Chapter 218 |
“You both probably heard the rumors today.”
“The rumor has already spread throughout the academy.”
“Eunha isn’t the type to do that…”
There was a reason behind the opening of the first Cool Girls’ Dormitory Union.
It was due to the rumors circulating recently about Eunha at the academy.
The rumor about Noh Eunha, who placed second in the academy entrance exam, choosing Bae Soo-bin, had spread uncontrollably.
Despite the efforts of the three to contain it, it was futile.
Even disregarding the truth of the rumor, Eunha was often seen lingering around Soo-bin.
“What’s going on in his head? He keeps following someone he claims to dislike, so the rumors keep spreading?”
The kids chewed on their snacks vigorously.
That was just like Noh Eunha.
The three couldn’t hide their displeasure.
At that moment, Seona cautiously spoke, glancing between the two.
“But… Eunha probably doesn’t really like Bae Soo-bin, right?”
“Absolutely, there’s no way. Have you seen someone who’s in love with someone else look like that?” “True, right?”
“Eunha probably just wants to become friends with Soo-bin as he said.”
The rumor was wrong.
The kids, with their bitten snacks, firmly denied one possibility among many.
As the three who had known Eunha since childhood, they could assert that he didn’t like Soo-bin. He simply wished to befriend her, always following her around.
The problem lay in how to become friends.
“We’re not elementary school kids anymore. How can we suddenly say ‘Let’s be friends’ and actually become friends?”
Seona shrugged.
Minji and Hayang nodded.
Even though they weren’t kindergarten or elementary school kids anymore, how often did people at their age say ‘Let’s be friends’ and actually become friends?
They thought they were becoming friends by getting to know each other.
“Noh Eunha, he was weird since the rehearsal for the inauguration ceremony, now he’s completely obsessed. Maybe he doesn’t even realize he’s making a big mistake.”
Minji grumbled discontentedly.
The other two felt the same.
He hardly showed interest in anything, and now he was inexplicably chasing after a girl. It felt unsettling.
Even if he claimed not to have any romantic feelings for Soo-bin.
“””Though he didn’t do that to me…”””
The three lamented with a sense of hurt.
Surely, Eunhyuk and Parang might be thinking the same.
Seeing him pursue someone so fervently was unusual.
The kids who had leaned on him emotionally felt sorry for Eunha while feeling jealousy toward Soo-bin, who was receiving his attention.
“I’m not a fan of that Bae Soo-bin.”
Minji bluntly stated, uncharacteristically for her.
Seona and Hayang didn’t voice it, but they felt similarly.
At first, they thought he was wrong for aggressively approaching her.
However, seeing her constantly pushing him away made them feel uncomfortable.
Why was Eunha so insistent?
It was a matter of self-respect.
While Eunha was at fault, seeing her blatantly ignore him hurt.
Maybe he knew how she looked at him.
Despite this, Eunha approached her with a bright smile.
The more they saw, the more infuriated they felt.
They wanted to tear him apart.
Noh Eunha might have his reasons, but still…
The three shared their thoughts through their eyes.
There must have been a reason for his behavior in wanting to get closer.
They couldn’t just stop him outright.
Of course, not in this manner.
“Maybe slowly approaching him would work. That way, the other person won’t feel threatened, and you could become friends smoothly.”
Seona spoke wisely while munching on a snack.
The other kids also crunched their snacks, almost as if breaking Eunha.
“Eunha doesn’t have friends, that’s why. Has he ever approached anyone until now?”
“Never.”
“If we hadn’t approached him first, he probably wouldn’t have had a single friend!”
Minji slammed the desk. The soda in the PET bottle sloshed around.
The two agreed with her. Eunha hadn’t initiated contact to make friends.
They were always the ones to approach him.
As a result, it became a problem. He never made friends by his own will, so now, it was impossible for him to make genuine friendships.
“…It’s serious.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Yeah, I think Minji’s right.”
The three scratched their heads.
Truly, he was a hopeless case.
It felt like looking at a child thrown by the riverbank. Given Eunha’s recent actions, they couldn’t help but think that way.
“Still… I don’t think Soo-bin is a bad kid.”
Hayang spoke softly at that moment.
She didn’t like Soo-bin ignoring Eunha, but she didn’t think she was a bad person.
Otherwise, Eunha wouldn’t have pursued her so passionately, even at the cost of his self-esteem.
“Maybe you’re right, Hayang. From my drama experience, just by looking at her, she seems like a fiercely proud person.” “Eunha just made a mistake.”
What to do with Eunha?
Since he’s showing interest differently than usual, they could only support him from the sidelines.
The three sighed.
You really owe us gratitude.
It was almost time for attendance.
Minji decided to conclude the first meeting of the Cool Girls’ Dormitory Union at this point.
