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“Actually, I have a curfew.”
“You are?”
The guy who’d grabbed his shoulder on the boardwalk earlier. Se-kyung covered his reddened ears with his hand in embarrassment and stared off into the distance.
“
by ten o’clock. I forgot because I’ve been doing palm trees lately. I guess she hasn’t called me yet, even though it’s a non-palm day.”
“Well, you may be a grown man, but you’re still a kid in your parents’ eyes.”
Although he said that, Kim Deuk-pal understood if the curfew was set to prevent Choi Se-kyung from getting into trouble, and he could see through his father’s intentions.
He craned his neck to look at the electronic clock at the theater entrance. The movie tickets they’d bought had a 9:55 p.m. start time, and it was now 9:40. Kim Deuk-pal jumped off the stool.
“Let’s go. I’ll take you home.”
If you bring someone’s precious child out of their house with a curfew, you have to take them home safely. Without answering, Kim Deuk-pal grabbed his hooded hat as he left the movie theater. Choi Se-kyung was hurrying. He didn’t let go of the hooded hat to stop the fake Song Yi-Heon from leaving.
“See you.”
“You said there was a curfew.”
“You’re not in trouble. It’s okay. It’s just a formality. Just tell me where you are.”
It turns out that Choi Se-kyung has a curfew because she’s afraid of trouble. Se-kyung took this to mean something, so she snatched up the popcorn bucket and stormed out of the theater. Se-kyung didn’t want to ruin his night out with him.
“Hey, give me popcorn.”
Kim Deuk-pal giggled, thinking it was cute that Se-kyung was taking the popcorn, which had been so delicious the first time, like a hostage.
***
When the movie ended and they left the theater, it was after midnight. Kim leaned his head against the taxi window and stared out at the cityscape. The streets looked familiar, and he had been there many times during his gangster days. As a gangster, he was more familiar with the nighttime scene than with the daytime. Behind the quiet boulevard, beyond the reach of the streetlights, was where his life had once been.
He didn’t miss it because it was the only way he could make a decent living, not because he wanted to. But he often thought of his men, just like now. They were all scarred. He couldn’t pass by those who were frustrated and wandering away from their poor families or the walls of reality. He started collecting his own men.
They were all picked up by Kim Deuk-pal. Kim Deuk-pal felt nostalgic as he remembered their admonition not to pick up people like taking up cats. He didn’t even get to say hello. How are you doing

.
Next to him, he could hear Se-kyung, who was sitting next to him in the back seat, answering a call from home.
“I’m on my way in. I took a taxi. No, it’s a classmate. 
 Same neighborhood, yeah. Good night.”
As they walked out of the movie theater building, Kim Deuk-pal asked Se-kyung where he lived, remembering that the original Song Yi-heon had said he’d come to his door, but Se-kyung wasn’t expecting it, so he just looked at the side of the road and found the taxi he’d hailed through the app and let Kim Deuk-pal in. In the back seat, Se-kyung named the neighborhood.
As the taxi pulled into the neighborhood, Se-kyung touched Kim’s fingers, which were lying haphazardly on the seat. He leaned against the window and turned his head around.
“Do you want to walk?”
Shouldn’t we get home early? Kim Deuk-Pal was puzzled, but nodded, figuring he could handle it. He couldn’t help but think of his subordinates.
The taxi stopped on a popular cafe street near a housing complex. It was late, and most cafes were closed, leaving only alcohol-serving cafes to shine their lights like pellets on the dark street. The cherry blossoms lining the streets were in full bloom and fluttered in the moonlight.
Looking up at the night sky mesmerized, Kim Deuk-pal reached out to catch the falling petals. The petals fell his fingers. As he bent down to catch the petals, he saw a pair of sneakers. As they walked side-by-side, Se-kyung blocked Kim’s path and held out the cherry petal she had caught.
“I can help you.”
“It’s tricky.”
That was the point. He laughed softly.
It was a child’s game. Who helped whom? Besides, Kim Deuk-pal didn’t need any help. He didn’t take the cherry blossoms Se-kyung offered him, instead kicking a dented can on the ground like a soccer ball. Se-kyung followed, urging him on.
“If you don’t have an identity, I can get you one, and if you’re involved in a crime, I can get you legal help. There’s a foundation my mother runs, and I can get you financial support, which means you don’t have to live like Song Yi-heon.”
Seeing Choi Se-kyung trying to pretend to be an adult using her parents’ powers reminded Kim Deuk-pal of how young he was. He was worried that Choi Se-kyung would do something unwise with his young blood, so he admonished his.
“Don’t make your parents worry about you because you’re so young, just study hard. You shouldn’t break curfew like today. You should go to a good university, get a good job, get married, and have children. Do you understand?”
Se-kyung listened in silence, and then suddenly intercepted the dented can and kicked it as hard as he could. The can bounced off the iron gate in a residential neighborhood. A dog barked ferociously from inside the house, and the automatic security system flashed.
“Hey

!”
As Kim Deuk-pal spun around in surprise, Choi Se-kyung grabbed his hand and ran in the opposite direction. As security beeped louder and louder, Kim Duk-pal realized he was doomed and joined the sprint. At times like this, there was nothing like thirty-six-point-five.
Not knowing the neighborhood geography, Kim Deuk-pal ran as Se-kyung ran. To keep up with his long legs, he had to use his stomach to move his legs. When he was pushed against an unknown wall, his legs shook from exertion.
Choi Se-kyung touched the wall next to Kim Deuk-pal’s face. Against the moonlight, a shadow fell over Song Yi-heon’s small frame.
“He’s not young.”
His hair was disheveled and he breathed heavily, but his eyes were firm and his voice was clear. He emphasized his displeasure at being treated like a child.
“At least, I’m old enough to be exploited by you.”
“Dude, shit, you made a mess of it

