Chapter 8
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Cha Yihan’s smiling face was pretty… but why was he suddenly calling me by a nickname?
“Why a nickname out of nowhere?”
Ding dong dang dong—
Startled by the familiar bell ringing after so long, I turned my head. The sound coming from the speakers was the lunch bell I used to hear back at my all-girls’ high school.
Wow, this really brings back memories.
But before I could fully sink into nostalgia, the moment the bell rang, the teacher slammed the attendance book down first.
“Everyone, go eat!”
Then he dashed out the door ahead of the entire class.
“……”
Is a teacher allowed to act like that?
No matter how I looked at it, we seemed to have drawn one of those rare teachers in the whole school, the overly playful type who had completely thrown away any sense of authority.
Except for me, who was staring at the front door with a dumbfounded expression, all the other students rushed out after him toward the cafeteria.
The familiar rumbling sound I used to hear when I attended an all-girls' high school shook the classroom ceiling. I could see the lights trembling slightly.
“Hey…”
I shook my head, thinking this was no joke. They were definitely young. When you got older, even running became a hassle.
With a bright smile, Kang Sunwoo looked at me and stood up from his seat.
“Should we take our time?”
“Huh? Oh, right. I was actually going to go—”
I had no intention of eating with the male leads.
I quickly turned my head in panic and looked at the group of girls leaving the classroom.
I had barely taken two steps to run out the door when I was stopped.
Kang Sunwoo grabbed my arm, and Cha Yihan wrapped his arm around my neck from behind.
“Yeon-ah, are you hungry? Do you want to eat quickly?”
“No, no! I was just going to eat with those girls over there…”
At my urgent shout, the girls glanced back at me.
Their eyes shifted from me to the boys behind me. When they saw the male leads, their faces turned red. They slowly stepped back before suddenly hurrying down the hallway.
Don’t go! Don’t leave me alone with these crazy bastards. Please!
“They left.”
Cha Yihan, his arm still around my neck, spoke casually by my ear.
“…I’ll eat by myself. You guys go on.”
It would be better to eat alone.
“Yeon, do you not like us?”
Cha Yihan asked, the teasing tone and playfulness completely gone from his voice. My own voice grew smaller in flustered panic.
“Huh? No, that’s not it…”
“You keep pushing me away. You don’t like me? Why? Do you hate me?”
All three male leads looked at me at the same time. The composition was straight out of a horror movie, and I felt like I might faint again.
It was Kang Sunwoo who broke the suffocating atmosphere first.
“That’s not it. Hayeon seems to be the type who gets shy around people. Since the teacher said so earlier, let’s go together today, Hayeon-ah. You don’t even know your way to the cafeteria yet.”
“Uh, yeah…”
What was this uneasy feeling that if I refused, I would somehow get on their bad side?
While I was wondering if I had made my dislike too obvious, Cha Yihan, having heard Kang Sunwoo’s response, clung to me again.
“Yeah, let’s go together, Yeon-ah.”
I flinched as I tried to subtly push away Cha Yihan, who was trailing behind me with his drawn-out tone.
I was scared he might suddenly go serious again and ask if I hated him.
“O-okay… Let’s go. Let’s go.”
In the end, I nodded reluctantly.
And so, standing at the very back of the cafeteria line with Cha Yihan, Kang Sunwoo, and Kim Chanseung, I let out a deep sigh that felt like the ground might cave in.
“Ha…”
For a brief moment, I considered just leaving the cafeteria altogether, buying food on my own, and going home early. But I had no choice but to give up on that idea.
Buying food would be such a waste of money…
Imagining my meager allowance, I figured it would be better to just eat with them and risk indigestion.
Besides, it is not like avoiding them blindly would solve anything… We are already in the same class, and our seats are even next to each other.
I told myself that nothing would happen just from eating one meal together, so I quietly stayed in line.
But there were far too many students constantly glancing back at us. Objectively speaking, it was an eye-catching combination.
Whenever I looked at the three male leads’ faces and then happened to see my own reflection in the glass door ahead, it felt like some random squid had squeezed in between three models.
For the first time in my life, I was experiencing an inferiority complex over my looks. In the middle of that, Cha Yihan, who had been casually making conversation, stretched and said, “I heard the food’s good. I’m looking forward to it.”
I stared at him in confusion before asking, “…The food? Here?”
The food at my high school had never been that great.
“Yeah. The head chef from Hotel C transferred here. They say it’s been good ever since.”
“What?”
I looked at Cha Yihan without bothering to hide my disbelief.
