Chapter 35. The Popular Girl who just wants to be friends. (4/5)
Well, this turned out to be quite an unpleasant experience.
“Uh. Are you okay? You’re bleeding, right?” The girl moved to my front and looked at my face worriedly while raising her hand to the corner of my mouth.
“Don’t worry about it, it’s just some kool-aid powder mixed in with my saliva. It makes for some convincing enough fake blood when in the heat of the moment.” I took out the packet from my pocket and showed her to alleviate her concern.
Her eyes opened wide when she saw it.
“But, you still took a punch to the face because of me. Ah! Your eye. What’s wrong with it? Oh no. What do I do? What do I do?”
Just when I thought she was about to calm down she started panicking again, her face riddled with worry.
“My eye? What do you…” I trailed off as soon as I noticed something g a bit off. My vision was slightly obstructed in my right eye on the side I’d been punched just now. I covered my eye with my right hand as soon as I realized the colored contact had moved slightly out of position from the impact just now.
“Oh no. Is it okay? It’s not bleeding is it?” The girl raised her hand and pulled my hand down. I tried to close my right eye, but I was a bit too slow.
“Huh? Black? But… blue? Why? A colored contact?”
Her face drew closer, too close for comfort. I backed away, but she didn’t let me escape so easily and grabbed onto my arm.
“Uh… Wait. I’m sorry. But... do I… know you from somewhere else?”
“No.”
“Can I see your eye? If you don’t show it to me… I can only assume I’m correct. It’s… you… isn’t it? The fir-”
I raised my hand and covered her mouth, then with my back obstructing Yuna’s line of sight to her face, I spoke quietly so only she could hear in a cold indifferent tone.
“You saw nothing. You’re going to get your drink as usual. Pay for it like a good little girl and not cause a scene here. You’ll then leave, forget everything that happened here, and never talk to me again in the future. Do you understand?”
Caught off guard by my intimidating actions and words, she nodded without thinking.
I took a step back away from her and returned to behind the counter like nothing happened while rubbing my right eye to move the contact back in place.
“Thanks for the hard work. You sure have it tough,” Yuna joked seeing the look of irritation on my face.
I wasn’t in the mood to banter. I suddenly found myself in a precarious spot with my cover blown. If it’d been when I was 16, I wouldn’t have cared as much. But this affected my livelihood. The only saving grace in this situation was that she seemed to at least keep her promises and she was overly nice.
After waiting a minute, the popular girl approached the counter and we had our usual silent exchange.
She’d thankfully left without causing a scene.
The rest of my shift went by without any other troublesome scenes breaking out. I departed as usual at 9:00 PM and headed in the direction of my place but stopped after walking a block. I turned around and found a familiar girl walking not too far behind.
I was being followed. I’d seen her when I exited the building but didn’t want to end up talking in front of the building where my coworkers would see us together.
“What are you following me for?”
“Ah. Uh. That is. I wanted to thank you for helping me.”
“You waited hours just to say that?”
“No… that’s… it wasn’t all.”
“Then what?”
“About never talking to you again-”
“I mean it.”
“I want to be your friend!”
She spoke up like she was confessing her feelings to someone she loved. Though it was obvious enough that it was by no means a confession of love.
“That’s impossible, so give up. Now if that was all, I’ll be on my way now.”
“Wait. Why are you disguising yourself? Is it to avoid people finding out because you might lose your job if they do? You’re not 16 and shouldn’t be legally allowed to work yet, right?”
“If you figured that much out then please leave me alone.”
“I won’t. I want to be your friend.”
“Haaaah. And why is that?”
“Isn’t it natural to want to be friends with someone?”
“No, I personally don’t think it is.”
“It is natural.” It was a purely emotion-based response without any sound logic to back her claims.
“Why do you want to be friends so badly with someone who obviously doesn’t want to? Don’t you realize you’re just being a bother? A nuisance?”
“That is… I’m sorry. But I still want to be friends.”
