Chapter 3
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I sat there in a daze for a long time before I snapped back to my senses at the sound of the students’ names continuing to be called.
My startled hands shook as if I had tremors, and my heart pounded violently in my chest.
I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to calm myself.
No, calm down. That can’t be possible. Does that even make sense? That this place is inside the novel I wrote?
It would be far more believable that I had simply gone crazy.
As I slowly took deep breaths to steady myself, a scene from the past flashed through my mind.
It was from when I was attending the all-girls high school, sitting huddled together with my friends, chatting excitedly about the novel I had written.
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“Hey, Lee Hayeon finally lost it with a hundred days left before the CSAT! Come look at this.”
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My friends passed around the novel I had written, laughing so hard they could barely breathe. One of them even hit me with enough force to nearly dislocate my shoulder.
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“Are you crazy?!”
“Lee Hayeon, what is your deal? You look perfectly normal, but you are a total psycho.”
“If this aired as a morning drama, it would hit 50 percent ratings.”
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One of them even started crying from laughing so hard. As she wiped her tears, she choked with laughter and said to me,
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“Hey, but this is set in a high school, right? There’s not even a school name?”
“Oh, you’re right?”
“What do you mean, ‘you’re right’? Ahaha! My stomach hurts from laughing.”
“Hey, hurry up and come up with one. Don’t you know it’s a basic rule in school stories to mention the high school name in the first paragraph?”
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After hearing that, I struck a pose as if I were seriously contemplating it, thought for exactly ten seconds, and then replied,
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“Too much work. Let’s just change our school’s name a bit and use that.”
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And what I wrote back then was precisely that.
“Shinyeon High School…”
I muttered as if entranced. The moment I realized the truth about the school’s name, my head spun.
It’s not that I went back to my high school days after the car accident… Could it be that I entered the novel I wrote back then?
If anyone could actually die of shock from being startled, it would probably be me right now. I immediately began denying reality.
…No, no. Wait, no? Calm down. There’s no way. It’s probably just a coincidence.
Wasn’t it possible that, by sheer coincidence, there existed a boy who matched every single setting of the male lead I had written?
Frantically, I tried to recall memories from more than ten years ago, when I had been in high school. The contents of the novel remained only faintly in my mind.
Kim Chan… Kim, Chan… and there was another male lead with a unique name, I think.
It felt like my head was about to split open. Still, once I remembered one thing, other details began to follow.
One of the male leads had been set up as an athlete, if I remembered correctly.
I think I wrote that he was really tall, played some kind of sport, and had an amazing body…
At that moment, as I dug through my memories, I recalled the appearance of the man I had run into a few days ago at the pre-orientation.
“……”
He had easily looked over one hundred eighty centimeters tall, incredibly handsome, even just from his silhouette, and dressed like an athlete.
The thought of “No way” was gradually turning into reality. My stomach twisted as if I had eaten something bad. Cold sweat began to drip down my forehead.
“Hey, are you okay? You haven’t looked well for a while now…”
Hearing the teacher’s voice beside me as he patted my back with his palm, I turned my head toward him.
“I’m… not… okay…”
I could not finish my sentence. I fainted before I could.
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* * *
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The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was a white ceiling.
For a moment, I wondered if I had finally woken up in a hospital after dreaming nonsense ever since the car accident, and I shot upright.
However, it did not take more than a few seconds to realize that this was the infirmary. The hope that I might have returned to reality was shattered instantly.
I want to faint again…
Just then, my eyes met the school nurse, who had been stretching. The moment she noticed that I was awake, she flinched slightly, asked if I had woken up, and made a call somewhere.
“Yes, yes, Seonsaeng-nim. That student. She just woke up… She doesn’t seem to have any major issues. Yes. We haven’t been able to contact the parent. The contact information is…”
Judging from the conversation, it seemed like she was speaking with the teacher who would be my homeroom teacher.
If they say I fainted…Mom would probably just hang up and tell them not to lie first.
I had always been so healthy that I had never even caught a common cold. Even when I bumped into things or got into scuffles, I would recover within a few days, to the point that even doctors clicked their tongues and said I healed quickly.
“Student, drink a sip of water first.”
“Oh, yes. Thank you.”
“How do you feel? Just wait a little. Your homeroom teacher will be here soon.”
Just as she said, before long, someone who looked like a faculty member entered.
A student followed behind him. However, his face was hard to see because it was obscured by the person in front.
“Ha, honestly. What is this? If you were sick, you should have said something. Do you have some kind of illness?”
“What? Oh, no.”
Even if I might have looked frail on the outside, I had a body that had never even suffered from a minor illness. The teacher clicked his tongue as he looked at me.
“You collapsed for several minutes and didn’t wake up, but your heart was beating fine, and you were breathing normally, so we moved you to the infirmary first. Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine.”
Perhaps because I had fainted on the very first day of the entrance ceremony, the way he looked at me had changed into the kind of gaze reserved for a fragile kid who looked like she might collapse at any moment.
“Do you usually faint often?”
