I Became the Terminally Ill Character in My Friend’s Academy Novel – Chapter 46

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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: JayM
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“Hehe.”

Kim Ga-eul was in a pretty good mood.

Honestly, she had even made a lunchbox to eat together with him, so when she got rejected, she was close to despair. But it seemed that him having a prior engagement wasn’t a lie after all, and more importantly, he had accepted the lunchbox as if he couldn’t help it.

Kang So-hyun.

She kept calling him a loser because she was somewhat embarrassed, but deep down, he was someone she just wanted to become close to.

Only as a friend!

She was grateful that he had forgiven her even though she had harassed him, and that he had been considerate in helping her make friends!

She did have feelings for him, but only as a friend, and she wanted to become closer to him only as a friend.

“Hehe, but it doesn’t seem like he dislikes me, does it?”

In fact, as far as she was concerned, it would only be natural if Kang So-hyun pushed her away.

No matter how kind a person was, who would like the instigator who had harassed them and constantly picked on them unilaterally?

She had pretended to be confident, but even after preparing the lunchbox, she had a nightmare the night before where he had said, “Hey, just because I’m being a little nice to you, do you think I’m really your friend? Read the room, would you~ Go follow that Cheon Yoo-hak that you like so much. Oh, were you rejected, so now you’re switching to me?” It was a nightmare where he had cursed her out in quite a detailed way.

Switching. No, she still liked Cheon Yoo-hak.

Of course, after the last incident, he had become somewhat scary in her eyes, and her body would stiffen whenever she looked at him, but the feelings she had had for him for several years wouldn’t disappear so easily.

Anyway, for the moment, she thought she was already lucky to not be hated, but from So-hyun’s attitude, it seemed like he didn’t dislike her as much as she thought.

-Ah, hey. Why do you look so dejected again? Okay, fine. We can just eat together for two lunches later, right?

“Who would offer to eat two lunches together with someone they disliked just because that person looked disappointed? This went better than I thought, right?”

But why?

No matter how hard she thought about it, she couldn’t figure out why he didn’t dislike her.

If it had been her, she would have immediately appealed for her innocence and buried the other person so far down that they wouldn’t be able to lift their head.

A thought occurred to her when she looked in the mirror of her bathroom.

Her pretty face was reflected in the mirror.

Her reddish-brown bobbed hair as well as the makeup she had carefully done without being too flashy were nice. The only flaw, if there was one, was that her eyes were a little sharp, but overall, she didn’t look too bad.

No, she could say she was pretty. In fact, many guys had shown interest in her at the beginning of the semester.

“Is my face his type?”

Maybe that was it.

Since the beginning of the semester, she had been occupying his desk and had been somewhat aggressive in closing the distance with him.

Was she like the ‘kind bully to a loser’ that often appeared in the manhwa people read? Perhaps she had taken on that role in his mind.

“What am I saying? I think I’m really crazy.”

…But, there were actually cases where losers hid their strength, so could there actually be cases where a bully becomes close to a loser who hides their strength?

It’s a surprising plot twist, that was for sure.

“Hehe, that’s it.”

Overall, this seemed better than she had initially feared.

It was about time for him to come back, so it would be best to stop fixing her makeup and go back.

She returned to the classroom in a good mood while daydreaming like this, only to face a somewhat embarrassing situation.

“…Huh?”

The lunchbox she had carefully prepared to eat with Kang So-hyun had disappeared without a trace.

“W-where did it go!?”

She had only spent a few minutes fixing her makeup.

Unless the lunchbox had grown legs and ran away on its own, it meant that someone had taken it away in that short amount of time.

Chuckles

“Ah.”

She was quite sensitive to the surrounding atmosphere.

Thanks to Lilac and Kang So-hyun, public opinion of her had improved a little, but there were still people who looked at her negatively, and even those who didn’t dislike here weren’t close enough to her to stop the pranks that were played on her.

Kang Ha-ni, who she had gotten relatively close to, wasn’t in the class either, so those who disliked her would think of it as a golden opportunity.

Perhaps the culprits were students from other classes.

‘No, it’s still okay.’

She forced the bad thoughts out of her head.

If they had only hidden the lunchbox, she could just find it before Kang So-hyun was done with his business.

