Transmigrated as the Side Top used as an Emotional Trash Can - Chapter 9.2

“?”

It was different from the usual status window. The sentence had an almost brazen air, and I couldn’t tell whether it was a question or an attempt to pick a fight. Unable to understand what it meant, my body stiffened in confusion. Then I made the expression of a stubborn old man glaring at a thief who had come to raid his vegetable garden.

I put my wireless earbuds in and walked along as though I were on a call, then tried speaking to it.

“Hello?”

I spoke to the system window and repeatedly pressed it. Nothing appeared.

“Is this an open-ended written question?”

Still, nothing appeared. It seemed as though it had lagged. If it wasn’t lag, then maybe it was loading. Either way, its behavior seemed a little unnatural.

“Or is this some kind of question-and-answer interview?”

I muttered to myself and tried saying various things to it. But I gained nothing. After repeating such empty questions several times, I gradually began to wonder whether I was hallucinating because I hadn’t eaten.

“Hey, Baekhan, where are you going? Did you eat?”

“Oh, Sexy Baek, hi-.”

“Baek-sundae, come by later when we play basketball.”

Some guys I recognized spoke to me while I lingered near the flower bed.

I was about to open my mouth to answer when,

Ding-!

My gaze was stolen by a new type of status window decorated with adorable pixel graphics.

I could even faintly hear a jaunty, clattering sound effect. It was strangely cute, so a snicker escaped me, along with an involuntary, drawn-out, “No waaay-.”

“That bastard must be talking to his girlfriend.”

“Sweet as fuck, that son of a bitch.”

I lazily waved at the guys who had misunderstood on their own, then covered my mouth with one hand and murmured, ‘Okaaay.’ They somehow heard even that, pretended to vomit, and disappeared toward the cafeteria.

Oh, this wasn’t a four-leaf clover hunt but a doppelgänger hunt. It sounded fun.

“Hm? What do you mean, my body will be stol—”

Thud-!

A flowerpot suddenly fell onto my head.

I collapsed before I had time to resist.

After crumpling to the ground in an instant, I barely managed to turn my head and look up toward the window the flowerpot had fallen from.

“You, who are….”

It was me.

Baek Hanrim stood at the window with a strange, unreadable expression. My final memory was of it looking down at me before I lost consciousness.

I take back what I said about it sounding fun. Damn system.

When I opened my eyes, I was inside a locker in an unused art supply room.

I had no idea how long I had been unconscious, but it was pitch-dark outside. I kicked the door and burst out with a tremendous crash, and the latch and padlock immediately fell off and rolled across the floor.

“A doppelgänger…? Is that what it is? It really locked me up properly…?”

I felt a sharp pain near my head. It seemed to have split open badly, but the trails where blood had run down my face and the back of my neck had been wiped clean.

“Someone treated it?”

Only faint traces of blood remained in my hair and on the collar of my shirt. Even so, I thought it would be better to visit a hospital if I had the time.

“If I don’t catch the doppelgänger by the end of today, it’ll steal my body.”

I had no time to take things easy. I hurriedly moved my legs. Judging by how the doppelgänger hadn’t killed me immediately, maybe it was incapable of killing me.

Even when I dealt with incidents after being dragged into different world settings, the system didn’t seem to want me dead.

“The problem is where that bastard is….”

I racked my brain over where it might be, then changed my approach and thought of places I would never go. The women’s bath, the women’s restroom, some haunted abandoned hospital deep in the mountains, and….

“…Near the main top.”

After entering high school, Kim Jihwan had begun seriously studying and attending an academy. In the original story, it was also around this time that he met the main top on his way home late at night and began building their narrative together.

I somewhat remember the story saying Kim Jihwan usually took a shortcut past a chaotic construction site where redevelopment protests were underway and frequently crossed paths with the main top, who rested there.

“Their faces gradually became familiar, and then they eventually started greeting each other, was that it?”

It took them three months to begin speaking. Kim Jihwan had begun coming home late at night in early April, and it was now mid-May. Their full narrative with each other would be completed in July. So for now, they should still be at the stage where they did nothing but glare at each other.

“Good, it’s decided.”

I immediately ran outside.

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