.”
‘It’s terrible enough that I ran like hell in the middle of the night, but now I feel like I’ve been hit by a kid.’
Kim Deuk-pal gritted his teeth, but Se-kyung didn’t listen to him and walked out. Even as he walked away, she couldn’t look away from Kim Deuk-pal. The more he gritted his teeth, the more amused Choi Se-kyung looked.
“I’m coming.”
He turned and ran until he was away. Kim Duk-pal realized the alley was familiar. The wall against his back was lined with familiar vines. Choi Se-kyung ran in front of Song Yi-heon’s house.
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***
Lunchtime near March is hot.
The basketball court, which occupied one side of the campus, was surrounded by rare commotion. Their eyes lit up at something interesting, unlike first period’s sleepy, half-dead eyes.
A boy running across the rectangular basketball court stopped and bounced a basketball. Bouncing the basketball, which was taller than my palm, Song confronted the boys defending the goal. Both sides were sweaty and rough from all the running they had done.
The opposing team of three was out of breath and wary of Song Yi-heon, who was alone. The sweat that ran down Inzhong’s body seeped through his lips and made his mouth taste salty. However, he didn’t swallow a dry mouthful and concentrated.
It was Song Yi-heon who ended the scrimmage first, his skinny body suddenly stomping across the basketball court.
“Stop him!”
The opposing team spread their arms wide. They scrambled left and right to widen their defense, but they couldn’t stop Song Yi-heon, who slipped through like a loach. He bounced the ball as freely as if it were connected to his palm, ducking low to slip it under his opponent’s arm.
In a flash, he was in front of the goal and leapt. The toe of his sneakers crumpled, and the white tee he wore under his shirt rose to reveal his lean abs. The basketball he threw with a flick of his wrist drew a parabolic line. Looking like a black dot in the hot sun, the basketball took a long trajectory toward the goal.
The basketball hoop netting flapped wildly. The students watching from the basketball court cheered.
“Wow!”
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The score was now 3 to 1. With Song’s three points, the game was practically won or lost, and the defeated boys breathed heavily as their blood boiled.
Running around out of breath, the boys crouched down or bent over, while Song wiped sweat off his forehead as he approached. He wore a look of exhilaration on his face as he glanced at the basketball tucked into his side.
“As promised, I get to keep the ball?”
“

.”
The basketball owner gnashed his teeth, but a promise is a promise. You’ve seen how lame it is to try to convince someone not to give you a prize in a betting basketball game. You can’t convince someone not to give you an expensive basketball that you saved your pocket money for.
That was just a couple of days old. It was terrible enough to lose a basketball game, but when the ball was taken away from him, Lee Jae-woon’s insides burned.
Hwa-geun recognized Song Yi-heon washing his hands in the bathroom and told him to either go to the basketball court or keep his mouth shut.
‘I said something because I didn’t want to share a bathroom with a gay asshole. I was annoyed that I had to go upstairs to the secondfloor restroom on my way out.’
“Isn’t it humanly necessary for gay people to use the women’s restroom?”
He had heard all kinds of rumors about him cutting his hair and becoming a master of Murim. He also heard about him kicking Hong Jae-min and turning him into a snitch, but I dismissed them as false.
For Lee Jae-woon, whose hobby is sports and physical fitness, the rumors were exaggerated. Song Yi-heon, who was in the next class over, had fierce eyes and was nothing special. Honestly, he made sexist remarks because he looked at Song Yi-heon, who was small and had slender wrists, like girls who look down at the crown of their heads.
They glanced at Song Yi-heon, who had taken the restroom by himself, and were about to leave when Song Yi-heon called out to them from behind.
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“Hey.
Song Yi-heon made eye contact with them through the mirror. He looked up from where he was washing his hands in the sink and scanned them with three hundred eyes. One corner of his mouth quirked up when he spotted the basketball Jae-Woon had tucked into his side.
“You like basketball?”
And this was the result. When Song told Jae-woon and his friends to play as a team, I thought his liver jumped out of his stomach. However, ten minutes into the game, I had to change my mind.
Short and skinny, Song may not have a very impressive physique, but he has good basic fitness and athleticism. Perhaps under his school uniform, he has a dense layer of fine muscles. In addition, his basketball skills and sense were similar to those of a hobby basketball coach. He deliberately showed gaps as if he would steal the ball, but never did.
In the end, the ball was in Song’s hands for thirty minutes. Moreover, unlike the rest of them who gasped for breath, Song Yi-heon was the only one standing upright. This made he feel like he was trained as a dog.
Wiping the beads of sweat from his chin with the back of his hand, he bounced the basketball with pride.
“If you don’t answer, I’ll take it.”
The nuance was that if he said no, he would give the basketball back.
An asshole who stroked his ego until the end. As Lee Jae-woon glared at him, Song shrugged as if he had no choice, then retrieved the ball and tucked it into his side.
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Lee Jae-woon, who had stared at his back as he left the basketball court, jumped to his feet. He clenched his fist in frustration and shouted.
“Song Yi-heon!”
Stopping in his tracks, Song angled his upper body toward his side, where he held the basketball.
“Do it again tomorrow!”
But Song Yi-heon didn’t say anything, just looked back and forth between the two boys on the basketball court. Even though Song Yiheon had made the first move, the shame of playing dirty in a three-on-one game washed over him, and he blushed, but he didn’t say anything.
“Team up properly, do it again.”
Song Yi-heon’s lips twitched vaguely, but he still looked at Lee Jae-woon up and down wordlessly. When Jae-woon stood stiffly with both fists clenched, his throat gurgling with nervousness, Song Yi-heon smirked.
“Whatever.”
Only his smooth lips drew a clear arc across his face, blurred by sunlight.