Dirty Switch

“School?”

“Yeah. Am I not allowed to go to school?”
“No, no! Of course you can!”
His parents jumped up like they’d just heard something outrageous.

Chairman Joo and Director Yoo actually did have a plan of their own. They’d never intended to lock their youngest away in a tower like Rapunzel. They had been considering sending him abroad to a country with clean air and advanced medicine. After hearing the attending physician’s recommendations, they had even begun carefully researching domestic schools.
But Joo Taehyun had never personally brought up school—much less said ~Nоvеl𝕚ght~ anything about a science high school—so the whole family was slightly caught off guard.
“Sweetheart, when you say ‘science high school’… are you talking about the one Baekhan graduated from?”

“…Yeah.”
“There! See, that Seo Baekhan! Filling our baby’s head with all kinds of nonsense!”
“No, noona. I’m not just trying to copy him.”

Trying to calm down the fuming Yoonwoo, Joo Taehyun cautiously began sharing what he’d felt today.
“I want to become someone cool too. Like Mom and Dad, like my hyungs and noona. Like the guests who came to the concert—I want to become someone whose name appears in books. But… I don’t really know the best way to get there yet. So I thought maybe I could go to school and figure it out while studying.”
Joo Taehyun didn’t know how to speak as clearly as Seo Baekhan. He didn’t have a specific dream yet, so he couldn’t talk about his goals as confidently. But instead of being coddled and called baby, or little one, or sweetheart all the time, he wanted to become someone reliable enough to have a hand placed on his shoulder with a weighty, “We have high hopes for you.” That much was clear.

“For now, I want to study hard and get into a good school.”
And so… someday, he wanted to become the kind of person Seo Baekhan could confide in about his dreams without hesitation.
“Our baby…”

His parents, eyes glistening, took his hands and held them tightly. His older brothers did the same. Only Yoonwoo was tearing at her hair in disbelief.
“Wait, hold on! Studying hard is great, but this science high school nonsense—this is totally Seo Baekhan’s doing! Trying to make our baby his little minion—ow!”
“Would you watch your mouth in front of the baby?”

Kyunghan hissed through gritted teeth at her, but it was too late—everyone had heard.
Joo Taehyun couldn’t say it out loud, but honestly… he wouldn’t even mind being Baekhan’s minion. If he had a leader as cool as that, he wanted one too.
***
In the end, Joo Taehyun decided to give up on applying to science high school.

‘Your goal is to pass the science high school entrance exam? That won’t be difficult. Admissions are all about who strategizes most efficiently, so there’s no need to worry.’
The famed admissions consultant, summoned to their home just half a day after Taehyun’s big declaration, had promised admission with ease.
‘Unless you're aiming for early graduation within a year or something like that, we can fully support your medical school goals after science high school. Are you targeting any specific universities? If you speak English fluently and hold foreign citizenship, but still hope to attend university in Korea—’

But Taehyun had no desire to become a doctor after graduating from science high school. He didn’t want to ace exams just for the sake of passing.
He wanted to study. To throw himself into the world beyond the fence and experience what real studying felt like. Things like: before the concept of trait manifestation fever became widely known, there were many unexplained childhood deaths. Things you couldn’t learn just by memorizing textbooks—stories the world tells you.
‘Taehyun, what do you want to do? Do you really want to go to science high school?’

‘…I don’t know.’
‘That’s fine. You still have time, so think about it slowly. Dad and Mom are proud that our baby wants to study hard, but we don’t believe the path everyone else walks is necessarily the right one.’
‘Okay.’

So, in the end, Joo Taehyun decided to choose one of the top domestic private or international schools, as his parents had originally planned. He would always be “Joo Taehyun of the DH Group”—that was a fact that wouldn’t change until the day he died. Which meant he should make decisions that were his own. Just like his noona said, there was no need to mimic Seo Baekhan. And he figured Baekhan wouldn’t like that, anyway.
He would take the qualification exams and finish middle and high school early. His heart wasn’t just in the cabbage field—it was already far off in university. His parents seemed to be thinking about Korean universities, but Joo Taehyun wanted to study abroad.
“…I’m not doing this to copy that hyung.”

He just wanted to grow up faster.
Even though no one was listening, no one had asked—Taehyun still mumbled an excuse out loud, as if his own guilty conscience needed soothing.
Flipping through one of the guidebooks the admissions consultant had left, he slowly reached for his phone. Even though no one ever scolded him for taking naps or playing games at home, he still glanced around nervously like he was sneaking something.

Hyung, hello
It’s Joo Taeh…
12:34 PM
This is Joo Taehyun
Oh hey!
Joo Taeㅋㅋ
Did you get home okay? Eat a good lunch :)
12:38 PM
Then he flopped onto the couch, staring at the message thread he’d just exchanged with Seo Baekhan. He appreciated the quick reply, but now he had no idea what to say next. Baekhan told him to enjoy lunch… did that mean he was trying to end the conversation? So Joo Taehyun timidly pressed a heart on the last message.

“…Maybe the heart’s too much?”
Looking at it again, it felt a little too mushy to send to another guy. So he switched it to a checkmark. But then he worried—what if Baekhan saw the change later and felt disappointed?
…And yet, unlike earlier, Baekhan’s messenger profile photo had changed. Now it showed a blue background with a little person-shaped emoji floating in it. Didn’t that mean he’d been online? Maybe he was checking. Just in case, Taehyun changed the checkmark back to a heart. It was only for a moment, but he hoped Baekhan hadn’t seen it yet.

“…Whew.”
After making a bit of a fuss over nothing, Joo Taehyun finally got around to doing something he’d been putting off since last night. He cautiously typed into the search bar:
Seo Baekhan

“Waaah…”
He broke out in a nervous sweat.
It had taken over twelve hours just to get to the point of typing those three characters into a search engine.

Truthfully, he had tried to search for Baekhan’s name the night before. But even just typing it into the search bar had made his heart pound so hard it ached. So in the end, he couldn’t go through with it—he had to toss his phone across the room.
He’d seen the articles and pictures flood the screen, but pretended he hadn’t. He’d pushed it all aside. But now… he couldn’t hold back his curiosity any longer.