Chapter Text
“Jay hyung!” Sunoo’s melodic and bright voice called out in the corridors of the 3rd floor classes. “Jay hyung, look! I got a new manga!”
“Sunoo, I mean this in the most respectful way,” Jay said as he turned around and saw his beaming best friend, “you need to control your spending habits.”
Sunoo pouted. He had a cute pink hair clip on. Jay wondered if this too was a gift from Sunghoon. “I only spend this much on manga!”
“This is the 7th series you’ve bought this month alone!”
Sunoo pouted more. His doe-eyed amber eyes refused to let up. “Now you’ve made me sad.”
Jay groaned. It was late afternoon and he was too sleepy. He couldn’t see a sad Sunoo. “Fine. What’s it about?”
Sunoo immediately cheered up. Whatever happened to Jay having made him sad? “Love!”
Jay’s shoulders sagged as he released a huge sigh and started walking alongside Sunoo. “Another shoujo romance?”
“This one’s good! It’s gay!”
“How is it shoujo then? Where’s the young woman in it?”
“Ugh, hyung, you’re so old-”
“I’m only a year older than you.”
“It’s usually marketed towards young women.” Sunoo quickly flipped through the pages to find a certain one. “Anyway, look,” he said as he held up the manga in front of Jay. The panels on the page showed an overly exaggerated blushing boy pinned to the wall by an overly confident taller boy. “They’re about to kiss! I love the second lead!”
Well, Jay sure didn’t like him. He was lean, tall, with what looked like silver hair. And he also looked a little too much like…
“He looks like you!” Sunoo said cheerily. “Jay hyung, you’re the second male lead in this manga.”
Wait. Pause.
“What do you mean by second male lead? Why is he about to kiss this guy then?”
Sunoo’s expression turned into a grim one. Jay knew it couldn’t be that serious. “Well, they won’t kiss. The first lead would interrupt them.”
Jay gently took the manga from Sunoo’s hands and turned the page. Sure enough, an even taller boy with what Jay assumed were blond hair had walked towards them in the next panel.
“I’m really rooting for the second male lead though,” Sunoo claimed in a sad tone. “He’s cute, he’s caring, he gives Jungwon his distance-”
“Jungwon? That’s the name of the guy being pinned?”
“The uke yes!”
“The what?” Jay asked with a face of thinly veiled disgust.
“The bottom!”
Jay let out a dramatic sigh. “Why do you read these dramatic shoujo stories, Sunoo?”
Just as luck would have it, Sunghoon suddenly popped out of a class and was now walking towards Sunoo’s back.
“Because I’ll get love like this too! And I wanna be ready for it.”
“Love like what, Sunoo-yah?” Sunghoon asked with his distinctly raspy voice. Jay was probably hallucinating how velvety it sounded.
“Hyung!” Sunoo turned around excitedly.
Jay sighed again and decided to exit the scene. He could not tolerate Sunghoon’s disgustingly loving gaze every time he saw Sunoo.
Love like a shoujo manga, huh? That can’t be real. But Jay sure hoped Sunoo would get it, even if he couldn’t.
The next day was as normal as it could be. Jay woke up to the chirping birds. Wait a second. Why were the birds louder than usual?
Then he got out of his bed. Completely well rested? Why was he so… elated today?
Then he greeted his dad. Who had the breakfast and coffee all ready for him? Wasn’t he supposed to be busy?
Then he… excitedly walked to school? Under a bright azure sky dotted with fluffy white clouds?
What in the world was happening?
“Hyung!” Sunoo greeted a puzzled Jay in the corridor again. Well, at least Sunoo was the same- bright and cheerful. “Good morning!”
“Sunoo-yah, don’t you feel like the air is different today?”
Sunoo tilted his head. “The air? No. It’s the same, hyungie.”
Jay shook his head. “I swear it’s different, Sun-”
“Sunoo!” A soft greeting rang out from behind Jay. He felt his heartbeat skip at the sound.
He turned around to see the most adorable boy he had ever seen in his life.
The boy was smiling, his cute feline-like eyes creased to indicate his happiness. His soft brown locks enraptured Jay. He wanted to touch them. Just once.
“Oh, Jay hyung is here too!” The boy remarked.
Jay hyung? Wait a second. Why did this boy look so familiar?
“Jungwonie!” Sunoo greeted.
Jungwonie? Jungwon? The Yang Jungwon from Sunoo’s gay shoujo manga?
This cannot be real.
Said lead from gay shoujo manga was currently looking up at him with big expectant eyes. Jay gulped.
“How was your morning, hyung?” Jungwon asked.
Jay felt dizzy. How was his morning? Well… “Good,” he croaked out. “Really good.”
“Mine too!” Jungwon said with an excited tone. “Well, anyway, we have class soon. See you later, Jay hyung!”
By “we”, Jay realized, Jungwon meant Sunoo. As in, his friend Sunoo, who was now walking to join Jungwon.
“Sunoo!” Jay hissed as he held his arm. “Sunoo, we need to talk.”
Sunoo turned around to tilt his head. Maybe it was Jay’s expression which made him assume an understanding one himself.
“Won-ah,” he said to the other boy, “you should go! I’ll join you later.”
“Okay!” A cheery Jungwon replied.
“What is it?” Sunoo asked with amused confusion.
“What in the world is Yang Jungwon doing here?”
“What do you mean? He’s a student here, hyung.”
“Him? Yang Jungwon? A student in this school?”
“Yes?"