Who knows how many more meetings they’d have until they graduated from the academy.
☆
There was no noble cause to protect humanity. The reason for deciding to become a player was simply to succeed.
Soo-bin trusted in her talents without a shred of doubt.
Born in a single-parent household, to succeed without any support, the only path was to become a player.
So, she worked tirelessly to gain the Galaxy Group’s sponsorship and bowed to her direct and indirect relatives. (TLN: Galaxy group? Was that the name?)
She didn’t slack off in her efforts. With talent combined with hard work, she could feel a sense of accomplishment each day.
However, she still came in third.
Disappointing, but the result was everything.
She had to accept the fact that there were two people at the academy who were greater than herself.
“Noh Eunha, are you going to keep doing this?”
“Hah, did you get so carried away because you think you’re second? If you keep this up, you might fall behind here.”
Academy inauguration rehearsal.
She could meet the top and second-ranked students there.
They were the kids she had seen once in the entrance exam.
So, initially, she felt a sense of familiarity. She even thought about going over to say hello first.
If only Noh Eunha hadn’t made repeated mistakes during the rehearsal.
“I’m sorry.”
“Why can’t you give a proper answer?”
“Yes.”
“Ha, really…”
She gave up on getting close to him while he answered the instructor bluntly, even though she knew she was in the wrong.
The first impression was the worst.
For no reason, her pride was hurt.
Realizing she wasn’t as good as him.
Then, Soo-bin coincidentally discovered how wealthy he was born into. The story that Jung Hayang, who entered as the top student, was directly related to the Alice Group.
How nice. To have lived well since birth. If I were born in the same background as you guys, I would have worked even harder to succeed.
Being sponsored by Galaxy, she caught a glimpse of Jung Jaege’s principles to some extent.
Because of that, seeing Hayang surrounded by Galaxy’s children while lazily participating in the initiation ceremony sparked unnecessary resentment.
The strong feeling of not wanting to lose to those two arose within her.
To her, both of them were not subjects to be respected but subjects to be brought down.
But then, he suddenly approached.
“Hey, how’s the academy?”
“Who do you think you are suddenly acting familiar?”
“Oh, right. Sorry, I’m Noh Eunha.”
“When did I show any interest in your name? Why are you suddenly trying to act friendly?”
“Just, well… Haven’t we met somewhere before?”
“What nonsense…”
“Nonsense? The one who did nonsense better was you. Ah, sorry, I misspoke. You seem interesting, so I wanted to get close to you…”
Saying they met before. Saying he’s good at talking nonsense. Saying he seems interesting.
There was no one crazier than him.
Focused on success, she had no intention of making friends, and the odd guy was even more undesirable.
She believed that if she ignored him enough, he would eventually leave on his own.
She believed that until then.
“Let’s have lunch together. You don’t like pasta, right?”
“How do you know if I like pasta or not? Stop bothering me and go eat with your friends.”
“Hey! Where are you going?”
“Why should I tell you?”
Whenever she turned away, he chased after her.
He was truly unbearably persistent.
One day, she got so irritated that she cursed at him, ignoring his background.
Yet, he didn’t change his expression and approached her with a smile.
Because of that, rumors started circulating wildly around the academy.
That Noh Eunha was interested in her.
She was a girl too.
She couldn’t ignore someone following her and claiming to like her.
So one day, out of irritation, she directly asked him.
But what did he answer?
“Huh? No, why would I?”
He responded with a face that made her questioning herself feel embarrassed.
She tried to push him away even more.
She intentionally threw harsh words at him.
But he still clung to her like a burr.
“How many times do I have to say that I don’t intend to be friends with you?”
“And then later when you have no friends, you’ll get drunk and bother me again. Stop it. I want to be friends with you.”
“Ah, whatever.”
“Yeah, whatever.”
Even amidst that, playing around.
Soo-bin found his tone of knowing everything about her, his cheerful face, and nonchalant actions irritating.
She wondered if ridiculing him despite his persistence was a mistake.
“This is clearly a trick to deceive me. Trying to make me unable to study by doing this…”
It felt like she was falling into a trap.
After roll call, she sneaked out of the dormitory and walked along the promenade.
The night breeze cooled her anger.
She decided to erase his presence from her memory.
It was clearly a high-level strategy.
This method of bothering herself, trying to obstruct her, was undoubtedly a tactic.
“Impossible talk.”
Who would think such a thing?
Just a little more patience.
Then, he will eventually fall away.
She walked along the promenade following the light illuminating the path.
As she turned onto the path leading into the woods at a crossroads, the surroundings darkened.
Soon, she saw the light.
“─Was it hard getting here?”
“…No. It’s been a while, Oppa.”
A large rock at the end of the path.
Her childhood friend, whom she had known since she was young, was sitting on that rock.
Oppa gestured to the space beside him.
