I’m a Second Male Lead in a Romance Fantasy, but I Don’t Like the Female Lead

At 8 PM, I headed to the back of the auditorium as Seol-ah had told me in the morning. Though I didn’t feel the same nervousness as during our first meeting, I felt a slight tension.

“You’re a bit late?”

“I came exactly on time.”

Again, Seol-ah had arrived first and was waiting. Checking my watch subtly, I saw there were still 5 minutes until our appointment time. I dismissed her complaint about me being late. Seeing that my expression wasn’t particularly good, she casually asked:

“You don’t seem to be in a good mood?”

“I failed an interview.”

The morning’s Travel Club interview had been haunting me all day. I disliked everything about it—stumbling over my words after approaching with overconfidence, the possibility of not being in the same club as Hestia, and the chance that she might not be able to join the club she wanted because of me.

“A club?”

“Yes.”

At my answer, she burst into laughter. I glared at her as she laughed merrily, oblivious to my feelings.

“What’s so funny?”

“What kind of audacious club would reject you?”

“That’s what I thought too, so I didn’t prepare.”

“The Travel Club?”

She stopped laughing after a while.

“That’s right.”

“Then, let me give my first piece of information to my collaborator here. You will get into the Travel Club.”

Seol-ah’s attitude changed suddenly. She was confident, like someone who had seen the future. Is this information from the original story?

“How can you be so sure?”

“The Travel Club appears in the original story too. It’s the club Lily joins in her second year. And there was a woman who gave you a strangely pressuring interview, right? Wearing glasses. She’s the daughter of some baron or something. She has a personality that’s obsessed with principles and rules. But she has no power within the club. She probably got severely reprimanded by the other seniors after the interview.”

“You’re suspiciously detailed. Perhaps in the original story…?”

“That’s right. In the original story, Lily uses the Travel Club for all sorts of schemes. And that glasses-wearing girl tries to stop Lily by citing principles, but gets absolutely crushed and kicked out of the club. Why, should I do that for you?”

“Please don’t do that.”

I was horrified by Seol-ah’s answer. How could she so easily talk about crushing an innocent person?

“That senior didn’t even do anything wrong to me, so why would you do that?”

“Why think so complicatedly about it? They’re just characters—if we don’t like them, we can get rid of them.”

I felt a chill at her joke. I deliberately changed the subject and started a new conversation.

“So why did you want to meet this time?”

“There’s no need to be so guarded. Let’s just chat a bit about what’s been happening, and also talk about how our operation is going. I realized that when we met last time, I was so excited that I only talked about future plans and didn’t actually interact as one human to another.”

“We exchanged names and ages.”

“Isn’t that a bit lacking to call it human-to-human interaction?”

“I think it’s sufficient.”

“It hurts a little even for me when you push me away that much.”

Seol-ah seems disgruntled by my reaction. She is a welcome countryman met in this strange land, and we share each other’s biggest secrets. However, she’s also a dangerous woman whose intentions are inscrutable and who puts herself in danger for her plans.

“Let’s start with recent events. Don’t you have quite a few things you want to ask me? Since our last meeting, we haven’t had a chance to talk at length like this.”

Sensing that I was wandering, unsure of how to respond to her talk of human-to-human interaction, Seol-ah started a different conversation. It’s true that I haven’t had the opportunity to talk with her alone. It’s also true that I have many questions.

“Then first, take off your uniform.”

“…Are you a pervert?”

“We already know each other, so don’t joke around.”

She was still wearing her uniform despite the late hour. The Academy’s spring/autumn female uniform consists of a white shirt and a knit. And they must wear a T-shirt underneath the white shirt. In other words, even if she takes off her uniform, she’ll just be in a T-shirt.

“No fun.”

Seol-ah pouted and grumbled as she loosened the buttons of her shirt. I watched her body without saying anything.

“Ta-da! What do you think?”

Eventually, she unbuttoned the last button of her shirt. She tried to gloss over it with playful interjections, but I couldn’t take my eyes off her body. It wasn’t sexual excitement. This was closer to anger.

