Chapter 218: Yesterday's Best Friend, Today's... (5)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 218: Yesterday's Best Friend, Today's... (5)
Late in the morning.
Kim Eun-bi, having just woken up, drank the honey water her brother handed her with a gloomy expression.
“Hmph…”
As her mind slowly cleared, she thought to herself.
I wish I had an ability to turn back time…
If only she could, she would turn back time.
That’s how much she regretted it.
The time she had spent with him after so long had ended while she was asleep.
At the same time, she was worried.
Nothing happened between them, right…?
She was worried that something special might have happened between Kim Do-jin and Ryujin while she was out.
“Then why did you drink so much when you can’t even handle it?”
At Kim Jeong-hun’s scolding, Kim Eun-bi clutched her head and rolled around on the bed.
“I didn’t know the cocktails were that strong!”
Gulping them down because they were tasty had been the problem.
Ryujin had tried to stop her, but at that moment, she hadn’t wanted to listen.
It felt like Ryujin’s always-caring actions were just treating her like a child.
Worried that Kim Do-jin might see her as too young, she had pushed herself too hard.
I should’ve listened to Jin…
She regretted it now, but it was, quite literally, too late.
Time passed cannot be rewound.
Kim Eun-bi struggled to sit up and asked Kim Jeong-hun.
“What time did I get home last night…?”
“Around 12:30.”
“Then, um…”
She slowly calculated the time.
It was about 9:00 when they left the restaurant.
It was a little after 10:00 when we were ordering cocktails and talking…
That left a gap of roughly two hours before she arrived home.
In other words, Kim Do-jin and Ryujin had been alone, facing each other, for that long.
She was terribly curious.
What did they talk about?
What kind of drinks did they have, and what did they discuss while she was drunk and asleep?
Did some strange feelings blossom between them?
The longer she thought, the more frustrated she felt.
The delusions she wrote in the blank space of time, where she couldn't know what had happened, grew more vicious.
The memory of the two of them kissing at the club fueled those delusions.
That’s right, they’ve already kissed…
A thought suddenly struck her.
Hadn’t she already lost?
Weren’t the two of them, who had already developed a fond relationship, laughing at her?
No, that can’t be right.
Neither Kim Do-jin nor Ryujin.
Kim Eun-bi knew well that they weren’t those kinds of people.
If they truly had feelings for each other and started dating, they would have told her.
As she was trying to shake off the anxiety filling her heart by repeating those thoughts,
Bzzzt-
A message arrived on her smartphone.
《DojinDojin: Noona, are you awake?》
That one message from Kim Do-jin, arriving just in time, blew away all her worries and anxieties.
A huge grin spread across her face as she immediately sent a reply.
《Eun-bi Noona: Yep! I just woke up, haha》
《DojinDojin: You drank a lot yesterday, is your stomach okay? I asked Jeong-hun to make you some honey water when you woke up.》
Her face turned pink as she read the message.
“Jeong-hun!”
“Yeah, what.”
“This honey water… did Do-jin ask you to make it yesterday?”
Kim Jeong-hun’s expression instantly darkened.
If he could, he would have said absolutely not.
“…Yeah, that’s right. He asked me before he left yesterday.”
Remembering the warning Kim Do-jin had given him last night, Kim Jeong-hun reluctantly agreed.
“I see…!”
Her already large smile grew even brighter.
Judging by her fingers tapping away, she seemed to be messaging Kim Do-jin.
“Hehe… Heehee.”
She looked way too happy for someone just exchanging a few messages.
That made Kim Jeong-hun even more furious and anxious.
I have to get that bastard away from my sister.
That was the only thought in his head.
The problem was how to separate them…
Suddenly, a good idea flashed through his mind.
With that, even my sister might lose interest…
With a triumphant smile, Kim Jeong-hun waited for his sister’s happy moment to end.
About ten minutes later.
When Kim Eun-bi put down her smartphone and stretched with a satisfied look, he spoke up.
“Noona, don’t you want to see a picture of Do-jin from high school?”
“Huh? From high school…?”
“Yeah.”
The method he’d come up with was to use a past photo of Kim Do-jin, one that was completely different from how he looked now.
The Kim Do-jin of the past was an ugly guy with all the elements to make anyone feel disgusted.
If she saw that the man she liked used to look like that, wouldn't the image keep popping into her head and lower her affection for him?
Unaware of his intentions, Kim Eun-bi’s eyes sparkled with enthusiasm.
“I want to see it!”
She was curious.
What did Kim Do-jin look like in a school uniform?
It had only been a year or two, but just as her own brother had matured quite a bit since becoming an adult, wouldn't the Kim Do-jin from back then have looked much younger?
“Wait a second.”
Kim Jeong-hun went straight to his room, took out the graduation album from the top of his bookshelf, and opened it.
Kim Do-jin’s face was there, next to his own in the class photo.
Seeing that face, so completely different from now—the face that would forever remain a loser in his memory—filled him with confidence.
You fucking loser, you’re so dead.
