Chapter 17 - I Want to Know Your Secret

"Huh????" The whole table was dumbstruck by this sudden confession.

"Yo, are you on drugs or something??? What the hell are you saying all of a sudden???" Mo Aini exclaimed.

"It's true." Hu Chuntian said, shouting with his booming voice. "EVERYONE, LISTEN UP! I LIKE THIS MAN!"

He pointed to Mo Aini, and all the eyes on the cafeteria turned to him.

"What the fuck are you doing!?" Mo Aini said.

"Now we're equal. I humiliated you, so now you can humiliate me." Hu Chuntian bends on one knee, bowing his head. "I'M SORRY FOR REJECTING YOU! PLEASE LIKE ME BACK AGAIN!"

The people went crazy and murmured to each other, taking out their phones to take videos.

"Isn't that Hu Chuntian!?"

"The Tiger Emperor is bowing to someone else!"

"He must be so smitten with this guy, I didn't know he was a cut-sleeve!"

Mo Aini's heart rate went 200 beats per second, feeling like he would die of a heart attack. "Hu Chuntian, stand up! Stop this bullshit and stand up!"

"PLEASE ACCEPT MY FEELINGS!" Hu Chuntian continued shouting. "I WILL DESPERATELY, AND PATHETICALLY WIN YOU BACK! I PROMISE!"

"Okay, let's talk about this somewhere else for a second!" Mo Aini smiled at everyone with a panicked expression. "Come on, Hu Chuntian, stand up! This is so embarrassing, stop this now!"

Hu Chuntian hugged his thigh!

"MO AINI! YOU ARE MY WORLD! I WOULD DIE IF I WON'T HAVE YOU! PLEASE LIKE ME BACK!"

Mo Aini felt his pant leg getting wet. Hu Chuntian was crying!

"He's much more scarier when he's like this!" Shu Chuanli hid behind She Haoran.

"O-Okay... Um...." Mo Aini scratched his head. "A-Tian. I'm calling you A-Tian now, okay? A-Tian let's go somewhere else, let me go. I'll consider your feelings if you let me go and talked with me somewhere private."

Hu Chuntian immediately stopped crying. "Really? You'll like me back?"

(I said, I would consider it. I never said I'll like you back.) Mo Aini thought, but kept it to himself.

"Come with me, okay? Let's get out of here." He convinced Hu Chuntian by using a sweet tone that one would use on a child.

"Okay!" Hu Chuntian smiled happily and stood up. Mo Aini dragged him and ran to escape from the prying crowd.

He ran all the way to the rooftops, making sure not a single soul was there to embarrass himself to again.

When they reached it, he punched Hu Chuntian in the face!

"The hell is wrong with you!" Mo Aini punched him strong enough for his knuckles to crack.

The edge of Hu Chuntian's lip was bleeding and his face fell to the side.

He just licked the blood and smirked. "That's so mean of you, love. I didn't punch you like this when you confessed to me."

"So are you taking revenge now!? Is that it!?"

"I'm a really good actor, aren't I? I should have won the audition instead." Hu Chuntian chuckled. "I really was meant to win it, right? Yet you somehow got in the way."

"Are you done being petty? You humiliated me in front of everyone else like I did to you before, good job." Mo Aini glared warily at him. "Are you satisfied?"

"I figured it all out now, Mo Aini." Hu Chuntian said mysteriously.

"Figured what now?" Mo Aini was just so freaking done with him.

"When you said you were going to die if I got chosen by your sister...." Hu Chuntian rubbed his bruised cheek. "You meant literally, didn't you?"

Mo Aini was exasperated. "That's what I was trying to tell you in the first place! You only realized it now!?"

"You're not just an ordinary student, aren't you?" Hu Chuntian took one step closer to him. "You didn't even like me in the first place. You had been lying and manipulating for a purpose, and you know things that we don't. What's your secret?"

Mo Aini rolled his eyes internally. (That you're an otome character and I transmigrated from the real world to here because my sister plays bad boy routes? Yeah, good luck understanding that. I don't want to give you an existential crisis. )

Mo Aini pinched the bridge of his nose, sighing. "If I tell you, you would be in danger. It's something unbelievable and hard to understand."

Hu Chuntian did not buy it. "Nonsense. You just don't want to tell me."

(Because I wouldn't gain anything if I did tell you!)

Mo Aini slumped to the ground. "Fine. So you figured it all out. I lied to you. I lied to everyone because I'm not really an 'ordinary student'. What do you want to do now, push me off the roof?"

"Good idea, but that would be too easy on you." Hu Chuntian said. "How dare you play with me. Even if you're not an average student, you don't have the right. I am the Tiger Emperor of this school for a reason."

