Episode 70
Lee Jae-heon clearly wanted to gain the protagonist’s trust and join his group.
Even the supporting actors who stood beside him were unable to completely escape from the underworld, so how can an insignificant old villain who is not the exact opposite of the main character, but diagonally, enjoy wealth and fame?
So, as soon as I remembered my past life, I came up with a plan. If it was an unavoidable fate, he had to take advantage of it as much as he could, and for Lee Jae-heon, that was the present life that entered the novel.
The novel he read was about survival from poverty, but the creatures in it were all just chicks. When the inhabitants of the previous world saw it, it was quite a shocking story to see things that were so weak and delicate that they could not even imagine being damaged beyond our own. Lee Jae-heon began reading the novel out of a sense of obligation, but he could not deny that he enjoyed the process.
Since they were such soft and weak things, it was natural that Lee Jae-heon planned his future path with confidence. If I know how things work, what they are made of, and what the results will be in the end, there will be no way for them to escape from my grasp that is standing over my head.
Lee Jae-heon wanted to be recognized as a member of the ‘main group’, and in his opinion, this was not that difficult. I thought so at the time.
‘The problem is that I was too confident.’
I made a mistake.
I should have known how soft and fragile this world was, but Lee Jae-heon had impersonated the values of his previous life, creating an unavoidable sense of discomfort. Slow judgment due to poor mental ability also played a role.
Therefore, Jaeheon Lee was remembered as an overly sacrificial person by his group. I pretended not to be that kind person, but I became a dishonest person. Lee Jae-heon clicked his tongue several times at the image of not liking anything, but was unable to refute it openly. Even if I tried to refute it, it wouldn’t be acceptable, and even if it was refuted, it would only ruin my image.
Of course, until now, Lee Jae-heon wanted to stay out of the group’s eyes. In the end, being a party is a concept that arises when we are family or colleagues. The former is a relationship built on affection, but the latter is a relationship built on trust. That’s why it’s often possible to have a colleague who you hate but can trust.
What Jaeheon Lee wanted was just that level of affection and trust. I wanted to be remembered as a useful person who kept the minimum standard. The more trust was built, the better, but the more affection increases, the more difficult it becomes.
‘Look at this, they don’t let you do whatever you want.’
In other words, affection means suppressing freedom.
Therefore, in the world of my previous life, affection was not a very important virtue.
Of course, affection was needed for lovers who shared one’s heart or family members whom one saw every morning, but one did not necessarily devote the same amount of devotion to coworkers. In any case, the most important thing was efficiency. I had to proceed with my desired plan. It had to produce the desired results.
To do that, you must know how to throw a colleague who is suitable for the situation into the fire pit, and the thrown victim must not despair even if he is angry. It wasn’t really worth it. Of course, Lee Jae-heon would have been embarrassed if he had been pushed down a thorny path. I didn’t want to be in pain or pain. I hated the difficult road.
Nevertheless, the inhabitants of this world are more than he could have imagined, so he only stepped forward as an investment for the future. There were no noble resolutions or painful sacrifices here.
‘Just’
that was efficient.
I was just thinking that I would lead rather than put a lesser chick in front and see everything fail, but they just had different values.
Lee Jae-heon felt uncomfortable with their soft values. The group that had developed excessive affection was disparaging his value in the name of concern and ethics.
I wanted to scream at him.
‘I’m not bad.’
do.
I just have different values.
In his world, Jaeheon Lee was just a good member and a valuable being. But as this world denied it, even my pride, which I had never had, was about to be crushed.
Moreover, there was a bigger problem.
‘If there are restrictions on your activities, your plans will be disrupted.’
The plan was to pass on the role of leader to the protagonist, but Jaeheon Lee planned to hover around him and lead the group in the desired context. What I meant was that I should escape my responsibilities and obligations and see what I want.
However, if this were to happen, the group would scream no matter what Lee Jae-heon did. If you catch a monster and get hurt, you will be sad, and if you become bait, you will be shocked. They considered such behavior to be quite natural and reasonable. Unlike Jaeheon Lee.
He was very burdened by the reaction of his companions. If I were to explain it using common sense in today’s life, I would say it feels like everyone is making a fuss every time I take 10 steps, asking if my feet hurt. They seemed like people who admired people just because they knew how to read and write. The latter did not feel bad despite the childish situation, but the former felt rather tired. Honestly, why do I want to do that?