Full of a confidence that made his cowering before Kim Do-jin’s presence last night seem ridiculous, he grabbed the album and headed to Kim Eun-bi’s room.
“Here, look.”
“Hehe, thanks!”
Taking the album, Kim Eun-bi excitedly flipped through the pages.
“Jeong-hun, were you in Class 1?”
“That’s right.”
“Grade 12, Class 1… found it.”
Her finger traced over each person’s photo until it landed on the three characters of Kim Do-jin’s name.
After checking the photo there, Kim Eun-bi tilted her head and asked.
“Uh… Jeong-hun? I think this photo is wrong…”
A fat face that seemed to have no connection to the slightly younger-looking Kim Do-jin of today filled the picture.
Toward the puzzled Kim Eun-bi, Kim Jeong-hun suppressed the laughter rising in his throat and replied.
“That’s Kim Do-jin.”
“Wha—? Really? This is Do-jin…?”
Her eyes widened in surprise as she examined Kim Do-jin’s past photo.
“He used to be super fat back then. And, how should I put it… he smelled because he didn’t wash much, and he acted a little weird… no, strange, so he got made fun of a lot.”
“R-Really…?”
Kim Eun-bi’s body trembled slightly as she stared blankly at the photo, her head bowed.
Kim Jeong-hun thought it was an expression of disgust.
But it wasn’t.
“Do-jin… he must have worked so hard.”
“…Huh?”
When Kim Eun-bi lifted her head, her eyes were welling with tears.
“Look at this!”
She held up the album to show him Kim Do-jin’s picture and passionately explained.
“How hard must it have been to go from this to how he is now? He must have wanted to die. Hmph… I always fail even when I’m trying to lose just one kilogram…”
“……”
“The other friends were so mean! Teasing someone just for being a little overweight! Jeong-hun, you didn’t hang out with kids like that, did you?”
“N-No, not me.”
“Hehe, right? I knew my Jeong-hun wasn’t that kind of person, right.”
“Y-Yeah… But, Noona, are you okay with it? That he used to look like that…?”
To the question he threw out in a last-ditch effort, Kim Eun-bi shook her head.
“Not really…? I just think about how hard it must have been for him to lose all that weight…?”
“I-I see…”
Her affection for Kim Do-jin had only grown stronger, and his own position had become even more precarious.
Faced with a result completely different from what he had expected, Kim Jeong-hun stumbled out of her room.
*
After finishing my chat with Kim Eun-bi.
I stared at the contacts saved on my smartphone, lost in thought.
“Hmm…”
Looking back on my life after getting this body, I could feel a crisis slowly approaching.
Jeong-hee, Shin Yu-jeong, Yoon Ji-an, Im Na-eun, Jo Yun-kyung, Ryujin, Kim Eun-bi.
It hadn’t even been that long, yet I had gotten involved with seven women.
Of course, Jo Yun-kyung was a useful tool who would come when called and leave when told, but that still left six.
At this point, wouldn’t it be fair to say I’ve been living by my dick instead of my brain?
“I think it’s time to sort things out…”
This wasn’t about abandoning anyone.
How could I throw away these charming women I struggled to get because I didn’t want anyone else to have them?
The sorting out I needed to do now was to make them accept this situation.
To make them acknowledge each other’s existence and ensure they couldn’t leave my side.
If I could do that, I wouldn’t have to be anxious whenever I met one of them.
“The problem is how to do it.”
Right.
In the end, it all came down to the method.
There seemed to be no way to make them understand logically.
Why?
The answer comes when I try to put myself in their shoes.
What if the woman I liked was secretly dating other men—several of them—at the same time?
I’d be lucky if it didn’t end in a knife fight.
“Haha, well now.”
If that’s how I’d feel, other women would be the same.
If the man they like is openly dating other women besides them, and to top it off, he openly declares he’s going to build a harem because he doesn’t want to be anxious and asks them to join…
“That might be the day of my funeral…”
In the end, this problem can’t be solved with logic.
If I tried to be logical, there’s a greater chance I’d be the one persuaded and end up defeated with nothing.
That means I have to approach this with emotion and sentiment, not logic…
“Is there no other way but to take it one step at a time?”
Gathering everyone at once and revealing everything is out of the question.
If I did that, I’d be lucky to escape with my life.
Ultimately, there’s only one method worth trying.
To adopt the same approach I used with Kim Eun-bi and Ryujin.
One person at a time.
Make them vaguely aware of each other’s existence, and in the process, make their feelings for me grow even stronger.
At the same time, I have to instill conviction in them.
The conviction that even if the number of women increases to two or three, the absolute value of my love for them won’t change.
“I have to make this work.”
I steeled my resolve.
I have to go into this with the mindset that I’ll die if I fail.
And that’s the reality of it.
I’d rather die than let go of the women I’ve worked so hard to get and watch them go to other men.
“First, the target to conquer is, as expected…”
The first target was already decided.
Someone who would at least pretend to die if I told her to.
Im Na-eun.
Let’s introduce my lovely slave to the junior slave she’ll have to manage from now on.