Transmigrated as the Side Top used as an Emotional Trash Can - Chapter 73.2
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READ ONLY AT VANISHINTOFICTION.COM
I had a nightmare. Just like usual.
I suffered the entire time, but I didn’t regret it.
More accurately, I couldn’t regret it. Regret is only possible when a choice existed in the first place. What do you call regret over something you had no choice in?
You would call it lingering attachment without hesitation. And you would ask me about it too. To that question, this is how I would answer. Longing.
After finishing morning swim practice, I headed to a classroom.
Not my class, but Class 4. I needed to see Cha Gwonhyeok early.
“Gwonhyeok-ah, can I see your phone for a second?”
I needed to check what I looked like when I was under the ‘Younger Top’ keyword.
“Saint B, that’s fucking creepy… I thought you were my girlfriend….”
“This bastard just casually slipped in a brag about having a girlfriend.”
I was talking to Cha Gwonhyeok, but the guys beside him made a bigger fuss.
“Mm….”
Uncharacteristically, Cha Gwonhyeok hesitated.
“Right now?”
And he held back from acting.
I guess that was only natural. A phone wasn’t just a means of communication. It was a private space packed with personal information and private preferences, so I could understand.
“Can’t I?”
“I was just wondering why you suddenly wanted to see it.”
Yeah, I understood. It would feel uncomfortable. But I needed it.
“I want to see the pictures you took on Jihwan’s birthday.”
How would Cha Gwonhyeok remember it, and what would be left in the records? How different would it be from the day I experienced?
“If that’s all, I’ll send them to you by message.”
As though he didn’t want to show me his phone easily, Cha Gwonhyeok took a step back. Should I back off here too, or should I stubbornly keep asking him to show me?
“I want to look through them myself and pick the good ones. Would that be difficult?”
I thought it would be fine to press him once more, so I asked with an apologetic expression. At my request, Cha Gwonhyeok lowered his head and fiddled with his phone, falling silent for a moment as though thinking it over. Then suddenly, his gaze fell on the white pony stuffed toy tucked under my arm.
“You found that?”
“Ah, yeah. It was on the drying rack. I guess I forgot about it.”
I had found the pony stuffed toy I thought had been stolen on the drying rack that morning and brought it to school tucked under my arm. I hadn’t stopped by my classroom yet, so I hadn’t had a chance to leave it at my desk, but he actually noticed it. His memory really was good.
I pulled out the chair in front of Cha Gwonhyeok’s seat and sat on it backward. Then I hugged the pony stuffed toy and sprawled over his desk.
“It feels good sleeping while hugging it like this. This part along the back is especially soft.”
Cha Gwonhyeok looked up at me and smiled along with me.
When I smile, Kim Jihwan’s expression gets progressively more vicious, but when I smile, Cha Gwonhyeok smiles too. One is a reflector, and the other is a mirror. They’re both so pretty when they sparkle.
“If you lend me that pony for today, I’ll show you my phone.”
What a strange condition. Was that really all it took?
“Sure, here.”
But I had no reason to refuse. If he would show me his phone for such an easy condition, then I should be the one who should be thanking him.
And so, we exchanged our belongings.
Cha Gwonhyeok confidently took the pony, but all he did was fiddle with its front legs without doing anything else in particular.
Didn’t he take it because he was sleepy?
The thought crossed my mind, but I didn’t dwell on it and shifted my attention to the phone. That wasn’t what mattered right now.
“Mm?”
There weren’t many pictures of me in Cha Gwonhyeok’s photo gallery.
I had been sure there would be at least 300 pictures of Baek Haneul (Baek Hanrim), but there were only about three now.
Me looking at the screen while making a V sign, me smiling beside Kim Jihwan while consciously posing for the camera, and me shoveling down half a cake. Just those three.
There wasn’t even a single video.
“Gwonhyeok-ah.”
“Yeah?”
I asked him while he held one of the pony’s front legs and swung it around.
“Your birthday is February 29, right?”
I asked because I needed to find out just how different his memories were, and how he remembered me.
Did the conversation we shared and the laughter we exchanged still remain with Cha Gwonhyeok?
“How did you know my birthday?”
Cha Gwonhyeok blinked in surprise and asked me back. It seemed he didn’t remember something he had told me himself. No, this didn’t seem like something he had simply forgotten. It felt as though it had never happened at all.
“You told me…. Don’t you remember?”
“Did I….”
Apparently, yesterday’s ‘Baek Haneul’ had become someone who never existed at all.
Then what exactly was this ‘Baek Hanrim’ who had appeared before Kim Jihwan and Cha Gwonhyeok, spent the birthday with them, and even been photographed?
Was it the Baek Hanrim from the original work? Or me?
I had no memory of spending the birthday with them in my seventeen-year-old form, so it certainly didn’t seem to be the ‘current me’…. Had even my memories been manipulated?
“That’s weird….”
Cha Gwonhyeok frowned slightly, seemingly confused by what I had said too.
And that made me think the Keyword Draw system might be a far more unsettling existence than I had expected.
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