I was Thrown into an Unfamiliar Manga

There was a slight hiccup, but we arrived without incident at the goldfish scooping stall run by someone Karen knew.
“Greetings, miss!”

A mustached man with a buzzcut and black sunglasses jumped up and gave a deep bow.
“Oh, hey.”
The stall owner spoke to her respectfully, and Karen accepted it like it was normal.

It was clear to anyone that they had a firmly established hierarchy.
I’d seen stuff like this so often I was used to it, but anyone who didn’t know better would probably be baffled.
And sure enough, Yaguchi, standing behind us, leaned in and asked Karen with a serious look.

“Karen, who exactly is that guy?”
“Oh, it’s nothing. He’s one of my dad’s former subordinates. He’s retired now and just runs a flower shop nearby for fun.”
“Flower shop?”

Yaguchi blinked, surprised at the job not matching the appearance.
To be fair, it really didn’t suit him.
Yuika, the only one who could be called ‘sane’ in this group, muttered “Subordinate…?” but we all decided to pretend we didn’t hear.

“We were hoping to do some goldfish scooping.”
“Oh, of course! If it’s Miss’s friends, you can play as much as you like for free!”
“It’s not like it costs much.”

The stall owner tried not to take any money, but Karen insisted and handed over a 1,000-yen bill from her wallet, resulting in a brief back-and-forth.
In the end, the stall owner reluctantly took the money Karen offered and handed out small scoops to each of us.
Sasha waved the scoop around through the air and asked,

“You can really catch goldfish with this?”
Karen nodded as she rolled up the sleeve of her yukata.
“It’s made of paper so it tears easily, but if you’ve got the technique, it’s not too hard.”
Saying that, Karen locked her eyes on the water tank and, with a sharp little “Haap!”, swung the scoop.

Splash! Splash!
A red goldfish wriggled energetically on top of the tiny scoop.
With a proud expression, she puffed out her chest and asked, “How’s that?”

Definitely the work of a pro.
If it were me, I’d mess up the pressure and tear the thing instantly.
Once Karen gave the demonstration, everyone crouched in front of the tank with their scoops and started fishing.

“Ah! It ripped!”
Of course, it wasn’t nearly as easy as it looked, and scoop after scoop got torn apart.
Which meant buying the next scoop immediately.

“Kim Yu-seong, aren’t you going to try?”
“Nah, I’ll pass. I’m not good at delicate stuff like this. You wanna try for me?”
As I said that and held out the scoop, Sasha accepted it and murmured, “I see…” then crouched in front of the tank.

“Then I’ll catch enough for the both of us.”
“What?”
She’d never done goldfish scooping before—so where was all that confidence coming from?

But surprisingly—
“Ha!”
Sasha scooped up a goldfish in one clean motion with perfect form.

And not just beginner’s luck—she did it three times in a row.
Seeing that, Rika shouted in shock.
“Sasha-chan, this isn’t your first time?!”

Sasha gave a smug little laugh and said,
“I copied the movements Karen showed just now. If I can’t do something, I simply mimic someone who can.”
And with that, she effortlessly caught five more goldfish, tossed aside her now-wet and torn scoop, and continued scooping with the spare I’d handed her.

It was borderline divine skill.
All we could do was watch in awe as Sasha proudly presented the bag full of goldfish to the stall owner, our expressions somewhere between impressed and dumbfounded.
***

“Mmh. That was rather fun.”
Sasha said as she lifted the plastic bag containing three goldfish up to eye level.
She’d actually caught way more, but didn’t feel the need to take them all, so the rest were returned.

The stall owner, who looked like he’d nearly had to shut down for the night, bowed repeatedly as he thanked her.
This is why letting veterans loose is dangerous…
As we all started walking toward the hill to watch the fireworks, Ryuji was the first to speak up.

“Alright, we’ll take off here.”
“Huh?”
I looked at him, not getting what he meant, but he just gave me a cheeky thumbs-up while standing next to his ghostly foreigner sidekick, then walked off with Yaguchi and his little sister.

Just like that, my strongest allies were gone, and I swallowed nervously.
Now, besides me, there were only four girls left.
And if you excluded Minato, who was basically just a text buddy, the other three all seemed to have feelings for me.

