Transmigrated as the Side Top used as an Emotional Trash Can

A day without Swimming Club practice.

After taking Kim Jihwan to his academy, I returned home and had my private tutoring session.

“Hanrim-ah, you really can’t seem to focus today.”

My tutor scolded me. And understandably so, because my mind was completely occupied with Cha Gwonhyeok, the main top who had suddenly appeared, and the culprit behind the attack on Kim Jihwan’s gym uniform.

“Should we just stop here for today?”

My tutor glanced at the clock and spoke to me. When I checked the time, it was about time to finish.

“Hmm…. Should we try a little longer?”

“No, there are just days when studying doesn’t work.”

He was usually so passionate about teaching that our tutoring sessions often ran overtime, so I needlessly felt guilty, wondering if he was leaving because I couldn’t concentrate.

“But make sure you review what we learned today. I’m going to test you next week, okay?”

I answered that I would, and my tutor packed his bag and left the house. After briefly recording what I had learned today, next week’s test, and my study time in my study planner, I checked my phone.

“It’s almost ten….”

Usually, once I finished studying for the day, I opened the suitcase in one corner of my room to inspect it, then went running at the park. But today, I didn’t have the leisure to run around the park.

“I should hurry over before the school closes.”

I put on my wireless headset, played the playlist I listened to while running, and ran toward the school. I wondered whether there might still be some clue left behind from the attack on Kim Jihwan’s gym uniform.

“We don’t usually let students in, but I’m only opening it because you begged so much, alright-?”

The school security guard opened the door with a deliberately stern expression. Since I was a student and said I had come to retrieve a book, getting inside the building was easy. The door to Class 12 was firmly locked, but I simply stopped by the faculty office, picked up the key, and opened it.

“Schools are surprisingly easy to access.”

If the culprit was a student at the school, then anyone could have done that to Kim Jihwan’s gym uniform.

I turned on the classroom lights and went to Kim Jihwan’s seat, but everything looked normal, with no traces of another attack. Since my gym uniform was no longer in his locker, it seemed Kim Jihwan had taken it with him.

“Well, after something like that happened, it would’ve been strange to leave it behind.”

It seemed unlikely that I would find anything, so I turned off the lights, closed the door, and stepped out.

Then I deliberately made the sound of footsteps walking down the hallway.

Because the window facing the hallway had been open.

Someone’s inside.

“…….”

…is what I thought. Had I started imagining things just because a window was open?

I became a little flustered. No matter how long I waited, I couldn’t hear so much as the sound of the wind. I opened the door again, entered the classroom, closed the hallway window from inside, and locked it.

“Judging by the footprints on the windowsill, it does look like someone entered the classroom this way.”

Korean high school students climbed through windows and scaled walls even when there was a perfectly good door, so someone might have entered through the hallway window for no particular reason.

“But these are sneaker prints.”

I didn’t know whether it was some kind of tradition at our school, but first-years wore indoor shoes or slippers inside the building. Until they advanced to the next grade, they weren’t allowed to enter wearing the shoes they wore outside.

Which meant these were traces left by a second or third-year. But would a sunbae have any reason to leave footprints on a first-year classroom windowsill?

“Hmm….”

No matter how much I thought about it, I couldn’t tell. Even I was wearing sneakers right now because I had entered the school from outside. So there was no guarantee that the culprit had to be a second or third-year either.

“Haa…. I didn’t find much.”

Disappointed, I was about to leave when I suddenly spotted a familiar piece of paper in the trash can. It had been torn up and thrown away, but this was….

“…An Affection Level Increase Coupon?”

It was one of my Affection Level Increase Coupons that someone had stolen. And not just one—two of them had been thrown away. If they didn’t only apply to me, then whoever used them must have gone through quite a hard time.

“Did they tear them up because they thought the other person’s affection would increase instead of their own?”

I thought about it for a moment, then stopped because it didn’t seem very productive. Whether the coupons worked on someone else or not, and whether the thief had misunderstood them or not, why should I worry about a thief’s well-being?

“Something about this situation feels weird…. But I don’t know why.”

It felt as though this series of incidents was connected by a single thread, but it was only a feeling, so I decided to examine everything more carefully before reaching a conclusion.

Right, that was enough for today.

READ ONLY AT VANISHINTOFICTION.COM

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READ ONLY AT VANISHINTOFICTION.COM

Who was the first person to come up with the saying, no news is good news?

Some people uphold it as though it were an eternal, unchanging truth. But I can’t agree with it. I think no news is merely ignorance of something you haven’t noticed.

Ignorance of an unpleasant incident unfolding beneath the surface, simply because you haven’t become aware of it. The process of something quietly rotting away can’t be called no news. It is silence, and it is encroachment. Calling that good news is nothing more than optimism.