.
Her red, voluminous hair waved along the waist; her mature-looking facial features looked fancier and more well-defined because of the makeup she was wearing.
Her face looked somehow familiar. Was she… the Chinese actress, Fan Bingbing? Turning my head thoughtlessly in that direction, I found a breathtakingly stunning beauty. However, the reason why I became surprised was something else.
‘She’s the person I saw there at that time!’ I shouted while turning my head fiercely. In the club called Papillon, the membership venue where Lucas and I had to break in during the Yi Ruda rescue mission, I had definitely seen that lady there on the second floor.
Due to the dark lighting and myself being too out of my mind in that place, I wasn’t able to notice her at a glance. However, encountering her in the streets this way, I could tell that her beauty was indeed on another level. The boys at that time could have gotten her wrong as a grownup woman.
Anyway, what was she looking in this direction so much? Her stinging glance was about to pierce through my cheeks. Covering my face with my hands, I observed her through my fingers.
Taking a closer look, I found that she was fixing her gaze at, not me, but at Ban Hwee Hyul while passing me through. That was when I heard Ban Hwee Hyul grumbling, “What are you doing all of a sudden while making me stand still over here?”
“No, just hold on for a second,” I replied.
“Are there other bastards chasing you? Should I go tell them off?”
I said to myself, ‘Ban Hwee Hyul, you look cool, acting confident and proud, but I guess it’s you, this time, not me, who’s getting chased!’
There were footsteps from the back. The red hair girl looking in this direction blankly was now right behind us before we even knew.
The owner of the glasses vendor looked back and forth between his watch and us nervously. When he glanced in the girl’s direction unconsciously, his jaw dropped onto the floor. That was almost the same reaction guys had when they first met Ban Yeo Ryung.
A careful voice came out from behind my back.
“Ban Hwee Hyul? Hello, no… Are you really Ban Hwee Hyul? For real??”
Snapping his finger in annoyance, Ban Hwee Hyul replied apathetically, “Who the hell are you to ask a stranger if he’s real or not? Am I a purse or what? Huh?”
Oh, geez, Ban Hwee Hyul… I touched my forehead. Please!!!
Turning my head abruptly to the display stand, I began to search quickly for the dirtiest glasses. I was fine with the drastic change in his behavior; however, to make him have a normal conversation with other people, I should find glasses as soon as possible and urge him to wear those.
While I looked around the display stand urgently, their conversations kept on.
Despite Ban Hwee Hyul’s ludicrous response, the girl didn’t seem to be surprised at all. Instead, she shoved her face onto her hands as if she felt deeply touched.
She shouted, “You…! That rude little bastard I know…! You are really Ban Hwee Hyul!”
“What?”
“Oh, heavens! Your stupid way of talking can sound so nice since it’s been such a while! Yeah, you really never know. Can’t believe this…”
“What? My stupid way of talking? Should I make you believe what’s gonna happen next?”
Listening to their fantastically incoherent conversations, I quietly turned my head back toward the display stand and concentrated on searching for the right glasses.
‘Hmm, according to their talks, that girl definitely belongs to a Ban Hwee Hyul type of person. There is no room for me to intervene in then,’ I thought.
The glasses vendor guy’s face then came into view. Since he looked so nervous, I quickly took the dirtiest glasses from the stand.
“Uh, I’ll get this one! Sorry for making you wait.”
“Um, no…”
I quickly handed out the money to the guy, who was scratching the back of his head, then turned to look beside me. Their talks continued. Even I, who seldom had any normal people around me, had never heard about this kind of weird conversation in my whole life.
Looking thoroughly at Ban Hwee Hyul, the girl uttered in amazement, “Wow, you speak exactly the same way, but what happened to your face? Why did it change so much? What’s wrong with your hair? Are you trying a caveman style? Dude, you look like that… you know Australopithecus in the movie, Night at the Museum…”
“What? Isn’t that a dinosaur? Where does a dinosaur have its hair on? Are you kidding me?”
“Oh!!! That’s right! You were just like this. Geez, you were so bad at remembering names. Hold on, do you… remember my name?”
“Isn’t it Dae Lisuk?”
“Fu*king kill you, man. I’m able to have mercy on those who call me Mona Lisa, but not you.”
