Free Web NovelChapter 510: I slammed the door and locked it
"What did you just say to me?" Seo-Jun asked, his voice dropping into a low, dangerous register that usually made people trip over themselves to apologize.
"You heard me," I snapped. I was done. The heat, the humiliation, the way they had passed me around like a communal trophy—it had finally burned away the part of me that was afraid. I looked around the room at the hundreds of students watching us, then back at the four ’Kings’ who thought they owned the air I breathed. "You’ve already made me a target. You’ve ruined the only thing I had in this school. So what are you going to do now? Carry me out again? Go ahead. But stop acting like I’m enjoying this pathetic show."
I grabbed the edge of the tray I hadn’t even touched. My heart was thudding against my ribs like a trapped bird, and the scent of them—still clinging to my skin, still marking me—made me want to scream.
Seo-Jun slowly pulled back, his jaw working as he processed the fact that the ’rabbit’ had just bitten back in front of everyone. He let out a sharp, jagged laugh that had zero humor in it.
"A pain in the ass?" Seo-Jun repeated, his eyes glinting with a mix of fury and something that looked dangerously like respect. He reached out, his fingers twitching as if he wanted to grab my jaw again, but he stopped himself. "You’ve got a lot of nerve for someone who can barely stand up straight."
"I’m standing well enough to leave," I said, pushing the chair back. The screech of the metal legs against the floor sounded like a declaration of war.
"Sit down, Jo-Pil," Jin-Yeok said, his voice smooth but carrying the weight of a direct command. He wasn’t smiling. "You’re making this worse for yourself."
"How?" I challenged, looking him dead in the eye. "Is there a level of ’worse’ I haven’t hit yet? Because from where I’m sitting, you’ve already taken everything else." freewebnoveℓ.com
I turned to Ki-hoon, expecting him to be the one to finally snap and drag me back down. Instead, he was just staring at the chair I’d just vacated, his expression unreadable, though his hand was clenched into a fist on the table.
I didn’t wait for a response. I turned my back on the most powerful table in the room and walked away, my legs shaking with every step, but my head held higher than it had been since I first set foot in this hellhole. I didn’t care about the rumors anymore. If they wanted a monster, I’d give them one.
I walked as fast as my aching body would allow, ignoring the sea of whispers that felt like static in my ears. I didn’t stop until I reached my dorm—the small, cramped room that felt more like a cage than a home, but at least it was my cage.
I slammed the door and locked it, the sound echoing in the tiny space. Then, I finally collapsed.
The adrenaline that had fueled my outburst at the cafeteria drained away, leaving only the raw, throbbing reality of what my life had become. I slid down the door, pulling my knees to my chest, and let out a sob that had been building since the music room.
I cried until my throat burned. My face was a hot, blotchy mess, my eyes were swollen, and my nose was stuffed. I felt pathetic. I had stood up to them, yeah, but I was still the one sitting on a cold floor in a room that smelled like cheap floor wax while they sat in a suite that cost more than my father’s life insurance.
A soft, steady knock thudded against the wood behind my head.
I froze, my breath hitching in a wet hiccup.
"Jo-Pil."
It was Ki-hoon. His voice was low, muffled by the door, but it carried that same heavy gravity. He wasn’t banging on the door like Seo-Jun would. He was just standing there.
"Go away," I croaked, though it came out as more of a whimper.
"I’m not going away," he replied calmly. There was a pause, a long silence where I could almost feel his presence through the wood. "Can I come in? Please."
I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand, smearing the tears across my cheeks. I thought about keeping him out, about letting him stand in that hallway until he got bored. But part of me—the part that still remembered the way he had looked at me during the night—wanted to know why. Why me?
I stood up unsteadily, clicked the lock, and pulled the door open just enough to see him.
He was still in his uniform, looking as composed as ever, but when his eyes landed on my red, swollen face, something in his expression shifted. It wasn’t pity—it was something sharper, like he’d been physically stung.
I stepped back, leaving the door open as an invitation, and sat on the edge of my narrow bed. Ki-hoon walked in, his large frame making the room feel even smaller than it already was. He shut the door softly and just stood there, looking at the tiny desk, the single window, and finally, at me.
"You’re not supposed to be here," I whispered, looking at my hands. "A prince doesn’t visit the servant’s quarters."
"I told you before," Ki-hoon said, stepping closer until he was standing right in front of me. "I don’t care about the roles people give us. And I’m not a prince."
He sank down onto the floor, sitting on the rug at my feet so he was lower than me, forced to look up. It was a position of total submission—one I never thought I’d see an Alpha like him take.
"Why are you doing this?" I asked, a fresh tear escaping and rolling down my nose. "Why me? Out of everyone in this school... why did you have to pick the one person who just wanted to be invisible?"
Ki-hoon reached out, his hand hovering over my knee before he finally let it rest there. His touch was warm, grounding.
"Because," he started, his voice dropping into that low, honest tone that always made my heart skip. "I’ve been waiting for you to look at me for a long time, Jo-Pil. Long before you ever put on those glasses and hid behind that hair."
I froze. "What?"