-Ah, okay. I’ll be looking forward to how delicious it is, so stop being so sad.

She had boasted so much about the lunchbox she had made for him, so there was no way she could say she had lost it like this.

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Okay, what should I do about this?

“Ah, frozen is better than this. This hasn’t gone bad, right?”

On my way back from my meeting with Professor Cathy, I saw what looked like extras from a drama eating a lunchbox.

Well, they were people too, so it was fine that they were eating, but the problem was that the container of the lunchbox they were eating from had a design that I was quite familiar with.

Thanks to Kim Ga-eul’s boasting about it earlier, I remembered it almost exactly.

Was this really a coincidence?

“Hey, isn’t she crying?”

“Honestly, so what if she cries? She followed Cheon Yoo-hak around for so long, but since that didn’t work out, she switched to Lilac. It’s infuriating, honestly.”

“And what big deal is it if she skips one lunch? If she doesn’t like it, she can go to the cafeteria.”

“That’s true.”

Hmm, damn. The testimonies were coming out that made it impossible to deny that it was Kim Ga-eul’s lunchbox.

If I had discovered them before they had started eating the lunchbox, I could have taken it away or done something about it, but the lunchbox was already almost empty.

In other words, the first lunchbox that Kim Ga-eul had ever made in her life had already gone into the stomachs of these terrible girls.

“Hey, let’s stop eating this. It’s not really good.”

“Yeah.”

The girls threw away the little bit of lunch that was left in a nearby flower bed and carelessly threw the container next to it.

These girls didn’t know how precious food was.

And did they even think about the person who maintained these flower beds? What were they going to do if it rotted and the smell spread because of it?

I wondered whether I should pretend not to know about what happened here or tell Kim Ga-eul about it, but my deliberation didn’t last long.

No, I should say that I couldn’t make it long.

It was because I could already see Kim Ga-eul running from afar.

She must have run into those girls because her face was quite pale, and she looked quite frightened.

The way she ran while shaking was quite impressive.

“Ah.”

And soon, her expression twisted when she discovered the abandoned lunchbox container and the food scraps.

She collapsed weakly onto the ground, and soon, she began to tremble a little.

…Huh? She was crying? Really?

“Again.”

Huh?

“If I make it again… No, there’s no time, so if I buy lunch and just fill it with the contents…? No, it loses its meaning if I didn’t make it myself.”

She was so flustered that she even started talking to herself.

“Really, damn it. Why today of all days… They should have just come and beat me up instead.”

No, Ga-eul, no matter how you slice it, lunchbox vandalism was better than getting hit. Are you still okay in the head?

I couldn’t just keep watching like this, so I approached her, and she looked up, surprised to see him.

“Huh? Huh? No, that’s…”

“What happened?”

I already roughly knew what had happened, but I couldn’t skip this question.

“Ah, that’s… Actually, no, it’s not a big deal. I mean, what happened to the lunchbox… It’s…”

It seemed like she was more shocked than I thought.

“Calm down. I’m not going to scold you. Tell me everything slowly.”

I patted her shoulder, hoping to reassure her, and calm her down. Her trembling lessened a little after that.

“That’s… I left for a bit to fix my makeup before eating with you loser, but when I got back, the lunchbox had disappeared.”

“Yeah.”

“I looked everywhere, but I couldn’t find it. So, I asked some of the students, and they said that they saw someone carrying it… sob… carrying it this way… hic…”

Oh dear, she was crying again.

I thought she had finally calmed down a bit, but it seemed like she got emotional again when she recalled what had happened.

“So, I ran here, but they already ate it… They said it didn’t taste good. So…”

Wow, those girls were really terrible.

I thought she might run into them, but how could they even think of NTR-ing someone else’s lunch box and then having the gall to be rude afterward?

Kim Ga-eul, who had been sobbing for a while, opened her mouth carefully.

“I’m sorry. I said you could look forward to the lunchbox.”

Ah, so she was crying because of that?

“It’s okay.”

It might sound a little heartless, but in the first place, she was the one who kept saying that I should look forward to it, so I just answered positively back then to be polite.

I wasn’t really looking forward to it, so it was really okay.

In the first place, I already ate, so I wasn’t hungry right now. Rather, she was probably the one who skipped a meal because of our appointment.