A hotel head chef? That’s ridiculous…
Letting out a scoff at the absurd nonsense, I dismissed it. What kind of hotel chef would transfer to become a school cafeteria cook?
Even if this is a novel, at least keep the jokes within the bounds of common sense.
However, I had overlooked something. My senior year of high school self had thrown away more common sense out the window than I realized.
As the line gradually shortened, we got close enough to see inside the cafeteria.
Leaning against the wall and fidgeting with my hands, I caught a whiff of something delicious drifting all the way over. I craned my neck past Kang Sunwoo to peek inside.
“Huh?”
The moment I saw the interior, I doubted my eyes. It did not look like a school cafeteria but a stylish hotel buffet.
Where did the cafeteria tables go? And what happened to those cafeteria chairs?
There were so many different dishes laid out that I could not even tell whether I was on a field trip to some major corporation or if we had all come to eat at a buffet.
My mouth began to water.
Cha Yihan wasn’t lying?
This was a total windfall. For once, I felt like praising my past self.
But if even the cafeteria had changed this much, an ominous thought began to creep up about how strange everything else might have become.
“Look over there, Yeon-ah. There’s the lunch menu posted by the door.”
As I leaned forward to look inside, Cha Yihan came up beside me.
He pointed at the glass door. Even at a glance, the menu was filled with expensive dishes you would never expect from a school lunch.
I felt the corners of my mouth subtly rising and quickly covered it with my hand.
I had completely forgotten that just moments ago, I had been seriously considering transferring schools.
“Wow, wow.”
“You like it that much?”
Even when Kang Sunwoo asked, I was too delighted to manage my expression.
Is everything really implemented exactly the way I wrote it?
Then maybe, instead of just the basic subjects like Korean, English, and Math during school hours, there might be other interesting classes too.
I did remember going on about how great it would be if all the classes were like this.
But I can’t remember any of the important plot events from the novel.
That made sense.
The novel I had written was nothing more than a brief episode and a source of amusement from my exam prep days, something that should have long since faded from my memory.
“Huh, is that lobster?”
I could see lobster meat stuffed inside a shell split cleanly in half. The moment I stepped in front of it, a rich buttery smell wafted over.
“Yeah, looks like it. That’s what it says on the description below.”
Without a word, I placed a lobster onto my plate. After glancing around, I subtly added one more, but no one said anything.
“Yeon looks really happy.”
“Yeah.”
Now I understood why even our homeroom teacher had run to the cafeteria. At this level, it was worth running for.
Thinking that I would run here next time, too, I began filling my plate with other dishes as well.
Still, since I’m older now, let’s not do something crazy like jumping from the second floor.
Back in middle school, I must have lived with that kind of reckless spirit, but now I was an adult.
“Hey, look over there. It’s Kang Sunwoo.”
“Cha Yihan’s next to him, too.”
“Kim Chanseung’s there as well.”
“Are the three of them in the same class? Class 1?”
“How did those three end up in the same class?”
“But I don’t recognize the girl with them.”
“Me neither.”
It was the first day of school. Wasn’t it normal not to know people yet?
I ignored all the reactions buzzing around us and diligently continued filling my plate.
Even as I walked, I could feel people’s eyes sliding over to follow us.
So this is the life of good-looking people…?
If this was the life of a beauty, I decided I did not want to live like this. The moment I spotted an empty seat, I walked straight over, sat down, and picked up my chopsticks alone.
Like hell I’m ever eating with them again.
Starting tomorrow, I needed to hurry up and shamelessly befriend someone, anyone, and find people to eat with.
With a sullen expression, I took a big bite of the lobster.
“Oh.”
It was delicious. The moment I tasted it, I felt happy.
The stress I had been carrying for days from the absurd situation of transmigrating into my own novel seemed to melt away.
“Did a real hotel chef actually come?”
At my quiet mutter, Kang Sunwoo, who was sitting next to me, looked at me and asked, “Is it good?”
There was no time for small talk. With my mouth full of lobster meat, I nodded vigorously.
I was focused on eating when I suddenly felt a persistent gaze from across the table.
The moment I looked up, my eyes met Kim Chanseung’s as he stared at me.
“Kgh.”
It was brief, but I almost choked in surprise. It felt like the first time I had seen his bare face without a mask, and as expected of a male lead, he was strikingly handsome.
Wow…
His gaze was intense, almost relentless, yet when I actually met his eyes, they seemed oddly indifferent, almost detached, which left me confused.
What is it? Why is he staring at someone while they’re eating?
Thinking he might have something to say, I kept looking at him, and he kept looking back at me.
It turned into something like a staring contest between the two of us.
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