As soon as I came to school, I pretended to look inside my cabinet while looking around. 11, 21, 12, 7… These were the favorability ratings of kids standing nearby. As expected, the favorability of kids I’d only talked to a few times had no real value. But how do I raise three people’s favorability above 55?
Right now, the only possibilities were Joel, Dave, and Bryan. Among people I knew, these three were the only ones over 30. Then I should check whether these three’s favorability is still the same.
“July, July!”
“…Oh, Bryan.”
At the high-pitched voice calling me, I forced a smile and turned my head. Bryan was standing next to me bouncing up and down, having approached at some point. He held out his phone screen to me while smiling brightly.
“Did you see the link I sent you? There are already eleven comments!”
“Wow, that’s amazing!”
Yeah, I left all of those. You bastard. You don’t know my efforts to boost your spirits. “Wow, who could have left them? They must have really enjoyed reading it!” I said while pretending not to know and opened Bryan’s character status window.
<Character Status Window>
◈ Name: Bryan Roberts
◈ Age: 17 years old (12th grade)
◈ Popularity: -30%
◈ Favorability: 41♥
◈ Nicknames: Transfer Student, Country Bumpkin, Hick
◈ Special Notes: Huge fan of the comic ‘One-Eyed Jack’
“Who’s that? Ah, that kid who came from the countryside? He looks gloomy, not my type.”
Still 41. It’s not a low number, but it hasn’t gone up either. I felt somewhat indignant. I’m working so hard reading your terrible writing, so why won’t your favorability go up! I wanted to confront him, but I didn’t want to lower the favorability I’d barely raised by giving him a book worth 1.2 billion won, so I tried not to let my twitching mouth corners drop.
Still, only 14 remained until 55, so it wasn’t bad. If I keep going along with him like this, it’ll rise before I know it. Phew, let’s endure. Endure…
“Thanks to the comments, I got a new novel idea! This one’s also an SF novel…!”
Bryan, whose skills were garbage but whose ideas gushed forth like an endless spring, started rambling about the novel plot on his own again. I nodded “Yeah, yeah,” answering halfheartedly. Meanwhile, I thought the novel content I was hearing sounded quite familiar.
“A man stranded on the moon grows carrots!”
That’s 『The Martian』! This bastard. It’s not that ideas gush forth like an endless spring—he’s just plagiarizing all the stories he’s seen.
“And the man and the sexdroid that was there…!”
He really valued commercial appeal, as he didn’t forget romance and sex in the midst of it all—that spirit was truly excellent.
“There’s a problem with the spaceship so he goes out to fix it, but the line connecting him to the spaceship breaks and he becomes lost in space!”
This is 『Gravity』. And then he encounters the sexdroid drifting through space and they struggle to get to Earth together. His skill at crudely weaving together Hollywood’s excellent masterpieces was truly remarkable.
“Hey, Dave! You look good today?”
“Good? I look the same as usual.”
“Wow, look at him acting all high and mighty about being handsome!”
The hallway suddenly became noisy, and the voices of large boys were heard. In this case, it was obvious. It meant a sports team had entered, and usually it was the commotion of kids surrounding Dave, who had the most popularity.
When I looked that way, Bryan also turned his head back, then frowned and whispered to me.
“I hate that bastard.”
“Why?”
I wondered why he hated Dave when he’d only been here a short time as a transfer student. But it was a stupid question.
“He’s tall and handsome and has lots of money. He’ll definitely go to a good college too. Even getting a scholarship.”
“…I guess… so…”
It was such an obvious answer. So he hates him because he’s ‘jealous.’ But the fact that he couldn’t show it publicly and only whispered to me, who had pretty high favorability, was so pathetic. If you’re going to hate him, hate him confidently, like Joel Gomez.
“Well, still… he’s popular.”
Even if someone like you hates him, he won’t care. I shrugged my shoulders and roughly wrapped up the conversation. I didn’t think I needed to draw out bad talk any longer. Since I was just rummaging through my cabinet for no reason, Bryan standing next to me fidgeted anxiously like an impatient person for some reason.
“What now?”
“I wrote a new novel. Can you read it?”
“Oh, okay. I’ll read it after class later.”
Bryan, you need to restrain your creative urges.
I felt daunted thinking about reading another terrible piece of writing, but I forced a smile. When Bryan pulled up the corners of his mouth in a grin, his canine teeth rotted with cavities and black at the roots showed. Dental treatment is expensive here, so brush your teeth well—I was having such idle thoughts when someone lightly tapped my shoulder.
“July.”
“…Hi. Good morning.”
