Chapter 10
Chapter 10
"This just isn't going to work."
I felt like telling someone face-to-face that something wasn't going to work was a little rude. I narrowed my eyes and looked up at her, but Yu Ha-neul, who'd adapted to my expressions in a single day, didn't show a hint of fear.
"Sara, your stamina is way too weak."
Without warning, Yu Ha-neul launched a factual assault.
"I'll admit it."
She wasn't wrong. Ye Sa-ra's body was excessively frail. Perhaps it was a lingering effect of the psychological abuse, but she apparently hadn't even been able to eat the three square meals a day prepared for her. The period of deprivation must have been so long that, even after I, a completely different person, entered her body, just putting food into this stomach was a struggle.
There must have been plenty of days when she skipped meals entirely, not just eaten a little. Thinking back, maybe Yang Hye-in was so insistent about spoon-feeding her that porridge because she was afraid Ye Sa-ra would just leave the bowl untouched.
That's right. Having somehow ended up in someone else's body, I had become a master of self-objectification. Not that it's surprising, since I was literally a different person observing from the outside.
My easy admission seemed to fluster Yu Ha-neul. Had she expected me to offer some kind of rebuttal?
"Oh, uh, really...?"
Yu Ha-neul's eyes darted around for a moment before she shook her head vigorously, as if trying to snap out of it.
"No, you can't just admit it and leave it at that. You have to build up your stamina, at least a little. Otherwise, you're definitely going to collapse and seriously hurt yourself one day."
Unless someone randomly jumped out and slammed into my back, that didn't seem likely. I had been eating diligently lately. So diligently that Yang Hye-in, my maid, would get a baffled look on her face at every meal. Of course, I still hadn't managed to clean a single plate, but at least I'd put on a little weight compared to a month ago. At least, I thought so.
There was no reason to refuse the food, really. Everything served at the mansion was delicious.
And as you'd expect from a school with astronomical tuition, the cafeteria here was spectacular too.
My god, a buffet-style school lunch. This school definitely didn't receive any free lunch subsidies. Even just looking at today's meal, it clearly wasn't something you could throw together with a government grant. It wasn't even one of those buffets with a huge variety of bland, mass-produced food; it was a spread with a slightly smaller selection where every dish was made with genuine care. Even at a school full of rich kids who looked down on ordinary people, this buffet-style lunch made students' eyes pop wide open.
The food was a luxury buffet, but the cafeteria itself looked no different from a standard school lunchroom, a contrast that nearly gave me cognitive dissonance. But what did it matter? The food was delicious, and that was enough....The real reason was probably that the developers, not wanting to draw new backgrounds, just snapped a photo of a regular school cafeteria, slapped some edits on it, and called it a background CG.
Still, even with that delicious buffet, one plate was my absolute limit.
Anyway, could we please sit down? Standing around in the cafeteria like that makes everyone stare. The fact that no one would come near the three of us only made us stand out more. Fortunately for me, Yu Ha-neul, who had been nodding to herself as if she'd reached some conclusion, soon plopped back into her seat.
"That's true."
As soon as Yu Ha-neul sat down, Lee Su-a, who had been listening intently to our conversation from the side, spoke up.
"Is that really going to last you until lunch is over?"
...There it was.
I'd called it "one plate," but if you looked at the total amount of food I'd taken, it wasn't even half a plate. Just a salad and a few pieces of meat. I hadn't even touched the desserts or snacks. I couldn't have eaten all of it even if I'd taken it, so what was the point? It'd be a waste to throw it away.
On the other hand, Lee Su-a and Yu Ha-neul had piled their plates so high it threatened to shatter the image of a "high school girl."
Lee Su-a had a meticulously organized mountain of mostly sweet things, while Yu Ha-neul had grabbed a chaotic heap of everything, like she was hitting a buffet for the first time in ages.
Their expressions radiated a fierce determination not to leave a single scrap behind. Well, teenagers, male or female, aren't all that different. That age is when you run around burning a ton of energy and eating everything in sight. I was the weird one here, picking at tiny portions.
"This is already too much for me."
I answered, but Lee Su-a looked utterly unconvinced. Seriously, I'm not just pretending to be delicate.
I'd probably end up leaving some of what was on this plate, too.
Just as that thought crossed my mind, Yu Ha-neul suddenly plopped a portion of the meat side dish from her own plate right onto mine.
"No, I really can't eat this much—"
Before I could even finish the sentence, Lee Su-a also dropped a chunk of meat from her plate onto mine.
