# Chapter 1
Excuse me…
So, to go back to the beginning of this whole situation, it all started with my sister getting accepted into high school.
After spending three years of high school doing nothing but intense studying, I managed to get accepted into what’s considered the best university in our country, just as I had aimed for.
Not long after receiving my acceptance letter and enjoying my freedom by lazing around at home, my sister, who had always been exceptionally good at studying, got her acceptance letter to a foreign language high school.
My family celebrated this double blessing by eating delicious meals every day, and I was spending my days so comfortably sprawled out that I worried I might turn into a pig.
Then February came, and my sister left home before me, saying she needed to move into the dormitory. Since I had also spent three years in a dormitory during high school, I wasn’t particularly moved by my sister’s departure.
A sister I barely saw for three years—what difference would it make if I didn’t see her often for another three years? We weren’t particularly close family members anyway.
I decided to live with my parents since the distance from home to university was manageable for commuting. And here comes the important part: I got to claim my sister’s computer when she left for the dormitory!
A desktop computer after so long!
There was a computer room in the dormitory, but because of illegal files that guys always downloaded, there was frequently an A4 paper saying “Under Maintenance” stuck on the door. The laptop I had bought for convenient computer use was so old that I could barely write application letters with it. Even after using it efficiently for three years, it would often shut down from overload even while writing documents.
Amid all this, the joy of having a desktop was indescribable.
Excited by the thought of comfortably playing various high-spec games and starting hobbies like video editing, I began by organizing my sister’s hard drive.
I should have mercilessly wiped the hard drive clean, but I made the mistake of carefully organizing it out of concern that my sister might have forgotten some files.
That’s when I discovered it.
On my sister’s hard drive, a folder named “Life’s Energy Source♥Public Funds.”
Little did I know it was the root of all evil…
“Public funds? What’s that about? Embezzlement? What on earth has she been up to?”
Unconsciously, I clicked on that folder and ended up seeing things I should never have seen.
Files with titles like:
“Heart, Stomach, Feet”
“Act Up and I’ll Make Porridge”
“Dad’s Money is a Top Bully”
“The Problem is the Son’s Princess”
“Unauthorized Personnel Entry Delayed Payment”
“The Guy Who Kisses for 5,000 Won”
“Kiss My Dog With Those Show-Off Lips”
Wondering what kind of black dragon sealed in the left arm these titles were, I felt so bewildered that I opened those ‘.txt’ extension files.
“Are these files collected from internet serials? Did she illegally download them? Why? …She’s not broke, so she should have some sense of copyright.”
Along with discovering that my sister had terrible copyright awareness—meaning she severely lacked respect for others’ rights, legal common sense, and basic decency—
I couldn’t resist the temptation to scroll through and see what kind of novels would have such outrageous titles. So I flicked the mouse wheel a few times.
And I ended up speeding through those texts with their bizarre spacing between sentences instead of proper paragraphs, and a parade of emoticons like (-_-^) (^ㅁ^) (>0<) (=_=zZ).
As a result, I ended up in this disaster.
“Haejun?”
“…”
“Did something happen? Why is my dongsaeng acting like this~?”
“Nothing, so could you please leave now? I have a headache.”
“…What’s going on, Haejun? Which bastard is it? Who’s been bothering you? Haejun, tell me.”
So, this person who was smiling brightly like sunshine (^-^) at my answer just a moment ago, and is now freezing his face and talking like he’s ready to bury whoever is bothering me—this person claims to be one of the “Four Kings” from an internet novel written in 2005, and claims to be my twin brother who strangely resembles me yet doesn’t, and is incredibly handsome. That’s the ridiculous situation I’m in.
Please Exclude Me From Your Friendship
“Haejun, want to go to school together?”
“No, I’m good. Besides, you remember our agreement to never acknowledge each other at school, right?”
“Never, ever acknowledge…?”
I could see the illusion of ears that couldn’t possibly be there drooping down to the floor. I wonder if this is what they call a main character buff?
