PAID

The classroom was no refuge.

No one outright harmed me, but no one welcomed me either. In this square, confined space, I was an island.

What really made me want to die wasn’t the whispers or the stares. It was the fact that the bread I’d been choking down for weeks—the one I had chewed until I was sick of it—had suddenly appeared in front of me again.

Lunchtime.

Go Yohan, once again, was the culprit.

"You like this, don’t you?"

Is he mocking me? What the hell is this? My blood boiled.

Why did I keep eating that bread for weeks? Who do you think made me do it? The intent behind giving me that bread was utterly vile.

The classroom was empty. My desk partner was, of course, nowhere to be seen. Which meant I was forced to face Go Yohan directly.

I didn’t even want to eat that dry, sponge-like bread. I glanced at it briefly, then answered.

"No."

"You’re lying again."

Why does he act like he knows everything? It pissed me off—this feeling of being forcibly denied.

Go Yohan picked up the bread I had pushed away and slowly peeled off the wrapper. Just like before.

"I brought this for you so you can eat something good, you know?"

A quiet breath. He leaned against my desk. The hand holding the chocolate bread inched closer to my face. The suffocatingly sweet scent hit me hard.

I refused to lift my head.

Who knows what he did to that bread? Messing with someone’s food was one of the oldest bullying tactics in the book. I couldn’t eat it.

But that must have irritated him.

"Hey."

"……."

"Are you ignoring someone’s kindness?"

A gentle threat. His words were laced with barbs.

I suppressed the urge to stand up and punch him in the face. Instead, I ignored him.

"Ah, what the fuck. That hurts, you know?"

He let out a laugh—half mocking, half amused.

As if he was pretending to be hurt.

But the way he spoke carried an unmistakable undercurrent of you don’t matter enough to actually hurt me.

Shit.

I dug in my heels, refusing to react.

Leave me alone. Just go away already.

I screamed the words inside my head over and over, but Go Yohan was always, always Go Yohan.

"Oh well. If you don’t want it, I guess I’ll have to throw it away."@@novelbin@@

His slender fingers uncurled in front of me.

The crumpled plastic wrapper flattened noisily.

The chocolate bread, now unsupported, tilted.

It was an intentional movement.

Thud.

The bread landed squarely on my workbook.

"Right?"

"……."

Fucking bastard.

I stared at my workbook, now smeared with chocolate, and closed my eyes.