“Ah, no! It's just that I suddenly felt a bit anemic today..."
I could not exactly say that I fainted because I realized this place was a novel.
As I trailed off, the teacher looked at me as if I were a critically ill patient who belonged in a hospital rather than at school.
Feeling preemptively guilty, I desperately tried to explain.
“It’s true. I’m not usually like this. I’ve never fainted before…”
At my words, the teacher let out a long sigh and nodded.
“Alright. I’ll call your parents, so take the day off and go home and rest. Did you receive the handouts?”
“Yes, yes.”
“Then I need to check attendance separately… What’s your name?”
“Lee Hayeon.”
“Lee Hayeon?”
“Yes.”
“Alright. Got it. Temporary class president, come here. I’m busy right now, so when her parents arrive later, take her to the school gate. Got it?”
The teacher stepped back from me. Naturally, my gaze shifted to the student standing beside him.
The moment I saw his face, it felt like my heart dropped straight down. I clenched the blanket tightly in my hand.
It’s Kang Sunwoo.
Even though I had not properly seen his face in the auditorium and it was practically our first meeting, the moment I saw him, I knew at once that he was Kang Sunwoo.
How can someone’s face look like that?
How could a person’s face be more defined and flawless than a sculpture?
I stared at Kang Sunwoo as if I were admiring a work of art. Even from a distance, he was strikingly handsome enough to stand out immediately.
His eyes were unrealistically large, and his nose was high.
Despite having such distinct features, he did not give off a strong or harsh impression. Instead, he was a handsome man with a soft aura.
“Hi, Hayeon-ah.”
The fact that the male lead I had written was standing right in front of me was a huge shock, but it was not as overwhelming as it had been earlier.
Maybe it’s because I already fainted once in the auditorium.
All the oddly strange parts seemed to fall perfectly into place when viewed under the premise that this was all inside a novel.
“…Hi.”
I spoke while trying to maintain a calm expression. He greeted me with a smile.
“I’m Kang Sunwoo.”
“Oh, right. You were the freshman representative earlier, right?”
“Yeah. You saw me earlier?”
Even his tone was gentle and soft, exactly the kind of style I used to like back when I was in high school.
If this were not me transmigrating into my own novel, but rather something like a drama adaptation, or if I had simply happened to run into a handsome guy by coincidence, I would have just been impressed.
But sadly, I could not enjoy this situation.
The novel I had written in high school was a train wreck story filled with crazy guys, without a single normal person in it.
And this guy…
Among the faint memories that surfaced, the most significant setting about him was that he was a psychopath.
“Did you contact your parents?”
One who was incredibly well socialized at that. A polite psychopath who looked perfectly normal on the outside, even like a model student.
“Ah… N-not yet.”
“Do you want to call them? When they arrive at the school gate, I’ll take you there.”
Now that I remembered that setting, his gentle tone did not sound entirely pleasant. Even that tone was all an act.
It’s practically the same as being trained to act that way.
I nodded at him, then quickly pressed the call button on my phone.
Meeting the male lead in real life and even having a conversation with him was certainly a fascinating experience, but that did not mean I wanted to stay in the same space as a psychopath.
Ring, ring—
The entire time the ringtone echoed, I did not glance at Kang Sunwoo even once. My hands, already tense from everything that had happened, trembled slightly.
“Hayeon-ah.”
A low voice called from right above me. Kang Sunwoo’s legs had moved to stand directly in front of the bed I was sitting on.
“Why are you shaking like that?”
[Hayeon-ah!]
Kang Sunwoo’s question and the moment my call connected to my mom happened almost at the same time.
His pinpoint remark sent chills down my spine, but I pretended not to hear him and focused only on my mom’s voice as if I were delighted.
“Mom!!”
[What happened to you? They said you collapsed! Do you know how shocked I was when the school called?]
“Uh, yeah, I collapsed in the auditorium. I guess I suddenly got anemia or something.”
[Anemia? You’re the kid who would get back up and keep playing thirty minutes after passing out from heatstroke under the blazing sun!]
“…Yeah.”
[You’re the kid who jumped from the second floor in middle school just to get to the cafeteria faster and even healed a sprained ankle in two days!]
“……”
I had nothing to say. It was all true.
It’s not like I can say I fainted because I was in shock that I transmigrated into the novel I wrote in the past.
[But did you get up right after you collapsed?]
“Yeah, I did.”
[Well then, I guess there’s nothing to worry about.]
The mom who had sounded so startled and worried was suddenly gone. Perhaps because she thought I had already recovered, calmness quickly returned to her voice.
“That’s a bit harsh, Mom. Even so, your daughter fainted…”
[Alright, alright. I brought the car, so let’s go to the hospital and get a checkup while we’re at it. Come out to the school gate in ten minutes.]
Click.
The call ended in an instant. I let out a sigh and lifted my head.
“Ah.”
Kang Sunwoo was staring at me with his large eyes, blinking. His gaze looked as if he were observing some kind of peculiar creature.
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