"......"
In an instant, the amount of food on my plate had tripled.
What is this? Some kind of newbie hazing?
I furrowed my brow slightly and looked back and forth between Yu Ha-neul and Lee Su-a, but both were smiling brightly. Though Yu Ha-neul's expression was at least half guesswork on my part.
It felt exactly like staring into the face of a grandmother who keeps piling more rice on your plate even as you insist you can't eat another bite.
"Meat is the best thing for building stamina, you know."
"Right. That's what gives you energy."
I know that. I'm not a vegetarian.
I considered protesting my portion size again but just let out a deep sigh instead. Fine. I'll eat. I'm eating.
As I heaved out my sighs and started moving my fork and knife, the two of them smiled, utterly satisfied. I am not your granddaughter, you two.
And, of course, I couldn't even finish a third of the meat they'd piled onto my plate.
*
"Urgh."
Just as I'd predicted, my stomach felt awful throughout all the afternoon classes. I'd stopped before pushing myself to the point of throwing up, but it was still bad enough to leave me in poor condition for hours.
Should I start carrying digestive medicine around?
Surprisingly, the fact that no one tried to approach me was a blessing at times like this. Of course, I can't say what would happen in a real life-or-death crisis, but having everyone pretend not to notice when I was periodically letting out a miserable "urgh" was something I was deeply grateful for, even if it wasn't exactly done out of kindness.
"Are you okay?"
Though, there were some people who didn't pretend not to notice.
The source of my misery, Yu Ha-neul, didn't ignore me. She caught on to my poor condition all through the afternoon and, every time class ended, kept asking me how I was doing.
"I'm fine...."
I wasn't really fine. But when you're facing someone who's genuinely worried about you, it's hard to say just anything.
"I'm sorry. I should have listened to you at lunch."
Yeah, you should have.
The reply crawled up to the tip of my tongue, but I managed to swallow it. Neither Yu Ha-neul nor Lee Su-a had done it out of malice. They just honestly hadn't known I was at my limit with that much food.
Still, by the time school ended, I was feeling a lot better. Someone had asked if I wanted to go to the nurse's office, but I refused. The teachers here didn't care about me beyond calling my name for attendance, and I figured the school nurse wouldn't be any different. I thought it'd be better to just go home quickly and get treated back at the mansion.
So I was just waiting for school to end—
"Oh, um, excuse me...?"
"Club recruitment starts today, you see..."
Normally, high schools in Korea don't put that much emphasis on club activities. Unless it's a sports club that directly helps your career, clubs are often just an extension of class. Most people tend to pick a club at random based on where their friends go and then just kill time during the activity period.
But this world, being inside a dating sim, is different. Though, given that the setting is the Republic of Korea, ordinary schools here are probably the same. It's just Hwayeong High School that's the exception.
At Hwayeong High School, everyone finds a club suited to them, even if it isn't mandatory. The clubs themselves aren't necessarily resume-padding material. Except for the athletic ones, most are purely hobby-based. Reading, movie appreciation, photography, art—places where you just do what you enjoy.
But the students at this school are far from ordinary.
They use the time to gauge their classmates' affiliations and status, strike up conversations to build rapport, and lay the groundwork for their future wealth and power. For them, even break time and lunch are part of their social maneuvering. They hone their networking and conversational skills from childhood to cash in as adults.
You might wonder why anyone would bother with such a hassle from their teens. But when you think about how long friendships made during those teen years can last, I can kind of understand why they run around so frantically from this age.
So, for them, club activities are important too. Especially since so many clubs are in the "hobby" grey area, kids of similar status and circumstances tend to naturally gather. What better opportunity could there be to expand your network beyond your homeroom class?
Therefore, I had zero intention of joining any clubs.
I'd obviously just get treated like a ghost even if I joined. It'd make everyone else uncomfortable. Wouldn't it be way more comfortable to just go straight home the second school ended?
"But, Sara, you just go straight home after school. And it's not like you do any kind of exercise when you get there."
"......"
Having perfectly read my mind, Yu Ha-neul smacked me square in the face with facts.
She was right. Once I got home, my plan was just to slump onto my bed.
"So, you're saying I should join an athletic club?"
I don't know when she'd collected them, but Yu Ha-neul was holding a whole armful of club recruitment fliers.
Softball, basketball, volleyball, track and field... Just hearing the names felt brutal. These aren't the kinds of clubs I should be joining.
I skimmed the fliers and looked at Yu Ha-neul with a questioning face, and she nodded vigorously as she spoke.
