The Author Did an NTR Drift (2)
Well, today's been nothing but weirdness from start to finish.
"Two draft beers and a tendon hot pot over here!"
"Please use the table kiosk~."
"Ah, the kiosk…."
There was a pathetic guy at this bar who couldn't even place an order right. He'd quit smoking about half a year ago and was still grinding away the weight he'd packed on as a side effect. Maybe that was why, even at the office, he got treated as just another bland, unremarkable face — a salaryman who never spoke to anyone around him unless it was work-related, a solo who simply showed up and collected his paycheck on schedule.
His only hobby was watching his favorite manga and anime in the original language the second they dropped, before any translations appeared. His special skill was home workouts after work. Those two things made up the entire routine of his daily life.
And then the worst possible disaster struck: the pure-romance manga author he'd been following since college had taken the true heroine and slammed the story into a sudden, brutal NTR Drift. Not some half-measure either — he'd put the heroine through the wringer in a way that could never be walked back. Purity and pure love, both reduced to filthy rags.
Was he just overreacting on his own?
Apparently not.
"Pwah! Another draft over here!"
"Yes~ Please use the table kiosk~."
"Ah, the kiosk…."
There was a woman sitting at the same table. She had zero points of contact with the man except for the fact that she sat next to him at work. She had sharp, intimidating eyes, and she was pretty. If you had to categorize her, she was the cool-beauty type. Her hair looked like long black at first glance, but it was actually a secret two-tone — the underside was a shade of blue. She was usually stiff and strictly businesslike with people, yet today she kept smiling to herself.
That smile was all the handsome team leader needed as an excuse to drag the management support team into a lunch gathering. Free lunch had put the woman in an even better mood.
And then the worst possible disaster struck: the pure-romance manga author she'd been following since high school had taken the true heroine and slammed the story into a sudden, brutal NTR Drift. Not just any twist — he'd wrecked the plot so thoroughly that the existence of any other heroine barely even mattered anymore. Purity and pure love, both reduced to filthy rags.
Was she just overreacting on her own?
Absolutely not.
"How the hell does this make any sense? Five years of serialization — they showed each other every pathetic side, every frustrating side, and neither the male nor the female lead ever so much as glanced at anyone else!"
If it had just been me overreacting, I never would have ended up sitting across from this ice beauty, clinking glasses. If it had just been her overreacting, Riyeon never would have been slamming the bar table the same way she slammed her office desk, pouring out her rage at the author straight at me.
"I'll admit the male lead did a lot of pathetic shit. But that was the character and the story the author designed! Mizuki pulled every frustrating stunt in the book too, but they still looked at each other, made up, and every fight was rooted in how much they loved each other — that's why I got it, why every other reader got it and moved on!"
So Riyeon was a massive fan of the manga Even After Knowing Everything of You. Who knew. I just sat there holding my beer, listening blankly while she walked me through every single pure-love foreshadowing device across every chapter and every symbol that proved the true heroine Mizuki's purity.
"Do you know what flower Mizuki was holding every single time she worked her part-time job at the flower shop? Lilies! Lilies! What's the flower language of a lily? Purity. Innocence. Even a kid knows that. But from around chapter 310, what was she holding? Hyacinths. I thought it was weird so I looked it up. Regular hyacinths mean eternal love, but purple hyacinths also mean 'I'm sorry.' I got a bad feeling starting then, but I never once imagined they'd torch five years of buildup in a single chapter…."
Riyeon's eyes welled up. She clenched her teeth and let out a sob-laced sigh.
"Ha-huh-huh-huh… And yet that is exactly what happened. Son of a bitch!"
I wordlessly lifted my glass for a toast. Riyeon crashed hers against mine with gusto and drained another draft in one go. Even with beer, drinking like that was going to hit her hard.
"Another?"
"Yeah. Another."
Why was this woman suddenly using casual speech with me? Still, I could take the swearing and understand it. Neither of us was in any condition to stay fully sane. The author we'd trusted had stabbed us in the back, and more than anything — Riyeon was beautiful.
Unless a gorgeous woman was actively trying to scam me or murder me, putting up with a certain amount of absurdity and unfairness was simply the law of the world. Hell, even getting scammed a little — if the amount was small enough — I was willing to take the hit. Because she was a beauty. Beauties deserved more respect and better treatment than average people. I'd been taught that less than half a year ago.
Wait. Did that mean it was fine for me to get treated as less than average?
Probably. I was more than enough of a person for that.
"Haaah, fuck…."
Honestly, just watching Riyeon get this worked up and furious was already a massive privilege. The fact that this cold, businesslike woman was this heated over a manga, of all things, was fascinating enough on its own.
