We ate together at lunch time, and I quickly understood how dangerous school was for him. People kept staring at him, and often enough someone would throw something at him when the supervisors weren’t looking. I warned him most of the time, sitting in front of him, and he managed to dodge whatever was thrown at him. But I could see how the sudden stress caused by my warnings was worrying him. I sighed.

“Um, maybe I shouldn’t warn you? Is it too much?”

“No, it’s okay… it’s not like I have spare clothes with me, so it would be a shame to spend the rest of the day in dirty clothes because someone managed to get me.”

“But your disease…”

“I should survive that. It’s not like it’s a very intense situation.”

“I see…”

I wasn’t sure of how to take this. Was he simply glad he had a friend, which was why he was trying not to upset me, or was he really sincere about that? His eyes were always so big and sad, I didn’t know what to think…

“Sungmin…”

“I’m sorry if I seem cold. I’m just not used to, well, having someone around caring about me. Having someone who’s trying to protect me from the things people throw at me. You know.”

“I know, but I don’t understand what they’re trying to do. Why are they throwing stuff?”

“Because they don’t like me, I guess.”

“You’re taking this way too lightly. That’s called intimidation.”

“That’s called, people don’t like me, and they’re trying to make me feel bad. Which is not working, this is why they throw stuff. You see, if they can’t make me upset because I’m hated by 99% of the school, they want to make me upset because they dirtied my clothes.”

“That’s stupid.”

“That’s how they probably think.”

He frowned and dodged the pepperoni someone threw at him from my side. He was about to warn me about something, but the other pepperoni hit me before he could say anything. I breathed deeply and got up, removing the pepperoni from my shoulder. I turned and glared. I was Asian, yeah, but I was strong. Strong and big. I could be scary. I walked to the little 13 years old kids and dropped the pepperoni on the most annoying one’s head.

“You do that again, either on me or on Sungmin, and I’ll make sure you can’t throw stuff at anyone anymore.”

He had a ‘I’m better than you, dude’ face and chuckled. “What will you do, you’ll tell the supervisor? Tsk.”

“No. I’ll punch you so hard you won’t see after that.”

I grabbed the back of his shirt and lifted him using only one arm. “Oh, that’s just a small part of my strength. No need to be so impressed. Want to see what this arm is able to do to your face? I’ll punch you so hard the children of your children will look like my fist.”

I dropped him and glared at all of them one last time before returning to Sungmin. He raised a brow, a bit surprised. “Wow. You got the guts.”

“Didn’t think so?”

“Well, it’s not that I didn’t think so, it’s just that you scared them a lot.”

“It’s either that or you have to keep on bearing with their stupidity.”

“Everybody heard.”

“Yeah, and it’s better like this. It applies for everyone here. If they dare throw food again, I’m going to get mad. The supervisors didn’t care too much about me I see.”

“Well, of course not. Violence isn’t tolerated, but intimidation isn’t either. Taking my defense gave you the right to bite back. Plus, you didn’t hurt them.”

“You don’t know how much I would’ve liked to. But then, there are the supervisors.”

“Please don’t hurt them, supervisors or not. Okay? I don’t want people to get hurt because of me.”

“And you don’t mind getting hurt?”

“They are simply afraid of what they do not know. That’s why it’s okay.”

“It’s not okay. That’s intimidation. I’ll make sure it won’t happen again.”

“I know, and I’m glad you’ll help me with that. But don’t hurt them unless you already warned them twice and they won’t listen, okay?”

I sighed. He was a lot more patient than I was. “Alright. I won’t hurt them unless I warned them twice and they won’t listen. In which case I’ll do whatever I want. Okay?”

He smiled, and his smile actually looked happier than before. He had a delicate, very short laugh, but I could’ve listened to it on repeat for hours.

“Okay. My friend.”