The Regretful Male Lead

Things had kept going wrong ever since this guy had his first fight with the heroine…

Baek Yu-gyeong made his appearance around chapter 15, but the moment he showed up, he earned the enmity of the female protagonist, Seo Ha-ra. At that point Yu-gyeong was nineteen—a year later than now—and he had been confronting a student who had been badmouthing him behind his back when Seo Ha-ra caught them.

…Well, if you looked at it a certain way, that student had been a little at fault.

Gossiping with his friends about how Yu-gyeong was the discarded child of the Baekgyeong Group and getting caught red-handed was wrong, yes—but Yu-gyeong had harassed him just as thoroughly. From what I remembered, he had openly hurled humiliating insults right in the middle of the hallway. With his build and the sheer weight of his family name, even if he was the neglected second son, the intimidation had been impossible to ignore.

It was that classic male-student power play—pressing down with external pressure while, in front of everyone, digging up the other boy’s weaknesses and family circumstances and laughing at them.

Know your place—something along those lines, I think.

Seo Ha-ra, who knew none of the context, had stepped in and called him out, and their relationship had gone spectacularly sour from that moment on.

Yu-gyeong had worn his trademark cold, mocking expression as he looked at her and quietly let the words fall:

What Yu-gyeong had done wasn’t right, but he hadn’t been completely off the mark either. Ha-ra, ignorant of the circumstances, had sided with the other student and painted Yu-gyeong as trash on first meeting—that much was also true.

After Seo Ha-ra and Baek Yu-gyeong fell out, bad things began happening around her. Small things: belongings going missing, classmates ignoring her, that sort of quiet sabotage. Especially the girls she had been close with at the beginning—they suddenly grew distant for no reason. That said it all.

Either the people who followed Yu-gyeong had done it on their own, or he had given the order. One of the two, I figured.

Of course Seo Ha-ra would have noticed that the trouble started right after she clashed with him, so her dislike was only natural.

He was the regretful male lead, that was it. …Later Ha-ra probably realized she had misunderstood, apologized, and the distance between them started to close.

What I knew for certain was that up through chapter 35, which was as far as I had read, their relationship had been pure mortal enemies. Every single action only drove them further apart.

…Back then the comments had been full of spoilers about what Yu-gyeong did later. I had been skimming with half-closed eyes and never managed to read them properly—that still stung. At least it was clear he was the regretful male lead.

…Because… that guy cried his eyes out.

After chapter 35 I had just flipped through the pages, so I didn’t know exactly where, but sometime in the cooling days of autumn Baek Yu-gyeong would end up with tears dripping down his face. It was only drawings and I had no idea what the story was, but it was after he had fallen for Seo Ha-ra.

She was the kind of student you could fall for. Even if things had been rocky with Yu-gyeong at the start, this was a high-teen romance—he would have fallen for her gradually.

I didn’t remember the plot, but I could still recall how Yu-gyeong’s expression whenever he looked at Seo Ha-ra had slowly softened. Until, in the end, he cried.

Seo Ha-ra was the classic young lady raised in a good home with a proper education. Once she learned the full story behind that first confrontation, she would almost certainly have been the one to apologize first.

Aigoo. Still, a guy should know how to lose to a girl once in a while. He didn’t have to treat her that harshly. That’s why he ended up crying without even getting to confess.

…Well, none of that had happened yet, so it didn’t matter.

The real problem was something else.

I could still remember the rough outline, but the details had gone hazy. It was the sort of half-there memory that might come back if I saw it again. Trying to review something I had only read a month ago from a blank slate was proving surprisingly hard.

If I had known from the start that this was the world inside a webtoon, I should have written down every detail about the protagonists and the events that were supposed to happen.

But the moment I woke up in Shin Cha-heon’s body, even though I realized it was a high-teen romance, I hadn’t had the energy to care about any of that. Whirlwind flirting from a parade of beautiful boys, confessions from underage male students—words like “boyfriend” that I, after more than twenty years, had never once considered—left me in pure chaos. I spent the whole month rejecting them and pouring myself into Operation Restore Shin Cha-heon. By the time my memories had already started to fade, I never expected a sub male lead to show up.

