Transmigrated as the Side Top used as an Emotional Trash Can - Chapter 4.1
Carrying the carefully packaged delivery food, I climbed the stairs of an old apartment building without an elevator and imagined the staircase continuing forever, forcing me to climb without end.
Affection Level 16%
“Huh?”
The Affection Level suddenly dropped again.
I had only imagined it for a brief moment.
All I had done was think that I felt a little trapped, yet the Affection Level, which had been at 17 percent, suddenly dropped by a full 1 percent?
“Isn’t that too harsh…?”
First, I placed the delivery food in front of the designated address and tried to calm myself down. But my flustered mind didn’t settle easily. My breathing became constricted again, and inside the motorcycle helmet that enclosed me on all sides, I struggled to steady my ragged breaths while pounding my chest several times.
“Deliveries… first.”
As if trying to escape, I accepted about three more calls and raced around the city, but my mind still felt as though it were floating somewhere outside my body.
Exactly two weeks after Kim Jihwan left for Boracay, I finally parked my motorcycle in a secluded back alley and kicked an innocent pile of boxes.
“What am I supposed to do…. Fly to Boracay too?”
I checked my bank balance and fixed my gaze on the small, precious secret stash I had barely managed to save. My head felt as though it were boiling and about to burst.
Nothing would happen just because it dropped by about 1 percent. But what if it kept gradually falling like this until it went below 10 percent?
“…I’m fine. I’m fine…. No zombies will appear…. They won’t….”
Repeating it to myself a hundred times did nothing to calm me. Still wearing my helmet, I thumped my head against the wall. I stood there and desperately prayed for this horrible time to pass, and for Kim Jihwan, the protagonist of my world, to hurry back.
“-Hey, you…! Huh?! You…!”
“Get him!”
At that moment, a loud commotion erupted at the end of the alley, followed by the sound of something running toward me.
Urgent footsteps that sounded as though someone was being chased by several people. The sound of them tripping over garbage, then their clothes and skin tearing against a protruding joint in a gas pipe. Then came the sound of someone suppressing their pain through clenched teeth.
“What’s that noise?”
For the moment, I hid deeper within the dark alley. Then I waited for the approaching noise to pass. It sounded threatening at once, so I felt like getting involved would only bring me trouble.
“Where did he go?!”
“He went that way!”
“Fuck…!”
The target of the pursuit, who was grinding out curses under his breath, approached directly in front of me. He had an extremely small and thin body, with skin pale enough to look almost bloodless. He was so small that he could have been mistaken for an elementary school student. And so….
Grab!
“……!”
I moved quickly and seized him.
The other person was pulled into the darkness of the alley exactly as I dragged him. I had acted without thinking. I couldn’t simply stand by and watch that small, frail body when it felt as though leaving him alone would be wrong. It wasn’t any clear sense of justice or sympathy. Some kind of urgency had compelled me to help someone younger than me.
“Ugh…! L-Let go of me…!”
Startled by being dragged toward me, he flailed and tried to escape from my arms.
I held tightly onto his strangely feverish body, lowered my head, and brought my lips close to his ear as I soothed him.
“It’s okay. You were scared, weren’t you….”
I startled myself with my own words and quickly pulled away. They weren’t words I wanted to say to him. They were words I wanted someone to say to me. Had I become too consumed by the Affection Level?
“…….”
The other person, who had fallen quiet at some point, covered his ear and looked up at me. My helmeted figure was reflected in the lenses of his glasses. Ah, right. Did I look extremely suspicious right now?
“…Would you like to go?”
Realizing how incredibly rude this situation itself was, I relaxed the arms that had been holding him. The alley was still noisy, and the curses of those searching for him echoed loudly. We silently looked off into different directions and held our breaths.
By the time I had read every digit of the loan advertisement pasted to the wall in my head, the other person stood up. He staggered away without even saying goodbye, and I merely stared after him.
Those people from earlier did look like gangsters…. Was it really right to let him leave like this?
“…Huh?”
Just as I stood up to continue on my way, the status window suddenly appeared with a whoosh.
The world setting has collapsed. You will be transferred to another world setting.
“H, huh?! What?!”
I stared aghast at the status and warning windows popping up one after another without understanding what was happening, and a foolish noise escaped me. Startled by my cry, the other person also flinched and turned around, watching as I sat on the ground and stared into empty space.
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