I felt incredibly uneasy.
Actually, I did suspect it.
Unless you act terrifying enough, there’s no reason for kids from rich families to act so submissively.
But still, making someone go missing or setting a building on fire…
It’s not impossible, I guess.
Yes, in the reality I lived in, there were often insane incidents that even put fictional events to shame.
Plus, rich people physically harassing the poor is a cliché in works like this.
And in the original story, Ye Sara genuinely wanted to do something to Yoo Ha-neul.
…So, I felt even more uneasy.
If I thought that what happened to my friends might depend on my actions, shouldn’t I cut ties with them right now?
However, the reason I was still hesitating was that it was still in the realm of “rumors”.
If there had been real evidence that Choi Na-kyung had acted that way, I would have distanced myself from my friends immediately.
After all, I didn’t want my friends getting hurt because of me.
If they approached violently… too many bad things could happen.
Even though I didn’t think anyone could really do anything to Lee Soo-ah, a well-known name, it was different for Ha-neul and So-hee.
Moreover, So-hee had her younger sister, So-ri.
No matter how hard I tried not to imagine the worst, those thoughts kept coming to me.
…Should I just have their entire family move into this mansion?
I could make it happen.
But I didn’t think they would want that.
Even if I tried to confine them for their safety, they probably wouldn’t like it.
Besides, doing that would be no different from what Choi Na-kyung was doing.
…
Maybe it would be better to find that boy Ye Sara talked to when she was a child.
I didn’t know what happened to him, but at least by tracking him down, I could confirm whether Choi Na-kyung’s actions were true or not.
“Sara.”
As we walked silently for a long time, Ha-neul nudged my arm from the side.
“Uh-huh.”
Caught off guard, I let out a strange sound without realizing it.
…Why do I keep doing this?
I never made noises like that when I was a man.
It’s not like I’ve never been startled before, but I didn’t make weird noises like this.
Could this be some instinct engraved in Ye Sara’s body?
In the original story, she didn’t seem this clumsy.
Maybe it was because the story was told from Yoo Ha-neul’s point of view, who was bullied by Ye Sara.
As a developer, there would have been no need to make Ye Sara look positive.
…Or maybe this was all set up for Ye Sara’s route later on.
Yes, there was definitely a Ye Sara route in the game.
I didn’t know Ye Sara was this kind of character because I had only seen Yoon Da-ho and Shin So-hee’s routes, which didn’t delve into her background.
But if players entered Ye Sara’s route, there would need to be a story that made them sympathize with the villainess Ye Sara.
Ye Sara’s evil deeds could have been the desperate actions of a Ye Sara who had given up, or perhaps it was all a misunderstanding.
Or maybe it was a mix of both.
That’s one way to look at it.
…But doesn’t that make Yoon Da-ho a much worse person than I thought?
I understand why he hates Ye Sara, and I get that he didn’t want to be engaged to her.
But if Yoon Da-ho ends up with Yoo Ha-neul, that means he discarded Ye Sara even though he knew all about her situation.
And I’ve already seen Yoon Da-ho’s route.
I didn’t see the whole thing, but I watched a streamer’s highlights.
Yoon Da-ho never once mentions Ye Sara’s backstory.
And in the end, he breaks off his engagement with Ye Sara and ends up with Yoo Ha-neul.
…Did he really get together with Yoo Ha-neul because he liked her?
Or was he just using her to get rid of Ye Sara?
I remembered the look Yoon Da-ho gave me last time.
It wasn’t his usual disgusted expression, but rather, a look of satisfaction, as if he was telling me to do my best.
“…Sara.”
“Ah, yeah.”
Even after I responded once, Ha-neul tugged my arm again when she saw I was still deep in thought.
I finally answered properly.
“Don’t worry too much about what you heard today.”
Ha-neul looked into my face with concern.
“….”
I couldn’t answer.
What could I say?
Even though I knew the future, or maybe because I knew it, I involved the heroines to avoid my own downfall.
These three people would have stayed outside the story if I hadn’t approached them or allowed them to get close.
Yoo Ha-neul would have had her love life and happy ending if I had just stayed out of it.
“…Yeah.”
I answered like that because I thought she’d worry if I didn’t, but… how could I not be concerned?
Since I got them involved, I had to protect them.
…In the end, that thought distracted me from my studies that day.
Not that I thought concentrating would have changed anything.
*
‘Honestly, I wanted to stay over at Sara’s house.
But if I stayed this time, I’d want to stay again, and again, and I’d keep having those thoughts.