“You’re the one who’s gonna pay for calling me Tyrannosaurus.”
“It was Australopithecus, as*hole! Okay, let me be the nationwide Number one from today then!”
Throwing those words, the girl kept arguing with Ban Hwee Hyul in a great rage. Toward that savage girl, I carefully begin to talk.
“Excuse me…”
As soon as those words slipped from my mouth, not only the girl but also Ban Hwee Hyul turned to look in this direction in a flash. They both yelled at the same time in annoyance.
“What?!!”
“Why?!!!”
“Sudden attack!” Quickly shouting that way, I dashed to Ban Hwee Hyul and put the glasses I just got on his face. With full of tension, I observed the change in Ban Hwee Hyul’s face. The glitter of his eyes over the thick black glasses soon subsided like a turned-off flashlight. Watching that sight, I heaved a sigh of relief.
At that moment, a stiff question flew over from beside me.
“What did you just do?”
I replied, “Excuse me?”
“Are you the new nationwide Number one?”
I shook my head urgently while thinking, ‘What the heck? That can’t happen!’
However, in her perspective, my simple act seemed to have looked like it had put Ban Hwee Hyul’s rage to sleep. Thus, she could have gotten me wrong.
How could I explain the relationship between the glasses and Ban Hwee Hyul? While I frowned with the thought in mind, it was, surprisingly, Ban Hwee Hyul who responded to that question.
He said in a calm voice, “In the world of wrigglers, she could be the Number one.”
“Hey!”
Only the way he spoke had changed; the way of his thinking was still the same. With a grimace, I slightly kicked the back of Ban Hwee Hyul’s knees.
He was, however, just saying, ‘Ouch,’ without any response and just furrowing his brows a little.
When I lifted my head back, the girl was looking at me as if she had witnessed the end of the world. With a doubtful face, she asked, “… I mean, for real… what did you do just now?”
Scratching my head, I turned to look at Ban Hwee Hyul beside me then heaved a small sigh.
<hr />
“Hmm…”
Sitting side by side on the bench, the girl took out the glasses from Ban Hwee Hyul. As soon as she did that, Ban Hwee Hyul knitted his forehead and dropped some dirty words.
“Want to fu*kin…”
She then put the glasses back onto his face.
“What are you doing…”
Then took the glasses off again.
“You’re gonna be dead meat…”
Put the glasses back.
“Stop…”
Being unable to watch the sight, I called her cautiously, “Excuse me.”
As if that was when she noticed my existence, the girl got surprised then soon covered her mouth with the back of her palm.
With a smile, she said, “Ah, sorry. It was so funny. You know it’s like turning the plush toy on and off while pressing the switch to make it move. If I keep poking the toy’s tummy, it says like, ‘I love you,’ and when holding the button, it’s buffered like, ‘LLLLLLLOOOOVVVVEEEE.’ You know what I’m talking about, right?”
“Uh, yeah…”
“Changing the message of love into the warning of death… so exciting,” she uttered while clenching her fist.
Watching her reaction, I thought, ‘Anyway, this person isn’t normal at all too…’
Were all the fighters in the rank like this way? Wondering about their characters, I recalled Hwang Siwoo and Woo San, the guys that I saw before, then thought about this girl’s identity that I just heard.
Dae Lisa, the nationwide Number eleven. Though her name was the homonym of the term meaning a surrogate, her position wasn’t someone’s substitute. Her last name was Dae; the first name was Lisa. She was half brothers and sisters with Gang Han, the nationwide Number five. Since their parents got divorced again, they got to have different last names. However, I was told that they still kept a close relationship.
‘Whether it’s about her name or story, things are really like those in fiction,’ I clicked my tongue. Perhaps, Dae Lisa could be a female main character in another novel that I wasn’t aware of. Even her gorgeous appearance was too extraordinary to remain as a supporting role or an extra here.
Putting the glasses back onto Ban Hwee Hyul’s face, she spoke frankly, “Anyway, I was so surprised since a kid who completely disappeared for a year showed up right in front of the station in the middle of Seoul. I rubbed my eyes a couple of times while thinking that I was seeing an illusion. However, the way you talk and even the voice sounds the same. Due to that hairstyle, I almost didn’t realize you and was about to just pass you by.”