Honestly, from my perspective, it was a pretty overwhelming situation.
In the average romcom, a summer festival—or Natsu Matsuri—is the prime event where the male lead and the heroines deepen their feelings for each other.
But I wasn’t the original protagonist.

I was an anomaly injected into the plot—and that made me afraid.
If the feelings they held for me weren’t natural, but artificial—
If, by some irresistible narrative force, they had developed feelings for me instead of Ryuji, the real protagonist—

Then I couldn’t accept those emotions so easily.
Let’s be real: with the way I look now, my size and my face, it shouldn’t be possible to get this kind of genuine affection.
So if there are people who still like me despite that, it’s honestly the kind of luck you’d find once in a lifetime.

But when that luck hits not once, not twice, but three times in a row—
Even I had to start questioning it.
I was too popular. Way too popular.

Wouldn’t you be suspicious too?
Especially since I’m the only one here who knows this world is actually a manga.
And even if a relationship did bloom, it would be a problem.

One day I might wake up and suddenly find myself back in my original body, just like how I woke up in Kim Yu-seong’s body in the first place.
If that happened, it wouldn’t just affect me—it would leave an unhealable scar on the person left behind.
That was what I feared most.

“So what should we do now?”
“…Huh?”
I had been lost in thought when Rika suddenly asked, catching me off guard.

Seeing my blank face, she puffed out her cheeks slightly.
“The fireworks are starting soon, so I was asking what we should do. Are we all sticking together to the end?”
Right.

That whole “let’s all walk around together” suggestion I made earlier was just a stopgap.
And now, the decision I’d been putting off had come back.
Depending on who I watched the fireworks with, the pleasant atmosphere could instantly turn cold.

I looked each of the four girls in the eye, one by one.
Rika, pretending to be calm but clearly anxious.
Karen, staring at me like a drenched kitten.

Sasha, smiling confidently—but it felt a little too rehearsed.
And Minato, grinning innocently as if she trusted me completely.
It was a cruel set of choices.

No matter who I chose, there was no way we’d all walk away smiling afterward.
After thinking for a long while, I finally spoke.
“I…”

***
“Hehe! In the end, I got to have Senpai all to myself!”
The one I ended up choosing was Minato, my underclassman.

My excuse was that she was the one I’d made plans with first.
In truth, I picked her because she was the most neutral option—so that the three friends wouldn’t fracture over it.
I didn’t want to break what we had.

But Minato, unaware of what was going through my head, just clung to my arm with a bright, beaming smile.
Seeing that made me feel a little guilty.
As we climbed the hill together, I asked her,

“Minato, how was today?”
Minato looked up at me with a playful smile.
“It was fun. Everyone was so kind to me even though we’d just met. It was refreshing being treated like a regular person, not a celebrity.”

“I’m glad you had fun.”
“They’re all really nice people. Honestly, [N O V E L I G H T] I was surprised.”
“Surprised by what?”

Minato touched her chin and said thoughtfully,
“Well, kids my age usually find me hard to approach. Like I live in a different world or something. Probably because I became successful too young. Ah—but I know that sounds like a spoiled thing to say. Still, I’ve always wondered what it’d be like to have friends my age, and today kind of fulfilled that.”
She recalled earlier events with a happy smile.

“So, I guess I have you to thank, Senpai.”
“What did I even do?”
“Because you stood firm in the center, everyone else gathered around you, right?”

She just kept praising me, and I didn’t know how to handle it.
While I scratched the back of my head awkwardly, she reached the top of the hill ahead of me and flashed a peace sign with her fingers.
“Hurry up, Senpai. The fireworks are about to start.”

“Yeah.”
I quickened my pace.
At last, we stood on top of the hill, with the entire cityscape spread before us, and we could hear the crowd below starting the countdown.

“10! 9! 8! 7! 6!”
As we stood side by side staring up at the night sky, Minato clenched her fist and said,
“Senpai, there’s something I want to say.”

“5! 4! 3! 2!”
“Right now? What is it?”
“1!”

Minato bit her lip—then looked me straight in the eye and said:
Boom! Pa-papoom! Boom! Boom!
“I like you.”

And under the bright explosion of colors across the sky, I heard her voice loud and clear.