“I refuse.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want any friends. It’s really as simple as that. Friends are just a pain in the ass. Nothing you can say will change my opinion of that. I enjoy my alone time in peace and quiet and friends will do nothing but take that away.”
“But… I know your secret now. If you’re not my friend… aren’t you afraid I’ll tell others about it? You’d be troubled if I did that, right?” She asked with a pained expression. Even suggesting the idea that she would do that hurt her.
“Are you trying to threaten me into becoming your friend?”
“No…”
“Then there’s nothing to discuss. I will not become your friend.”
She had a pained look when I said that.
I turned around and began to walk away when she suddenly grabbed my hand and spoke up, “i-it is a threat. I-If you don’t be my friend… I’ll expose your secret.”
She sounded like her heart was breaking as she uttered those words.
“You wouldn’t. You’re too nice to actually go through with it. Empty threats aren’t threats at all, little girl. If you want to threaten someone, you’ll have to do better than that.”
I shook off her hand and took another step only to be stopped again.
“I’ll… really do it then.”
It seemed I’d underestimated just how determined she was.
“Haaaah. Fine. So be it, you can tell everyone. I still won’t be your friend though.” It was a bluff on my part.
“W-What? You’re fine with that? B-But why?”
“Because if I become your friend as a result of your threat, the one who’ll end up being hurt the most by such an outcome is none other than you.”
She took a step back as her steel-blue eyes rippled.
“That’s… not true.”
“If it’s not true, then why does it sound like you’re going to cry when you’re the one threatening me?”
I took a step closer to her, propped her chin up, and forced her to look me directly in the eyes.
“T-That is…”
“What?”
“Even if I’m hurt. Please be my friend.”
I’d truly underestimated this popular girl’s persistence. She really was willing to hurt herself over and over again just to try and become someone’s friend. I nearly found myself caving in from her sincerity alone.
But I closed my eyes and told her, “I refuse. You have your hands on a secret of mine. How could I possibly be friends with someone who could potentially reveal that secret at any moment? Even if you were willing to keep it, I’d be living constantly on edge as you might slip up and reveal it by accident. As such, I see no purpose in us being friends. The only relationship that can thus be born between us in my eyes is one of enemies. From today onward, in my eyes, you are a threat. A threat to my peaceful life. A mortal enemy. We cannot ever be friends. It is unfortunate for me, but if you use my secret against me, I really have no way to go against you.”
“Enemies?”
“Yes. That is correct, we are enemies. If you use my secret against me, I will have no choice but to follow your demands. But being friends is the only request I will absolutely refuse at all costs.” What this girl needed was not another random friend. She had far too many friends and not a single enemy. As such, I’d become her one and only.
“You’ll listen to any demand except the one thing I actually want?”
“Yes.”
“But that’s… unfair.”
“The world isn’t fair.”
Her breathing became unsteady as I stared her down.
“I… won’t give up. Even if you consider me an enemy, I will consider you a friend and work towards making the feeling mutual.”
“You’re free to do what you want. But I will work towards making you see me as your enemy… starting now I suppose.”
I took a step forward and she took a step back.
“What are you doing?”
“Something to make you hate me of course.”
With another step, I closed the distance. She retreated back further but hit a wall. She tried to turn but I placed my hands against the wall on both her sides to block her paths of escape.
“Something to… make me view you as an enemy? Just what are you planning?” She looked at me warily.
I’m gonna... steal your soda can...
Lol, it would be pretty funny if he did though.
@KiraMinoru i'd be pretty funny if you made it happen
TFTC! ah tainting a pure girl how lively
I shall steal... your hear- *cough* your soda
Every day I will make sure it is too far back for you to reach and then I won't help you get it! You will stand there and longingly look at it but it will never be yours!
