Chapter 58
Chapter 58
Even by the time I actually reached the student council room, that lingering unease still hadn't lifted one bit.
How to put it; it felt exactly like reading a novel where the protagonist sets a grand plan in motion, only for the villain to turn around and say, "I knew all along." That kind of feeling.
But mulling it over wasn't going to give me any answers right now, so I decided to set it aside for the moment and focus on what was right in front of me. One thing at a time.
Of course, what I'm talking about isn't the thing happening "right this second" in front of me. I mean the group blind date with the student council president, coming up this Saturday.
The truth is, the thing actually happening right this second in front of me was honestly no big deal.
Because no matter what happens here, it'll all work out in my favor.
"......."
A sharp-looking man in oval glasses sat with his fingers laced together, staring at us with an intensely serious expression.
The student council president.
His black hair was neatly trimmed and parted to one side. If you ignored how young his face still looked, it was an exemplary office-worker hairstyle, the kind you'd see on a strict male lead in a drama.
Speaking of strict male leads, I had a feeling I might know who this was.
But I couldn't be sure. Because the person, or rather, the "character," I was thinking of was one drawn roughly on an art board.
Right. His appearance bore a very strong resemblance to one of the characters from "If You Wish"—specifically, one of the three male leads.
The problem was, I'd never had much interest in the male characters, so my entire knowledge boiled down to the Yoon Da-ho route the streamer had begrudgingly cleared, plus whatever scraps I'd gleaned about Nam Da-un from poking around the wiki. The only reason I even remembered this guy's appearance at all was because he showed up on the "If You Wish" main menu screen; I didn't even know his name. I might have glimpsed it a few times while searching the wiki, but I'd never bothered to remember it.
"If You Wish" was famous for being a one-person development project and had generated a fair bit of buzz in its niche communities, plus it got more famous when a big streamer played it, but at the end of the day, these kinds of games are only ever played by the people who play them. The wiki entries almost looked like a single person had written them, and huge sections were left unfinished.
Maybe this character just fell outside that person's sphere of interest, so his entry never even got created in the first place.
While I was off in my own head going through all of this, the student council president cleared his throat with an "ahem."
"Uh... so, Miss Yu Ha-neul?"
"You can just use my name."
Ha-neul, sitting demurely in the chair next to me, said it quite confidently.
"Right. Then... I'll call you Yu Ha-neul."
Ha-neul nodded at the president's words.
"And... Miss Lee Su-a?"
"Y-you can just use my name, too."
"Thank you for being considerate."
Then the student council president turned toward me, his expression tight with tension.
...His first impression and his current image sure weren't matching up. Unlike the image of a strict office supervisor, the face he was making right now was, what's the word... incredibly flustered.
Could he have been a Gap Moe character?...Well, given that he's a male character, there's no reason for me to actually experience any gap moe, but still.
Ah, now that I think about it, in the Yoon Da-ho route, the one where Ye Sa-ra really goes all-in on her villainy, I think there might have been a description where the student council basically folded the moment Ye Sa-ra said a few words. Maybe this guy is actually a lot more spineless than he looks.
Our eyes met for the briefest moment, and the student council president looked away.
Then, facing Ha-neul again, he said:
"You're an outside admit, aren't you?"
"Yes."
The president read from the documents spread across his desk.
"Excellent entrance exam scores. Quick to answer whenever the teachers ask you something. Attending on a full scholarship."
"Yes."
"Never broken a school rule?"
"No. Of course not."
"Good. Keep working hard."
"Yes...?"
When the president wrapped up the Q&A just like that, Ha-neul found herself reflexively repeating the word, apparently that part really had caught her off guard.
"President!"
Disciplinary committee member Son A-reum, who had been standing triumphantly beside the president, looked horrified, but the president completely ignored her and turned toward Lee Su-a.
"Next, then. Lee Su-a."
"Huh? O-oh, yes."
Perhaps thrown off by how absurdly the Q&A between Ha-neul and the president had ended, Lee Su-a stumbled over her words for a second.
"Eldest daughter of Yiwon Trading Company. Mid-to-upper rank in middle school grades. Neat and tidy appearance, well-liked among her friends—"
He read up to that point, then, as if suddenly self-conscious, the president cleared his throat with another "ahem." Yeah, it's hard to deny that Lee Su-a's relationships with her existing friends rapidly distanced once she got close to me, no matter how much everyone treats me like I'm not even there.
"...Anyway, from what I understand, you haven't really broken any school rules. Correct?"
"I-I... "
"The eyewitness accounts say that during class, a young teacher who'd only just started the job accidentally erased what she'd written on the board, panicked, and couldn't get the lesson back on track. It doesn't appear to have anything to do with you. The disciplinary committee member seems to have gotten the wrong idea."
"Whaaat?"
Lee Su-a's mouth fell slightly open.
"So, well..."
The student council president pushed his glasses up.
"Keep working hard."
"President!"
The disciplinary committee member shrieked and slammed her hand on the president's desk.
Bang—a sound that seemed like it would hurt incredibly bad.
"Ughh..."
And as if it really did hurt, the committee member cradled the hand she'd slammed down with her other hand. A few tears had gathered in her eyes.
"This desk is really hard, you know. Shouldn't you be heading to the nurse's office?"
"No, that's not what's important right now!"
If she's actually hurt, wouldn't that count as important...? But I got the feeling saying so wouldn't make her listen, so I decided to just keep sitting still.
"President, what kind of nonsense are you saying? Right in front of you are three people who are absolutely wrecking this school's public morals! And every single thing you've said is the complete opposite of what actually happened!"
"She's right! I was definitely clinging to Sara the entire class period!"
