The Tough Guy Hides the Villainess

039 – A Wolf Among the Sheep #1

039 – A Wolf Among the Sheep #1

Ring, ring-.

Seo Ga-eul kept pressing the call bell.

She was angry from the recent conversation, and the fact that the male student had left on his own only made her emotions unresolved. At times like this, the best thing to do was to scratch with her nails.

Ring, ring-.

But no matter how much she pressed the call bell, the male student showed no sign of coming.

That fact made Seo Ga-eul even angrier.

“Wow, are you ignoring me right now?”

Seo Ga-eul had never been ignored by anyone before. From her peers to adults, men would at least pretend to die if she told them to.

Even the notoriously arrogant Prince Wang Ja-hyun paid attention to his actions and focused all his nerves on Seo Ga-eul.

So Seo Ga-eul knew her worth better than anyone.

But the male student Han Nam-jin, who had kidnapped her, was thoroughly neglecting her. It was as if he was treating her like a toy he had played with and then shoved into a corner.

“When did you make wedding invitations saying you wanted to marry me?”

Seo Ga-eul could not accept the current situation in many ways.

What made her even angrier was that it wasn’t a third-generation chaebol or a similarly successful male student─.

─It was the fact that she was angry because of a male student who was really nothing.

Seo Ga-eul’s pride was hurt by Han Nam-jin’s pathetic and shabby attitude and background.

It was unbearable that she had been kidnapped by such a man and was annoyed because of such a man.

Naturally, Seo Ga-eul went through a stage of rationalization to protect her delicate and haughty inner self.

‘Maybe Han Nam-jin is actually an amazing guy?’

There was no way an ordinary man could ignore her temptations, pleas, and tantrums. What if the person who kidnapped her was not Han Nam-jin but Wang Ja-hyun?

That would have been creepy and disgusting in its own way, but Seo Ga-eul had the confidence that she could quickly control Wang Ja-hyun to her will.

He was the kind of guy who would get all flustered just from a frown.

‘He doesn’t even have the guts to kidnap me in the first place.’

On the other hand, Han Nam-jin was different.

Han Nam-jin never did anything according to Seo Ga-eul’s wishes. He wouldn’t even grant the trivial request of installing a small TV, instead making do with newspapers.

“He doesn’t seem like an ordinary guy.”

That’s what she had to think. It was unthinkable that she had been kidnapped by an ordinary, insignificant man.

In this way, Seo Ga-eul succeeded in maintaining her self-esteem by elevating her captor.

‘Han Nam-jin, I’ll admit you’re not just a pathetic, clumsy fool. Thinking that way makes me feel a bit better. No matter what─.’

Ring, ring-.

Seo Ga-eul was still angry at Han Nam-jin for ignoring her call bell. She just wanted to get back Ying-ying, who had left the basement with Han Nam-jin.

She could sleep well with the soft Ying-ying as a pillow.

Rustle-.

At that moment, Seo Ga-eul’s ears, sharpened by her long stay in the basement, picked up a sound.

She thought Han Nam-jin had returned, but the footsteps were different.

Click, clack-.

It was the sound of high heels.

‘A woman?’

She didn’t know who it was, but it was a woman.

An adult woman old enough to wear high heels.

Soon, she heard the sound of the doorbell ringing next door.

What business could a woman in high heels have with Han Nam-jin?

“Brother, it’s your sister. Are you home? Our conversation got interrupted last time because of that intruder. I want to talk about the Judge and Seo Ga-eul’s disappearance! Specifically, I need your cooperation with the investigation!”

Hearing talk of investigation and cooperation, it seemed she was a police officer. Seo Ga-eul’s lips curled up in interest.

“Are you not home? I came here secretly, very discreetly, just to meet you. This is a rare opportunity. So, why don’t we have a deep conversation?”

Click, clack, click-.

Soon, the sound of the woman’s high heels approached the empty house where Seo Ga-eul was confined.

“This house feels suspicious. “My instincts are telling me so.”

Click.

The woman’s presence reached the front of the basement where Seo Ga-eul was trapped.

“It feels quiet but dangerous. Why? It’s just an empty basement. But it’s making me nervous.”

Clang, clank-.

The sound of chains and locks being handled echoed.

“How many locks are there? What on earth is in here that needs to be locked up like this? Is there…someone in there? Hello? Is perhaps there a person trapped in here?”

Knock, knock, knock-.

A woman knocked on the iron door.

“Seo Ga-eul, are you in there? If I were Han Nam-jin, who holds a grudge against the Seonam Group, I would have kidnapped you and locked you up here.”

Even Seo Ga-eul had to admit that she had a good sense of intuition.

Seo Ga-eul, who had been watching the situation unfold from the basement, thought it was a good opportunity and opened her mouth to shout softly.

“Kyeng, kyeng, kyeng-!”

It was a perfect imitation of an animal.

To be precise, it was the cry of a red fox, famous as the Little Prince’s friend, with reddish fur like autumn leaves and black legs as if wearing stockings.

“Kyeng, kyeng, kyeng-!”

Thanks to the concept of “imitation” that she had acquired to alleviate the boredom in the basement, Seo Ga-eul could mimic the red fox’s cry more accurately than anyone else.

Did it work?

“An animal? Ugh, I hate animals. I break out in hives just from touching them.”