Just have to say this story hooked me big time so much I've already read vol 3 after buying all 4 vols just a few days after finding this story, now its just the wait till 4 releases, but still had to post this because some of the things said later 'dont worry no spoilers here', regarding his author side that might relate to yourself made me want to say no matter the bad reveiws, comments etc.. just know you've made a fan of someone in only 2 days of reading and I consider the money well spent. Thanks for the great story and looking forward to more cheers.
Happy to hear you like the story so much! Just curious, what did you think of volume 3? I haven't had any feedback on it yet and it's a volume I'm concerned about. I'm somewhat confident in the beggining except for one small controversial detail, but the ending in particular I'm curious how it was received with the order events are revealed. I'm referring to the epilogue in particular.
As for some of the details author side, yeah they're things I can relate to personally. Especially when I was starting out as an author and only writing comedy because I just wanted to laugh at that time yet I'd get bashed endlessly for it. It eventually made me lose interest in posting to Royal Road altogether at some point. They don't know how to take jokes and take everything so serious, at least the reviewer side.
Just about everything is cringe to the reviewers there. Well, I mostly wrote satire and parody material back then so yeah there's bound to be stuff that makes people cringe.
@KiraMinoru I enjoyed vol 3 personally, my main criticism was there's a bigger tendency to go into rans inner monologues which is great to see his inner thought process at work in regards to those matters, but it also pulls you out of the story when it goes on for awhile from time to time which can be abit mundane, I did find myself skimming it to get back to the actually dialogue and character interactions because how you make the characters come to life and mesh with each other is brilliant, like when
Ran interacts with the officer Johnson I could see Rans 'I don't not what you mean officer' BS face in my head and it was hilarious to picture especially after what just happened with Jae-sun yang, loved that part.
and there's many other moments but I'd be writing down your entire character's interactions if I put them all here.
In regards to the epilogue I had no qualms, it filled in bits of information from earlier on in the story that did make me think 'wait when did that happen' but not enough to confuse the flow of the story at the time and it was like a 'oooooh that's how it happened ' moment and cleared things up which I enjoyed, some might think its abit to 'OP' I guess you could say but you made a solid foundation on how he's able to do what he does especially with Rosa's help.
I must have missed the controversial part or I'm too de-sensitised to see it that way because nothing like that came to mind as I read through so might have to enlighten me to that.
As for the comments, reveiews etc.... bollocks to em, you've got great story going and it flows well without being to outlandish even with some of the crazy stuff that happens sometimes and it hits hard
especially when he's remembering his past with his mother watching her sob at night and work herself to death
that got me good, but that's signs of solid writing that pulls you in, I don't claim to be no writer but I've read my fair share of sh*t and this story is up there with some of the best stuff I've read, so keep at it and I wont say ignore that negative because that just isn't possible for us as humans but just know you got someone who is dying to know what happens next.
Cheers.
@ThatRandomGuy Thanks for the feedback. Monologues have been something I was concerned about. Though Ran typically keeps quiet and to himself there's always something going on in his head. I guess I should try to condense them more. It's really a trait derived from him having a mindset of an author though as he's always trying to get into the heads of his characters and figure out exactly what they're thinking.
As for the controversial part, it'd be his appearance at the beginning, what he had on during his meeting. To me it's just a minor little detail, but I know there are people out there who'd blow up and rage over it despite it being used for the sole purpose of being unlikable and sinister as possible.
Kiss kiss kiss kiss kisssssss. I can feel the alpha chad energy from the mc. I love it!
Mc practicing his kabedons.
I placed my hands against the wall on both her sides to block her paths of escape.
Don't do that Ran she may fall for you ive seen this many times and the result will be your worst nightmare
Wait? I'm already caught up? -holds out cup- more sugar please author
I feel like I ran out of popcorn and when I went for more the episode of my favorite series ended ... well done with the cliffhanger but also badly done for me
Gotta do my due diligence and add them in every once in a while after all.
“I… won’t give up. Even if you consider me an enemy, I will consider you a friend and work towards making the feeling mutual.”
Oh, hell no. Stalker alert, plus.