The great Tiger Emperor squatted beside him, wearing a deadly smirk. "Everything you did to me, I will return tenfold. I will bring you the karmic justice you deserve. I will make life very difficult for you from now on."

"You can't make it more difficult than it already is." Mo Aini stood up and brushed off the dust from his clothes. "So I'd like to see you try."

He went to leave the rooftop, but Hu Chuntian stopped him, grabbing his shoulder.

"Hey, Mo Aini. You're forgetting something."

Mo Aini turned with deadpan eyes. "What now—"

Hu Chuntian drag his collar down and bit his neck!

"The fuck!" Mo Aini cursed, trying to push Hu Chuntian away. The delinquent was much stronger so he struggled from his grip. Hu Chuntian didn't let go and suck harder at the spot, like he was going to consume his flesh.

Mo Aini managed to push him away, but Hu Chuntian had already left a bright red hickey on his neck.

"I told you. What you have done, I will return tenfold. I'm already being generous with this." Hu Chuntian chuckled, bumping against his shoulder as he left.

"You could have just punched me ten times, you bastard!" Mo Aini shouted at him as they go down the stairs.

"I will eventually." Hu Chuntian said.

"Then what's this hickey for!?"

Hu Chuntian pointed at his own lips. "What else? You marked me like Judas in front of your sister, so I marked you too."

Mo Aini's eyes widened. "So you knew about the real reason why I kissed you. Since when?"

"Ever since you didn't deny when I said it was your fault."

A girl student tapping on her phone saw the two guys who had just came from the rooftop. One has his lips busted and the other had a hickey on his neck. Their clothes and hair were messy.

What else would she think?

"W-What were you guys doing back there!?" She asked, holding out her phone to take a picture.

"Having some fun." Hu Chuntian grabbed the flustered Mo Aini who was about to run away, wrapping an arm around his shoulder. "Smile for the camera, love!"

The next day, the side character Mo Aini and the bad boy LI Hu Chuntian become the greatest scandal in the history of Nushen High.

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"The pictures are everywhere!" Shu Chuanli exclaimed at his phone during lunch. "Somebody even made a fan page overnight! This is insane!"

"Luckily, the original poster covered your faces and did not disclose your names." She Haoran said. "They just referred to a 'certain tiger and a black cat student doing unspeakable things in the school rooftops'. But it was pretty obvious. You're wearing a bandage on your neck, and Hu Chuntian has one on his lower lip. Hu Chuntian is the Tiger Emperor, so there's no denying it was him."

"How am I a black cat?" Mo Aini grumbled.

"Because you bring bad luck." Shu Chuanli said. "Bad luck equals Hu Chuntian. Wherever you are, Hu Chuntian follows you."

"It's not my fault that he follows me!" Mo Aini said.

All the three people on the table didn't believe him.

"I watched your confession on the rain video." Wang Jing said.

"Logically speaking, a man like that would never go through such lengths if you have only mildly wronged him." She Haoran added.

"How did his lip get busted in the first place while you were on the rooftops?" Shu Chuanli meekly asked.

"Fine, fine! So it IS slightly my fault. But this is too much!" Mo Aini crushed his orange juice box.

He internally cursed: (Damn this underage body where I cannot drink beer! I want to get wasted right now!)

"You said you lied to him that's why he's taking revenge on you." She Haoran said. "Why did you lie in the first place?"

"It's just some stupid misunderstanding that I played with. I thought it would be fun, it was just a prank!" Mo Aini lied again through his teeth.

If he was Pinocchio, his nose will reach to the moon by now.

"You must be mentally ill, then. Everyone knows Hu Chuntian thinks highly of himself, and will obliterate anyone that defies him." Wang Jing said.

He was shot to the heart by the term 'mentally ill'. "Ouch, Wang Jing, you don't have to be that harsh!'

"What do you plan to do with the rumors now?" Shu Chuanli asked, blowing on his spoon of hot pumpkin soup.

"Let them die down eventually." Mo Aini shrugged.

"That's it? You're just going to let Hu Chuntian bully you?" She Haoran raised an eyebrow. "You could file him for assault, you know."

"He's rich enough to win the case, anyway. What's the point?" Mo Aini threw his empty orange juice into the trash bin. "Besides, I don't care what he does anymore."

(Because once my sister reached the Good Ending with Gou Manchu, this will all be over and the game would restart.)

"You don't care? What will you do if he messes with you?" Wang Jing asked.

Mo Aini shrugged, looking up to the sky with his droopy eyes, yawning. "I also mess with him, like I always do."

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