Chapter 3.

Our Child Could Never Be the Second Lead (3)

The representative work of youth web novels, Welcome! Summer Film.

The female protagonist, Semin, grew up under parents who owned a video rental store. For some reason, she became an outsider at school.

Semin had one dream she couldn’t tell anyone about….

She wanted to make a movie under her own name.

And then, two men who seemed as though they had stepped straight out of a movie appeared in Semin’s boring everyday life.

“Hi. Would you like to make a movie with me?”

“You can’t live quietly anymore. I filmed you.”

Dokyeom, the son of a famous actress who had moved from the United States to Korea,

and Eunho, who had quit judo because of an injury and become a delinquent at school.

Caught between a gentle man and a tsundere man,

Semin would experience the most turbulent period of her nineteen-year life.

—Sigh. I like Dokyeom, though. Eunho is way too much like one of those old-school internet novel protagonists.

As much as I hated to say it about Eunho, I had been on Dokyeom’s side during the early part of the story.

Dokyeom was gentle, kind, and someone who communicated well with Semin.

Eunho, on the other hand, wasn’t.

His manner of speaking wasn’t pleasant, and he was like a hedgehog that kept its quills raised at all times.

Even setting aside all the other reasons, Eunho in the early part of the novel was incredibly sensitive and frightening.

He was basically a stray cat that had been hurt over and over again.

In other words, the period I’d possessed Mun Yerim was when Eunho’s sensitivity was at its absolute peak.

“…Are you making fun of me?”

Before I could even open my mouth, I heard a whistle.

The students who had been hesitating to enter the school gate because they were watching the situation between the two of us turned their attention toward the school grounds.

I turned around too.

A man in a gym uniform was approaching from far away, scratching his head.

“What are you doing?! The bell’s about to ring. Aren’t you going inside? Bae Eunho, you come with me.”

So that’s the PE teacher.

The one who wore yellow tracksuit pants and loved hot dogs….

I remembered that the PE teacher had actually gotten more screen time than Yerim.

Surprisingly, Eunho obediently followed when the teacher called him.

As Eunho passed by me, he lowered his gaze and quietly warned me.

“You… stay out of my sight from now on.”

Eunho’s back gradually grew smaller.

The students hurried through the school gate, and I headed toward my classroom to the sound of the bell.

As I climbed the stairs, I remembered Eunho’s final words.

[Comment: Why is he such an asshole? Please, I really hope this guy isn’t the male lead.

Comment: I fucking hate delinquent male leads.]

That’s right.

Even when Eunho first appeared, quite a few readers hated him.

Whenever he saw Semin, the female protagonist, he would furrow his brow and pick a fight with her for no reason.

Even I had thought Eunho was a little too rough for a male-lead candidate.

But….

They only said that because they didn’t know our Eunho.

I was certain that after reading all the way through Season 1, they would become Eunho supporters with their hearts torn apart.

Because that’s exactly what happened to me.

Maybe because I knew Eunho’s personality so well, seeing him glare at me and tell me to stay out of his sight was just….

“So cute. What am I going to do?!”

There was no way such a cute kid could be the second lead!

I wanted to pound my fists against the wall and scream at the sky, but I had to endure it for Mun Yerim’s reputation.

Once I actually tried to enter the school, however, I felt like I might have a panic attack.

I took a deep breath and looked around at the students.

These kids were innocent and kind.

And I could do this.

“I’m Mun Yerim.”

I adjusted my bag again and looked around for my classroom.

In the novel, I had been in the same class as Semin and Dokyeom, and their class was….

“Class 3!”

Class 3.

The problem was, I had no idea where Class 3 was.

On top of that, the third-year students used a separate annex building, so I had accidentally entered the main building earlier and ended up climbing all the way to the fourth floor before having to come back down.

I was marveling at how carefully the author had planned even details that never appeared in the story when I checked the map of the annex.

“Huh? Han Dokyeom?”

Far away, I spotted a tall boy wandering around the building lobby.

His handsome appearance immediately caught my eye, along with his naturally brown hair and naturally brown eyes.

Seeing Han Dokyeom, who was even more handsome than the novel’s descriptions, I couldn’t help but gape.

Come to think of it… after this scene, Semin found Han Dokyeom because he couldn’t find his classroom and took him to the teachers’ office.

The moment Han Dokyeom saw Semin, he fell in love with her at first sight.

Semin was also surprised by how handsome Dokyeom was.

It was fair to say this was the beginning of a fresh, youthful romance.

“The problem was that they met in the first place. I shouldn’t let the two of them meet first.”

At the sound of approaching footsteps, I looked toward the stairs.

In the distance, a girl with fair skin and chin-length bobbed hair was coming down the stairs, carrying a large stack of books.