‘But that doesn’t mean it’s hard to show any different behavior.’
This was because there was no such possibility, and the loss was great compared to the gain in my hands.
‘To get rid of this image, we have no choice but to use shock therapy…’
In this case, the blow to the group was quite severe, so Jae-heon Lee kept his mouth shut as much as possible. There’s nothing to gain, so you can’t break the spirit of a stable member of your party.
But at this point, when I was in the thick of it, I ran out of some pretty good material.
‘Detective Survivor. And monsters.’
They gave Lee Jae-heon a plausible justification.
In the eyes of the detective, Lee Jae-heon had to solidify his image as a worthy crazy person. We needed an opportunity to unite the detective and other survivors with our group. And Lee Jae-heon inevitably became deeply connected to the green algae monster.
‘Besides, it looks plausible on the surface.’
It was after he was captured by the green algae monster that Manager Lee Jae-heon began to show particularly strange behavior. The fundamental problem is that even Lee Jae-heon himself could not have thought that he had anything to do with the incident.
In order to gain trust without affection in the first place, the excessive love that the group currently has had to be shaken off. In order to push him from behind so he could blend in with the group of other survivors, he had to take a step away from where he was currently standing. The green algae monster was the final boss anyway, and there were many mountains for them to overcome. Jaeheon Lee decided to do so.
Cracks were laid in advance for that purpose.
‘My head will hurt quite a bit.’
This was a kind of ground food.
Knowing what kind of ruins the insignificant comfort the party had been feeling was built on, and becoming distant from its source, Manager Lee Jae-heon.
Fear begins with what we do not know and cannot understand. Lee Jae-heon’s values were a concept that would not be recognized or sympathized with by them. He doesn’t think death is worth fearing. For the party, fear caused by survival instinct is literally an instinct. Those who go against their instincts cannot be understood.
It was a light crack now, but as time passed, the group’s thoughts would deepen.
‘What was that person thinking during his daily life?’
‘Why did you do that?’
‘How can that be?’
And the more they go through these thoughts, the more they feel an instinctive rejection.
From then on it was simple. The only person who overcame such rejection and approached him, aside from the main character, assistant manager Jeong In-ho, was Ha Seong-yoon, a doctor. When that time came, all Jaeheon Lee had to do was watch them from afar and make the necessary adjustments.
‘Still, I’m sorry, so I won’t do anything harsh.’
These are still chicks with a conscience.
There is a big difference between being in a bad relationship from the beginning and being in a good relationship but then deteriorating. Even in Lee Jae-heon’s case, the relationship that was negative went up to plus and then went down to minus again, making the history much more complicated than in other situations.
In the case of Lee Jae-heon, who was the manager of an old school, his relationship with them was extremely flat, but not anymore. Since they didn’t do anything to harm them and their favorability turned negative, there was little chance that they would harbor hatred toward Lee Jae-heon. He helped the group without any help, but he developed a one-sided rejection of that person.
Then everything was perfect. I was satisfied. He, who was trusted without affection, would never deviate from the category of ‘main character’ and the group could not abandon him first.
This meant Lee Jae-heon’s rights without obligations and peaceful freedom.
‘It’s still a minor crack, but it shouldn’t be difficult.’
So, just one thing.
‘All it takes is one trigger and it’s over.’
And the location of that ‘moment’ was not that far away from us.
There were a lot of monsters here.
* * *
The atmosphere that seemed as if it would break through the mantle was relieved surprisingly quickly.
In the end, what Jaeheon Lee showed was only a sliver of the truth, and he could not break away from his previous image with just a drop of discomfort. Moreover, the person who created this atmosphere is a patient who has just woken up and has no idea what the problem is, so it is impossible to inquire further. As Lee Jae-heon, the source of the sense of discomfort, remained calm, the others could do nothing.
If I had been in a close relationship with him for a long time, the story would have been different, but the number of times they talked was small and he held the title of manager. Even those with whom I had enough connections to talk about the topic just before couldn’t easily ask questions.
Manager Lee Jae-heon, who naturally breaks the mood and moves on, and his companions cannot bring up the topic again with him. If you add the work that needs to be done right away, all you have to do is lift the already depressed mood.
Of course, it would be at the level of blindfolding and ignoring it.
“Wow, someone built a wall like this.”
