The Male Lead Is Obsessed With My Health Chapter 397

Returning to our world was absurdly simple.

All I did was take Chloe’s outstretched hand—and the modern Seoul scenery surrounding us began to flicker like a broken TV screen. It crackled with static, patches of black spreading here and there as if letters were about to surface—

Fwah—!

As though the story itself had finally found its protagonist, the surroundings changed in an instant.

Everything returned to how it was meant to be.

“…Hehe. We’re back.”

Chloe smiled brightly.

I had never once doubted that this girl was the true protagonist of that <Male Lead’s Childhood Friend>-whatever novel, but somehow, it hit me all over again.

You really are the protagonist.

“Haa…….”

But perhaps because her body had been taken over for so long—and because she’d exhausted all her power returning to this world—Chloe looked like she could barely stand.

She slumped down on the spot, breathing shallowly, her eyes blinking sluggishly.

“Chloe, are you okay?”

“Yeah. My eyes are just… closing on their own…….”

“You’re not dying, right?”

“No, just sleepy…….”

There was still so much I wanted to say.

But as if she couldn’t fight the drowsiness anymore, Chloe closed her eyes.

“When I wake up… let’s talk more. If anything happens… wake me up…….”

“Okay.”

I relaxed only after confirming that the sleeping Chloe was still breathing.

Come to think of it—where are we?

“Oh. The capital’s magic tower.”

I looked around at the familiar scenery, something I’d grown used to from going in and out of the Sky Tower so often. A magic tower—this was the place from the prologue of that childhood-friend novel, wasn’t it?

But something felt off.

“Why is it such a mess?”

I released Chloe’s hand for just a moment and took a step to look around—

And the air changed.

“Huh?”

Something felt wrong. I turned back—

Chloe was gone.

“Chloe?”

Not just Chloe—the magic tower itself had vanished.

Where the hell am I now?

A forest so dense with trees it was as dark as night.

I clicked my tongue in disbelief.

Ding!

A status window appeared before my eyes.

It looked different from usual.

【Prove that you are the protagonist】
【Save the world】

 

 

****

 

 

 

How did things end up like this?

Mehen stared into empty space.

What a turbulent life it had been.

“Where am I now?”

In the brief moment it took to finish some paperwork and step out of his office, Mehen realized he’d been transported somewhere strange.

Because Halvern Manor now looked as though it had been abandoned for twenty years.

“What on earth is this……?”

Mehen concluded that some incomprehensible anomaly had occurred within his perception range.

Or perhaps he’d fallen into the Reverse World he’d heard so much about.

Otherwise, there was no way a perfectly fine estate would become like this in an instant.

And then—

「Arellin, Mehen…….」

There was no way he should have been seeing Valer with such empty eyes.

“Valer?”

Mehen spoke, but Valer acted as if he couldn’t see him.

Then, following Valer’s gaze, Mehen noticed something.

‘What is that……?’

A stone coffin and gravestone laid carefully in the middle of the estate’s garden.

No explanation was needed to know who they belonged to.

‘…Arellin.’

Mehen instinctively realized this was the worldline where Arellin had died.

“So I left Halvern.”

Mehen accepted it quietly.

Of course. Even when he’d sworn not to give his heart away, Arellin had lingered in his thoughts—so if she’d died, there was no way he could forgive Valer.

He knew better than anyone how desperately Arellin had longed for familial love, having raised her himself.

Back then, he’d believed he wasn’t worthy either and floundered uselessly—but even so.

If he’d thought Arellin died while things were like that, Mehen suspected the guilt would have driven him to want to die as well.

‘But that idiot…….’

Valer had never been one to smile easily—but he’d never seen such a hollow expression either.

「…….」

This Valer from another worldline stared vacantly at the gravestone for a long time before standing up.

Should I follow him?

As Mehen hesitated—

“!”

The scenery changed abruptly, as if answering his dilemma for him.

And Mehen saw it.

Valer, unable to withstand his madness, transforming into a monster and laying waste to everything around him.

“…Ha. Seriously.”

Mehen clutched his head.

His head throbbed.

 

 

****

 

 

 

Valer began exploring his surroundings in earnest.

Staying still might have been safer—but how could he possibly remain still at a moment like this?

‘I need to know. What that “line” was. What the voice I heard meant. How the fractured spacetime changed.’

It was when he crossed that “line.”

Valer expected to arrive at his own past, or perhaps an illusion of his sister—but an entirely different scene greeted him.

A quiet rural village.

‘But I was in the northern castle?’

The climate and scenery made it clear this wasn’t the north. It felt like the south—meaning there was a high chance this was Spherom’s territory.

‘The roads aren’t maintained.’

Valer recalled Duke Spherom boasting about spending astronomical sums to pave all roads in his domain so cars could travel freely.

That memory made Valer suspect this place might not be “reality” at all.

And that suspicion was confirmed when he saw Mehen emerging from a small house in the village.

“Mehen……?”

Mehen looked older than Valer remembered—and he was surrounded by children.

Only then did Valer realize where he was.

“…The world I failed. Before the regression.”

Watching this version of Mehen—wearing a serene, almost enlightened smile as he cared for village children—reminded Valer of the Mehen who once looked after young Arellin.

「Teacher! I like apple pie!」
「I like meat pie!」

In a scene he could hear but neither touch nor affect, Valer followed this worldline’s Mehen as he was led away by the children.

‘He always said he’d retire to the countryside… and he actually did.’

Considering the salary Mehen earned in reality—and the wealth Valer had handed him—it felt absurd.

He could have lived lavishly as a bourgeois in the city, even without noble status.

Yet here he was, living as a village teacher.

Seeing Mehen live better than he’d expected twisted something in Valer’s chest.

“You ditched me and lived just fine, huh.”

He looked happier and more at ease than he ever had at Halvern Manor—and that made it sting even more.

Valer knew this was a pre-regression worldline.

He knew Arellin was dead here.

He knew he bore karmic retribution.

Still.

He hadn’t wanted Mehen to live this well.

‘Looks like he never married.’

With that face and those abilities, it made no sense that no woman would marry him—Mehen had been a top-tier husband candidate even in the capital.

‘Wasn’t it the Albert Times that ranked him?’

Village girls passing by stared at Mehen with open admiration, so clearly marriage wasn’t off the table—there had to be another reason.

Then Valer noticed the pendant hanging from Mehen’s neck.

Inside it was a familiar photograph.

‘Arellin…….’

That was when something changed in the world he was watching.

‘Monsters?’

Beyond the wheat fields—golden stalks swaying like waves—a horde of monsters charged toward the village.

It seemed the collapse of the northern castle had affected even places like this.

「Kyaaah—!」
「Run! This way!」

The village instantly fell into chaos.

The local militia moved quickly, but it was impossible for them to defeat monsters that had grown stronger all the way from the northern castle.

As people fled or hid however they could, Mehen desperately evacuated the children.

And when Valer saw Mehen get caught by the monsters first, he turned his head without thinking.

“…You idiot…….”

Was it only this worldline?

No.

While Valer wandered the upper regions as a maddened calamity, Mehen always died the same way—saving children or others in the lower regions.

Whether in the countryside or the city, whenever monsters appeared, Mehen stepped forward first.

And he always died first.

“Ha… if you were going to leave me, you could’ve at least lived well. Why die saving others…….”

Watching the unchanging Mehen, Valer’s expression twisted with an inexpressible ache.