My heart began pounding at the aura of a female protagonist that radiated from her even from far away.

With every step she took, the name tag hanging over the left side of her chest moved slightly.

She had finally appeared.

The female protagonist of this story, and my second favorite character, Jung Semin.

Here, Semin was supposed to accidentally discover Dokyeom and take him to the teachers’ office.

That was how I was supposed to follow the original story….

But I hurried over to Dokyeom instead.

“Hi. Are you a transfer student?”

At my question, Dokyeom’s expression, which had been blank until then, immediately brightened.

Dokyeom was always the kind of boy who welcomed anyone who approached him with a smile.

I smiled just as brightly.

When I saw Semin through the glass door, I hurriedly grabbed Dokyeom by the arm and moved him inside.

“This is the teachers’ office.”

“Oh, thank you.”

Only after showing him the teachers’ office inside did I realize that I was still holding Dokyeom’s wrist.

I quickly let go.

Dokyeom rubbed his wrist and nodded gratefully.

I waved at Dokyeom as he entered the teachers’ office.

At the same time, I glanced sideways at Semin’s back as she left the annex.

“Why did I do that?”

Maybe it was because I’d just seen Eunho, who was covered in wounds.

Instinctively, I’d felt that I shouldn’t let Semin and Dokyeom meet.

And yet, I couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling.

I turned around and stared in the direction where Semin had disappeared.

“Huh? It’s Eunho.”

Through the glass door Semin had just walked out of, I could see Eunho crossing the school grounds.

His face was deeply furrowed, as though something was bothering him.

Seeing Eunho’s dependable back, I suddenly remembered that day just before I died.

[‘I’m still going to live. It fucking sucks, but I’ve got to keep living. What else can I do? You want to live too, don’t you? Don’t you?’]

If I ever got the chance to meet Eunho, even in a dream, I wanted to tell him thank you.

Now that I’d possessed a character in this story, I wanted Eunho to be happy too, just as I had become happy because of him.

“Eunho, I’ll make sure you and Semin end up together.”

“Hi. I’m Han Dokyeom. It’s nice to meet you.”

With my help, Dokyeom entered the classroom with the teacher before the first period began.

The girls’ faces turned red at his gentle way of speaking and the way his eyes curved beautifully when he smiled.

When break time came, Dokyeom had already become a famous figure at school.

He was the son of a famous actress, and he was incredibly handsome, so it was only natural that everyone wanted to talk to him.

I glanced toward the back of the classroom where Semin was sitting.

Semin wasn’t looking at Dokyeom.

She was drawing a storyboard.

“Yerim, we’re going to the school store. Want to come with us?”

“It’s almost lunchtime. You’re going to the store now?”

“What’s with you? Since when do you care?”

My classmates left the classroom, saying they were going to the school store without me.

Before class started, I stepped into the hallway to wake myself up.

Then I saw Semin climbing the stairs.

She was holding her storyboard and heading toward the school rooftop.

“Looks like Semin is going to draw on the rooftop again.”

In the original story, Semin was the kind of girl who sat on the rooftop and drew storyboards during every break.

So she really did draw in places where nobody could see her.

I was about to stop her when I noticed Dokyeom heading toward the rooftop in the distance.

“Did Dokyeom meet Semin there?”

I’d reread the web novel so many times, yet there hadn’t been any scene early in the story where Dokyeom and Semin met on the rooftop.

Could there be some kind of behind-the-scenes story that hadn’t been written in the novel?

Curious, I followed Dokyeom up the rooftop stairs.

When I opened the metal rooftop door, bright sunlight and a cool breeze rushed in.

I also saw a long metal fence that had been installed to prevent students from jumping off.

I looked around for Dokyeom and Semin.

The school rooftop was designed like a garden, with flowers, trees, and benches scattered throughout.

It was much larger than I’d expected, so finding the two of them wasn’t easy.

“Where are they?”

I’d gone halfway around the rooftop, but I still couldn’t see either of them.

I gradually became anxious and quickened my pace.

Maybe it was because I was too busy looking in front, behind, and to the sides.

I didn’t look down.

Something soft touched my foot, and I fell backward.

“Ah!”

With a floor this hard, I should have been covered in bruises for at least three weeks.

But it didn’t hurt.

Feeling uneasy, I looked down.

I’d fallen onto someone’s stomach and used them as a cushion.

I really was doing everything imaginable on my first day.

“Oh my! I’m so sorry!”

The book I’d been using to shield my face from the sunlight fell away.

The moment I saw the face hidden behind it, I sucked in a breath.

As I instinctively tried to fall backward in surprise, a large hand firmly caught me around the waist.

At an incredibly close distance, Eunho narrowed his eyes and said,

“You… I told you to stay out of my sight, didn’t I?”