Prologue: I Just Wanted to Rest
I was having the time of my life on a ride when it dropped straight out of the sky and cracked my skull open.
When I opened my eyes, I was in a hospital. The problem was the doctor—some bastard who casually tossed around game terms like “potion” and “healing” as if they were the most natural things in the world, then started shooting light out of his hands.
The moment I saw that, it hit me.
Ah. I’ve been reincarnated.
It was the spring of my fifth year.
And I sighed. I’d thought I might finally get some rest, but I already knew my life from here on out was going to be exhausting as hell.
I was tired. My head felt foggy, and I didn’t want to do a single thing. Wouldn’t it be fine if I just ignored everything and did only what I felt like?
How was I even supposed to know what this world was based on? The novels and games I’d seen in my previous life alone could build a house. And I was supposed to pick just one of them out of the pile? I’ll be honest.
Impossible.
My life had been so thoroughly wrecked that I never had the time to dive deep into any one thing. The world is wide and full of writers; there were far too many stories waiting for me to stick my head into just one that happened to catch my eye.
The future? You either die or you live—that’s it, right? Dying early or dying later doesn’t make much difference. Still, since I’d been born healthy this time, all I had to do was stay disease-free, eat well, and live well.
Me, the protagonist of this novel? Don’t make me laugh. I’d already met the protagonist.
More precisely, a guy who was basically the protagonist.
From the sidelines, watching the world revolve around him, I couldn’t help thinking: if this bastard isn’t the main character, then who the hell is? He was that perfectly protagonist-shaped.
And on top of that, he turned out to be my childhood friend. He was the one who’d watched me fall, and he was the one who’d called for help.
So if I just handled him right, I’d never have to worry about making a living, right? That’s why I treated him well.
I didn’t remember it myself, but he’d shown loyalty by reporting it first, so I answered his questions and taught him what he didn’t know.
A kid’s brain really is like a sponge—whatever I taught him, he soaked it right up. Studying and ordering him around turned out to be pretty fun. On a whim, I even decided to compare the scholarship of my previous life with this world’s, and before I knew it I’d run all the way to university.
Not that it mattered much. History and science were completely different here, so I was basically starting from scratch anyway.
The protagonist brat, being a guy and all, got sulky that I knew more than he did and started sniping, “You don’t even know this?” So I put on a straight face and told him I had amnesia. He felt ridiculously guilty after that.
These days it’s trendy for protagonists to grow up into complete assholes, so I used the opportunity to give him a thorough mental education so he wouldn’t go off the rails.
I was the teacher; he was the student. Was I traumatizing a little kid? I’m a little kid too, you know. Just because my mental age is higher doesn’t mean my body is an adult.
Besides, this was only fair. If you’re going to hurt someone, you’d better be ready to get hurt yourself. I crushed him completely. Life is real combat, kid.
He felt so sorry he even started sniffling, so I told him that if he was really that sorry, he could just owe me one, and we made up.
I filmed a video and drew up a document. A regular seal wouldn’t hold any weight, so I made him press his thumbprint.
I’d put this to use later. A childhood promise? Too calculating and petty? So what? Let me say it again: this is life, and life is real combat, you bastard.
From then on I stuck by the protagonist’s side. If you want to hide a tree, put it in a forest—my theory is that hanging next to the guy who stands out the most makes you stand out less.
If this were a novel, I’d probably be in the childhood-friend position.
Thanks to the complete overhaul of his personality and character from a young age, what emerged was a classic hero of the righteous path: kind, overflowing with a sense of justice, neither stupid nor overly dramatic.
Unlike me, he was a pretty boy with a bright personality, so his popularity never dried up. Before I knew it, he’d already formed a harem starting in middle school.
A chaebol second-generation young lady, a girl he’d picked up by chance and half-lived with, girls who followed him around confessing their love, and so on and so forth…
It was so textbook that it actually put me at ease.
Yeah. This is a novel. This is a game. While the protagonist laughed and joked in the middle of all those girls, I could just quietly step back and get some real beauty sleep.
Now the big concern for ordinary students about to graduate was, of course, higher education.
The protagonist had awakened around the same time as me and had kept grinding steadily, so getting into the Academy was basically a sure thing.
I told him to study hard for the exams, then slacked off myself. Me? I’d already skipped grades ages ago and was ignoring the invitations to come early, so all I had to do was send an okay and I had a free pass.
What, never seen a parachute before? One way or another, I got into the Academy.
By this point the protagonist should be able to handle things on his own. His harem members had all safely enrolled too, so he wasn’t going to suddenly dark-evolve and start wandering around lost.
This world never had a quiet day thanks to Awakened, hunters, monsters, and all the rest. It was chaotic enough that polygamy was apparently allowed if you had the ability. So they should all get along just fine without any drama.
I’d pretend to acknowledge him, give a little help from behind the scenes, and that would be enough. While the protagonist ran wild on his own, I’d sit back with popcorn and cola. Yeah—that’s the good life.
My grand plan was progressing step by step.
But then. But then, you see.
“Hey, aren’t you getting a little too cocky just because Taewoong’s nice to you?”
“Being childhood friends some kind of rank? Are you crazy?”
“Follow me to the rooftop. I’ll teach you a lesson.”
The better the protagonist did, the more weirdos kept latching onto me.
…Fuck. What a pain.