Sat Behind the Protagonist of a Romantic Comedy

Scribble, scribble.

Half-listening to the uninteresting lesson, I absentmindedly doodled in the corner of my textbook.

The model, a neat and focused female student sitting in the diagonal front row.

With soft brown hair cascading over her shoulders, she appeared to be a charming girl with an impressive smile.

The quickly scribbled side profile of the girl transformed into a deformed cute character, taking up a corner of my textbook.

Let’s clear up any possible misunderstandings right here.

I’m not secretly in love with that girl, nor am I drawing her sneakily.

Just casually drawing her without much thought because she happened to be the best model in my line of sight.

Besides, I’ve given up on having romantic feelings since a long time ago, and more importantly, that girl already has someone she likes.

The girl sitting next to her. In other words, the protagonist of the original world… the guy from the romance comedy novel.

Knowing this fact, I, a sad soul who got possessed by an extra-level existence not found in the original work, have only read the early parts of that novel.

***

I started thinking when I was about six years old.

They say when you die and are reincarnated, you forget everything from your past life. But for some reason, I remember my past life.

It’s a spotty memory, but I remember at least the major things like my name, where I lived, family relations, favorite foods, hobbies, and other trivial memories.

However, no matter how hard I tried to remember how I died, my head just throbbed, so I gave up on recalling it.

Anyway, until I entered kindergarten, I didn’t feel anything strange.

I thought I was lucky to be born in the same country in a similar era, and I even had silly thoughts about how to create a virtual currency wallet in this era without worrying about making a living in the future.

The feeling of strangeness hit me when I entered elementary school and joined the class I was assigned to after the entrance ceremony.

As I sat in the back, contemplating spending another ten years in school, a faint memory surfaced unconsciously as I caught sight of two kids.

One was a kid with a baby face, still not losing his baby fat, and the other was a chubby-cheeked cutie with light brown hair walking beside him.

As I stared at the two for a few seconds, a faint memory suddenly resurfaced from my subconscious.

“Could it be… Is that Yisea…? And next to her, Yoon Jiwu…?”

The identity of the memory that came to mind was from a novel I had read before.

The childhood illustrations from that novel and those two looked so alike.

It was a typical school romance comedy story, set in a Korean school background.

It was one of the many web novels I used to read for fun in my past life.