I Want to Steal Him
That morning, Yoon Arin was restless in a way she never usually was.
Ordinarily, today would have been a training day.
If it meant getting stronger, she climbed into the ring every single day whether her body held up or not. That was Yoon Arin's life.
Lately, though, her mind kept wandering.
…Just for today, maybe.
From the corner of her eye, she snuck a glance at Kang Hyunwoo sprawled across the sofa.
They'd stayed tangled up late into the night, and he was still dead asleep.
Looking at that defenseless face, training suddenly felt like too much trouble. All of it did.
She just wanted to stay glued to this man all day long.
The second the thought hit her, Yoon Arin slapped her own cheek.
What kind of insane idea was that.
Skip training?
For a guy?
The old Yoon Arin wouldn't even have been able to imagine it.
But.
…Just today. Only today.
In the end, her heart tipped over.
The problem was how to say it.
Yoon Arin had almost never asked anyone for anything in her entire life. Asking someone out on a date, of all things.
She opened her mouth again and again, then swallowed the words back down.
Her heart was hammering like crazy. More nervous than stepping into the ring. She couldn't believe she'd ended up like this—and yet her mind was already made up.
When Kang Hyunwoo finally cracked his eyes open, Yoon Arin at last found her courage.
"H-hey…"
Her voice shrank without her meaning it to.
"Today… can we maybe not go to training?"
"Hm? Something wrong?"
"…N-no, it's not that."
Yoon Arin fidgeted with her toes, face burning red. Then, in a voice barely louder than a mosquito, she finally forced it out.
"…Today, do you… w-want to go on a d-date with me?"
The moment the words left her mouth, even her ears went scarlet.
She couldn't bring herself to look at Kang Hyunwoo's face. She just glared helplessly at the floor.
Good god.
What had she just said.
Until not long ago she'd been the undefeated champion—and now she was skipping training to ask a guy out first?
If her old self had seen this, she would have scoffed in pure disbelief.
But what could she do.
Right now, this was what she wanted.
…And that was how I ended up walking down the street side by side with Yoon Arin.
Originally it was supposed to be a training day.
But Arin had been the one to suggest ditching it for a date.
A woman who'd treated training like her life itself, ears flushed red, stammering those words out—there was no way I could refuse.
"…Hey. That place."
Arin pointed with a fingertip. A shabby little snack shop.
"Cup tteokbokki. Ever had it?"
"Cup tteokbokki?"
I let out a short laugh. Had I ever had it.
"Of course I have. Who hasn't eaten that?"
"…Wait, really?"
"I was obsessed with it as a kid. Bought some every day after school. The second I got my allowance, the snack shop was the first place I ran to."
Saying it out loud brought the old days flooding back.
A little kid racing to the snack shop with a fistful of crumpled bills still warm from his pocket.
Long before becoming a world champion—back when a single serving of tteokbokki felt like owning the whole world.
"…That's unexpected."
Arin's eyes went round.
"What is."
"That even someone like you had a time like that. I somehow can't picture it."
"I was a little kid once too. Same as you."
"…I'm not a little kid."
Arin bristled. But the way she bristled was so childish that I couldn't help laughing.
"…But."
Arin dropped her voice a little.
"Honestly… I really loved this stuff when I was little too."
"Oh, for real?"
"Yeah. Used to sneak off and buy it after training. Coach would yell at us if she caught us, so I'd hide and eat it with my childhood friend."
Arin smiled faintly, as if the memory had come back to her.
"Weirdly enough, eating it in secret made it taste even better. Felt like the most delicious thing in the world."
Little kid Yoon Arin hiding somewhere to eat cup tteokbokki.
Stacked against the woman who'd been called the undefeated champion until just recently—whose record I'd broken with my own hands—the image made me laugh somehow.
Arin must have been thinking the same thing. We looked at each other and snickered.
"Then today we don't have to hide, huh."
"…Yeah. No one's gonna scold us anymore."
Arin grinned bashfully. That smiling face looked no different from any little kid you'd see on the street.
We each took a steaming cup and sat down on a roadside bench.
"…It's hot, so be careful."
Arin speared a piece of rice cake with a fork, blew on it gently, and held it out to me.
I could barely believe this was the same person who'd grinned through a face full of blood in the ring. I laughed under my breath and took the bite.
Spicy-sweet. Pretty damn good. It was strange that even this world had something like it.
Game world or not—even a tiny flavor like this felt completely real.
"How is it?"
"It's good. Really."
"…Right?"
Arin looked pleased with herself and started munching her own. Her cheeks puffed out like a squirrel's, which only made it funnier.
But.
Sitting there sharing cup tteokbokki so peacefully, I slowly started to feel the stares around us.
"…Look over there. That guy."
"No way. How tall is he?"
"And his face is… ugh, my heart just stopped."
"Who's the girl next to him? I'm so jealous…"
Passing women started slowing down one by one, sneaking glances at me.
The looks were so blatant my back was practically burning.
I'd been in this world for a little over ten days now.
I should have gotten used to it by now, but I still hadn't adapted.
The fact that someone like me was a spectacle on par with a celebrity in this world.
…What a tiring world, seriously.
Still, I didn't particularly care.
I'd never been the kind of man who got shaken by other people's stares.
Same in my past life. Tens of thousands of spectators locked onto me the moment I stepped into the octagon, and not once did those eyes make me nervous.
That's just what a champion is. Doesn't matter what people say or how they look—you just walk your own path.
And right now.
"…What. Do I have something on my face?"
Beside me, Arin tilted her head. Sauce smeared on her cheek.
"Yeah. Right here."