She took his hand and climbed up onto the rock.
“How long has it been?”
“Since Oppa entered the academy…, it’s been two years now.”
“You’ve changed a lot since I last saw you. It’s really nice to see you like this.”
Soo-bin felt embarrassed and brushed her hair back.
The childhood friend she met after two years had become a much more impressive person than she remembered.
“Well, congratulations on entering the academy.”
“Thank you, Oppa.”
He took out canned drinks from a bag. Soo-bin made a clinking sound with her mouth and toasted with him.
That day, the two of them reminisced in the deserted forest.
☆
“If only I hadn’t met that guy─!”
In his previous life, Eunha didn’t know Bae Soo-bin from the academy.
So, his understanding of Bae Soo-bin’s situation was limited to fragmented knowledge.
“Our mom also met a wrong man and suddenly got pregnant… Am I not any different from mom?”
She had a boyfriend she met at the secondary academy.
At that time, receiving sponsorship from the Galaxy Group and excelling in academics, she supported her boyfriend wholeheartedly, giving away everything she had, even her piggy bank.
She once said with regret, “I should have realized from the moment he kept asking for money, with his wallet empty.”
They even said that she handed over the family stamp, enabling her boyfriend to create a clan.
Eventually, her support for her boyfriend, despite being excluded from Galaxy Group’s sponsorship when the truth was revealed, was evident.
That’s how much of an extraordinary love it was.
A love that burned everything.
Even graduating at the top of the academy, she refused the offer from her clan and joined her boyfriend’s clan.
“What have I really…?”
She was a slave of love.
All the income from the clan went straight to her boyfriend’s pocket, and she accumulated debts in place of her boyfriend.
Believing that she would live together with him, she foolishly dreamed only of hope, even when her debts piled up like a mountain and she was physically abused.
Love blinded her.
By the time she came to her senses, the situation had become irreparable.
“…Reality hit me like a bucket of cold water. I realized I was really crazy…”
The man incurred debts from gambling.
She couldn’t stop the collection agents anymore.
So, in place of the debts incurred from gambling and those unpaid for so long, the man sold her as a Grade S player according to the Mana Management Organization.
Her intentions were hardly considered in that transaction.
From the moment the man entered the gambling den, she was just a stake in the game.
She disappeared from the underground market without a trace.
“…I did all sorts of things. If you hear it, you’d be shocked, wondering if such a thing could happen in the world, right?”
In the shadows, a slave existed. The world that had once perished was not a merciful world for the weak.
In a world where monsters appeared, human life was nothing but a lamp extinguished in the wind.
It was not a strange occurrence for someone who was said to have died from monsters to live as a slave in the underground market.
In such a situation, she suffered all sorts of hardships as a combat slave, a sex slave, a regular slave, a spectacle, an experimental subject.
Driven mad by resentment towards the man, she lost her sanity.
“…Soo-bin?”
Then, Eunha and Yoojung encountered Bae Soo-bin in the underground market.
At that moment, Yoojung couldn’t help but be amazed at Bae Soo-bin, who bore indelible scars all over her body.
Eunha, who had been exploring the underground market to find the desired artifact, still remembered the girl trapped within.
“Hey.”
As if parched for a while.
Soo-bin muttered with parched lips and eyes filled with venom.
“That guy…”
“……”
“…I’m going to kill… him.”
That day, using the money he had saved to buy the artifact, he bought her.
It was before the establishment of the Mistflower Party.
The two of them had limitations even in organizing an instant party together.
So, he recruited Bae Soo-bin as a caster. To be precise, he owned her.
“What is love…”
Class was over.
Eunha followed Soo-bin, who was leaving with her belongings.
“Hey, what’s the next class?”
“What are you going to do? Just leave me alone.”
“I’m just here to see you off when you’re done.” “Ugh… seriously…”
In her previous life, Bae Soo-bin achieved what she desired.
As soon as she regained her health, she destroyed her boyfriend’s clan. She said she cruelly tore her boyfriend, who was living with another woman, to pieces.
She was a madwoman.
Someone who felt exhilaration in killing others, a lunatic.
Realizing she was losing her mind and eagerly waiting for the day of her death, she became a witch.
“Then, want to have dinner later? I’ll treat you to something delicious.”
“Go eat with your friends. Stop bothering me and go away.”
That wouldn’t work in this life.
Eunha approached her, remembering her, who, after the battle in her previous life, lost herself and looked up at the sky.
No matter how much she pushed him away, he was determined to capture her somehow.
At that moment, the smartphone he had put in his pocket vibrated.
「Noona」: Eunha, I heard some strange rumors ^^;
「Noona」: Want to have dinner together tonight? (01:54 PM)
TLN – Bonus Chapter 3/3! Thank you once again!!! See you guys Friday!