…Well. It wasn't "just a manga," either. From the moment the chapter dropped at lunch all the way into the night, the communities had been on fire. Not just Japan — fans in Korea, China, Europe, and North America had all joined hands in a full-blown We Are the World of shared trauma.
"So when did you read it, Injae?"
"The latest chapter? Lunch break."
"Lunch? We had the team lunch then."
"Mmm~."
I hesitated for a second. Should I throw out a white lie so she wouldn't feel awkward? But nobody had invited me at lunch in the first place — why the hell should I make excuses for them? I'd already declared I was willing to put up with some unfairness for a beautiful woman, but the one who'd started the lunch gathering was the handsome team leader. I was just some average guy. The team leader was a good-looking guy. So when it came to other men, I actually preferred stacking the deck against them.
"They didn't ask me to come."
"Ah, so that's why I didn't see you. But you actually skipped because you wanted to read the latest chapter as soon as possible, right?"
She made up the excuse for me on her own. I just nodded a few times. She was using polite speech again, so she must have cooled off a little. But the moment the new draft arrived and she took a sip, Riyeon suddenly started sulking.
"That's cold."
"Sorry? What is?"
"You read it first. Why didn't you tell me?"
"Tell you what?"
"What happened in the latest chapter."
"I didn't even know you read the manga."
"Even popular people read this manga, you know?"
"And you think I go around talking to popular people?"
"I'm not popular."
"If you're not popular, that makes me even less likely to go out of my way to talk to you."
"But it was a major incident. It basically drew a line through the history of manga."
A major incident. She wasn't wrong. Even so — even if, somehow, I'd been close enough to Riyeon to speak up — I still never would have told her. Because—
"You want me to say out loud that Mizuki got high on drugs and cheated?"
That would just make my mouth dirty.
"You just said it."
Ah, damn it. My mouth was dirty now. Better rinse it with beer.
"Cheers."
I lifted my glass and Riyeon lifted hers to meet it. Surprisingly good at looking after people, this one. Not as good as me, though. Counting my internship, I was in my fourth year of HR. I had real confidence in my skills at looking after people and gathering gossip. Just those skills, but still!
"This is so fucking disgusting."
Riyeon swore under her breath, gloomily turning her beer glass in her hands.
"Just dating another guy would already make me sick, but getting high and gangbanged? She crossed a river she can never come back from."
Her tone was quiet and calm, but the words coming out of those lips were anything but. For some reason Riyeon's voice cut cleanly through the noise of the bar, clear enough that I found myself glancing around to see if anyone else had heard.
"I really love this manga, you know? I read it all week long."
"You just keep rereading that week's latest chapter?"
"I read the latest chapter, then binge from chapter one all the way up until the next one drops."
What the hell. That was terrifying. Even I didn't do that. I just read other manga instead.
"Why do you like Everything of You so much?"
Everything of You was the short form of Even After Knowing Everything of You. After the NTR Drift, even the title felt disgusting. Don't tell me they'd named it that from the start on purpose….
"Because they never break up."
An unexpected answer.
"No matter how much they fight and argue and mess up, they always end up forgiving each other, growing even closer, and carrying pure love forward."
"By that logic, the heroine has messed up right now too."
"Oh, come the fuck on… there's a limit! Getting high and having an orgy is not just 'messing up'! That's a crime! From the way it was drawn, they were stuffing every hole including her mouth!"
I was in deep trouble. My classic loner lack of social awareness had made me pick a pointless fight, and the pure-love crusader's roar of fury had drawn every eye in the place.
"That's seriously too much! We're comrades who took the same emotional hit, aren't we? We're supposed to empathize and help each other get through this disgusting mess — I don't know if we even can, but at least comfort each other! Why are you attacking me?"
"I'm sorry."
"You're always just saying sorry at the office too."
That's because our handsome team leader is terrible at his job despite his looks, but okay.
"Anyway, I fucking hate NTR. It's a niche underground fetish to begin with. That son of a bitch author is just flashing his underground origins for the whole world to see. And the editorial department is weird too, right? Why would they even upload that? Don't they do any checks?!"
"I hate NTR too. It feels like someone's taking a whisk to my guts until I want to throw up."
"Cheers."
We lifted our glasses at the same perfect moment and tapped them lightly together. Riyeon drained another five-hundred-mil draft in one easy shot. She gulped it down like an electrolyte drink, set the glass down with a hard thunk, and whispered to me.
"But then again, fuck, the thought of NTR shit does kind of turn me on. And that pisses me off too."
Which beat was I supposed to match here? I went dead serious without meaning to.