“Evaaaaans!”
The Principal pointed at Dave and shouted. He looked like he was about to foam at the mouth and faint. The Principal raged, then stomped his feet, causing all sorts of chaos. Dave collapsed looking exactly like he was dead, so I thought even I would have acted that way if I were the Principal. If a school student had beaten another student to death.
But he probably wasn’t dead. Since the plot couldn’t be more ruined than the male lead suddenly getting beaten to death, yet the system window and this world were quiet. The Principal, with a face alternating between red and blue, shouted at Joel to follow him to the Principal’s office. Joel’s reaction was simple.
“Tsk. What a pain.”
He just raised one eyebrow, scratched that eyebrow with his index fingernail, and trudged after the Principal. I alternated between looking at Joel and the collapsed Dave, then soon fixed my gaze on Joel’s back in his denim jacket. After briefly being distracted by the threads of the slightly worn denim jacket dangling, I opened Joel’s character status window.
<Character Status Window>
◈ Name: Joel Gomez
◈ Age: 18 years old (12th grade)
◈ Popularity: 80%
◈ Affection: 35♥
◈ Nicknames: Drug Dealer, Joe, Future Criminal, Big D, That 12th Grader
◈ Special Notes: Main character in the drama ‘Pizza Saver’
“I want to try dating him once, but he probably won’t accept a freshman like me, right…? He’s a senior, handsome, and sexy…”
“……”
Joel’s Affection was 35, more than twice as high as 14. Why on earth… is his Affection so high? Considering the rough attitude he’d shown until now, it was a surprising number. Joel Gomez, this… damn hard-to-understand bastard.
***
Dave didn’t die. He just fainted briefly and suffered a very mild concussion, that was all. Regarding Joel, there was a lot of talk that it would become quite a big problem since he’d thrown a punch in front of most of the school. But since Dave’s family said they didn’t want to make a big deal of it and wanted to quietly smooth it over, a 3-day suspension was the punishment given to Joel.
The entire football team went wild saying he’d injured The Savers’ ace, but this wasn’t a particularly important fact. I was relieved that Joel didn’t have to pay for Dave’s treatment in the expensive private hospital room.
Right after the incident, I tried to analyze the situation with a much cooler head. David and Natalia kissed. Nevertheless, the Romance index didn’t go up at that time, and only rose after I found out about it. In other words, the Rotten Pineapple index only recognizes facts I know, events based on my perspective. That means this system has a considerably close relationship with ‘me’.
It was quite an obvious fact, but events I didn’t know about were also constructing the drama. No matter how hard I tried to complete quests and create events, I was the character with the lowest importance among the main characters. The protagonist whose name came first was still Natalia.
She was definitely building her own events and story too. The viewers might have known about David and Natalia’s kiss that I didn’t know about.
I’d been thinking that not all my actions would be broadcast. It wasn’t ‘The Truman Show’, and watching someone’s entire day wasn’t interesting as a drama. And if I was observed that meticulously, I wouldn’t have been able to go to the bathroom.
“Some events are broadcast and some aren’t?”
Through careful evaluation by the world and system, what’s worth broadcasting is transmitted and what isn’t is edited out. However, even if something has value, ‘meta-fictional’ events that break ‘the fourth wall’ are boldly edited out. 🙂
The fourth wall and meta-fiction. It seemed to be this world’s rule that the fourth wall dividing the story from the outside world must be firmly maintained. Meta-fiction had a similar meaning too.
In other words, cases where characters in this world recognize that this is a drama and become aware of the viewers are boldly edited out. So scenes of me knowing this is a drama and talking with the system naturally wouldn’t be broadcast.
Ultimately, it meant that ‘events interesting enough to be worth broadcasting, but that don’t shake the foundation of this world’ flow out.
What should I do from now on? Should I approach Natalia more to build up Affection and get information about events that will happen to her? Or should I continue completing quests like now and twist this story in my own way?
Since I, who had been an extra, became a main character, and keywords that didn’t exist were added, the story had been considerably twisted. So I couldn’t fully predict future detailed events with the original story of ‘Pizza Saver’. In other words, what I could know was quite limited.
