Chapter 3
Chapter 3. Realizing
At a glance PLAYER, at a close look PLAYER, even after rubbing her eyes, still PLAYER.
Those damn letters, PLAYER, were stuck right next to Baek Sunyul’s name and refused to come off.
Jiwoo, her mind bleached white by the shock, tried hard not to connect those lousy letters stuck to Sunyul with the words she saw in the system messages.
[System] PLAYER feels discomfort at the gaze of “Monday Girlfriend” Yeon Jiwoo.
But as if mocking her effort, the system message that appeared before her eyes hammered in that what she thought was exactly right.
“….!”
With such clear evidence, it was no longer easy to pretend not to know.
Startled stiff, Jiwoo quickly averted her gaze from Sunyul as if to deny the truth.
Enveloped by an indescribable shock, she muttered in a dazed voice.
“…This can’t be.”
The identity of PLAYER was the handsome, cute, sexy, beautiful, genius black swan Sunyul?
The same bastard who had been charming women nonstop since morning?
The multi-plug who plugged in here and there?
The more she spoke, the more detached from reality it all felt.
There must be some kind of mistake.
After the shock passed, the time of denial came.
Is it a brain tumor? Did her love for Sunyul overflow into illness? Or a YouTube hidden camera prank? Or maybe, in truth, she was abducted by aliens while sleeping, and now her brain was trapped in a jar, subjected to strange experiments?
Yeah. This is all just a dream.
After long, deep contemplation, Jiwoo came to the tentative conclusion that she had not yet woken up.
“I’ll call attendance briefly. Yeon Jiwoo.”
At that moment, the professor standing at the podium casually called her name.
Jiwoo quickly raised her hand and responded to roll call.
“Yes.”
Then she buried her face in the raised hand and despaired.
No, this isn’t a dream. That beast-like reflex to respond to attendance was definitely reality.
Having failed to escape reality, Jiwoo lost all motivation and slumped in her chair.
She had even rushed over to take this seat just to sneak glances at Sunyul throughout the lecture.
But now, she didn’t even have the courage to turn her head toward him.
For a while, Jiwoo stared blankly into space, but finally decided to accept the reality before her eyes.
Waking up suddenly and seeing system messages like those in a visual novel game, the existence of PLAYER, and that PLAYER being Sunyul. It was all…
‘If I think about it, he just smiled. He didn’t do anything wrong, right?’
Taking a step forward in her mindset, Jiwoo immediately began self-justifying for her own sanity.
When she thought the smiling guy was a stranger, she wondered how someone could be so frivolous. But now knowing it was Sunyul, she figured there must be some reason.
Yeah. It’s okay.
Sunyul didn’t cheat on me, and there’s no reason to worry just because I saw a few strange things.
[System] Displays the affection levels of all strategy characters sharing the same space as PLAYER.
No sooner had she steadied herself than the annoying system message suddenly appeared again.
[LOADING……]
Unlike before, the system message lingered, making Jiwoo anxiously bite her fingernail.
Instinctively, she felt something big was coming.
And when the long loading finally ended…
[Physical Education Freshman Min Yura: ♥♥
English Literature Freshman Chae Yuram: ♥♥♥
Folk Dance Freshman Ha Yuri: ♥♥♥
Administrative Science Senior Park Yuhui: ♥♥
……]
Dozens of name tags appeared one after another, turning the entire space into a sea of hearts.
“…?!”
Jiwoo’s face noticeably paled as she looked at the grand parade of hearts.
Hearts floated above the heads of every woman sitting in the lecture hall.
Freshmen, seniors, sophomores, juniors.
[Psychology Professor Heo Nanyeong: ♥]
Even the professor giving the lecture diligently…
Having scanned the whole classroom, Jiwoo looked up at her own head in dismay.
Yeon Jiwoo (MON-GIRL FRIEND): ♥♥♥♥♥
Her own name tag she had casually overlooked stabbed painfully in her eyes.
Thinking that the hearts next to her name and those next to the professor’s name were the same made her feel indescribably awful.
But the most horrifying fact of all was…
Jo Hyejin (TUE-GIRL FRIEND): ♥♥♥♥
The existence of another girlfriend who occupied Tuesday. The day Jiwoo was absent.
***
Betrayal.
The feeling of having one’s trust or loyalty broken.
People say that feeling betrayed is because of the other person.
“It’s all your fault for betraying me, that’s why I’m so miserable.”
But Jiwoo thought it was never just the other person’s fault.
The betrayal was done by them, but isn’t the one who feels betrayed the person themselves?
Emotions come from within. The person who acted is external, but the feelings influenced inside oneself are internal, meaning they can be controlled by the individual.
If you didn’t trust or feel loyalty in the first place, you wouldn’t feel betrayed.
No cause, no effect.
It’s simple.
That day was one of those days.
If she had trusted, she would have been disappointed. If there had been loyalty, she would have been hurt.
After a long time, her family suddenly contacted her and sent a car and people out of nowhere, inviting her to have dinner together.
Normally, she would have made every excuse not to go. But the timing was so coincidental that she went along, hoping for something.
And once again, the meerkat was deceived.
“Dad left the foundation to you?”
Her eldest brother, who called Jiwoo into the chairman’s office, greeted her with words dripping with spite and greed.