"If you join an athletic club and do the basic training with everyone else, your stamina will definitely shoot up!"
"......"
Wouldn't I just die? No, I'm being completely serious here. Ye Sa-ra's body might not be able to withstand this level of athletic intensity.
But Yu Ha-neul seemed to have already made up her mind. She was already walking ahead down the hallway, swinging her arms in windmills.
I shot a "please help me" look at Lee Su-a, but she just gave me a slightly pitying look in return.
...It seemed she, too, agreed that I needed to build up my stamina.
*
I used to hate exercise. I wouldn't even do simple stretches at home.
I agreed that Ye Sa-ra needed to improve her stamina, but I figured I could just cover it by eating. If I made an effort to eat a balanced diet, I'd gain weight, and then I'd at least have the basic fitness to survive, right?
But Yu Ha-neul harbored the subversive philosophy that stamina must be built exclusively through exercise.
...And, knowing the game's content as I did, I could understand that philosophy to some degree. In the game, practically the only choices to raise your 'Stamina' stat involved exercise. If you had a mindset built on those kinds of game choices, thinking that way wasn't strange at all.
As luck would have it, exercise seemed to hate me just as much as I hated it.
More accurately, the 'athletic clubs' hated me.
"Sorry, but we take baseball seriously here. You can't just barge in and join just because you feel like it."
That was the fifth rejection.
The club captains would break into warm smiles when they saw Yu Ha-neul approaching them, then turn ghostly pale when they spotted me standing behind her.
And that made sense; it was none other than 'Ye Sa-ra' coming to apply for their club.
Forget the athletic club part; apparently, Ye Sa-ra had never even joined a club before. Which made sense for Ye Sa-ra, who'd had people lurking in her shadow to sabotage any attempt to make friends. Those fliers weren't even given to me; they'd gone to Yu Ha-neul.
The captains, still unaware of the dynamic between Yu Ha-neul and me, had offered them to the energetic, healthy-looking Yu Ha-neul when she visited them during break. And I'm guessing Yu Ha-neul had planned to join one herself first and then drag me in to at least build up my basic fitness.
But what can you do? Every single one turned us down.
"Can't we just call it quits here and go home?"
I asked, but Yu Ha-neul shook her head. She pulled out one last flier and thrust it at me.
"There's still one left."
What is this, a last cigarette before the firing squad?
*
The place Yu Ha-neul led us to was, of all things, the 'Soccer Club'.
The soccer club. I was fairly confident I could lose a fight to a soccer ball. Lee Su-a had also been in favor of me doing a club activity, but even she seemed blindsided that we'd ended up at the soccer club.
Was the soccer club at this school co-ed? Well, it's possible they had separate men's and women's teams internally.
"......"
Then, I saw the person who was supposedly the captain of the soccer club, and I went rigid.
Bleached-blond hair swept back, the kind of upperclassman character who looks like he was born in a dating sim to play soccer or baseball. For someone supposedly running hard across a field, his skin was suspiciously pale, and he was staring at us with green eyes.
"So, you want to join the soccer club?"
"Yes!"
"The recruitment invitation I gave out was for you, and you alone."
"Ah, well, these two are...!"
But before Yu Ha-neul could get another word out, the upperclassman's eyes swept over Lee Su-a first, then landed on me.
He hadn't buttoned a single button on his dress shirt, exposing the white short-sleeved tee he wore underneath, an almost delinquent look, but, oddly enough, a faint glow was emanating from his face too.
This was the first time I'd seen that phenomenon on a guy's face since coming to this world.
He must have been running just moments before because I couldn't see his jacket or vest. Did he love moving around so much that he'd rather run first and change into his gym clothes later?
Most other students would have ignored me without a second thought, but this upperclassman character was looking straight at me.
Seeing that, I was certain. This person was definitely one of the romance targets from 'If You Wish'.
One of the three male character routes.
His name—
"Tsk."
...was Nam Da-un.
As I gave him a puzzled look, the upperclassman clicked his tongue the moment he saw me, as if I'd deeply offended him—
"Well, fine. All three of you, follow me."
With that, he spun on his heel and headed off toward the field.
What's his deal? Is his personality good or bad? I wish he'd just pick one so it'd stop being confusing.
"We finally did it!"
Yu Ha-neul, apparently blind to the upperclassman's attitude, bounced up and down with joy as she said that.
.......
I stared pointedly at Lee Su-a again, signaling that I needed saving, but she just smiled awkwardly in response.