…Then in the end, I have to follow the system’s instructions, complete quests, and try to change the big flow that I at least know.
“Did you hear? She kissed David!”
“I know. Multiple times too! Looking closely, she is pretty. But seeing how they hid it, they’re probably not dating, right?”
“If it were me, I wouldn’t say we were dating either. She’s a nerd.”
The scandal between Natalia and Dave made the school buzz. Natalia’s Popularity rose, but I thought this wasn’t beneficial for her.
“I heard she has big breasts? D-cup apparently.”
“Really? But she always wears baggy clothes so I didn’t know. It’d be nice if she wore shorter things. How are you supposed to know if her figure’s good or not when she dresses like that?”
“That bastard David would know. That bastard has good taste too. How did he pick out the decent-looking one even among nerds?”
I heard low-quality guys having sexual conversations about Natalia several times. Saying that since someone as good as David Evans was with her, there must be something really substantial about her.
When I heard talk coming from the locker room about how she might be amazingly good at kissing and even sex, I deliberately slammed my cabinet door shut loudly.
Bluedale Saver or whatever… I didn’t like the self-consciousness of someone calling themselves a savior. I had no idea what the identity of that bastard was that even the system didn’t know, but I was certain I didn’t like them.
But after Dave and Natalia’s scandal, followers surged again, so all the students’ attention was on that account. The kids held both fear and subtle expectations that they might be posted. Everyone who appeared on Bluedale Saver was either famous or became famous.
Whatever Bluedale Saver did or didn’t do, the one I was actually focused on right now was Joel. It was the second day Joel hadn’t come to school due to his suspension. Why did he throw a punch at Dave? Did he really just want to hit him once and the opportunity happened to come up? Or was it for me? I don’t know. I really don’t understand… but I was concerned. In any case, it was true that I was involved in his suspension.
“…What is he doing?”
I went into the Stargram app and searched for Joel’s name. As expected, no account came up.
#training #tough #let’s do this
“……”
Then I saw Dave’s post on my timeline and my mood completely sank. I wanted to unfollow him, but I couldn’t because he was the male lead and I needed to know all his updates.
Dave was acting as if nothing had happened after the scandal broke. His attitude was like ‘So what?’ He didn’t officially confirm he was dating Natalia, nor did he deny the kissing photo. It still wasn’t clear whether he was hanging out with Natalia.
Dave also stopped contacting me. He must have sufficiently felt the effectiveness of a tongue piercing. Would he be somewhat shaken if it was revealed that he’d kissed me multiple times?
All the talk about Natalia felt like it was directed at me. The talk that someone as good as David Evans obviously wouldn’t like ‘that girl’. Right. There’s no way David Evans, who’s the male lead of a high-teen romance drama, would like me, yet I even resolved to try liking him. It was utterly pathetic.
I still thought Joel punching Dave was crazy… but I couldn’t help feeling a bit satisfied.
Joel didn’t have any social media accounts, so to know what he was up to I had no choice but to ask directly or hear rumors. Rumors were circulating that since the drug dealer got suspended, he’d be out selling drugs. But for some reason, I thought that was nonsense.
Before, I’d believed the story that Joel was a drug dealer because everyone said so. But while it was really true that Joel objectively had a bad personality, it didn’t seem like he’d go around selling drugs. Rather, the story that he’d beaten someone almost to death sounded more convincing. That’s why I still thought he was a dangerous person.
“Where is Joel Gomez right now?”
After barely enduring the school that was noisy all day with talk about David, Natalia, and Joel, I got on my bike. And in the middle of the forest path heading home, I asked the system as if talking to myself. Is he at the movie theater? Is he knocked out at the movie theater again, eating lots of popcorn and Mountain Dew…
Home
“…Home.”
It sounded strange. Joel Gomez and home. But Joel had to live and stay somewhere too, so he ‘had’ to have a home. Was he living with family? Ah, they said all his family was in prison… So he must be alone.
“…Where is that house?”
Even while thinking I shouldn’t do this, I rode my bike in the direction the system told me.