Still, I couldn’t go that far.
Lately, my family had been worried about me sitting silently, lost in thought.
If I came home late, they would be concerned, and staying out all night would be too much.’
…That’s why Yoo Ha-neul was frustrated with herself for even thinking like that.
So-hee and Soo-ah were living confidently at Sara’s house, but she couldn’t bring herself to do the same, and that made her angry.
She could think about staying just for a day.
But leaving her family and moving in… that didn’t feel right.
Maybe it’s because that’s how she was raised since she was a kid.
Though lately, it felt like that was slowly crumbling.
Yoo Ha-neul had always been someone who tried to learn everything taught at school and live by it.
If something was wrong, it should be corrected, and it shouldn’t be ignored.
And because of that, she thought she shouldn’t do anything wrong either.
But after going to Hwayoung High School, her thoughts changed.
The people who were really wrong didn’t even realize what they were doing was wrong.
To them, breaking the rules was normal, and they didn’t even blink at it.
To fight against those kinds of people, you had to break the rules too.
Unless they got hit, people like that never realized why they should stop.
It didn’t even take a month at Hwayoung High School for Yoo Ha-neul to realize that.
She wasn’t grateful to the people who made her realize it.
If someone she liked hadn’t been there, she would’ve quit school a long time ago.
…Yeah, someone she liked.
Up until now, she thought it was just possessiveness toward a friend.
She convinced herself it was just ordinary jealousy, something temporary.
But it wasn’t.
The more people surrounded Sara, the more she became close to others besides her, the more anxious Yoo Ha-neul felt.
‘What should I do?
How can I get closer than those others?
How can I stay by her side and never let go?’
Thoughts like that circled her mind all throughout class.
…If Sara ever decided to spend her life with someone, and if that person wasn’t her, could Yoo Ha-neul endure it?
Yeah, Yoo Ha-neul had no right to say anything to Sara.
She was just as distracted in class as Sara was.
Not yet.
She still didn’t have the courage or the conditions to run that far ahead.
Even so, Yoo Ha-neul had already decided.
“….”
After staring at the backs of her three friends as they left, Yoo Ha-neul turned and started walking.
It seemed like the weather was finally shifting from winter to spring, as it wasn’t that cold anymore.
Even though it wasn’t cold, she didn’t want to stand outside to talk.
Yoo Ha-neul walked into a café tucked away in a corner.
She had been there several times already.
Despite its appearance, the café used high-quality beans, and its tiramisu was delicious.
She ordered a cup of coffee and sat in a quiet corner of the café.
And she waited.
After a long time, the person she had been waiting for finally entered the café.
It was Yang Hye-in, wearing a black coat, just like last time.
Under that coat, there was likely a maid uniform.
Yang Hye-in entered the café, not seeming hurried, and after placing her order, she approached Yoo Ha-neul’s table as if they had arranged to meet there.
She took out a note from her coat pocket and placed it in front of Yoo Ha-neul.
[After you leave, at the café we saw last time.]
The note, written on a torn piece of paper, was in Yoo Ha-neul’s handwriting.
Yoo Ha-neul nodded with a stiff expression as she met Yang Hye-in’s gaze.
Yang Hye-in sat in the empty seat in front of her with graceful movements.
“May I ask what business you had in calling me here?”
“It’s because of this.”
Yoo Ha-neul pulled out Sara’s notebook that she had prepared in advance.
She had taken it under the pretense of reading through and correcting it, but only the first few pages had been written in.
“…”
Yang Hye-in flipped through a few pages of the notebook Yoo Ha-neul handed her.
“This notebook—”
“It’s Sara’s.”
Before Yang Hye-in could finish her sentence, Yoo Ha-neul spoke.
“We studied together today. This is what Sara wrote.”
“…”
Yang Hye-in looked at the notebook again.
Her eyes widened slightly.
Since her expression was usually set in stone, this change felt more dramatic than it would on others.
“Do you notice anything strange?”
“….”
Yang Hye-in opened her mouth but then closed it again.
She flipped through the beginning of the notebook slowly, looking over the first few pages.
…But there wasn’t enough written in the notebook to take minutes going through it.
“You should know by now.”
Yoo Ha-neul said.
“If that’s Sara’s handwriting.”
Yang Hye-in looked up.
Though she hadn’t said anything, her eyes clearly wavered.
“The will you showed, who wrote it?”
…Yoo Ha-neul still didn’t have the conditions to run ahead like others.
Then, why not run in a direction others weren’t going?
That was what she thought.