🔊 TTS Settings
Chapter 8
Thud―
Just as my body was falling backward, someone grabbed my arm and yanked me toward the top of the stairs.
My center of gravity instantly shifted forward, and my dizzy vision returned to normal.
“Are you okay?”
“…….”
“Do you want to go to the infirmary? Your class president is Nam Juyeon, right? I’ll let him know in advance.”
Wi Jinha, who had been walking at the front, had somehow rushed back and was now holding one of my arms tightly.
With the concern in his voice and eyes, my vision seemed to spin all over again.
I had almost fallen down the stairs just a moment ago, but when I saw his face, only one thought came to mind, absurdly enough.
‘My favorite really is too handsome. That’s the problem.’
I was happy that he was looking at me like that, but at the same time, I also felt a little burdened by his attention.
In other words, I had no idea how to react either.
“The stairs behind me.”
“…The stairs?”
I only realized that I had unconsciously taken a step backward when the grip on my arm tightened.
‘I almost threw myself down the stairs again on my own.’
There was now more anxiety than concern in Wi Jinha’s expression.
Kim Dohwan also came over to where I was and asked if I was okay. He seemed pretty shocked too.
‘I almost gave them a trauma that didn’t even exist before.’
I didn’t want to give the guys a trauma because of my accident. No matter how much I wanted to leave an impression on Juyeon, I had absolutely no intention of throwing myself down the stairs in front of them.
More importantly, I was a person who valued my own body.
“Ah. Thanks for saving me. If you hadn’t been there, I might have ended up in the hospital.”
“Whew. You really scared me.”
“Sorry. I got lost in thought for a moment.”
Wi Jinha led me several steps farther inside, as if he intended to get me as far away from the stairs as possible, and only then did he let go of my arm.
Kim Dohwan spoke when we were walking down the hallway.
“Do you normally just collapse like that?”
“What? Me?”
“Of course you. Do you think I meant this guy with those sturdy legs?”
Kim Dohwan raised his chin and pointed beside me.
Wi Jinha also seemed to have been lost in thought for a moment. When he noticed me looking up at him, he tilted his head as if asking what was wrong.
With his harmless-looking face and sturdy physique that didn’t match it at all, Wi Jinha was obviously the last person anyone would associate with being physically weak.
“…I don’t think I’m that physically weak.”
Maybe because I was standing between two grown-looking guys, I really did feel weaker than usual.
It didn’t take long for me to realize that it wasn’t just a relative feeling.
I had actually become absolutely weak.
“Is this what it feels like when your brain isn’t getting enough oxygen?”
We reached the front of our classroom, where I put down the bag that had been handed to me, and then walked all the way up to the fifth floor, which was directly below the rooftop.
I had only gone up two more floors, yet somehow it felt like I could taste the metallic taste of blood in my throat.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have made you run an errand. I should’ve just told you to bring it to the classroom.”
Just before this, I had asked Kim Dohwan to get me a drink because he was going to return my bag to me and go back to his own class.
At the time, I had been so focused on making Kim Dohwan run errands for me that I hadn’t known what was waiting for me.
‘Did I gain better memories in exchange for losing my stamina? A third-generation chaebol title traded for physical strength?’
Even if it wasn’t exactly an exchange, it was obvious that my physical condition was connected to the newly changed memories.
This morning, when I asked Kim Dohwan to give me my schoolbag at the main entrance, he had looked down at me once before saying that the bag was heavy and that he would just carry it to my classroom himself.
‘Ah, so that’s why I’m out of breath after barely climbing one set of stairs?’
Just yesterday, I could run from the first floor of the annex all the way to the fifth floor of the main building without stopping and barely feel tired.
Now, even walking up to the fifth floor of the main building exhausted me.
Just like that, I had become physically useless in an instant.
“At least it’s definitely connected to the headaches.”
Right before the new memories were overwritten, the one thing they had in common was that I had experienced a mild headache.
I thought back to what had happened before.
Even when I realized that I was the vice class president, I had definitely felt a slight headache.
“It’s frustrating. Even if I try to figure it out, I don’t have any clues.”
As I sighed, I heard heavy breathing coming from downstairs, as if someone had run all the way here.
I looked at my wristwatch.
About three minutes had passed.
“Haa, haa.”
“You finally made it?”
Kim Dohwan came up the rooftop stairs carrying the drink I had ordered and a black plastic bag.
The droplets of water covering the can sparkled in the light, making it look as though he had just taken it out of a vending machine.
I took the drink from Kim Dohwan and then casually spoke as if I had just remembered something.
“Oh, right. Since you were going all the way to the vending machine in the annex, I was going to ask you to get me a pack of jelly from the snack shop there too.”
“…….”
“I forgot. What should I do?”
At my words, Kim Dohwan stared blankly for a moment before pretending he hadn’t heard me and sitting down on the stairs.
