Boksan High School was a public school, so it welcomed every student who had no chances at 'proper' schools. Although there were many reasons for students to end up there, all of which came in various layers, did almost all of them boil down to simple things such as stupidity, delinquency and poverty.

Kim Joonmyun grew up in a world where money could solve all his problems, and although he was fairly sure that he could pass any entrance exam with his brainpower alone, did he always feel comforted by the knowledge that there always was a way. He never had to fight for anything, neither with his fists nor his intellect, and he had been a student of one of the most prestigious high schools in town. The world was his oyster. Was, until he learned the meaning of the word 'bankruptcy'.

He didn't know when his father's business had failed, because it had been hidden from him until people came into his house to take everything that was of any worth. It was as if they had accidentally become the heroes in their own soap opera. His mother cried when they took her jewels, his father desperatedly drank his favourite prized vintage wine, and Joonmyun stood in front of an empty road called 'future', with no certain destination.

He knew Boksan High School. It was rather infamous even among students of better schools, so when he was told he would have to go there, he of course complained.
"Aren't there other schools? There have to be thousands of poor people, so I'm sure there are enough other schools for them," he had tried to argue.
"We're worse than poor people right now," his mother had said coldly, as if it was below her to deal with her child's problems. "We're ruined and in debt. You should be thankful that you're allowed to enter any school at all. There are boys your age who earn their own money."

Joonmyun wasn't stupid. Joonmyun wasn't violent. But Joonmyun was poor now, and it took him a while before that realization fully struck him.

"What's wrong with the first graders though?" someone asked as they sat behind the school. Technically they didn't have to hide to smoke, no teacher ever bothered them about simple delicts like that, but there probably still was a certain thrill about things done in secret. "Back when I was that age I didn't dare to speak a word around older guys, but those little s constantly pick fights. They might as well sign their own death certificates if they even pick on the Core."

Fights belonged so much into the daily routine of Boksan High School, its students sometimes seemed to forget that people outside the school grounds did in fact not settle all their disputes through violence. Only deliberately inconspicious people like Joonmyun could live in relative peace. His 'friends' were wannabe delinquents, secret smokers, people 'without guts', who were probably closer to normal than everyone else. They were like satellites surrounding 'the Core', those infamous leaders of the third grade who had fought their way to the top.

"Honestly, it freaks me out how shameless they are," someone else said and angrily attempted to light his cigarette with an almost empty lighter. "What if I'm the next Kim Minseok?"

"Why would they waste their time on you?" someone scoffed. "You're just some weak nobody."

They laughed and made jokes about it, but the images still haunted them. The attack on Kim Minseok  a few days ago was to prove an example, to show that the first graders had the power to bring them all down. It was a cheap attempt, an unfair fight. And it had worked.

Joonmyun was in the classroom next door when a mass of black uniforms passed by the window. They made barely a noise, like a group of grim monks, and only the shuffling of their feet could be heard in the corridor. Their destination was the classroom of the main leaders of the Core. It probaly wasn't about anyone in particular.

There was a ghostly silence, and then the roars started. Someone hectically ran by the classroom and the black mass followed him.

Kim Minseok was the first victim. They chased him through the school until they cornered him on the schoolyard. There were dozens of them, dozens to make sure that he couldn't get away, and one who hit him. But the number of the first graders was laughable in comparison to the hundreds of students who watched the fight. They cheered and yelled from their classroom windows, as if the scene in the yard was just a sports events. What ultimately terrified Joonmyun the most probably was how no one seemed to care about a single student getting hurt.

Kim Minseok wasn't a bad guy, he wasn't a bully or a fighter. To Joonmyun he actually seemed more like a direct victim of the Core, like someone they allowed around without giving him any rights. It wouldn't have surprised them to hear that they took his money and made him do their homework. Kim Minseok's only mistake was that he belonged to the Core. For that he got punished, simply because he attended a school where scars counted as achievements.
It made Joonmyun sick, and it was only the terror that prevented him from averting his eyes. Endless moments seemed to go by, until he finally heard the familiar voice of the Core's main leader outside his classroom.

"What the hell is going on?" Wu Yifan asked as he walked along the corridor and all the third graders who had aimlessly stood around the windows immediately grew silent. "What's with the commotion?"

"It's the first graders," someone said in panic. "They have Minseok."
And those simple words immediately changed the situation.
The Core finally moved. They ran through the hallways, broke up the circle on the yard and caused it to scatter into a mess of black uniforms. It looked almost comical, like a fight between ants.

And Joonmyun hated it. He wasn't violent, he wasn't stupid, but his poverty had caused him to become involved with high school students who wasted their time on fighting each other, rather than to fight the society around them, as if they didn't understand that they would have to move on once they finished high school.
There was less than a year left for the Core in grade three, less than three for grade one, and yet they blindly acted like warriors in a fight that wouldn't earn them anything but the 'respect' of other delinquents.

He didn't understand it.
He didn't want to understand it.
And he knew that if he wasn't careful, he could easily become a victim like Kim Minseok, the beaten boy who was dragged away by his Core friends, and who had not actually done anything wrong.