My head felt light, and my heart beat irregularly.
Everything in front of me felt like it was slipping away in an instant.
I felt dizzy, unable to handle reality.
I ended up springing from my seat.
Clatter—
The chair was pushed back roughly with a loud noise.
For a moment, Gongi and Ian looked at me with startled expressions.
And……. Cedric, too.
His red eyes were quietly tracking me.
The moment I met his gaze, I couldn’t breathe.
Heterogeneous, bizarre red eyes that you couldn’t see in reality.
……This was an impossible situation.
Kim Semo had become Cedric.
Who is Kim Semo?
A childhood friend who had been by my side since we were young.
A guy who couldn’t even reach items higher than his own height and asked me to get them for him every time.
A guy who had never even held a girl’s hand, yet bragged that big breasts were the best.
A guy who whined that he was unlucky every time we played games, and had requested a duo from me dozens of times only to be ignored.
That loser, nerd Kim Semo—was now looking at me, having become Cedric Leonhardt Crown.
Does this make sense?
How? Since when?
My mind went blank. In this absurd situation, I desperately tried to find some reality.
Could there be a camera filming me somewhere?
Like a hidden camera?
……But that was just my wish.
Cedric stood there, looking at me as calmly as if he had been like that from the beginning.
He didn’t avoid my eyes, nor did he look awkward.
As if the name ‘Kim Semo’ had never existed in this world in the first place.
Suddenly, I felt stinging gazes.
The students were whispering, seeing me stand up after roughly pushing my chair.
And Gongi was looking at me with concern from the front seat. ……I was the only crazy person in this lecture hall right now.
“Yoon Seohyun?”
I was pulled back to reality by Gongi’s cautious voice.
Her expression clouded strangely.
She looked flustered, as if she wanted to say something, but I had no intention of listening.
“……Sorry.”
Taking a deep, ragged breath, I packed my bag blindly.
My fingertips were trembling.
I gripped the hand holding the bag so I wouldn’t drop it. I had to get out of here as soon as possible.
However, the moment I took a step toward the door—Grab.
I felt a strong force gripping my wrist.
“Yoon Seohyun.”
A low, solid voice.
A voice that was familiar, but one that should absolutely never be familiar.
Reflexively turning back, I saw Cedric quietly looking down at me.
Features perfect as a sculpture, red eyes shining brightly under the sunlight.
It was too beautiful to be reality, and the intense colors stood out.
But there was no time to be impressed.
There was no reason to be impressed by a man’s face in the first place.
More importantly, does this make any sense?
I know this face all too well.
Because it’s a face I’ve seen time and time again in the game.
A guy who always looked down on everything with arrogant eyes and smiled leisurely, as if bored.
I had never played him directly, but I knew the ending where he sat on the throne and looked down on everything.
A person who reigned on the throne in the game without shaking even once.
The one Lucian called a ‘wildcat.’
However, it should have been Kim Semo gripping my wrist right now, not Cedric.
My brain couldn’t accept the discrepancy.
I wanted to deny the existence in front of me, but he was all too clearly real.
…Even his warmth.
“……Let go.”
“I can’t. The lecture is about to start, so where are you going?”
Cedric’s voice remained calm.
Yet, the strength in his hand showed no signs of loosening.
“Just, let go.”
In the end, I gritted my teeth and twisted my wrist.
But Cedric just held my hand lightly and didn’t budge.
……This bastard, he’s too strong.
He wasn’t the guy who hits the Emperor route for nothing.
My wrist throbbed with a dull ache.
And at that moment.
Ping—
My vision blurred momentarily.
Sorrow surged from deep within my chest for no reason.
Why am I like this?
I’m not one to cry easily, it’s just… this situation was so sad.
It felt like everything had twisted.
The reality before me was too unfamiliar.
It was as if the world I knew was being broken into pieces and reassembled into a completely different form.
“…Are you hurt? Why are you like this, Yoon Seohyun?”
Cedric asked in a low voice.
Seeing his red eyes narrow slightly, I bit my lip hard.
Our Semo’s bushy eyebrows would bunch together and look ridiculous whenever he frowned; he didn’t have a face that naturally crinkled like that.
And above all, Semo was never this handsome.
My wrist felt even sorer.
The solid grip, which I couldn’t escape even if I applied a little force, felt surreal because its hot warmth was too vivid.
I swallowed my breath and twisted my wrist slowly, but the solid force was still holding me.
What on earth should I do now?
“It hurts, so let go.”
Maybe because my voice came out watery without me realizing it, Cedric’s gaze flickered slightly.
At the same time, the force wrapped around my wrist slowly loosened.
I quickly pulled my hand away and stepped back.
Then, gripping my wrist, I swallowed the profanity inside.
Fucking bastard.
He’s handsome, strong, and now he’s even created a miracle where a game character has popped out into reality.
What kind of situation is this?
My nose stung from the overflowing emotions.
The more I inhaled, the tighter my chest felt.
But I couldn’t be swallowed by these emotions.
I hurriedly grabbed my bag and took a deep breath.
I had to pull myself together.
Pretending to be fine, even if my head was a mess, I had to move first.
Right now, I had no time to think and no room to be swept away by emotions.
I left the lecture hall without hesitation.
The moment I opened the door and stepped out, the air in the corridor changed completely.
The cool air filled my lungs, and my heart, which had been sinking heavily, seemed to calm down a little.
Right, it must be a dream.
This must clearly be the continuation of a nightmare I haven’t woken up from yet.
The moment I tried to hurry my steps as if nothing were wrong—Thump.
My face crashed into something like a solid wall.
My chest, which had been inhaling, was pressed as if it were being crushed. It was an unexpected collision.
My body wobbled for a moment.
The bag strap slipped off my shoulder, and I reflexively reached out.
But before I could even find my balance, a voice vaguely familiar to my ears rang out.
“It’s the first class, yet you are already contemplating skipping?”
A voice that was strange but not unfamiliar, and a familiar tone.
……But an existence that should never be here.