And Jay, of course, was smart enough to realize that something was terribly off about his entire day. Waking up as if he was in a shoujo manga himself and then instantly crushing on the guy who was only a lead in his friend’s new manga?
Yeah. He was fucked.
“Never mind,” he said with a wave of his hand and pursed lips. Sunoo decided to let it go as he shrugged, gave a quick goodbye to him and walked towards his own class.
In one week, Jay believed he had successfully figured out the truth behind his interesting circumstances.
“You remember how you mentioned you were sick of Heeseung reading a particular genre of manga? What was it called?” Jay had asked Sunoo one day on the phone.
“Isekai? Is that what you called me for at 10 PM?”
“Yeah. Isekai. How does it work?”
“Hmm. You get transported into a different world. Usually, all these straight isekais are based around a guy transporting into a world where girls have unrealistically big boobs and they all somehow like him.”
“What about gay isekais?”
“Gay isekais? None that I know of.”
Well, at least Jay was a pioneer. Not that he believed he had accidentally been transported into a world where the guy he had developed a crush on from his best friend’s manga was real. It was too illogical and resembled a dream too vivid and too long.
But for now, he had no other explanation.
The second fact Jay could ascertain was that everyone he knew and loved existed in this world. Unlike in Sunoo’s manga, he, Sunoo, Sunghoon and Heeseung were all here. A few classmates had inevitably changed, including a certain clearly important one named Jake. But that wasn’t much of his concern.
What was his concern, though, was the third fact.
It was also the fact he hated the most.
Besides Jungwon, there was one other person who he was sure did not exist outside of the manga.
Nishimura Riki.
“It’s Ni-ki to you.” Jay remembered the coldness and arrogance in the sentence when he had first talked to Ni-ki. Sunoo had enthusiastically introduced him to the lunch table as the “new guy”. But said new guy was the least friendly person he had ever met.
The fourth fact? Ni-ki was also very clearly crushing after Jungwon. His cold and uncaring act would drop as soon as Jungwon would enter a room or do as much as give a small smile.
The fifth fact was plain and simple. Jay, too, had a crush on Jungwon. And so Ni-ki made him incredibly jealous.
Jay’s pen created untidy and scattered dots on the paper as he tapped it impatiently. With the facts (quite literally) laid out in front of him on the paper, he had assumed his brain would be illuminated with clarity. Alas, no such thing arrived. He only became more puzzled.
Well, all he could do was exist in this world.
“The second romantic leads are never supposed to end up with the main lead,” Sunoo announced assertively. For some reason unbeknownst to Jay, his best friend ran a manga club in the school of this world. He was an authoritative voice in it, having speed-read basically every single manga to have ever been released.
“Why?” Jay asked.
Sunghoon smirked. The other six members seemed to narrow their eyes at him. “Classic newcomer question.” To Jay, he was just as exasperating in this world as in the world he belonged to.
“Because,” Sunoo started before Jay could snap at Sunghoon, “it’s just a rule, you know. The second romantic lead is there to provide the push to the first lead and the main character. Only they can end up together.”
“That seems too totalitarian,” Jay declared.
Jake burst into laughter. “I like this guy! He uses big words.”
Jay’s eyebrow twitched in annoyance. He sure didn’t like the new guy that Jake was to him.
“Anyway, if you guys ever do make a manga by yourself, remember this golden rule,” Sunoo said. “You break it, you disappoint the reader, you lose money, you end up on the streets and so on and so forth.”
“Surely it cannot be that strong of a rule?” Heeseung asked in slight shock.
Sunoo shrugged. “Google it. See if you can find any cases where a mangaka has successfully survived his career after getting the second lead and the main character together.”
Jay didn’t need to google it. He knew he could trust Sunoo the Manga Encyclopedia.
His heart, meanwhile, constantly hoped he was the first romantic lead in the world he had been thrown into. Because why else would Jungwon and Ni-ki be giving each other heart eyes throughout the entire club meeting? Surely to advance his and Jungwon’s relationship, right?
“For example,” Sunoo continued, having effectively shut up Heeseung, “hypothetically, let’s say Jungwon is the main character of a manga-”
Why was this the hypothetical assumption?
“And let’s assume Ni-ki is the first romantic lead while Jay hyung is the second-”
Wait, what?
“Then, no matter how you write the story or how many detours you take, you cannot, under any circumstances, make Jay hyung and Jungwon end up together.”
This had to be a joke, right? A major cosmic joke, fashioned exclusively for Park Jay.
Jungwon was blushing. Ni-ki was blushing. But Jay? Jay was in no mood to hear any more words from this club.
“The manga I’ve decided for this week has a similar theme,” Sunoo beamed. “Ta-da!” he exclaimed as he fished out the aforementioned work from his bag. “It’s called ‘Second Lead Syndrome’. It’s an excellent dive into how you can make a second lead very likeable but still please your audience by making the first lead and the main character end up together. It has five volumes and all are centered around certain arcs. So it won’t take too much time to read.”
Great. Only five arcs. He was sure Sunoo had vaguely mentioned his own manga having seven arcs. So it wasn’t the one he was thinking of.
“Hey, Jay looks so much like the second lead here.”
Fucking Park Sunghoon.
Jay snatched the manga out of his hand. And… oh shit. Sunghoon was right.
“No I don’t.”
“You kinda do,” said Heeseung. “The resemblance is uncanny. And the first lead looks like…”
All heads raised at once to look at the boy seated at the end of the table, right in front of Jungwon.
“What?” Ni-ki asked. “Why are you all looking at me?”
“Well,” Heeseung chuckled, “this is going to be interesting.”