1st Place In The Ranking Is A Villager

1st place in the ranking is the villager

- Volume 7 Episode 2

2. Pandora's Box

In the square of Iz Baront, the capital of Lou Zeros, King leaned his hips against the fountain, waiting for a tribute.

It was already time for the appointment, but Hoyoung was nowhere to be seen.

"When are you coming..."

Initium's characters bring the appearance of reality as it is.

So King was looking around for a man with Hoyoung's face, but he was nowhere to be seen.

He immediately thought that he might have been struck by the wind, but he quickly taunted himself that it would not be because the distance between him and Ho-young in reality is as if they were in the same space with one wall.

'Did something happen? Should I try pressing the call button?'

As Ho-young didn't come, he was worried about him. As he was about to go, a figure approached King and tapped him on the shoulder.

"Hi."

"Brother...? Aren't you in the eastern continent right now? What's going on here!"

Its identity was Hoya.

Why do people who are in the eastern continent come to the western continent?

In response to such a question, King asked Hoya a question, and Hoya scratched his cheek.

"I came to see you."

"Me? How do you know I'm here..., ah."

King, a high school ranker, was quite famous, so if he searched for his nickname in the community, he could see articles such as where he had seen him.

King thought that Hoya had come to see him.

It was a pleasure to see Hoya come to him, but unfortunately, he already had a prior appointment.

"I'm sorry that you've been here all the time. I already have a reservation."

"......ha."

At King's words, Hoya sighed and immediately grabbed King's hand, exited the square, and headed for a sparsely populated alley.

"Ton, bro! You can't go out of that square! You and the other person haven't been added as friends, so it's a big deal if there's a conflict!"

"It's me."

"Yes?"

"That's me."

After Hoya entered the deserted alley, he turned around to check the King, and he saw a question mark drawn above his head.

As Bek Seol said, King didn't notice anything strange.

He's not even being a voice changer, so why doesn't he recognize that Hoya and Hoyoung's voices are the same?

It's probably because they separated the two as different beings from the beginning.

"What does that mean..."

When King opened his mouth in amazement, Hoya took off the mask and, seeing Hoya's face, King rubbed his eyes with his hand.

"Uh..., that..., Hoyoung hyung...?""okay."

"Wow..., wow, wow, wow really..."

King may have been very surprised, his eyes and mouth wide open and he stuttered for a long time, and after a while, he opened his mouth properly with a bright expression.

"Wow...! The world is really small once! You've become a real older brother! Wow, really, does this make sense......"

King, who had uttered words of joy, surprise, and emotion, suddenly stopped his words and dyed his face red.

He remembered the words he had said to Hoyoung earlier.

-If you had told me in advance, I would have helped develop the character.......

-Even if I look like this, I'm still a ranker!

- You don't have to specify anything! Let me help you!

'Ahhhh...! How dare I spit such nonsense at anyone!'

It felt as if I had made a black history.

'No, why didn't you tell me in advance in the first place!'

Since it was Beksul who informed him that Hoyoung was playing Initium, King was sure that she must have known Hoyoung was Hoya from the beginning.

Bekseol, who hadn't informed me in advance, was only resentful.

With those thoughts in mind, King gently lowered the hand that had covered his blushing face and looked at Hoya to see him smiling.

“Homin-ah, can I help you with character development?”

"Oh, no. It's okay..."

"Even if I look like this, I'm a ranker."

"Ahhhhh! Please!"

As a joke, Hoya returned to the King what the previous King had said.

Embarrassed by his words, the King screamed, covered his ears with both hands, and collapsed into his seat.

"You don't have to give up. I'll help you!"

"Aaaaaah! I made a mistake, so please stop!"

At King's reaction, Hoya couldn't help but burst into laughter.

* * *

The week went by so quickly, and Lee Ye-sook and Baek Jae-gun, who had gone on their honeymoon, returned home.

The two took a day off to relieve the fatigue of their honeymoon, and the next day, Ho-young and the three of them moved to unpack their newlyweds.

The luggage itself was moved by Hoyoung by a moving company while Baek Jae-gun and Lee Ye-sook went on their honeymoon, so the three of them had nothing but to unpack.

Most of the furniture is in new condition, so there are very few things that have been moved from the previous house.

"Mom, where are you putting this?"

"Huh? Oh, that! I asked where the box was, and it was there. You know there's a small room on the second floor, you know? Put it there, and Mom will clean it up later."

"I see."

At Lee Ye-sook's words, Ho-young took her box and went up to the second floor.

When she went up to the second floor and arrived at the room Lee Ye-sook said, she saw the back of Baek Jae-gun sitting on the floor with a box open to the side.

"What are you doing?"

"Huh? Ah, that's Hoyoung. Just taking out things one by one while tidying up makes me think of the past... These are the things I've already seen once and chewed on the cud while packing.

Ho-young approached Baek Jae-gun and saw him on his leg.

It was the album that made Baek Jae-gun immersed in thought.

