Male Lead Is Obsessed With My Health - Chapter 1

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

Prologue

My face grew paler and paler as I stared at the mysterious liquid sloshing in the oversized cup, threatening to spill over at any moment.
Glug.
A thick, dark-green liquid.
Viscous and sticky, and once swallowed, it looked like it would compromise not just my sense of taste but my very life.
But there was something driving me even more insane than this mysterious liquid.
“Here, come on.”
This creature right here.
“Drink it!”
The one holding out a cup brimming with the mysterious liquid and grinning at me with that seductive charm—Feshion Alermagne.
Ugh.
My pride stung at the realization that my heart had wavered over this enchanting eight-year-old face.
Those crimson eyes sparkled like gemstones, fixed on me.
“What are you doing? You’re not going to drink it?”
Without answering, I simply looked up at him.
Feshion Alermagne.
The firstborn son of the Alermagne Imperial Family, the crown prince destined to rule the great empire of Albreicht.
And the “male protagonist” of this “novel.”
Yes. I had been reincarnated into a novel.
And into the role of an Extra—a sickly girl who would die early.
I was supposed to be nothing more than the male lead’s childhood friend Number One, a minor extra fated to perish without significance.
At least, that’s how it should have been.
“Arel, I went through such tremendous hardship to obtain this—I suffered so much to get it. You’re really not going to drink it?”
How did things come to this?
The moment I hesitated, Feshion’s sharp senses caught it, and he turned those moist, pleading eyes toward me.
When he did that, I felt like I might lose my mind.
What on earth does he want from me?
“No, it’s not that I don’t want to drink it…”
“Then drink it.”
“But…”
Would you want to drink it?
Chugging something down with your eyes squeezed shut was only bearable if it looked halfway palatable.
This was genuinely something I didn’t even want near my lips!
As my expression twisted, Feshion’s grew even more forlorn.
The only answer was to run away.
Clap!
“Huh? Where are you going?”
He caught me in a second.
With this wretched body, I couldn’t even manage a proper escape.
As I scowled, Feshion’s expression shifted to one of such woeful abandonment that he launched into a monologue worthy of a melodrama.
“I climbed all the way to the very peak of Croan Mountain in Shalen because it’s good for your health. I hunted down a monster and obtained an Inner Core for you. That monster was truly fierce—its hide was so tough. I nearly died fighting it. This is something you can’t even buy with money. And I gathered everything myself—the Elonde Flowers from the White Witch’s Forest and the Elixir, everything is good for your health, all for you…”
“Fine, fine! I’ll drink it! I’ll drink it!”
My conscience had been thoroughly pricked into submission.
Suppressing my biological revulsion, I finally brought the cup to my lips.
Watching Feshion’s expression brighten instantly left me feeling exasperated yet strangely moved. I pinched my nose and forced myself to drain the cup. My stomach immediately churned.
I think I’m going to be sick.
“Arel! You collapsed again yesterday, didn’t you? I told you to get healthy! Who told you to be so frail? You can only fall ill with my permission!”
It wasn’t fair. I hadn’t asked to be born into this body.
“Still, you drank this today, so you won’t collapse.”
That was an absolutely depressing statement.
The taste lingering on my tongue.
A flavor I never wanted to experience again. Oh, heavens, why do you torment me so?
“From now on, whenever you want to collapse, you need my permission first. Understand?”
Feshion seemed to have gone completely mad, now demanding impossible things of me.
Say something that makes sense.
And then came the question that jolted me awake.
“Did you do your cardio today?”
Flinch.
There was no way I could have.
For reference, this body was so weak that simply standing up made my vision spin.
“That’s strange. You exercise so much, yet you haven’t gained any muscle.”
“…”
“Once your food digests, let’s go out and exercise together later!”
“…”
Tragedy.
Living in this miserable body was already killing me, and now this even darker proclamation.
Oblivious to my anguish, Feshion continued muttering increasingly outrageous things as though it were nothing.
“You need to get healthy soon so we can go mountain climbing together and hunt monsters. Doesn’t that sound fun, Arel?”
Hunt monsters with what?
What exactly does he plan to do with me?
I shuddered with disgust.
I reincarnate into a novel and suddenly the male lead becomes obsessed with my health.
“Don’t worry, Arel! Trust me! I promise I’ll make you healthy!”
Please, male lead, go away.

