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CHAPTER 03
‘So the collision on my way to school this morning really was just a practice round! So, which of the Three Kings are you?’
The first thing that caught my lowered gaze was the other person’s white sneakers. Slowly looking upward from the bottom, I saw a school uniform skirt the same color as his jacket.
‘Wait, a skirt…? Was there someone among the Three Kings who had a hobby of cross-dressing?’
My eyes shook with confusion. Before I could bring myself to raise my head, a clear voice came from above me. It was the kind of voice that could be described as sounding like a clear glass bead.
“Huh? It’s Beotkkot! Hi, we’re meeting again! Are you running an errand?”
“H-Han Yuna?”
My body stiffened without me realizing it when I saw her smiling brightly.
‘What the heck? Was this really a genre where girls ended up together? And the guys ended up together with other guys?’
She stared at me when I couldn’t easily continue speaking, then tilted her head and asked,
“Are you okay? Your face looks pale.”
“Uh, y-yeah. I’m… fine.”
She didn’t seem to believe me judging from her expression. Han Yuna was about half a head taller than me, so I hadn’t expected her to slightly bend down to bring her eyes level with mine.
Maybe because I was already so conscious of her, I instinctively took a step backward in embarrassment.
Then my heel caught on something.
I immediately lost my balance and leaned backward.
“…Huh?”
As I slowly fell backward, I instinctively squeezed my eyes shut.
‘I’m falling! I’m definitely going to fall!’
But instead of feeling a hard impact, I felt as if I had gently landed on something.
It felt almost like I had sat down on a staircase…
When my thoughts reached that point, I cautiously turned my stiff neck and looked around.
The beginning of the staircase leading upstairs was quite far away. Apparently, I had flailed my hands around unconsciously when I fell, because one of the notices I had been carrying had fallen over there.
‘If what I’m sitting on isn’t the stairs, then could it be…?’
Since I hadn’t been hurt when I fell backward, I naturally assumed that one of the main characters had caught me.
After all, as always, saving someone from danger was the role of an important main character, not an extra.
That’s why I had unconsciously assumed that someone had helped me without thinking.
But instead, I had apparently landed on top of another person.
“Excuse me, uh, are you okay? I-I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sit on you.”
Naturally, my words became stuttered because I was so flustered.
The boy was dressed casually, wearing school uniform pants, a white shirt, and a black hoodie over it. He wasn’t wearing a name tag either, so I couldn’t tell which grade he was in.
‘Could he be an upperclassman?’
The male student kept grimacing, apparently because his back hurt from hitting the floor.
His black hair and black eyes weren’t particularly different from those of any ordinary student.
Except for the fact that even his irritated expression practically had “I’m handsome” written all over it.
A male student who had witnessed the scene came running toward us from a distance.
“Hey, Kim Dohwan, are you okay?”
“…What?”
The moment I realized that the name I’d just heard sounded familiar, a dumbfounded answer slipped out of my mouth.
‘Kim Dohwan? Could the guy I’m sitting on right now actually be the prickly one among the Three Kings, and…’
I lowered my gaze and looked directly at the face of the boy underneath me again.
He was glaring at me as if he wanted to kill me without taking his eyes off me.
“Are you crazy? Aren’t you getting off me?”
The owner of that terrifying gaze was someone I knew very well.
‘…The third-generation chaebol of Cheonghwa Group.’
Only then did I realize that I was still crushing him beneath me.
I immediately stood up and naturally took a step backward.
From a distance, the whole situation looked even more ridiculous.
The notices I had been carrying were scattered all over the hallway, and some random male student was lying right in the middle of them.
And that student was lying there because of me.
I harassed a third-generation chaebol = corporate destruction.
I harassed one of the Three Kings = school-wide destruction.
I harassed the male protagonist = destruction by the readers.
I must have taken the wrong evolution route.
Instead of evolving from an extra into a protagonist, I must have wandered down a side path and become a villain.
What happened to the villains in internet novels?
At the very least, they were forcibly transferred to another school.
At worst, they lost their lives.
A warning siren that I hadn’t even known existed in my head began flashing red.
‘Danger, danger. Danger, danger!’
I don’t even know how I managed to pick up more than forty sheets of A4 paper in such a short amount of time.
I was quietly trying to leave the area to save my life when someone firmly grabbed my arm.
“Hey. You knocked someone down in the middle of the hallway, and now where do you think you’re running?”
“I’m sorry! I’m really, really sorry!”
Even when I shook my arm, Kim Dohwan’s hand wouldn’t let go.
Kim Dohwan completely stood up from where he had been lying.
The natural difference in our heights forced me to look up at him.
Kim Dohwan ran his free hand through his hair and let out a long sigh.
“Hey. What are you standing there for?”
“…Huh?”
“I said, what are you doing? Lie down too.”
“…Huh?”
“You sat on me, so shouldn’t I sit on you too? That would be fair, wouldn’t it?”
For a moment, I had misunderstood the situation.
The Kim Dohwan I had most recently read about in The World of Those Guys had completely suppressed his personality after meeting Lee Segye because he didn’t want her to hate him.
Without Lee Segye here, he was literally like a young horse that had broken free of its reins.
Kim Dohwan’s eyes were, to put it bluntly, slightly unhinged.
