Chapter 23: Reversal (4)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 23: Reversal (4)
Today, as usual, Butt was at my desk.
After hearing that our Butt had even tracked down my phone number over the weekend, I honestly thought this bitch still had a lingering attachment to Cheon Yu-hak and was trying to use me to get to him.
“Hey, Loser, you’re here?”
So, as usual, I sat down, manifesting my steel-like will to never yield to violence. The moment I did, Butt greeted me with a beaming smile.
“Did you miss me over the weekend, Loser? I missed you.”
…What is wrong with this bitch? Did she eat something bad?
“Ah, you’re not mad that I’m sitting at your desk while I waited, are you?”
“Ah, no.”
“Why the formal speech? We’re the same age. We have so many classes together, too.”
Well, plenty of cadets were watching us.
Some were laughing as if it were absurd, while others watched with interest. The first to react were those who had once been Butt’s friends.
“Hey, Kim Ga-eul, you’re seriously fucking shameless.”
“Loser. I’ve been thinking, and I think I was a bit too sharp with you. It’s not like anything that big actually happened between us.”
But Butt ignored them with the same coldness they had shown her.
“Hey, are you ignoring me right now?”
“Loser. Don’t you smell bad breath coming from somewhere? I don’t know who it is, but they’re making a real scene. Right?”
Aha.
Since I hadn’t flat-out rejected her, she was planning to act close to me this time. Her strategy seemed to be: ‘We’ve made up, so why are you guys making a fuss?’
In the process, she probably wanted to get some revenge on the people who had looked down on her.
As expected of the Queen of Incitement, Butt—her plan and execution speed were perfectly suited for her C-rank talent, Incitement.
“I don’t know about bad breath, but I think I see someone whose conscience has exploded.”
“You must have a dull sense of smell! I’m jealous~ I’m so sensitive that I feel nauseous when a bitch with bad breath is nearby.”
“I’ve heard enough of this crap, you fucking bitch!”
“Oh my, I’m sorry. I was talking to Loser; did you hear me? But there’s a reason your breath stinks, isn’t there? It’s because you’ve got a mouth like a gutter!”
Fine, whatever. That’s all well and good, but why are you doing this at my desk? Can’t you two just do this amongst yourselves?
“Hey, Los… So-hyun, don’t be too accepting of her. She’s acting up again because she thinks you’re an easy target.”
You were about to call me ‘Loser’ just now, weren’t you?
Besides, this one used to talk shit about me behind my back all the time when she hung out with Butt. Truly, birds of a feather flock together; her conscience was just as blown out.
“It wasn’t just one person with an exploded conscience, it was two.”
“Loser, you’d prefer someone who only has an exploded conscience over someone who has bad breath and an exploded conscience, right?”
No, I hate both of you.
“Ah, this fucking bitch, seriously.”
“Stop it.”
The one who mediated the fight was Lilac.
“We’re all friends attending the Academy together. It looks like she’s trying to reflect and apologize, so let’s not be so sharp. Ga-eul, you shouldn’t be so irritable with the others, either.”
“Lilac! You’re saying that because you don’t know what she did to So-hyun!”
“What? I just wanted to get closer to Loser and have a conversation, but you’re the one who barged in.”
“It’s not like you believed in So-hyun when he was having a hard time, either. If you really want to talk, you should do it between the two of you without bothering others. How flustered do you think So-hyun is, having this happen at his desk?”
Yes, yes, that’s it.
Our apostle of justice and benevolent mediator, Lilac, was moving exactly in the direction I wanted.
Even until a moment ago, he was probably persuading the other students based on the idea that the rumors about Kim Ga-eul weren’t all true, or that I was trying to forgive her.
Cheon Yu-hak didn’t seem to have any thoughts even after seeing the situation, and the former friends who were trying to attack Butt went quiet, seemingly able to use their heads enough to realize that pushing further would only disadvantage them.
Now, Butt will probably fall for Lilac, who helped her, just like the “falling-in-love-at-first-sight” girl she is.
“Loser.”
Huh?
Wait, why the hell didn’t you go to Lilac?
“Our Loser is being so mean. I’ve been asking for your number for a while now. Why are you ignoring me?”
Ah, is it because public opinion hasn’t completely shifted yet, or because Lilac’s help wasn’t that obvious? Well, it is Monday, after all.
* * *
As Lilac corrected the rumors among the students and defended Butt while using me as a shield, public opinion definitely began to improve.
