Transmigrated as the Side Top used as an Emotional Trash Can - Chapter 31.2
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READ ONLY AT VANISHINTOFICTION.COM
“Ahjumeoni, I’ll walk by myself.”
“……Will you? Make sure to call if it gets difficult. Send me a message once you get home.”
Kim Jihwan’s mother respected my wish to go alone. I took a long detour around the road where I had died and walked along streets I had never visited in my life. After wandering through the unfamiliar neighborhood for a while, the evening sunset appeared.
“This is the longest I’ve stayed alive out of all the times I’ve died.”
I had always died before seven in the evening. But it was now 7:12. So this was what the world felt like when it was dyed in warm orange light.
“I feel like it’s been a long time… since I watched the sun set.”
The warmth of the sunset was so overwhelming that I wanted to melt and cling stickily to the asphalt like ice cream.
“What should I do….”
A contract killer, Cha Gwonhyeok, poison. None of them could capture how I felt now. I was going to become a perpetrator of school violence, and it was now uncertain whether I could compete in the swimming competition.
What should I tell the coach? What should I tell Jihyeok-hyung? What should I tell the hyung who was currently hospitalized? The countless thoughts surging through my mind made it feel as though my head would burst. I felt so wronged that I wanted to die and turn time back to lunchtime again. Compared to this kind of mental blow, it was easier when only my body hurt.
“Suicide… wouldn’t do anything, would it?”
I had to be murdered to return to lunchtime. Killing myself wouldn’t improve the situation.
“Did something like this happen in the original novel too?”
The small question occurred to me, but there was no way to know. This was Hanrim’s high school years, a period the original novel didn’t cover in detail. And it was the story of ‘Baek Hanrim,’ a supporting character and side top, rather than one of the leads. This was a story that existed nowhere else, one that only I had to endure.
“Why does everything keep happening only to me….”
It was unfair.
I wanted to tell someone, but I couldn’t explain it. I leaned my back against a wall and crouched down. Burying my face in my knees, I repeatedly pictured nothing but a pure white blank page. I knew perfectly well that endlessly despairing over my situation wouldn’t help me. It was wiser to simply empty my mind.
Rustle-.
I took my phone from my pocket. After staring at it blankly, I carefully pressed in a number that wasn’t even saved in my contacts, one tucked away in a corner of my mind. A number that shouldn’t exist within this story.
“What are you doing, sitting around like a bum?”
A little while after answering my call, the guy arrived where I was and spoke when he saw me sitting carelessly on the street.
“Do I look like a bum?”
“No, it was just an expression! Why can’t you understand what people mean?!”
Lee Seojun had called me a bum, but he crouched down beside me anyway. Now there were two bums.
“Is that your school’s summer uniform? It’s pretty.”
I spoke while fiddling with the collar of his white summer uniform. It was slightly damp, perhaps because he had run over despite the hot weather.
“Forget that. When did you get my number, you damn thief?”
“First I’m a bum, now I’m a thief. This is getting ridiculous. How many convictions do I have now?”
I snickered as I joked. My reaction only made him huff and grow even more irritated.
“I’m sorry. I just feel comfortable when I’m with you.”
The first freedom I had experienced from Kim Jihwan, and the unusual connection I encountered there. The yellow linoleum floor that was cold but comfortable. Those sensitive, piercing eyes that seemed to see straight through me. You, who remembered about half of the me I had left behind that winter.
Now, even when I looked in the mirror, all I saw was Baek Hanrim. Was the me you remembered a little different?
“I’m sorry…. Sorry…. I was wrong….”
Without even knowing what I was apologizing for, I apologized and begged forgiveness. It felt as though everything had gone wrong, and that simply breathing at this moment was a sin.
“Fuck, ah! What I’m trying to say is…!”
He seemed flustered by my incoherent pleas for forgiveness. He cursed and fumbled around before pulling my head into his small, slender embrace.
“Ah! Please! Stop crying!”
So I was crying. The old me had never cried over something like this. Was it not me crying, but crybaby Baek Hanrim’s body?
“What do you want me to do? What am I supposed to do? What can I do to make you stop crying?”
A weak laugh slipped out when he asked as though he truly would do anything for me.
“Seojun-ah, how are you planning to handle a promise like that? What would you do if I asked you for ten million won?”
I suddenly remembered our first meeting, when he had snarled that I should be able to tell from the state of his place what kind of situation he was in. Maybe my scoff annoyed him, because the heart in the chest beneath my forehead began pounding wildly.
“Would ten million won be enough?”
“Eh?”
“I asked if ten million won would make you stop crying on the spot.”
The absurd question made my tears stop completely.
“Money really does work wonders. You actually stopped.”
“No, it’s because you said something so ridiculous….”
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