“What’s okay? There’s no need to be embarrassed about it. It’s your first time receiving something from a girl, so you must have been really looking forward to it.”

…This was really…

Every time I try to be kind to her, she always does something that makes me dislike her.

I thought for a moment.

What should I do here?

If I were the sweet guy Lilac, I would have picked up a piece of the fallen food, ate it, and praised it as delicious, then I would comfort her by saying, “Let’s eat even more delicious food next time.”

If I were Cheon Yoo-hak, I would have told her to ignore the prank of those bastards, and then I would go crush them.

But I wasn’t a sweet guy who had gone crazy enough to do such things.

And if I thought about my usual behavior, such actions didn’t suit my style either.

Well, I didn’t need to think too hard about it.

There was no need to imitate someone else in this kind of situation.

When someone was crying because they were sad, this was what I would do.

“You haven’t eaten yet, have you?”

“Huh? Yeah…”

“Then let’s go.”

It seemed like her makeup had smudged because of her tears, so she might be embarrassed later if we went to the cafeteria, so we should go out and find something to eat.

“Huh?”

“First, wipe your tears with this. It’s a shame about the lunchbox, but you can’t go hungry. Let’s go out and eat something.”

I took out a handkerchief from my pocket, and she carefully wiped her tears with it.

“…Thank you.”

“It’s nothing. In times like this, I usually eat something delicious and spicy.”

It seemed like she thought I was joking, but I was being serious.

When I was feeling like crap, the first thing I did was put something in my mouth. It was more effective than one would think.

Even at the orphanage, when the kids were fighting and snapping at each other, giving them each a piece of candy would make them reconcile while crying after a little while.

When we went to a nearby tteokbokki restaurant and I ordered tteokbokki, she was looking at me while she ate even though she was hungry.

That was right, you need to have energy whether you were angry or crying.

You couldn’t go hungry.

“Is it good?”

“Yeah, it’s spicy, but it’s delicious.”

“When you feel bad, you have to eat spicy food. This is scientifically proven, and people who disagree with it are merely uncultured.”

I didn’t particularly like spicy food, but eating spicy food when I was in a bad mood wasn’t bad.

“What’s with that?”

She started laughing softly, as if she thought it was funny.

See? She smiled and laughed after eating something delicious.

“It’s a shame about the lunchbox, but since it already happened, let’s just eat together next time.”

“Okay, as a reward for comforting me today, I’ll make one even more delicious next time.”

She hesitated for a moment before opening her mouth.

“Hey, loser.”

“There’s that ‘loser’ thing again. Why? Do you want me to order more tteokbokki? Or do you want some sundae or fried food?”

“Do you think I’m a pig? That’s not it, I’m just curious, why are you being so nice to me?”

“Then what, should I have just left you while you were crying? Am I a psychopath in your eyes?”

“That’s not it. Honestly, I bullied you, but you’re being so nice to me. So why?”

…Yeah?

Why was I being so nice to this annoying girl?

I actually thought about it before, but it seemed like I had no particular reason for being nice to her.

At first, I just planned to save her and fix her personality, but somehow, we had become something similar to friends.

“I mean, you don’t really like me, do you?”

What was she saying…? Was she a crazy woman?

“Hehe, I can tell by your expression. It’s not it, is it? Thank goodness.”

…Uh, what was this intense emotion burning in my chest?

It felt a little weird, like I had been rejected without even confessing.

“But it’s a little disappointing.”

She looked at me while smiling.

“If I had met you before Yoo-hak, the person I liked might have been different.”

She said something that was difficult to respond to before she started eating her tteokbokki again.

“It’s good, but it’s really spicy.”

She was small, so she probably couldn’t eat much, but she was still eating it all.

“It’s so spicy that I’m crying.”

She said that while crying.

…I had a lot of things to do, but it seemed like I had to help her get revenge too.

Not a petty revenge like usual, but something that would be satisfying.

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T/N – Well, so much for their relationship being platonic. I can almost hear the social link up sound effect from Persona after reading this chapter. And nice try, Mr. Author, but Ha-ni is still best girl. Though I have to admit, Ga-eul is growing on me.

If you find any mistakes, feel free to point them out in the comments.