Part of it was that the victim had forgiven her, and the drama itself had cooled down after a week, but it certainly wouldn’t have gone this smoothly without Lilac.
It wasn’t at the level where all the friends who had cut her off came back, but the amount of cursing or bullying she faced seemed to have decreased since the first day.
Of course, this didn’t mean things had simply gone quiet. Even if Cheon Yu-hak didn’t care, his cronies didn’t seem intent on letting this incident end like this.
In effect, it had turned into a battle between Lilac’s sociability and the loyalty of Cheon Yu-hak’s clique.
The pattern of the first day began to flow quite strangely.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
In the original work, Butt, whose soul was utterly crushed, would attend school like a dead person. Then, when Lilac stepped forward to defend her, the classmates would just accept it and move on.
Cheon Yu-hak would ignore her, saying he didn’t care about someone with dead eyes, and his clique would follow suit without much resistance. But now, they were paying an unusual amount of attention.
This meant that Cheon Yu-hak hadn’t told them to leave it alone. Given his personality, that was as good as expressing that something was bothering him.
What was the problem?
The fact that the subject of the bullying was me?
Or that Butt was being unexpectedly cheerful instead of being directly dumped by Cheon Yu-hak?
It was likely both.
In fact, I was already sensing that I was screwed.
Everything else was fine, but the problem was that if Lilac’s friends and Cheon Yu-hak’s clique started fighting, there was a high probability that two specific women would clash.
It was quiet for now because there hadn’t been a major incident, but our Pink Chihuahua, who was in charge of the ‘crazy’ department among the female characters, and the Purple Cat, who had been insulting Butt by Cheon Yu-hak’s side…
Those two, who never ended things quietly even in the original work, were bound to collide soon.
* * *
Maybe I really am a good person.
Am I not a saint reborn in this era, perfectly suited to be the owner of this ring called the Will of the Saint?
Of course, considering the original owner of this ring was a loser who died to a goblin, I’d deny it even if it were true.
Anyway, I, who used to dismiss the protagonist’s or Professor Cathy’s barrages of praise as nonsense, was suddenly having these thoughts because…
“Are you done talking?”
“No, if I’m not done, were you going to wait for me?”
…Because looking at the Pink Chihuahua and the Purple Cat fighting in front of me made me naturally think that I might actually be a decent person.
Right. First of all, the problem was that I had visited the gym to crush a workout and clear my head after the last lecture of the day.
The gym, which I had practically monopolized for nearly a month, was now quite crowded, and all the treadmills for effective cardio were already in use.
Thanks to my half-baked knowledge that strength training is less effective without cardio, I wondered what to do before reaching the conclusion: ‘Do I have to use a treadmill? Can’t I just run?’ With the lighthearted thought of ‘I’ll just run a few laps around the field and then hit the dumbbells,’ I went for a run and stumbled right into this situation.
The eyes of the two girls converged on me.
“What do you think?”
“Is there even a need to ask? It’s obvious, isn’t it?”
Ah, shit. It wasn’t ‘soon,’ it was today. LOL.
The Lilac-obsessed patient and the Cheon Yu-hak fanatic were glaring at each other.
“It’s good for friends to get along. Why are you so twisted that you’re trying to ruin a girl’s life?”
“Hey, when did I try to ruin her life? Still, she shouldn’t be acting so shameless, should she? She should at least show some sign of reflection. She’s only acting so bold because Lilac is trying to keep things quiet.”
“The victim of the bullying is right here. He said he’s fine with it and he’s accepted it, so why are you guys making a fuss and even bringing Lilac into this?”
The summary of the incident was this:
As Lilac’s supporters began to open their hearts to Butt one by one, Cheon Yu-hak’s supporters, who saw this, didn’t like Butt, who had picked a fight with me while using Cheon Yu-hak’s name.
They eventually blurred the point to gloss over the fact that I, the party involved, had forgiven her.
They started attacking Butt again with topics that were only vaguely related to me, such as: ‘She didn’t even apologize properly,’ ‘Her attitude is too much,’ or ‘She shows no sign of remorse.’
Actually, it wasn’t a problem up to that point, but the incident started when one Cheon Yu-hak supporter said, “Who does Lilac think he is, acting out like that anyway?”
As soon as those words reached the ears of our Pink Chihuahua, who had been the least interested in this incident, she stepped up to the front lines to fight.
That’s right.
To our Pink Chihuahua, circumstances, good and evil, and even right and wrong held no value.
Lilac was her only value, her standard, her justice, and her goodness. That was why she was angry.
