CHEOLYONG

Hiding behind the dumpster was not the brightest idea that Bang Cheolyong had ever had. Set at the back of the school where it was off limits to the students and hidden from the sunlight, it was cold and damp from the light rain showers earlier in the day, not to mention the odor was foul and strong. But Cheolyong had no choice but to sit crouched behind the giant dumpster, because on the other side were four older boys in the senior class, smoking their cigarettes and talking about how they were going to beat him senseless once they found him. But their intelligence wasn’t the highest, and if they just took a look behind the green dumpster they’d find their victim, thus leaving them idiotically unaware of Cheolyong’s presence.

As the smoke from their joints of flowed through the air, Cheolyong quietly cupped his hand over his nose and clenched his eyes shut, tears already stinging his eyes from the wafts.

“Come on, I’m not waiting around all day for that scrawny er. Let’s go nick some booze from the corner store,” One of their voices broke through the silence, gruff and scratchy from the amount of cigarettes consumed on a daily basis.

As their footsteps retreated into the distance, Cheolyong slowly crawled to the edge and poked his head around the corner, checking to make sure that they were really gone. Not seeing anyone around, he sighed in relief and closed his eyes, mentally thanking God for giving him a break today as he stood up and moved away from the reeking hideout. He made a mental note not to run and hide there ever again, especially if it was the boys’ hangout spot after school; probably during, as well. After brushing off some wet gravel from the knees of his pants, Cheolyong slowly walked away from the school and towards the direction of his neighborhood, which wasn’t too far off; only a block or two.

It was not the nicest neighborhood around, but when you looked at it as a whole, neither was the city Cheolyong lived in. Well known for its high rate of unemployment, patronized for the crimes that were headlining the morning paper, the city of Chongruhn was quite the ghetto. As Cheolyong walked down the broken and cracked sidewalk, he silently looked around at the several houses in the neighborhood. Sometimes he wondered if at one time the neighborhood had actually been nice, clean and well kept. But from the looks of it, several tattered houses with overgrown gr