Episode 1

Reincarnation into a novel character?
Who would ever wish for such a thing?
“And yet, it really did happen.”
Somehow, I had been reincarnated as a character in a novel.
“Wow.”
In this Web Novel Era, with five hundred thousand romance fantasy titles flooding the market, no one would even bother asking if reincarnation was real. But seriously—was this actually happening?
“What crime did I commit in my past life?”
I genuinely reflected on my deeds.
I’d never posted a 5,700-character hate comment, never engaged in flame wars with other readers over authors or works, wasn’t the sole reader of a thousand novels, and wasn’t even an avid reader—far from it, I was practically a burnt-out one.
So why me? Why reincarnation?
“It’s not like my soul switched bodies, or I died when I wasn’t supposed to and made a deal with some god. So why? Reincarnation?”
I couldn’t make sense of it.
Okay, I was a high school senior who hadn’t even graduated yet, that much was true. But I hadn’t been hit by the classic reincarnation truck.
It was just a sedan that hit me.
“I guess that means I died back then.”
The memory I’d been trying to forget resurfaced, and I clicked my tongue. Given that I’d been reincarnated, I must have actually died.
“So I’ve been reincarnated.”
Humans are remarkably adaptable creatures; place them in a sufficiently surreal situation, and they adjust to anything.
That’s right.
One day, at six years old, reincarnated in a novel, I remembered my past life.

* * *

To be honest, I had never lived an ordinary life. And for good reason—I was simply too talented.
The gifts I possessed were exceptional, my abilities were exceptional, and so were my parents.
This wasn’t self-praise; it was objective fact.
A gift bestowed by heaven itself, once in a millennium, a prodigy. Confidence and arrogance are separated by only a hairline, and growing up showered with worship from my childhood, I never had the wisdom to tell them apart.
If I’d continued drifting through life like a cloud in the sky, coasting along, it wouldn’t have mattered.
“Anyway, enough about the past.”
Now there’s nothing I can do about it or change about it.
What mattered was the present.
An acquaintance of mine—let’s call them Person A—who loved romance fantasy used to indulge in a particular fantasy.
“What if I woke up one day and ended up in a romance fantasy?”
The same silly fantasy.
And I had the credentials for it. As a named reader and celebrated “oil baron”—someone who sampled every new release on the three major platforms on launch day itself and dutifully left reviews as part of the “advance guard”—I was notorious in romance fantasy circles.
Q. I think I’ve been reincarnated into a novel. What should I do?
A.
“As someone who’s been a romance fantasy reader for years, let me give you some advice. First, when you’re reincarnated into a romance fantasy, you need to quickly figure out which novel you’ve entered!”
“How?”
“By remembering place names, or specific characters!”
Wow, are all romance fantasy readers geniuses?
How do they remember all that? Is it really necessary to have that kind of memory capacity to be a romance fantasy reader?
That question from back then was proving surprisingly useful to me now.
“Thank goodness.”
My memory wasn’t terrible.
As someone who’d only finished reading a handful of novels, a light user, I was able to quickly identify which novel I’d reincarnated into.
“The male lead’s childhood friend… something about obsession?”
I had the vague sense there were countless titles like that, though it was probably just my imagination.
Alright, so now that I’m the only reader in this world who knows the future, should I start profiting from it? That thought seemed promising until…
I realized what kind of character I actually was in this novel.
“Extra.”
Right. The kind of character who appears once or twice and vanishes without so much as a status update.
“Terminal illness.”
This was where despair began.
“Dies early in the story.”
If someone had killed me, at least there’d be hope of doing something about it. But my cause of death was listed as “illness.”
A rare disease? Couldn’t you just develop a cure?
For those entertaining such naive thoughts, we’ve prepared a special gift.
Surprise! An incurable disease!
“This is insane!”
If this were a game reincarnation, it would be beyond “hard mode” and approaching “hell mode.”
Yep. This life was doomed.
“Terminal illness, an expendable extra character who dies in the early chapters, the male lead’s forgettable childhood friend.”
No matter how you arrange it, there’s nothing but meaningless, emotionless keywords.
“Seriously, if I was going to be a villain, I should be a proper villain. If I’m an extra, I should be a notable extra. If I’m a terminal case, I should be a heroine with a terminal illness. If I’m going to be the childhood friend who becomes the male lead’s trauma, I should be that!”
What is this pathetic setup?
I hadn’t particularly wanted to be the protagonist, but the world had been cruel to me.
Come on, whatever—just give me something. At the very least, a status window!

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————