When I checked the box next to it, there were a lot of miscellaneous things mixed up in it. For some reason, Hoyoung felt very familiar with some of them.

And in the meantime, he was able to find a thick yearbook with a leather cover engraved saying Taeyang Middle School.

'Why is this here?'

Since it was the name of the school that was also Hoyoung's alma mater, Hoyoung wondered if his yearbook had been mixed up wrongly, so he took out her yearbook and looked at it.

And Hoyoung had no choice but to doubt his own eyes.

At the top of the cover of the yearbook is a photo of the student who is a graduate of the school and owner of the yearbook.

The graduation album that Hoyoung took out had a picture of someone other than him attached.

A picture of a person Ho-young knows well.

"Why is Jihan's picture here......"

I couldn't understand why his graduation album came out in such a place.

"Do you know Jihan?"

Then Baek Jae-gun opened his mouth.

"Ah, come to think of it, Ho-young is from the same middle school as you. We must have met each other on the way."

"...why is his graduation album here?"

"Because, man... No, it's your father's son?"

Ho-young thought for a moment that he had heard it wrong.

"What just...?"

"It's my father's son... ...but now he's gone far away."

At Baek Jae-geon's words, a stream of water fell from Ho-young's eyes.

Suddenly, he remembered what he had said to him when he first met Ji-han Moon.

-We're not just friends anymore, we're friends like family! best friend!

He was no longer in this world, but the family friend he spoke of has truly become a family.

Tears flowed down his cheeks without realizing it.

"Why, why are you crying? Did something bad happen with Jihan?"

"...No, rather the opposite."

Ho-young told Baek Jae-gun about his relationship with Moon Ji-han.

He even said that because of him, Ji-Han Moon got involved in an incident on the subway.

Baek Jae-geon was greatly surprised by Ho-young's words, but patted him on the back.

The unexpected relationship was both happy and bitter, but now it was more to relieve the guilt that Hoyoung was feeling than the joy.

'I hope you don't want to carry it alone...'

Baek Jae-gun thought so and opened his mouth.

"Hoyoung-ah, I won't tell you not to cry. But please don't think that Jihan died because of you. If Jihan knew that Hoyoung was thinking that way, what would you say?""...if you're going to think that way, don't even think about it, stupid, what are you doing..."

"Uh, uh... I know."

Having barely lived with Ji-han Moon for less than a year, he understood what he knew well, even his childhood friend Ho-young.

Moon Ji-han hated being hurt by others and had a strong personality.

Based on such things, Baek Jae-geon smiled outwardly at the thought of Ji-han Moon doing exactly what Ho-young said.

At that moment, Baek Jae-geon suddenly remembered something and started looking for an item while looking through the box with a serious face.

“Hoyoung-ah, did Jihan say ‘I’ll meet you and show you a video’ back then?”

"Yes? Yes."

Thinking differently, saying 'I will meet you and show you a video' means 'I have put a video in something'.

At the time of the subway fire incident, Baek Jae-geon took over Moon Ji-han's belongings as a guardian, and there were objects that could contain images.

At that time, I did not dare to open it due to a sense of loss, and it was an item that I had not checked yet because it was in a continuous state.

The possibility that the video was contained in it was quite high.

"found."

What Baek Jae-geon pulled out of the box was a USB about the size of his fingers.

"that......?"

"Huh? Ah, it's nothing! Ye-suk-san will look for it more than anything. Should I finish tidying up soon?"

Baek Jae-gun, who found the USB, made an excuse to send Ho-young down to Lee Ye-sook's place.

If he is right, showing Ho-young what is inside will be like opening up a wound that has barely healed.

'...Did you go down?'

Baek Jae-gun, who heard Ye-sook Lee and Ho-young's conversation coming from downstairs, took the USB and went to the room he had made as a workroom, turned on the laptop's power, and plugged in the USB.

There was a single folder in the USB and the name of the folder was 'Youngji High School CCTV'.

When I double-clicked the folder to check the contents, dozens of videos were organized.

As he saw that one scene of the video he saw through the preview was the same, he could see that the whole video was from one CCTV.

When I clicked on one of them, the back of the school building and the canteen in front of it floated up.

The length of the video is about an hour, and when you look at the time shown below, it looks like the whole lunchtime video was cut.

Baek Jae-gun, who was checking the video while quickly closing his eyes, frowned.

Ho-young's appearance did not appear directly in the video.

However, several students were reflected in the glass windows of the school in a blur.

Her face could not be judged because of the blurry reflection in the window, but it was clear that several students were assaulting a single student.

Other videos were in a similar situation.

However, in the video, which was taken on a day when the weather was exceptionally clear, the faces of the students were properly reflected in the glass windows.

When I enlarged the image using the program, the names of the nameplates were barely read.

And the scene of violence was clearly visible.

"...I'll have this for now."

These were videos of Ho-young's wounds that I wanted to get rid of right away, but I don't know what's going to happen later.

Baek Jae-geon kept it a secret from Ho-young, and decided to keep this USB cherished in case something happened in the future.

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