“Are you really crazy? What happened to your body!”

Seol-ah’s arms, revealed beneath her shirt, had more injuries than before. Hand-shaped bruises visible here and there, marks from being hit, and wounds that looked like bites. After hearing last time that Wilhelm was actually hitting her, a corner of my mind had always been worried about her current condition. Her condition, which I had seized the opportunity to check, was more serious than I thought. I grabbed her arms and shook them. She smiled bitterly at my reaction.

“It hurts when you grab like that, so let go first and then talk.”

But I didn’t stop. Seeing her arms, I couldn’t see anything else. I’m in no position to criticize Cordelia. I lifted her T-shirt slightly. Below the T-shirt, her white navel is visible. But before that, what catches my eye first are, unsurprisingly, the scattered bruises.

“Hey! I said let go!”

Seol-ah shouted and pushed me away at my sudden action. Only then did I finally move away from her.

“What is this?”

“I told you before. That bastard really hits me.”

Unlike my anger, she seemed indifferent, with a calm attitude. However, her voice and eyes were clearly trembling, contrary to her attitude.

“That’s not what I’m asking. Since when has this been happening? Do you know it hasn’t even been a week since we started this so-called operation?”

“That’s not something for you to worry about. The operation is proceeding without a hitch.”

“Do you know your voice is trembling a lot right now? If it’s this bad in less than a week, what do you think will happen later?”

“Don’t worry. As I said before, Wilhelm is the type who might snap at any moment and do something to me if I don’t train him now. I can endure this much pain for the future development. And isn’t it your role to prevent something from happening?”

Seol-ah tried to insist that everything was fine, but I couldn’t understand at all. Her obsession with the original story is abnormal. Of course, if someone knows how this world will unfold, they might try to guide it toward the future they know to maintain their information advantage.

But her attitude is clearly strange. She is clearly suffering from the Crown Prince’s obsession. The wounds on her body, her trembling eyes, and voice tell us that fact. Yet she insists on carrying out her plan forcefully.

“That damn development, original, story! What is it that makes you go to such lengths? Doesn’t it hurt when you get hit?”

“Why are you so angry? You’ve been showing how uncomfortable you are every time I cling to you, but now you don’t like it when I come back beaten? Are you actually concerned about me?”

“Is this the time for jokes?! And how could I not be concerned?”

I shouted at Seol-ah, who was trying to brush it off with jokes even in this situation. This nonsensical operation will clearly eat away at her body and mind.

Seol-ah removed her smile and answered with a serious expression.

“As I said earlier, this is the only way to control Wilhelm. If I distance myself awkwardly now, I might really be imprisoned somewhere underground. When you agreed to my operation initially, the last train had already departed.”

“If I had known… it would be like this, I would never have agreed.”

I wanted to refute Seol-ah’s words, but this was all that came out of my mouth. Certainly, Wilhelm’s deviant obsession was evident in the traces he left on her body. Could she try to distance herself from Wilhelm now? I felt like I was sinking into a quagmire.

“I know. That’s why I deliberately didn’t give you the details. I hid it. I have no reason to blame you. And you don’t need to be so troubled either.”

“Now that’s what you call words!”

“Alright, alright. Let’s stop this conversation now. They’re just characters after all. No need to overreact. It’s just my body suffering a little.”

Just characters, overreact. I felt a great sense of dissonance from Seol-ah’s words. It feels like there’s a huge, unbridgeable distortion between her and me. The chilling feeling I had when talking about the Travel Club interview earlier courses through my entire body.

“So now let’s talk about the future operation.”

Seol-ah gathered up and put on the uniform she had taken off. She began to speak as she buttoned each button one by one. But I couldn’t ignore the chilling feeling and distortion I had felt earlier. I had the intuition that if I didn’t confirm it now, I would greatly regret it someday.

“Looking at my condition, you can see that progress is faster than expected. I feel like he’ll cause an incident soon.”

“Ms. Seol-ah. What do you think about this world?”