“Not even a greeting…”
“Don’t.”
“But still…”
“Don’t.”
“Mmm, okay.”
After emphasizing what I had already urged several times before, Seong Haemin backed down. The person claiming to be my brother left the kitchen first, shuffling along.
I silently watched his retreating figure, and only after hearing the front door open and close could I finally let out a long sigh.
“Haaaah…”
How should I overcome this mess of a situation?
I’ve been clutching my head and agonizing over this for days, but still couldn’t find an answer.
I mean, what could I possibly do when I just woke up inside a novel!
At this rate, the only escape route from this novel that came to mind was “One day I woke up and was back in reality again.”
In other words, there was nothing I could do.
“…My university acceptance letter!”
I stomped my feet in the empty kitchen. No matter how much I thought about it, it was infuriating.
What did I study like a dog for three years of high school for?
I spent my time anxiously waiting for my grades to come out, and whenever I heard that someone from the next class got even one point higher, I would stay up all night to review intensely. For evaluations, I would carry the entire group by myself, staying up all night to ensure perfect scores.
I suppressed my desire to go to PC rooms with friends, endured being called a eunuch or a Buddhist saint, and spent my three years of high school like that…
‘And the reward for all that disappears overnight without a trace?’
Does that make any sense?
I don’t think so!
I was furious.
How could they ask a high school senior who just finished the college entrance exam to start over from freshman year? Especially when I had already received an acceptance letter from what’s considered the best university in the country! I even created a social media account just to post a photo of my acceptance!
It’s been days now that I’ve been seething with anger alone. Thinking that I’ll surely wake up back in reality tomorrow, that I’ll definitely open my eyes in the real world the next day, I’ve spent countless nights.
But I was still in this situation. I was still Seong Haejun, a character from the novel who had the same appearance and name as me.
Yes, I woke up in a novel, but my name and face hadn’t changed from reality. If I had to find something different… a slightly younger face. This face was the same one I had when I entered high school.
There was definitely a character in the novel I read on the day I accessed my sister’s hard drive where I thought ‘Hey, this person has the same name as me.’
‘And I’ve become that person?’
The me in the mirror hadn’t changed at all except for looking a bit younger, yet I had to believe in this absurd situation that this was inside a novel and that I had become a character in it. It was incredibly distressing.
However, among countless denials, there was a reason I had to believe this was the internet novel I had read. It wasn’t just because the space I woke up in wasn’t the house I lived in but an unfamiliar place, or because a very handsome high school boy who resembled me yet didn’t suddenly claimed I was his twin brother. (Though those were certainly part of the decisive reasons.)
There was one reason I had snickered throughout reading the internet novel, wondering how my sister could read such things—it was because the characters in this novel, written in 2005, used items that belonged in a museum.
While scrolling through the novel, I kept thinking:
-A slide phone? Isn’t that what my mom used before she got married?
-Swapping out a phone battery? What era is this phone from?
-Just blocking the number is enough?
-What’s a phone strap? I think my sister said something similar when buying a Z-Leaf recently…
-They could just turn on GPS. They could just search on their phones.
I had been making all kinds of sarcastic comments and giving unsolicited advice. But after coming here, I realized there was a reason the characters had no choice. Because in this world, the only mobile phones were feature phones! And they were the size of those hard ice creams like Shark Bars or Tube Bars, with screens the size of boogers. They were even ridiculously thicker than those hard ice creams I remembered.
After realizing that, I cried once more.
‘My latest apple phone that I bought by going to the store myself after getting accepted to university!’
It wasn’t just phones. The supposedly cutting-edge computer monitor in the house I shared with Seong Haemin was a chunky LCD. If this was considered cutting-edge, then the computer monitors at school would definitely have bulging backs.
I reluctantly turned on the painfully slow computer and searched for “Youtub” on the obviously low-quality search engine.
“No search results.”
That’s when I really screamed.
‘This world doesn’t know moderation!’
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
