I was Thrown into an Unfamiliar Manga

After the shocking first encounter with the protagonist, I applied to a private high school far removed from my original school district, determined to live a normal life.
There was a public high school just ten minutes from my house, but it was crawling with people who knew the old Kim Yu-seong from middle school. It wasn’t really a choice.
The private school I applied to wasn’t just infamous for its sky-high tuition—it also had significantly higher academic standards, meaning average grades wouldn’t even get you in.

Some might say I was burdening my parents to indulge my selfish desire to escape my past, but I silenced that guilt by earning the top score on the entrance exam and securing a full scholarship.
I’ll never forget the look on my parents’ faces when I told them.
They were stunned that the kid who seemed to just goof ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) off at home was apparently a genius. They were seriously overjoyed.

They must’ve been quietly worried after all.
The moment I graduated from middle school, I followed through on my plan and cleaned up the room that had become a monument to over-the-top otaku obsession.
Of course, I didn’t throw everything away. I just took down the wall posters and sold off the figures and merchandise through secondhand sites.

It didn’t feel right to erase every last trace of the boy named Kim Yu-seong. After all, I’d spent half a year imitating his habits, reading everything he liked, and in the process… I’d grown a little fond of him.
Especially that samurai manga drawn by an author named Kishimoto Musashi—it was insanely good.
I even became a fan without meaning to.

After finishing the room cleanup, I brought in some exercise equipment to fill the empty space.
Something I’d learned back in grad school: physical strength is national strength.
The younger you start training, the better you’ll fare in old age without constant doctor visits.

Yu-seong’s body, being the type that preferred staying indoors, was way too frail compared to my old one. I wanted to bulk up a bit.
Once I was bigger, fewer people would try to look down on me for being Korean-Japanese.
And so, during my final semester of middle school, I started modifying Kim Yu-seong’s scrawny body.

***
Ichijo Academy.
A prestigious private school in Tokyo—so elite that it was once nicknamed “a school for the rich.”
It was also where I’d be spending the next three years.

In April, when the cherry blossoms were in full bloom, I stood onstage as the new student representative, thanks to the title I’d earned by crushing all the top applicants and entering the school ranked first.
When I stepped up to the podium and grabbed the mic, I could feel hundreds of eyes staring at me.
I’ll admit—I was a little nervous.

Being the center of attention like that… wasn’t something I was used to.
“In this blossoming April, we, the incoming students, look forward to—”
I had no idea what I was even reading. I just sped through the welcome speech someone else had written and came down from the stage.

Even after I sat back in my seat, my heart wouldn’t stop racing.
That surprise event on the very first day aside, I actually settled into school life pretty quickly.
Maybe because everyone had seen me up on stage, lots of people started casually talking to me.

Granted, most of it was just asking for help with studying, but even that kind of attention was far better than nothing.
Back in middle school, I’d been stuck playing the part of the old Kim Yu-seong, so unless someone had already known him, there was no one I could really talk to.
And then about half a year passed.

Since I never slacked on self-discipline, I’d grown dramatically taller since middle school. That’s probably why the newly appointed student council president scouted me to join as secretary.
I’d already joined the board game club at that point, so I politely declined… but the black-haired, hime-cut student council president shoved her ever-present folding fan in my face and went:
“A commoner who dares turn down my invitation?! How audacious! I like it! Ohohohoho~!”

Then she forcibly switched my club registration.
At the time, I was completely dumbfounded by just how much unchecked power the student council president seemed to wield. But I eventually got used to it.
She came from an old noble family and had a pretty intense sense of vanity—but she wasn’t stingy when it came to her own people.

Thanks to her, I ended up getting a lot of perks at school, so I guess it all balanced out in the end.
As for the board game club, I could still drop by anytime, even if I wasn’t officially listed. So I didn’t really mind being reassigned.
As I worked as the student council’s secretary, I naturally had more chances to look at the full student roster.

And that’s when I noticed: among this year’s new first-years were Sakamoto Ryuji, the protagonist of Scramble Love, and his childhood friend, Yaguchi Maiya.
I had chosen a private high school 30 minutes away by train specifically to avoid the original characters. I never imagined we’d end up attending the same school.
Starting now, I need to be extra careful not to get involved.

My goal was to graduate quietly and land a normal job.
That was for the sake of the real Kim Yu-seong, who’d died, and also for the future I wanted to live.
If I got tangled up with Scramble Love’s protagonist, Sakamoto Ryuji, and started getting dragged into events, my peaceful school life would be over.

That’s just how romcoms work.
From that day on, I doubled the length of my personal training sessions after school.
It was all to prepare for an uncertain future.

At first, my parents had been thrilled that I was working out—but they eventually started saying it was getting excessive.
But there was no way I was giving up on my gains.
In a manga world, even muscles the size of a bodybuilder on steroids were fair game—because physics here didn’t care.

As my body changed day by day, I found myself cutting carbs but religiously eating protein.
And so, after massacring hundreds of chickens and spending half a year going to the gym for brutal daily workouts—
I ended up with a ghost on my back.

***
Looking back now, that first year of high school might’ve been the most productive year of my life.
Back in middle school, I’d been shorter than most girls. But once I got serious about training, I shot up to 186cm, and solid muscle built from real sweat now covered my entire body.

Compared to how weak I used to be, I had gained an overwhelmingly powerful physique.
I may have gotten a little carried away with the training, but this was a romantic comedy world. Weird stuff happening was par for the course.
In every romcom manga I’d read, you’d always get aliens, ghosts, gangsters—nothing was off-limits.

I hadn’t read Scramble Love itself, so I didn’t know exactly what kind of insanity to expect, but it was technically a shounen manga. That alone made anything possible.
Anyway, the frantic pace of the first term, second term, and even third term flew by.
I was still holding onto the top rank in the entire grade when I moved into my second year.

People around me kept asking when the hell I even studied, considering I spent every day working out. But unfortunately for them, I was the kind of guy who trained and studied at the same time.
Like: memorize ten English vocabulary words, and for every one I got wrong, I had to do ten squats as punishment. I hated the penalty so much I’d grind my teeth and memorize harder.
It worked for me—and especially helped with memorization-heavy subjects.

But all that blood-and-sweat effort didn’t stop the disaster that struck the moment second year began.
That was when I got assigned to the same class as Sakamoto Ryuji—the guy I’d avoided all of first year because we’d been in separate classes.
And, like the protagonist he was, Ryuji sat at the last desk by the window.

My seat was only about three meters away from his, even with our desks between us.
Thanks to my tall seated height, I naturally got assigned to one of the back seats, which ended up being my undoing.
If I knew this would happen, I would’ve taken one fewer scoop of protein powder every day.

“Ryuji! We’re in the same class again this year!”
“What the—again?”
The voice calling out cheerfully to Sakamoto Ryuji belonged to none other than Yaguchi Maiya, the childhood friend who ended up as the winner in the original series.

Just from her looks, she perfectly fit the bill of the “classic childhood friend heroine”—a little plain at first glance, but with a natural cuteness.
Her one standout feature was the checkered headband she always wore, and the fact that she clearly wasn’t the trendy type most high school girls were.
Thankfully, the first day back was nothing but a few icebreaking activities, so nothing major happened.

But the very next day, when a blonde transfer student showed up who screamed “main heroine,” I knew without a doubt—
The plot of Scramble Love had officially begun.