So why is this guy acting like this toward me?

The Baek Yu-gyeong in my memory had never been a lighthearted person. I had only properly read the dialogue between chapters 15 and 35, where he was cold and curt, so seeing him act this clingy and sweet was honestly hard to deal with. Even in the stretch where he was falling for Seo Ha-ra, he had never been this soft. He had been icy and sharp.

I shook my head.

“Even if you gave me your entire fortune, I’d still be in a bind.”

“…Then what if I threw myself in along with the fortune?”

…Was this really a high school student currently enrolled?

Faced with Yu-gyeong’s deranged confidence, I simply lost the ability to speak. When I just stared at him blankly, he beamed, cupped his face with one hand like a flower, and asked if I was staring because he was just too pretty and handsome.

What a headache of a kid…. Can’t he just hand over the fortune and leave it at that?

Saying that much would hurt him. I couldn’t bring myself to be that cruel to a student who, by my standards, was still a child.

And even if you had an entire fortune… hmm, it would still be bigger than mine.

…Baekgyeong or Baekcheon—whatever it was called, he was the second son of a chaebol ranked in the top three of this fictional Korea’s business world.

Must be nice~.

I decided that ignoring him was the answer, so I didn’t reply and simply headed to class.

When he actually followed me all the way into the classroom and started feeding me snacks by hand, I realized I somehow had to peel this boy off me.

It had been the most trivial connection. It was never supposed to stretch this far in the first place.

Day 32 of the Challenge to Retrieve Shin Cha-heon’s Soul into Shin Cha-heon’s Body. I had followed the instructions in the spirit-channeling book again the night before and failed, so I was walking home in a gloomy mood when a bunch of thugs grabbed me.

This damned pheromone.

I had already lost count of how many times the pheromones coming off this body had spectacularly twisted a situation.

“Hey, you rejected Seo-jun’s confession, right?”

“…Uh, friend. Who exactly is Seo-jun?”

“Holy shit, you don’t even remember his face?”

“…No, seriously, who is Seo-jun? If he’s one of the guys who confessed to me, the only one who actually said his name clearly was that Min Ha-seong kid.”

Min Ha-seong, was it? A pretty-looking guy. Around day three—it hadn’t even been a full confession, but he had just walked up and handed me chocolate, so he was probably testing the waters because he liked me.

Ha-seong? The name feels weirdly familiar. Does he show up in the original?

Anyway, these Alpha bastards—had they eaten manners for breakfast or what? They were so brazen. They didn’t even give their names before launching into confessions; that alone told me roughly what an Alpha was in this world.

From what I had gathered, if there was one outstanding guy in any group, there was a ninety-percent chance—slightly exaggerated—that he was an Alpha. They seemed to be the superior genes among humanity. That was probably why the whole system of chasing reproduction and seducing the opposite sex had developed separately.

And of all bodies, I had to possess one that came equipped with that stupid, reproduction-obsessed seduction system.

When I played dumb and asked who they were, whether they were that guy’s friends, the thuggish-looking student glanced back at his buddies and snickered.

“Whoa, fuck, how many dudes has this bastard been through that he can’t even remember names? Hey, call Chae Seo-jun and tell him this guy’s a total whore so he shouldn’t be depressed.”

The others laughed and piled on. My brow furrowed.

…This little shit?

I wanted to punch him, but I forced myself to keep my cool and look for a way out of the situation. That was when my eyes met some guy walking right past the alley. It was Baek Yu-gyeong.

He was genuinely, ridiculously handsome, so my gaze was stolen for about three seconds—then the guy suddenly pinched his nose shut and just walked on by.

Big guy like that just watches and leaves? What a real piece of work.

The thought that he might help had been laughable.

In the end, when the students’ language started escalating and it was about to turn physical, I managed—somewhat laboriously—to subdue all three and get out of the alley.