‘Oh, look at this.’
It was only Day One of making him my drink errand boy, and it wasn’t even morning homeroom yet.
“What? Is it too much trouble?”
“Yes.”
“This is what you get for bullying someone’s precious child, you brat.”
“You’re bullying someone else’s precious child too.”
“This is your karma.”
I looked at his exhausted face for a moment before taking a refreshing sip of the tangerine drink.
It was the same drink I had happily drunk until yesterday, but somehow it tasted so much sweeter today that it almost stung my tongue.
‘Hmm. From now on, I shouldn’t make him buy this drink anymore.’
I crushed the empty can in the middle with both hands, barely managing to dent it, then looked over at him, who was still sprawled beside me.
“Just because someone speaks harshly to you doesn’t mean you’re a good person for speaking nicely back. That’s not kindness. That’s being a pushover. What are you doing? Hurry up and go.”
“Ahh, I’m tired…”
“What kind of young guy makes groaning noises like that? It’s only Day One, buddy.”
“How did you even do this before? You don’t even have good stamina.”
“…That’s what I’d like to know.”
As if he had read my thoughts, Kim Dohwan frowned slightly while chewing on the chocolate bar he had bought, as though he still couldn’t understand how strange it was.
“Was it last week? When I saw you running incredibly fast during break time, I thought maybe being bad at sports was just an act. Like you were pretending.”
“Haa. I wish this was an act.”
Damn these new memories.
Damn this terrible stamina.
“No, seriously. Back then, even when I chased you at full speed, I couldn’t catch up. The gap actually got bigger, and I was completely stunned.”
“You were that fast?”
“You don’t know this, but I was the last runner in a relay race at my middle school last year. We came from behind and won first place.”
Kim Dohwan glanced at me and gave a small laugh, as if he still found the whole situation ridiculous.
“I’ve always been pretty confident that I was fast. So do you know how shocked I was when I found someone who was even faster than me?”
As I listened to him, one hypothesis suddenly occurred to me.
‘Could whatever is affecting me be related to Kim Dohwan?’
Even the memory about being a third-generation chaebol that had just appeared had come from Kim Dohwan’s older brother, Kim Dohyun.
But between my meeting with Kim Dohyun and me, there was Kim Dohwan.
The reason Han Yuna had called me the vice class president was also because Kim Dohwan had taken the notice I was supposed to deliver.
‘I think I need to test this.’
And right now, because Kim Dohwan had said I was physically weak, I had instantly become someone with terrible stamina.
It wasn’t just something he said.
My body had actually changed that way.
“Hey, Mr. Kim. Let me ask you for one favor too.”
“What is it?”
Kim Dohwan raised one eyebrow, clearly displeased with the way I had addressed him.
The sight was simply ridiculous.
‘You called me Miss Kang too!’
His reaction was the very definition of hypocrisy.
When I do it, it’s romance. When someone else does it, it’s an affair.
“Say this to me: ‘Hey, did you hear the news? I heard the lottery ticket you bought last week won the first prize all by itself.’ Say it while getting fully into character.”
“…What?”
Kim Dohwan’s face immediately twisted into a miserable expression.
“Hurry. Say it.”
“Did you buy a lottery ticket? You’ve got the entire Hwadan Group behind you, so what could you possibly be lacking… Wait. We’re minors. We can’t even buy lottery tickets.”
“Ah. Right.”
I let out a small sigh and quickly continued.
“Correction. Say that my dad bought the lottery ticket, not me.”
“Your father bought a lottery ticket?”
“No, no. That’s not what I mean. I’m just saying it as an example. Think of it as a kind of test.”
It wasn’t wrong to call it a test.
I needed to figure out how much something had to affect me, or whether there was some specific level of influence that triggered the memory manipulation.
Right now, I was testing it to find that condition.
“Ah-ha. A psychological test?”
“…….”
“Why are you glaring at me like that? Your eyes are going to shoot fire.”
With an expression that seemed to genuinely have no idea why I was glaring at him, he reached into the black bag.
Kim Dohwan randomly picked a can of soda, opened it, and took a sip with an annoyingly smug expression.
After swallowing one mouthful, his face immediately turned sour, and he put a lollipop into his mouth.
‘Out of all the drinks in there, why did he have to pick the one and only carbonated drink?’
By now, I could tell just by looking at his crumpled face.
“You just don’t want to do me a favor, do you?”
“Was it that obvious?”
It was the first time his smug face had ever seemed this irritating.
‘Should I hit him?’
I barely managed to calm down my boiling temper before making him an offer.
“If you do this, I’ll consider all the errands you’ve made me do already paid back.”
“You know, I heard the news. The lottery ticket your father bought last week won the first prize all by itself, right?”
At my words, Kim Dohwan immediately recited the sentence perfectly.
