SOS! I’m Being Forced to Be a Villain - Chapter 32
—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————
Episode 32
Name: Lee Chung-hye
Age: 18 years old (Seolam High School, 2nd year, Class 1)
Role: Main Soo of the novel ‘Only Two’
Background: This person receives love from those around her due to her naturally good and kind disposition… (Show more)
Current emotional state: Stability, relief, anticipation, interest, enjoyment
Inner thoughts: “It must be hard dealing with those two people at once. Really… how pitiful.”
One hour after practically chasing Lee Chung-hye out of the house. During that time, I had been staring intently at the system window containing Lee Chung-hye’s profile information.
The bed mattress supporting the back of my head felt uncomfortably hard today. No matter how much I tossed and turned, I couldn’t find a comfortable position. Before long, I gave up even trying to move and hurriedly scanned through the system window.
“…Who’s naturally good here.”
There was no fraud like this fraud. I could confidently say there would never be another person with a persona as thick as Lee Chung-hye’s.
I gritted my teeth and glared at the section below, the inner thoughts part, as if I was about to tear it apart right then and there.
It must be hard dealing with those two people at once. Really… how pitiful?
I could tell who those words were directed at without thinking deeply about it. An hour ago, before Lee Chung-hye left this house, hadn’t she extended her hand for a handshake and spouted nonsense about asking me to take care of things? As if that wasn’t enough, even as she was being chased out of the house, she looked at me with a meaningful smile.
‘…No, even setting all that aside.’
“Why have we suddenly become close? Why on earth?”
Lying on the bed and just stamping my feet wouldn’t help me find the answer. I just got angry from the endlessly swelling absurdity.
Still, judging from Lee Chung-hye’s reaction, it seemed she couldn’t see my ‘inner thoughts’ yet.
Originally, the degree to which people feel intimacy toward each other is relative. Through this incident, Lee Chung-hye might have come to regard me as quite a close friend, but I certainly didn’t feel the same way.
Instead, if she accessed my profile information, she would be able to check my current emotions. Knowing this, I freely vented all the irritation and anger boiling up inside me without any intention of suppressing it. I had no way of knowing whether Lee Chung-hye was looking at the system window right now, but I wanted to express myself this way.
After fuming like that for a while, I deflated again. As I breathed heavily and glared at empty air, the system window flickering before my eyes gradually became blurry and faded.
…As if I could change fate as easily as flipping my palm.
Of course, there had been considerable changes from the predetermined framework.
The fact that Lee Chung-hye had someone else she liked, that it wasn’t Seo Jung-hoo or Kwon Tae-min. And the fact that more than just simple conflict had developed between Lee Chung-hye and me – actual meetings and connections.
‘…Kwon Tae-min said he wanted to see Lee Chung-hye, so even if it’s not unrequited love, he seems to have some favorable feelings.’
I rolled my body that had been sprawled on the bed. With my body flipped 180 degrees and buried in the blanket, I pressed my face against the soft pillow and rubbed it around roughly.
Since Lee Chung-hye said she didn’t like it, I wondered what right I had to force predetermined fate or main character roles on her.
‘Then they shouldn’t force it on me either!’
Moreover, unlike Lee Chung-hye, I was enduring all sorts of turmoil and unreasonable discrimination because of the system. Subjected to inexplicable anger, incomprehensible venting, constantly monitored and coerced at every turn!
‘It’s fucking awful! Damn it all…!’
I screamed a muffled shout with my mouth tightly shut. Perhaps because the muffled sound couldn’t escape, my head buried deep in the pillow seemed to throb.
I slowly released the tension from my body. I lay back in proper position and pulled the blanket up to my chest.
Actually, before Lee Chung-hye went home, I had asked her directly out of curiosity. Whether she had ever seen men in black suits. Whether she had experienced being dragged around by them, transported like luggage, and thrown to the ground.
But the answer that came back was exactly as I had expected. Lee Chung-hye said she had never seen those damn black bastards. She added that while she had received threatening warnings when trying to tell someone about the world’s secrets, she had never been directly harmed.
‘Why only me…!’
If the existence beyond the system really was something people usually called God. If it had created all the fate of this world, connections and inevitabilities, and us.
‘The appearance it gave me, the personality it gave me, not just the family environment but all the situations I’m in – everything must have been God’s intention…’
Why does it treat only me so viciously.
I pushed down the question that had risen to the surface deep inside me.
I already knew from past experience. The question “Why do you hate the existence you created so much?” – I couldn’t get an answer to this question in any way.
I stared at empty air with unfocused, dazed eyes.
“…”
Why was it? The faces of Seo Jung-hoo and Kwon Tae-min suddenly came to mind. Meddling by insisting I eat, pretending to worry and taking care of me, applying medicine. Even though I knew it was all just pity or sympathy, or schemes to torment me…
“Ah… I don’t know, damn it. Maybe I thought of them because I want to punch them.”
I muttered in a rough tone. Soon I pulled the blanket over my head and squeezed my eyes shut.
* * *
I had been weak since childhood. It wasn’t that I suffered from any specific named disease, but I was prone to getting sick and collapsing far more than other children.
Even a mild cold would cause my fever to spike so high that I often had to go to the emergency room, and I had surgery a couple of times. Until I became an upper elementary school student, playing alone with toys rather than talking with friends, lying in bed counting ceiling patterns rather than running around outside – that was my daily life.
Now I can’t recall the terrible pain and agony, the writhing and wailing from back then. But I still remembered my childhood far too vividly.
The white private hospital room, or my room with lights half-dimmed. The bustling medical staff, or the house settled in quiet stillness. The days I cried more than I smiled, the times I felt stinging emotions while being intimidated and constantly reading the room – I couldn’t forget even if I tried.
I regarded myself like a criminal. I repeatedly told myself in my head that I, weak and sickly as I was, was nothing but a burden, that I would never be of help to anyone.
My parents also treated me like a criminal.
I don’t know exactly what form of emotion they held toward me. Whether it was annoyance toward a high-maintenance child, whether I was just property they had withdrawn investment from early due to lack of growth potential, or whether they simply didn’t like me.
It was too late to ask now. They had died several years ago, and I couldn’t bring myself to ask even until the final moment of holding the funeral and cremating the ashes.
‘I should have asked at least once before those two died…’
I sometimes had such thoughts. It was the byproduct of a more primitive emotion, somewhat different from regret or wistfulness.
When I somehow managed to study Korean that no one taught me while crouched on the sickbed, and finally learned to write my own name and showed it to them, what did that cold look in their eyes toward me mean?
You neglected and ignored me so indifferently, yet when I was sick you unfailingly provided treatment and surgery – was there no sentimental reason at all? Was it just to fulfill the minimum duty as parents, or because you couldn’t bear to dispose of your son’s corpse when he was too young to let die?
‘…If I had been healthy like my brother.’
Could we have become a harmonious family then? Eating together, talking morning and evening, living as each other’s strength and support?
Not a life where only I had to desperately struggle and protect myself, but an ordinary life like that.
“What even is such an ordinary life anyway.”
I tensed and relaxed my tingling nose tip. Then I slowly turned my head.
In the dim room, the door was open just enough for a single finger to fit through. Soft lighting shone through from beyond, and I could hear the voices of three people laughing and chatting.
As I stared intently at that beam of light, I suddenly thought.
‘Just…’
I was the problem.
—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————