It was Dave. I glimpsed Bryan hesitating and stepping back, then smiling brightly while looking back and forth between me and Dave. He seemed anxious and watchful… like he wanted to talk to Dave. Even though he said he hated him earlier. But Dave smiled at me without giving Bryan even a glance.
“I heard from noona. She said we met when we were little?”
“Yeah. I heard that too.”
“I apparently proposed to you! Asked you to marry me!”
Dave laughed hahaha as if telling a funny joke. His football team teammates standing around him also burst out laughing puhaha! I didn’t find it very funny, but I just pulled up the corners of my mouth.
“Right. I should have accepted then instead of rejecting you. Then I’d be marrying Bluedale High School’s most popular guy, David Evans.”
“I didn’t hear that you rejected me?”
Dave tilted his head to the side. Just when that humorless face was getting a bit flustering, a football team kid standing next to him lightly pushed Dave’s shoulder.
“Hey, Dave. You’re incredibly confident! Are you saying ‘David Evans’ is so great that even a boy obviously wouldn’t reject you?”
“But wouldn’t even gay guys go crazy over someone like Dave?”
“I guess so…”
Even though they couldn’t know I was gay, I kept my mouth shut at the football team kids’ conversation. The corners of my mouth that had gone up had drooped down before I knew it. Dave wrapped his arms around his friends’ shoulders and pulled them in.
“What nonsense are you all talking. We’ll be late for class. Just go.”
Dave, who was walking leading his friends, suddenly turned to look at me and grinned. Blankly watching his retreating back, I belatedly realized I should check his favorability and hurriedly opened Dave’s character status window.
<Character Status Window>
◈ Name: David Evans
◈ Age: 16 years old (11th grade)
◈ Popularity: 97%
◈ Favorability: 40♥
◈ Nicknames: Dave, The Only Quarterback, Bluedale’s Sweetheart, Bluedale’s Lover of All, Bluedale’s Hot Guy, Bluedale Heartbreaker
◈ Special Notes: Quarterback of Bluedale High School’s football team The Savers, protagonist of the drama ‘Pizza Saver’
“If I could kiss David just once, you can take everything I have!”
“……”
The last time I checked it was 30, but it went up by 10. When did it go up? And why did it go up? In the meantime, I hadn’t had much occasion to talk with Dave or spend time with him.
Like the saying about knowing the depths of water but not knowing what’s in a person’s heart, understanding favorability was the hardest thing. Even though it has a game-like system, this wasn’t a game. Not every emotion and action had a clear cause and effect relationship. Like Dave’s favorability that rose on its own even though I hadn’t done anything.
Even though it wasn’t a bad thing, my head was complicated so I was scratching the back of my head when this time there was a “Huk!” sound of someone inhaling. Did some bad quality kid come in, why are the kids tense? I thought as I turned my head. And in the middle of the hallway stood Joel. Right. Outwardly, he was the son of a drug dealer whose entire family went to prison, so it made sense the kids would be scared.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
The way he picked a fight with me while tilting his head crookedly was truly delinquent. I found it newly unbelievable that in just two days, the person I’d be dating was that bastard.
“Why, am I too handsome?”
“Think whatever you want.”
Ignoring Joel who was giggling while rubbing his chin, I took out the books I needed for class from my cabinet. And as I was about to head to the classroom, I finally remembered I’d forgotten the most important business.
“Joel.”
“What?”
Joel, who was chewing on jelly he’d rummaged out of his pocket, raised one eyebrow.
If you keep eating sweets like crazy like that, your teeth will rot, you idiot.
While inwardly badmouthing that bastard, I smiled brightly while shaking my head and opened the character status window.
“No, I thought I had business but I guess not.”
“Annoying bastard.”
Joel tore and chewed the red Twizzler roughly as if it were jerky while sauntering away. And I slightly frowned while looking at Joel’s character status window floating in the air.
<Character Status Window>
◈ Name: Joel Gomez
◈ Age: 18 years old (12th grade)
◈ Popularity: 80%
◈ Favorability: 58♥
◈ Nicknames: Drug Dealer, Joe, Future Criminal, Big D, That 12th Grader
◈ Special Notes: Major character in the drama ‘Pizza Saver’
“I want to try dating him once, but someone like me wouldn’t be accepted, right…?”
This one’s favorability went up by 15? He’d become the unexpected person who’d complete the ‘Raise favorability to 55 quest’ first. I hadn’t done anything, so it was truly strange.
I struggled to somehow figure out the mechanism of favorability rising and falling, but gained no results and headed to the classroom. People’s hearts were too difficult.