“I tried building it with a curb…”
“If you do this, it will collapse quickly.”
Lee Jae-heon spoke comfortably and strengthened the sloppy wall by inserting stones of appropriate sizes into the gaps. Since the chicks had built up their own sincerity, we decided not to tear it down and build a new one.
In fact, except for being a little hungry and thirsty, Lee Jae-heon was fine to the point where he felt uncomfortable, even though he had only slept for three days. The doctor was in a state of bewilderment, so the awkwardness between the group gradually broke down as he ordered them to do a few tasks and repaired the wall together.
“uncle Uncle! “Isn’t this just right?”
“…Oh good. “I can put it here.”
However, what was a little surprising was the fact that the Park siblings looked more normal than expected.
‘I felt it in the novel as well, but their mentality is truly unbeatable.’
It seems that, unlike the last episode, they thought that the ‘uncle’ who decided to stick around in this episode would not die right away. After all, people who act like crazy people usually live long lives.
Of course, apart from that, it was quite surprising to see that face that did not seem to be affected by the atmosphere in the slightest. Considering that the siblings in the novel acted timidly and slowly distanced themselves from the situation, it seems like they are probably living their lives quite well now.
‘You’re greedy for the benefits you get from bonding rather than the mentality of the person you’re bonding with.’
Didn’t you have a very convenient mind?
In short, it doesn’t matter whether the person they rely on is crazy or not, as long as we can stay sane. For a chick on a cushion, it was really great.
“But you just woke up. Can you stay in bed any longer?”
“It’s because my clothes are dirty, but the wound itself has improved a lot… Why did I sleep for three days? “I was so hungry that I ate everything I could eat and filled up everything, so I think it would be better to move.”
“Looking at the doctor over there’s expression, I don’t think that’s the case…”
“Ignore it.”
To be honest, I was now truly amazed. Even in my past life, even when guys like that pushed me into a fire pit, I pretended not to notice and crawled out and stuck next to them again.
Anyway, they all look like disgusting chicks.
‘Well, isn’t it a bit strange to be so discouraged here?’
Even in the novel, they were guys who survived with just their wits and no other talents other than being able to run and be clever. I also thought that it would be even weirder if Lee Jae-heon recoiled from the slight sense of discomfort he revealed.
I was a little annoyed that I didn’t get caught up in the drug-filled atmosphere as planned, but I decided to take comfort in the fact that I found two promising sprouts. It’s also Lee Jae-heon’s fault for not calculating even though he knew the mental state of those two.
“Hey hey… where should I put this?”
“Just give me this and take it to where you collected the rest of the firewood.”
“Oh really. “They treat me like crazy…”
“Oh, that’s why I shared the food with you.”
“Thank you for that.”
Lee Jae-heon said as he greeted his older sister, Park Da-young, who came carrying rocks of various sizes wrapped in their school uniform jackets, and his younger brother, Park Da-hoon, who was tired from being called by his older sister, but did not let go of the firewood in his arms.
“Thank you for helping me with work, but it’s dangerous if you go out on your own, so make sure to tell an adult. okay?”
“…but everyone is busy….”
“If you can’t even watch your kids because they’re busy doing their own thing, does that make you an adult? He’s an idiot who wasted his age. Then, if you get hurt, the stress level of the doctor over there goes up.”
The siblings took turns looking at Ha Seong-yoon and Lee Jae-heon, who had dark expressions even though they were smiling, and nodded in a serious manner.
“I’ll be careful.”
“I don’t know why you’re looking at me like that, but… it doesn’t mean you did anything wrong, so don’t be discouraged.”
“I love you, uncle.”
“Huh.”
Even if they are executed immediately, they are not the kind of people who will pretend that it is not the case, but I gave them a word for image management purposes.
‘If your personality suddenly changes, that’s because your character collapses.’
Until now, he had shown a fairly limited appearance for minors, but if the setting was changed just because he showed some discomfort, even young girls would think it was strange. What he wanted was not an image change or for his past plays to be revealed.
Lee Jae-heon, who shook off his jacket that was covered in dirt from carrying stones and returned it to Da-young Park, opened his mouth as he saw the head teacher, Min-ah Kang, looking at him with a puzzled look.
“Since the fence is roughly finished, let’s go set some traps.”
“…Where are you going?”
“Why is even Chief Kang like this?”
