I Was Helping Out With The Harem Plan Of The Romcom Protagonist I Admired, But Now That I’ve Realized He’s A Scumbag, Next Time I’m Going To Stop It And Make The Girls Happy Myself - Chapter 2: Time Leap

Chapter 2: Time Leap

Around me, the classmates from my first year were talking while nervously reading each other’s expressions, like we’d just met for the first time.

Am I dreaming? Or is this the world after death? Ending up in the classroom I hate even after I die—what a cruel joke.

Half-laughing at myself, I pinched my right cheek hard.

Within seconds it swelled red, and pain shot straight into my brain.

Which meant this wasn’t a dream. This was reality.

But I died—stabbed by some man with a kitchen knife in the park. That wasn’t a dream, either. It was undeniably something that happened in the real world.

I still remembered the pain. The way my stabbed side went cold so fast, the feeling of life draining out of my entire body.

And yet, right now, there wasn’t even a single scratch on my stomach.

I couldn’t make sense of it. What the hell is going on? For now, I need to get my situation straight—

“Hey, you. Why are you just standing there? Something wrong?”

As I tried to look around, a voice called out to me from behind.

“Yeah. Why don’t you come talk with us?”

The moment I recognized that voice, my spine froze and my whole body shuddered like it was screaming.

Disgusting. Don’t talk to me.

The owner of that voice—the man I once respected more than anyone—was Kouki Jinguuji.

I turned toward the voice, and the second I confirmed it with my eyes, not just my ears, nausea rolled up my throat.

“What’s wrong? Are you okay? Maybe you—”

Jinguuji, having no idea what was going through my head, asked in that carefree tone. Like we’d never met before.

His overly polite, distant reaction felt off—and then he said something even more shocking.

“Did you come in late today because you weren’t feeling well?”

Late?

That word dug up an even deeper sense of wrongness.

I’d heard him say that before.

That’s right. The first day of high school. Jinguuji had been late, and he gently spoke to me when I couldn’t fit in with the class.

Because of that, I managed to blend in, and I even succeeded at making friends.

That was the moment I started respecting him.

Which means the answer can only be—

I time-leaped back to the day of my high school entrance ceremony.

I looked around and understood it completely.

A girl who, in my previous life, became part of Jinguuji’s harem—someone who was always near him, trying to capture his attention—was sitting alone at her desk, quietly reading a book.

“Are you really okay? Is it so bad you can’t even speak?”

It was clear I’d have to talk to the man in front of me, so I started exaggerating with a loud, “I’m fine, I’m fine.”

“I just got on the wrong train, that’s all.”

“I see. That’s a relief. So then—how about it? You can come over here too—”

I rejected Jinguuji’s invitation immediately.

“I’m good.”

I didn’t say what I was really thinking: Don’t get involved with me.

“Really? You can come over anytime.”

“Jinguuji. Hurry up and get over here.”

One of the popular kids groups called out to him.

“Alright, I’m gonna go.”

“Yeah.”

Jinguuji waved with a “See you,” then walked back to the group.

Left alone, all I could do was stand there in the middle of the classroom.

Right now, Jinguuji hadn’t done anything to me yet. Maybe what he just did was kindness, in his own way. No matter how he’d laughed at me dying in the park years later, the Jinguuji of today bears no sin—

While thinking that, I absentmindedly watched the popular group, and noticed Jinguuji staring in a certain direction.

That direction was Yuzuki Takasaka.

With long black hair, and beautiful violet eyes behind her glasses, she looked like she had lines and lines of carefully constructed sentences reflected in them.

The girl reading a book—needless to say, was the first member of Jinguuji’s harem.

So that’s it. He’d already decided at this point: he was going to build a harem.

But he couldn’t complete it with just one girl. So Jinguuji—wanting an easy-to-move piece—reached out a hand to me when I was struggling.

That wasn’t goodwill. It was hypocrisy, plain and simple.

With her well-balanced features, Yuzuki Takasaka drew stares from countless boys.

With looks like that, attention was inevitable. But that was exactly the problem. From here on out, she was going to be subjected to vicious bullying.

To avoid that, I sat down at my desk and searched something up on my phone.

※

A few weeks passed since the entrance ceremony.

This time, unlike my previous life, I haven’t made a single friend.

In my first life, I forced my way into Kouki Jinguuji’s circle to make friends. Basically, I was a tagalong.

But not this time.

Why am I choosing not to make friends this time… the reason is—

While I was thinking, the incident happened.

“Alright, how about we all go to karaoke or something—like a get-together after school?”

After school in the classroom, the one who said that was the leader of the popular group that hung around with Jinguuji.

One after another, the group voiced their approval. Jinguuji was among them.

“If you can’t make it, you can say no, but I want the whole class to get along, so try to join if you can. I’m thinking of making a class LINE group today, too.”

As he spoke, his eyes were completely focused on Yuzuki Takasaka.

Yeah. That’s how it was.

From the start, Yuzuki Takasaka was ridiculously popular with the guys.

Given her looks, that was only natural—but later, she’d fall so far it’d be unimaginable from where she stood now.

And she didn’t do anything wrong. It was all the fault of that so-called “kind” protagonist—him.

“Okay, if anyone can’t go, say it now. Anyone?”

The popular group leader said it with a bit of theatrical pressure.

With the way he put it, of course no one raised their hand.

“Alright then—everyone’s in. We good?”

In that heavy “this is basically mandatory” atmosphere, one student raised his hand.

That person was, of course—

“Um.”

I quietly raised my hand and clearly stated that I couldn’t attend the get-together.

“I’ve got something to do, so I can’t go. Is it okay if I sit this one out?”

“……”

Silence dropped over the classroom like time had stopped. A long, long silence.

The popular group leader’s face twisted like he wanted to say, Read the room.

“Uh… what do you have planned?”

Planned… I didn’t exactly prepare this just for the moment, but I did have a perfectly reasonable excuse that nobody could argue with. That would be—

And while ignoring the small whispers of, Who’s that guy?, I opened my mouth boldly.

“I’ve got a part-time job after this. I can’t exactly take the day off.”

That’s right. The reason I’m not making friends is my part-time job. I want to cut out as much wasted time as possible and focus on earning money.

Since we’d just started school, it seemed like no one besides me had a job yet.

So they let it slide easily.

They probably decided on their own that I came from a poor family. Not true in the slightest, but whatever.

Either way, I wanted money. The moment it was settled, I left the classroom and headed straight to work.