“He’ll probably cause an incident within this month. If I’m absent, you should follow Wilhelm when he leaves school that day.”

“Do you really think everyone here is simply a character in a novel? That they’re all fictional characters who don’t really exist?”

“If you fail to follow him, you’ll have to search all the empty buildings near the school, but if you go to a real estate agency near the school and find out which buildings were recently contracted, you can probably save quite a bit of time.”

“Is that why you’re so reckless? Because they’re all fake anyway? Because you think they’re just figments of someone’s imagination?”

“Your role is the most important. If you’re too late, I don’t think anything good will happen.”

“Han Seol-ah!”

My voice tore through the stillness of the dark campus. But it was only for a moment, and soon a heavy silence descended between me and her. Only the occasional sound of insects chirping reached our ears.

Seol-ah sighed deeply and broke the silence. The words that came from her mouth matched my bad premonition.

“Hah… Yes. That’s what I think. In this stupid world, the only real ones are you and me. The rest are all fictional characters that existed in the author’s head. These characters all move as I know they will. That dog Wilhelm beats me while saying he loves me, just like in the original. My family never notices my true self and just knows me as pretty, kind, and smart Lily, and the damned princess consistently puts political pressure on me. You’re the only one in this world who moves differently from what I know. Except for you, they’re all puppets moving according to the author’s thoughts! I can’t understand it, but even your beloved fiancée and Cordelia, who should have been eliminated and gone home long ago, are all just moving according to the author’s will. The only ones with free will in this world are you and me.”

From halfway through, her emotions seemed to have completely exploded, and she was almost wailing. I couldn’t say anything. Not only was I overwhelmed by her attitude, but the content of what she was saying was also an issue I had never thought about before.

“When I asked if you were concerned about me earlier, you asked if it was a joke? It’s not a joke. The only real ones in this world are you and me. Shall I be honest? Right now, I don’t even feel much emotion for other people, or rather, characters. Do you know what it feels like when Wilhelm hits me? It feels like self-harm. Even though I’m in pain from being hit by someone, I’m not afraid of that person, just annoyed. It feels really bad. Like something is being broken. But do you know why I’m still carrying out this ridiculous operation while being hit by Wilhelm? I wanted to put Wilhelm in the palm of my hand and get close to you. My goal was to make it so that bastard couldn’t say anything even if I stuck with you.”

“Ms. Seol-ah. I’m sorry, but I have a fiancée. You know that.”

I rejected her confession-like confession. Ironically, even in the midst of this, my heart races for her.

“Fiancée? What makes you like your fiancée in the first place? You haven’t been in that body for long. Don’t bother lying. There’s a rumor that’s spread throughout the capital, so don’t deny it. Even at the longest, it’s been less than half a year. You wouldn’t have seen your fiancée for long either. Are you going to say you fell in love at first sight?”

“Yes. I fell in love at first sight.”

She snickered at my prompt answer, as if she couldn’t believe it.

“You honestly feel that your fiancée doesn’t like you as much as you like her, right? What she feels for you is more possessiveness than love. She simply doesn’t want to give you to someone else. It’s probably due to some emotional deprivation from the original Mikhail’s long indifference.”

“I know that too.”

It would be a lie if I said I hadn’t felt it. Though it was a short period, I had noticed some of Hestia’s feelings while being with her. It’s not that she has no fondness for me at all. But her heart is closer to a child’s greed of not wanting to lose me than that.

“Yet you choose her over me? I like you more than she does, I can be more helpful, and I’m your only true understanding in this fake world?”

I silently nodded.

Seol-ah laughed dejectedly at my answer.

“I’ve been thinking completely wrong all this time. Do you know? The author ultimately wants the love between Mikhail and Lily. The original story has already begun.”

“My mind still won’t change. I’m willing to help you escape from that original story.”

“Goodbye. See you Monday. Come to think of it, we never did have that human-to-human interaction.”

Seol-ah turned her back, speaking of other things as if she didn’t even feel my words were worth responding to.

I stood alone, continuing to watch her retreating figure.