I wiped the sauce off her cheek with my fingertip. Instantly Arin's face went bright red. The reaction was so cute I couldn't help smiling.
Yeah. Right now, this one woman mattered far more than all those noisy stares.
It didn't matter how many women looked at me.
My eyes only had room for this idiot, sauce on her cheek, blissfully happy over cup tteokbokki.
"…What are you laughing at."
"Nothing. Just, you're cute."
"…!"
Arin nearly dropped her fork. She tried to snap back with a face gone scarlet, then failed to get a single word out and just stabbed furiously at her cup tteokbokki instead. Watching her, I laughed all over again.
And so, right in the middle of this noisy world, the two of us were spending a quiet little moment of our own—
—click.
Somewhere, I thought I heard the sound of a photo being taken.
But at the time, I didn't think much of it. Women had been staring so hard that I figured one of them had snapped a picture.
It was a common enough thing—and what kind of ripple that photo would set off, I had no way of knowing yet.
Lately, Kang Seoyeon felt like something was wrong with her.
That man kept coming to mind.
They'd only crossed paths once, barely brushing past each other at the arena.
And yet the indifferent profile as he looked away, that faint smile as he gazed off somewhere—every time she closed her eyes, they rose up again.
She'd tried to forget him plenty of times.
Acting like this over one guy just wasn't like her.
But the harder she tried to forget, the clearer he became.
As if that afterimage had burned itself into her skull.
"…I'm going insane. Seriously."
Kang Seoyeon sprawled across her bed, idly fiddling with her phone.
Hoping to shake off the useless thoughts, she opened SNS without much thought. And then she froze solid.
Right at the top of her timeline, a photo that had become the hottest topic on the entire platform was sitting there front and center.
"…This."
Kang Seoyeon sat bolt upright.
There were two people in the photo.
Sitting side by side on a roadside bench, sharing cup tteokbokki.
One of them was that man.
The man she couldn't forget no matter how hard she tried. That exact man.
And next to him…
"…Yoon Arin."
Yoon Arin was feeding him cup tteokbokki.
With the happiest face in the world.
Below the photo, comments were pouring down like a waterfall. The scroll went on forever.
It hadn't even been up that long, and the view count was already closing in on ten million.
This entire world had been flipped upside down by one man.
Of course it had. In this world, men were frail little toys.
And then along came a man taller than women, stronger than women, more dazzlingly handsome than any woman alive.
No wonder the world was losing its mind.
Kang Seoyeon still couldn't quite process the situation.
Not long ago, she wouldn't even have believed a man like that could exist in this world.
If someone had shoved a photo at her and said "this guy is real," she would have scoffed and called it fake. Exactly the way half the comments below were doing right now.
But Kang Seoyeon knew.
That man was real.
Not edited. Not fabricated.
Just a few days ago, she'd seen him with her own two eyes at the arena.
That overwhelming presence. Those indifferent eyes. That smile that had nearly made her heart explode.
It was absurd.
And at the same time, somehow it felt completely natural.
That a man like that existed. And that he wasn't some story from another world—he was right there in front of her.
Every time she refreshed, hundreds more comments flooded in.
The whole world was going wild over the man in this photo—and Kang Seoyeon was one of the very few people who had actually stood face-to-face with him.
That fact made her chest flutter in a strange way.
But.
The fluttering only lasted a moment.
Soon enough, none of the chaos registered in Kang Seoyeon's eyes at all.
Because one of those comments had driven itself straight into her.
Queen's got a full-on falling-in-love face right there.
Her gaze locked onto one place only.
In the photo—Yoon Arin's face as she looked at that man. That expression overflowing with happiness.
Looking at that face.
…That face again.
Her chest tightened, heavy and suffocating.
Kang Seoyeon knew that expression. No—she'd watched it her whole life.
When she got her hands on something. When she stood at the top. When she had what nobody else could have. That was the exact face Yoon Arin always wore.
The face of a winner—one Kang Seoyeon had never worn even once.
And this time, what Yoon Arin had gotten her hands on was the first man Kang Seoyeon had ever truly wanted.
…Why.
The fingertips gripping her phone went white.
Why does it have to be you. Why is it you again.
Skill. Glory. The spotlight.
Everything Kang Seoyeon had spent her life reaching for, Yoon Arin had always taken one step ahead.
Even so, she'd managed to endure that.
She told herself it was a difference in talent. That someday her effort would close the gap.
She'd soothed herself like that and held on.
But this… this man… this feeling she had for him… this wasn't something effort could fix.
He was already at Yoon Arin's side. Already looking at Yoon Arin with those eyes.
Kang Seoyeon stared at Yoon Arin's face on the screen for a long time.
And then, suddenly.
A thoroughly wicked thought began to raise its head.
…I want to steal him.
Her heart slammed hard in her chest—thump.
I want to take that man… away from Yoon Arin.
The second she thought it, Kang Seoyeon flinched.
No… hey…
What kind of thought was that.
Yoon Arin was her longtime friend.
Like her or hate her, the childhood friend she'd grown up with her entire life.
How rotten it was to covet a friend's lover—Kang Seoyeon knew that perfectly well.
But knowing didn't mean she could stop it.
Once this feeling had lifted its head, it refused to settle back down.
If anything, the more time passed, the hotter and bigger it swelled.
Just once… if those eyes… looked at me…
Kang Seoyeon clutched her phone tight and bit down on her lip.
Above her pounding heart, guilt and desire twisted together into a storm.
It was the first time.
The first time she'd ever truly wanted to take something from Yoon Arin.
And the fact that it happened to be the person her childhood friend loved—that scared even Kang Seoyeon herself.