…Unfortunately for them, I used to be on the judo national reserve team. Well, I quit after an injury, but still.

Shin Cha-heon’s body didn’t seem especially healthy, yet the old experience must have lingered; I could still read their movements. At the very least I wasn’t so weak I couldn’t handle a few thugs who had let their guard down because they thought they looked cool.

I walked out casually—and immediately locked eyes with the boy who had been near the alley.

At first Baek Yu-gyeong watched me as if curious how I had gotten out of that mess, then his nose twitched once.

“…….”

His brow creased for a fraction of a second. I scowled right back and glared at him.

“What. You want a fight too?”

My first impression of him had been so bad that the words came out ugly.

Looks perfectly fine on the outside, yet he couldn’t even call the cops.

I picked a fight, but the boy just flicked a glance at the name tag on my chest, the corner of his mouth twitching. Then he suddenly folded his eyes in half like he was putting on aegyo and called out to me.

“Hyuuung.”

“…Why the hell would I be your hyung?”

I stared at him flatly and answered with pure sarcasm. An adult acting petty toward a kid might sound small-minded, but I was the kind of person who couldn’t feel fond of a student who had seen everything and still walked away.

“Ah, right….”

“…….”

“Umm, sorry. …I was just too scared. I was hiding and looking for my phone to report it instead….”

“…….”

“I didn’t think hyung would beat them down and walk out.”

“…Fine.”

Hearing it that way, it made enough sense that I accepted it immediately and smoothed my expression.

If he had meant to leave, he should have left earlier, but he had stayed nearby—so the story checked out.

Yeah. That could happen. Just because you’re big doesn’t mean you can fight, and at a glance he looked like some pampered young master from a rich family….

A delicate-looking, easily frightened kid who hadn’t jumped in himself but had stayed nearby watching and tried to call for help—he had potential, so I nodded and started to walk past. I even felt a little proud of him.

“Hyung, but do you have a boyfriend?”

I had been about to continue on my way when the strange question snagged me again.

If I dated someone my real age, that person would become a minor exploiter; if I dated someone this body’s age, I would become the minor exploiter. There was no way I had a boyfriend in the middle of that mess.

“No, I don’t.”

I answered offhandedly, and the pretty boy’s face lit up completely.

Looking like that and then smiling so prettily—honestly, it was blindingly bright. If he debuted as an idol he would probably devour that entire generation; of course he was a character from a high-teen romance comic. Were even the extras here all this pretty and handsome?

…No. Those guys earlier weren’t exactly….

Just as a brief impression of the boy formed—

“Hyung, will you go out with me?”

The sudden confession made me think, Yep, this one’s an Alpha too, and I rejected him on the spot with practiced ease. In the middle of it I noticed something out of place: his whole outfit was neat from head to toe, yet the bottom button of his blazer had come off and a loose thread was sticking out.

But… ever since then, this tenacious boy who claimed love at first sight and had been stalking me for four whole days—what the hell was I supposed to do with him?

Hey, never mind that I’m a guy—on the outside I’m a teenager but inside I’m an uncle, you crazy kid.

If I said that out loud, I would be the crazy one. I decided to keep my mouth shut.

“Hyuuung, aaah.”

“…You eat it.”

“What, are you looking out for me?”

I sighed at Yu-gyeong, who was sparkling his eyes and cooing that I must be thinking of him. Undeterred, he held out the chocolate he had been holding and opened his mouth wide, asking me to put it in for him.

I turned my head away like someone who had seen something he shouldn’t. No matter how pretty he looked, this kid was basically a fully grown young man. He easily cleared 180 cm and had the build to match.

…And the real problem is that I’m not even an Omega.

…From what I remembered, Shin Chae-il had told me not to mention outside the house that I was a Beta. I had considered just announcing it outright, but there had to be a reason my parent had left that warning. Figuring that listening to a parent was still the right call, I kept my mouth shut.

But in one sentence, this bastard is basically saying he likes a man in drag. I’m going insane.

For some reason I felt a little sorry for Baek Yu-gyeong.