Can this sentence 他人のフリ be translated like this?

Question

I am translating some manga pages and I came across this line that one character says:
他人のフリ.
To give you some context, there are 3 characters, lets just simply call them A, B and C.
A and B start to behave weird and attract the attention of onlookers and C hears comments from them. C goes into another direction, with an embarrassed look on his face and has a thought bubble that says 他人のフリ, twice.
I really think that line can translated as the following: "Pretend you don't know them/ I don't know those people." (referring to A and B).
That's what I got, given the situation.
Literally the sentence would mean "behavior of other people", right? Please I would appreciate an opinion, and hopefully someone can tell me that it can have the nuance of what I stated above.
Thank you very much!

Answer 1

他人のふり
C goes into another direction, with an embarrassed look on his face and has a thought bubble that says 他人のフリ, twice.
I really think that line can translated as the following: "Pretend you don't know them/ I don't know those people." (referring to A and B).
That's what I got, given the situation.

You are right on that.

Literally the sentence would mean "behavior of other people", right?

I think I have to agree with you. At least to me it's more like etymologically than literally though. It's always hard to put what it is, but ふり is just nothing else but ふり to us Japanese. I guess it's also to do with that 振る舞い is so just 'behavior' to us. In fact, 自分のふりをする is a very unusual thing to say, maybe a word of someone who is aware of being in identity crisis or something. But ふりをする is a verbal phrase always means to pretend something or someone else.