The woman, who had been fiddling with the locks, distanced herself from the basement door. Seo Ga-eul then sat quietly on the mattress until the clicking sound of high heels faded away.

For quite a long time, she remained still.

# # #

━Gyu-iing.

Late at night. Around midnight. On the way to the orphanage grounds.

Ying-ying, who had turned into a cloud, flew far away into the night sky.

“Hey! You need to come back home before it’s too late!”

Ying-ying, like Seo Ga-eul, had been trapped in the basement for a long time, so she might have wanted to fly far into the sky.

But whether Ying-ying, who had turned into a cloud, would return to our home, I wasn’t sure. If Ying-ying didn’t come back… well, I would have to respect her wishes.

Ying-ying liked to wander around.

What about Seo Ga-eul?

My legs were heading towards the orphanage, but my mind was filled with thoughts of Seo Ga-eul. That’s what love is like.

“Should I take Seo Ga-eul for a walk sometimes?”

How about taking Seo Ga-eul for a walk, tightly bound with chains? Maybe that would soothe her prickly mood.

But if she struggled and screamed, it would be troublesome.

Should I wait for the full moon to rise before taking a bath or going for a walk? It would take another fortnight for the next full moon to appear.

With such thoughts in mind, I arrived at the orphanage site, which wasn’t far from the abandoned factory that had caused a commotion last time due to Yeom Hoon.

“Sapling Orphanage”

The paint was peeling off the building’s exterior walls, and the creaking merry-go-round reminded me of a haunted house. The rusty chain swings and the seesaw with dents everywhere made it look like a place where ghosts would appear.

But I was a man.

A man doesn’t fear ghosts.

Moreover, I was wearing tiger-patterned underwear, so it was the ghosts who should be afraid of me.

So, without fear, I boldly entered the Sapling Kindergarten building, which indeed felt like an abandoned place.

Broken windows, baby bottles scattered here and there─, it felt like it had been left unattended for a long time, and at the same time, I felt a strange sense of déjà vu.

A chilling sensation ran down my neck, making me uneasy. A few months ago, I had searched an abandoned hospital where robbers were hiding to find some medicine, and it felt exactly like that.

The feeling of someone hiding and watching me.

A trap. Yes, to put it simply, it felt like I was walking into a trap set by someone.

Sniff, sniff-.

Above all, the smell of disinfectant lingered strongly at the tip of my nose. This made me automatically recall the time I had entered the abandoned hospital.

Someone is definitely here in this orphanage.

“Who’s there?”

I asked, shining my phone’s light into the dark corner of the orphanage’s hallway.

Rustle. Clink, the sound of stepping on broken glass and asbestos falling from the ceiling, and soon a girl with short hair like a boy and a piercing on her lip appeared.

If it weren’t for her chest, it would have been hard to tell she was a girl with her androgynous appearance.

She looked like someone who would enjoy hip-hop.

“It’s been a while since someone figured out I was hiding. Are you a Newtype?”

“Newtype?”

“An Awakener.”

Were there people who called Awakeners Newtypes? While I was on guard in various ways, the short-haired girl also looked at me with wary eyes.

“You’re here to join the ‘Villainers,’ right?”

Villainers?

I didn’t expect to hear that name here.

“Me? Why do you think so?”

“You’re just like us. Dirty clothes. You can tell by looking at your nails or hair. Are you an orphan? Or is your family struggling financially? Or do you have adults at home who become violent when they drink?”

You have quite the keen eye. I thought I was keeping myself clean, but it seems I couldn’t hide my orphan roots.

I never expected to hear about “Villainous” in this orphanage.

Did Seo Ga-eul know?

“Hey, that wristwatch is from Yeongsa High, isn’t it? Are you a student there?”

Zzzt-. The short-haired girl, whose hair stood on end like sparks from a broken wire, seemed to harbor hostility towards Yeongsa High students.

I was curious instead.

“You seem like an Awakened too. Aren’t you a Yeongsa High student?”

“Why would I go to a place like that? If you go there, it’s like putting on a leash. You have to get your fingerprints, blood, and everything else tested and registered. It’s suffocating.”

I see. So she’s an ‘unregistered Awakened.’

From noble mtl dot com

Just a month ago, I was the same. Unregistered Awakened who didn’t enroll in Yeongsa High often caused social problems by wielding their powers recklessly.

You could call them super juvenile delinquents.

“If you’re a Yeongsa High student, do you know ‘that guy’?”

I could sense raw disdain and hatred in the short-haired girl’s pronunciation of ‘that guy.’

The reason she harbored animosity towards Yeongsa High was probably because of him.

Is it a guy?

“Who?”

“Geum Tae-seong. He’s a third-year now, I think.”

This was an unexpected yet familiar name.

It seemed the short-haired girl and Geum Tae-seong had a deep connection.

“I don’t really know. I’m a transfer student.”

I lied, trusting in the “Deception” of my ring.

At the same time, my curiosity about this orphanage grew rapidly.

“So, how do you join this Villainous place? And what does this orphanage have to do with Villainous that you’re here?”

“If you want to know, follow me.”

There was something that connected runaway teens and orphans. The girl in front of me seemed to sense that in me, quickly lowering her guard and leading me to the basement of the orphanage.