, fierce but breaking at the edges. "If they see you here, if your name goes in their report... your future is gone. Seoul, writing, everything. Don’t you get it? They’ll chain you to this mess."

Her tears streaked her cheeks. "But—what about you?"

He forced a smile that tasted of blood. "Me? I’m already chained."

She shook her head violently. "Ye-jun, don’t you dare throw yourself away for me!"

"Too late for that." His hand pushed her lightly toward the door. "Go before they come. Please, Ji-a. I want you to be free."

She lingered at the threshold, shaking, her fingers gripping the rusted frame. "If I walk away now... we’ll never be the same."

His eyes softened for a moment, the fighter stripped bare. "We never were the same, Ji-a. You were always better. Now... live like it."

Her voice lingered like a knife, soft but breaking: "Don’t disappear on me..."

The sirens drowned her words, and then she was gone.

The police stormed in. Metal clanged, voices barked, reports scribbled.

Hana’s name was inked onto the papers, their guilt undeniable.

But Ye-jun gave no defense, no protest, when they dragged him into the back of the patrol car. "Another night," he muttered, as if to himself. "Just another fight."

I remember Mother most of all. The station’s cold light turned her face pale, her hands trembling around the bail papers. "Jun..." her voice cracked, half-plea, half-accusation. "What are you doing to yourself? What are you doing to me?"

His silence pressed on her like a vice.

She leaned closer, voice breaking apart. "Every night I wait, terrified. And now this? Do you want me to bury you, Jun? Is that what you’re trying to do?"

He lowered his head, lips pressed shut. She slapped the table softly, not in anger, but in despair. "Say something—anything! Let me believe you’re still my son."

At last, his voice came hoarse, barely audible. "I promise, Mom. I’ll stop. This is the last time."

She looked at him long, searching his eyes, but what she found there only deepened the crack in her heart.

When she led him out of the station, her hand hovered near his back but never touched. In the car, the silence was a canyon.

Finally, she whispered, "You’re destroying yourself." He turned to the window, face hidden, and only murmured, "It’s worth it."

In the days that followed, silence thickened.

Ye-jun and Han Ji-a did not meet again. Her laughter, once dancing against my walls, faded into memory.

She wanted to left for Seoul quietly, notebook clutched like a lifeline, her heart battered but her dream intact.

She wanted to be a writer, to carve words on paper instead of scars into her days.

The night before she left, she sat in this room one last time. She scribbled furiously in her notebook, tears blotting the ink.

Her voice trembled as she read aloud to herself, as if practicing words she would never send: "If you had just looked at me once—just once—I would’ve stayed."

Then she closed the book, pressed her forehead to the desk, and wept. I carry that sound still.

She never gave me that letter. I never knew about her weeping silently in her apartment.

Hana, too, vanished. After the scandal, after her name hissed through school corridors in disgrace, she left the city with her mother. No more venom in the hallways. No more cruel laughter. Only an empty echo where storms used to rage.

And I left behind, grew older in their absence.

His jacket still hangs over my chair, her pen still rolls into the corner of my desk.

They are gone now, walking paths I cannot follow.

Yet still, I remember. Always, I remember.

Then I remember my meeting with her in railway station. The last time we met before going our own path.