“Can’t you hear me? Are you ignoring me right now?”
His eyes were so frightening that I kept my mouth shut and answered him silently in my head.
‘No. I can hear you very well. That’s exactly the problem.’
I gave an awkward little laugh and quickly looked around.
Sure enough, there weren’t many students on the first floor, probably because the only thing there was the teachers’ office.
“Teacher!”
I raised the arm that wasn’t being held and waved it from side to side.
It was obviously a gesture asking for help.
Seeing this, Kim Dohwan followed my gaze and looked behind himself.
‘Now!’
Taking advantage of the moment he let his guard down, I violently pulled my arm free and immediately sprinted down the hallway.
“Hey, pink head! Hey!”
Kim Dohwan’s voice came from somewhere far behind me.
‘Goodbye, everyone! Pink head… no, the pink-haired girl is throwing off all her chains and restrictions and leaving to find her happiness! You all be happy too!’
His shouting only made me run faster.
I would have to wander around in circles during the break and somehow waste time.
‘If I say I was running an errand for the teachers’ office, the teacher will understand to some extent, right?’
Without thinking, I just kept running.
I passed the second floor, reached the fourth floor, and was on my way back down the stairs on the opposite side when the back of my head suddenly felt cold.
Then a thought suddenly occurred to me.
‘What company did my dad work for again?’
In the first place, in this life, I had basically been nothing more than Person No. 1, moving mechanically through life.
There was no way I would have heard or remembered such specific information.
‘I don’t care about anything else, so please, just don’t let it be Cheonghwa Group! Please!’
How terrifying was Kim Dohwan when he lost control?
Whenever someone became his enemy, he didn’t just investigate that person. He first looked into what traces they had left behind and who they were connected to. Then he carefully calculated the best way to get revenge.
The most representative example was a sudden dismissal.
Unfortunately, the father of the villain’s best friend worked for Cheonghwa Electronics.
No matter how much the villain herself had bullied Lee Segye, her friend must have bullied Lee Segye quite a bit too.
‘What was her name again? Na Yuyeon? Yoo Nayeon?’
I repeated a few similar names several times.
Finally, I found the missing piece of the puzzle.
“Ah, Han Yuna.”
The moment I said that name aloud, my mind went completely blank.
Overwhelmed by the unexpected shock, I raised my hand and grabbed a handful of my smooth, light pink hair.
‘Oh my god. The genre-breaking girl was the villain’s best friend in the original story!’
Just then, I heard someone’s footsteps approaching from directly behind me.
There was no mistaking the sound of sneakers.
The moment I realized someone was coming, I didn’t have time to think about anything else.
I immediately opened the nearest door and rushed inside.
“Oh.”
“Ah.”
Only after opening the door did I realize that I had entered the school infirmary.
I also realized that there was someone inside.
Our eyes met, and both of us let out a short sound at the same time.
‘I came in here to escape the protagonist, only to find that there was another unusual person inside.’
After realizing that this was an internet novel, I had learned something through my observations.
Just like in my previous life, most people’s hair and eyes here were black or brown.
That didn’t mean everyone was like that.
Every once in a while, there were a few people with unusual hair colors, like me.
But except for characters who had a certain amount of importance in the novel, such as Nam Juyeon and Han Yuna, everyone’s eye color was the same.
Black or brown.
In other words, ordinary colors.
That was the conclusion I had reached through my own observations.
‘I’m sure that’s how it was. So what’s with this guy?’
I carefully examined the male student in front of me.
Someone with white hair was unusual.
Someone with sky-blue eyes was unusual too.
Someone who had both of these traits at the same time was extremely unusual.
He must definitely have had some importance in the original story.
More than anything, he was so handsome that I couldn’t even maintain eye contact with him from a distance.
‘Who is he? Who could he be?’
It would be awkward to meet someone for the first time and immediately ask, “Who are you?”
And unfortunately, he was wearing gym clothes, so he didn’t have a name tag either.
‘White hair and blue eyes… I’m sure I’ve read this description somewhere before.’
After thinking for a moment, I hurried toward the boy as the approaching footsteps grew closer.
The male student was sitting on one of the medical beds, taping his ankle.
I firmly placed both hands on his shoulders and put on the most serious and desperate expression I could manage.
“Listen carefully. I’m being chased right now. If some guy with black hair comes looking for a pink-haired girl, tell him I’m not here. Please! Got it?”
“Uh…? Uh, yes.”
As soon as I got his answer, I grabbed the shoes I had left outside the door and hid myself on the nearest bed.
I didn’t forget to pull the curtain around the bed either.
Maybe I had just said something that belonged in a thriller or action movie to a complete stranger, but none of that mattered right now.
After all, I had already bumped into Han Yuna, who was apparently the villain, twice today.
If this were a different genre, or if Han Yuna were one of the male protagonists, then I would definitely have ended up with her.
In an internet-novel world, bumping into the same person twice in one day after meeting them for the first time?
That was basically the universe telling us to get married.
But after thinking that far, I suddenly became anxious.
‘Surely this really isn’t a different genre, right? Could the male protagonist actually be a cross-dressing guy? …No way. Surely not. It can’t be… It really can’t be…’
Just as anxiety slowly began eating away at me, someone entered the infirmary with the sound of the door being roughly thrown open.