The Pink Chihuahua was no longer just a Lilac supporter.
She was in a state where she had become one with Lilac, considering any attack on him as an attack on herself.
In short, like a mad dog that flips out if Lilac is insulted—a Pink Chihuahua that’s small in stature but incredibly vicious—she was biting into the people who had brought up Lilac’s name.
“Making a fuss? Your mouth is quite foul for someone with your looks. Ah, seeing the kind of person who follows him around, I can guess Lilac’s level too.”
On the other hand, the Purple Cat facing her, our Ju Ri-ra, wasn’t sane either.
Rather than a childhood friend, she was more of a playmate for Cheon Yu-hak, and she was someone who had been more influenced by his ‘survival of the strongest’ ideology than anyone else.
In their childhood, they were like a maid and master, with Cheon Yu-hak’s father attaching her as a playmate, but Cheon Yu-hak had never once ignored or mistreated her.
Because she had talent.
He recognized it faster than anyone.
The opportunity to learn what she wanted, the ability to make the family that sold her off regret it, and even the position where no one could treat her lightly—she received all of it from Cheon Yu-hak. That was why, to her, Cheon Yu-hak was more than just an object of affection; he was a kind of god.
She tried to fulfill whatever Cheon Yu-hak desired and blocked anything that tried to use him in advance.
In a way, the two were very similar, but because the tendencies of the two boys they followed were so different, they clashed frequently.
But, shit, why am I caught in the middle of this?
— You know Lilac.
— Since Yu-hak is watching you, you’ll be more reasonable than this girl.
I swear.
From this moment on, even if the gym is crowded, I will not enjoy running by strolling here and there with an explorer’s mindset.
Actually, it already felt more like they were fighting for the sake of the people they liked rather than the incident itself, so there would be no answer to this debate.
However, surprisingly, this fight, which seemed like it would never end, concluded much more easily than expected.
“…No, if I do this, I’ll become just like that guy. I apologize. And we’ve expelled the person who insulted Lilac from our group.”
Ju Ri-ra was the first to yield.
“What?”
“Honestly, you’re angry because of Lilac. I know that feeling well, even if the person we like is different.”
Wait?
You guys aren’t usually like that.
Does this also have something to do with the fact that Lilac and Cheon Yu-hak’s relationship is still smooth?
The Pink Chihuahua might be half-insane, but the Purple Cat always had to be rational and competent to be chosen by Cheon Yu-hak.
Yet, these two often fought by insulting each other’s idols whenever they met. This time, the cat was the first to lower her tail.
“Lilac is a competent cadet that even Yu-hak acknowledges. We had no intention of insulting him. Though having too much compassion might be his flaw.”
“Whatever. Even that is part of Lilac’s charm, okay? Does the fact that you had no intention to insult him erase the fact that he was insulted?”
“Of course not. But I can write a pledge if you want. Or, while Yu-hak is out of the question, I’ll bow my head and apologize in front of Lilac for my failure to manage my group.”
For the record, despite her violence, the way to calm the Pink Chihuahua is simple: either have Lilac nearby or, like now, show the utmost respect for Lilac.
Um, but shit. If you guys were going to play the drums, the hourglass drum, and even the gong all by yourselves, then why the hell did you catch me?
But anyway, since it looked like it would end peacefully, I had no intention of stirring the pot.
“Where are you going?”
“We’re not done yet.”
“Pardon?”
I tried to slip away unnoticed, but the eyes of the two girls pierced through me as if the main point was just beginning.
What business do you still have with me?
“Why are you rejecting Yu-hak’s team proposal?”
“You, if Lilac asks you to be on his team, will you do it?”
Aha, these bitches. Now that they’ve resolved their misunderstanding, they’re going to play the supportive roles for their men?
“I won’t listen to excuses like ‘there’s still a lot of time left before team assignments.’ I trust that someone Yu-hak has his eye on won’t make such a pathetic excuse.”
“It seems Lilac has a favorable impression of you. I really don’t like that, but you’re certainly more perceptive and better than the others.”
The gazes of the two, which had been directed at me, turned toward each other again.
Haha, shit, what a mess.
Hey, Lilac. Cheon Yu-hak.
Aren’t you going to manage your pets properly? The chihuahua and the cat are biting people.
Afterward, as if they weren’t the type to be spoken of behind their backs, Lilac and Cheon Yu-hak appeared with miraculous timing. I was only liberated after the five of us talked for a long time.
To be precise, the four of them talked, and I just listened.
Guys, I’m not joining your teams.