Ha-neul, who had been listening from beside me, shot up from her chair and shouted.
No... you weren't clinging to me. You were just sitting on top of me...
Wait, is that the same thing?
"Hold on—didn't you say just a moment ago that you'd never done anything that would violate school rules?"
The president's eyes rattled intensely from behind his glasses. He seemed flustered by Ha-neul's sudden shift in statement.
"I said I hadn't violated the 'school rules'!"
"You did violate the school rules! If doing that during class doesn't count as violating the school rules, then what does?!"
Apparently Ha-neul's words made the committee member's blood boil in reverse.
"Is there actually a line in the school rules that says, 'You must not cling to each other during class'?"
Ha-neul launched a completely nonsensical sophism!
The committee member's mouth fell open, but no words came out! It was super effective!
I mean, to be fair, if anyone heard someone being that brazen with a straight face, they'd probably lose their words, too.
"......."
For a moment, the student council room filled with silence.
"J-just because it's not written in the school rules, there's still common sense that you're supposed to follow!"
Right, she's not wrong. There is such a thing as socially accepted common sense. And yes, what I did was me deliberately testing the limits of that common sense.
"You said you'd punish us according to the school rules! So if it's not in the school rules, you're basically saying we can do it!"
Ha-neul, that's not the kind of thing you say with your hands on your hips and your chin raised so proudly.
...Is it because she's the protagonist? Her ability to draw aggro is truly overwhelming. The only problem is that the aggro then gets tossed back over to me, and now the disciplinary committee member is glaring at me instead.
Now that I'm thinking about it like this, it really does feel like she's the villainess's most loyal right-hand defender.
I'd been jiggling my crossed leg this whole time, a deliberate attempt to get under my opponent's skin, and as I kept doing it, I spoke to Ha-neul.
"That's enough. I doubt they had any intention of listening from the beginning."
"But...!"
...That's an act, right? It's acting, isn't it. She looks genuinely indignant.
I decided to believe that my Ha-neul was not, in fact, actually angry because she couldn't cling to me during class.
With my arms crossed, jiggling the tip of my crossed foot, I raised my chin in a haughty manner.
...Or at least, that's what I thought I was doing. I'd never tried this before, so I wasn't totally sure I was pulling it off correctly.
And I looked the student council president straight in the eye.
Our eyes met, and the president's pupils trembled.
"President, try saying something about me while you're at it. I promise I won't go around telling anyone that the president actually spoke to me."
Despite how he looks, he is a male lead, or at least, he's strongly presumed to be one. He's got to have at least some of the fortitude you'd expect from a male lead.
"......."
The president avoided my eyes for quite a while.
"I-in that case, the disciplinary committee is adjourned..."
And with that, he rushed to his feet.
"President!"
"You—come see me for a moment."
The president shot a look at the committee member who'd called out to him, his voice taking on a somewhat darker tone.
"...Huh?"
The committee member looked a little confused, but the president quickly walked out of the student council room. Flustered, she looked back and forth between us and the door the president had just exited through, then hurriedly followed after him.
"......."
Well, then.
Is it really okay for the student council president to walk out of the student council room and leave other students alone in there?
"......."
Ha-neul, who had been standing up, slowly sat back down. The bold expression she'd worn just moments ago was completely wiped away, replaced by a face that was almost perfectly expressionless.
...That's a little scary. I should really avoid doing anything that would make Ha-neul angry.
"So this is what it's really like in reality."
Ha-neul said it like she was murmuring to herself.
I'm a complete invisible person, but Ha-neul and Su-a are not, for now, at least. The ignoring only extends as far as things connected to me. Of course, Ha-neul also gets ignored separately for not being from a chaebol family, but the kind of ignoring is different.
Ignoring Ha-neul means bumping shoulders with her in the hallway and not apologizing, or sneering as you pass her by.
Ignoring me means assuming I am simply not there at all.
In the latter case, the focus on the fact that I am "not there" is almost pathologically intense. It makes sense. Because if they didn't maintain that, they'd eventually have no choice but to acknowledge that I was, in fact, there.
"Right... I think I took this all too lightly..."
Lee Su-a had her head deeply bowed, fidgeting with her fingertips as she spoke.
Then she suddenly lifted her head and looked at me with sad eyes.
"So this is the treatment you've been receiving all this time."
"......."
I couldn't give her any answer to that. Because I've never actually received that treatment myself.
Sure, I've been living it for a little over two months since arriving in this world, but even so, the vast majority of my life was spent living ordinarily, nothing special. Even if I try to imagine what Ye Sa-ra must have felt, I can't properly picture it.
That difference in lived experience is probably why Ye Sa-ra's actions in the original story and my actions now are so different.
When I didn't offer any reply at all,
Ha-neul suddenly shot up from her chair again.
"Sara!"
"Eep."
I startled—she'd called my name out of nowhere, and loudly.
"Starting right now, let's go even harder!"
"...What?"
For a moment I couldn't figure out what she was talking about, and I looked up at Ha-neul.
Ha-neul was staring down at me with blazing, burning eyes, like the male lead of a hot-blooded super robot anime.
"From now on, we'll stick together more. Be more visible. Spread the rumors even harder! We'll create a situation that no one can possibly ignore!"
"...Eep?"
The words I'd just heard were so staggering that my reply came out before it could even form into real speech.
"Yes, Sara."
Suddenly, Lee Su-a, still seated beside me, took my hand. She was looking at me with dewy eyes, just like the tragic heroine in a shojo manga.
"Let's cheer up—together."
...
Uh, um.
So what you're saying is... you want even more from here?
Just how far do you two intend to take this...?