When a scholarship student spilled milk on my shirt, my childhood best friend bullied her the very next day. I told him it wasn’t necessary, but later I caught him cornering her again. "If I... if I kiss you, will you let me go?" she stammered. Liam gave a lazy, arrogant smile. "What do you think?" In that exact moment, I finally realized: we were no longer walking the same path. Half a month later, the scholarship student staged a fake bullying incident, and Liam violently kicked my desk over. "Are you psycho, Chloe?! Over a spilled cup of milk?! Really?!" I picked up my backpack with absolute indifference. "Sorry to disappoint you, but I have an airtight alibi." "I spent yesterday afternoon filing my transfer paperwork. I'm leaving tomorrow." 01 Liam Evans was the undisputed king of our high school. Tall, handsome, and so naturally brilliant he could place in the top ten without even studying. And everyone knew that I was his one and only untouchable boundary. No one messed with me, and no one crossed me. Or else they suffered the consequences. "Chloe, when do you think Liam is going to let that scholarship girl off the hook?" "He's literally skipped a whole week of classes just to corner Maya outside of school." My pen paused on the paper. I looked up at the empty desk a few rows away. I lowered my eyes and gave a flat reply. "I don't know." The final bell rang. I hugged my neatly packed notebooks and walked out of the classroom with my desk mate. She kept chattering. "Tsk, well, I guess I'll never understand the mind of an overly protective boyfriend." My throat suddenly felt dry. Protective? A few days ago, Maya, a scholarship student, accidentally spilled a carton of milk all over me. Liam’s face instantly darkened. As he took off his school uniform jacket and wrapped it around me, the other students demanded Maya apologize. "Huh? It was an accident. Do I really have to apologize?" "That milk was pretty expensive too..." She mumbled, clearly unwilling. Someone pulled her sleeve and whispered. "You clearly have no idea how protective Liam is of Chloe. If she gets mad, Liam will literally destroy you." Hearing that, she let out an "Oh." And gave a very reluctant, defiant apology. Meanwhile, Liam wiped down my desk, never sparing her a single glance. The entire school knew. Liam and I had grown up together. I was the person he cared about most, the person he was absolutely determined to protect. But now... I let out a dry, hollow laugh and stopped my desk mate. "Actually, Liam and I aren't really anything special." "Huh?" She looked confused. Seeing I wasn't going to elaborate, she followed my gaze toward the school gates. In a narrow alleyway just out of sight, Liam and Maya were standing incredibly close. They were talking, and the girl was so close her breath was practically brushing against Liam's face. 02 There were a lot of students walking by. If you didn't look closely, they were hidden in the shadows of the alley, making them hard to spot. A lazy, arrogant smile played on Liam's lips. "So, what do you owe me today?" "A deal is a deal." Maya's face was flushed red. She wouldn't look at him. She went up on her tiptoes and quickly kissed his cheek. "Holy shit! What?!" My desk mate was dumbfounded. She couldn't help but gasp out loud. That single gasp made Liam turn his head. His eyes locked directly with mine. Our gazes collided, and the air instantly froze. My desk mate finally realized what she had done and covered her mouth. "Sorry! You guys keep talking! I didn't see anything!" Then she bolted like her life depended on it. I tucked a stray strand of hair behind my ear, honestly not knowing what to say. I gave a cold, detached smile. "What a coincidence. I'm heading home too." Liam's gaze rested heavily on me. He didn't say a word. We stood there in a silent standoff for three long seconds. As I turned to leave, I heard Maya's voice. "Liam... is she mad?" "Don't worry about her." My heart felt a sudden, agonizing squeeze. I forced it down and walked faster. I had known Liam for nineteen years. Suddenly, I realized he was no longer the boy I remembered. Three days ago, when I found out he had started targeting Maya, I specifically went to talk to him. "I don't care about stuff like that." "But I do." His expression had been completely serious as he enunciated every word. "Your health isn't great. I won't let anyone bully you." We grew up together. That was the sentence he had said to me more than any other. But it was that exact same day. I saw him cornering Maya against the wall of the auditorium. Maya was crying and hiccuping. "If I... if I kiss you, will you let me go?" Liam dropped his usual cold, unapproachable demeanor. He gave a lazy, arrogant smile. "What do you think?" I don't remember how I walked away from the auditorium. My legs felt stiff, and my chest was so tight I couldn't breathe. For the rest of the afternoon, I didn't absorb a single word the teachers said. Eventually, I managed to convince myself: people change. If we were no longer walking the same path. Then we shouldn't walk together anymore. 03 The next morning, Liam didn't show up for homeroom. Everyone was used to him skipping class. "But..." My desk mate paused, unsure if she should ask. But she asked anyway. "You didn't walk to school with Liam today?" Normally, we walked into the classroom together every single day. In the summer, he would buy me breakfast; in the winter, he would have a hot pack ready for me on the walk. It was an unspoken routine everyone knew about. But today, I deliberately took a different route that avoided his neighborhood. Seeing my hesitation, my desk mate tactfully changed the subject. "Oh, whatever. What do you want to grab for breakfast after homeroom?" When homeroom ended, Liam finally showed up. He was carrying a bag of warm, fresh cheese balls. "Oh my god, don't you have to run all the way across town to get those?" "Chloe, you're so lucky! Let me have one!" A few girls crowded around me. But Liam didn't even look at me. He walked past my desk and dropped the bag of cheese balls directly in front of Maya. Then he went back to his desk and put his head down to sleep. The area around my desk went dead silent. "Did he drop them at the wrong desk?" "Did the young master need glasses?" Maya looked over at me, making eye contact with the girl who had just asked for a cheese ball. She covered the bag with her hands. "Sorry. Liam bought these for me. I'm not sharing them." Nobody really paid attention to her comment. Instead, everyone was shooting me awkward, questioning looks. Finally, someone couldn't hold back. "Did you guys get in a fight?" "No way. Liam is insanely protective of Chloe. There's no way he'd suddenly turn on her." I wasn't really surprised. Since I had seen them, there was no reason for him to keep pretending. The atmosphere around us was definitely humiliating. But my face remained completely blank. I just pulled my lunch card out of my desk. "We didn't fight. "And I should clarify this for everyone: Liam and I are just regular classmates. "We don't have any other relationship." With that, I walked out of the classroom. The school jacket Liam had draped over his head suddenly slipped off. He raised his eyes to look at me, his gaze freezing coldly in midair. 04 The subtle shift between Liam and me didn't escape my mom's notice. For several days in a row, he hadn't come over to our house. He used to always do his homework with me. Well, he didn't actually do his homework. He just liked resting his chin on his hand, watching me work, idly twirling the ends of my hair around his fingers. When it annoyed me, I'd swat his hand away. He would just smile, his eyes curving like a sly fox. "Finished? Want to go for a walk?" I would fake being annoyed. "Liam, if you aren't going to study, don't distract me." "Then kick me out." He would prop his head up with his other hand. His tone was absolutely shameless, knowing full well I'd never actually kick him out. Sometimes I studied very late. He would accidentally fall asleep on my desk. When he finally left, he would stretch by the door, smile, and wave. "See you tomorrow." That was the dynamic between Liam and me. There were no explicit confessions, but he rooted himself into my life, deliberately leaving his mark everywhere, flaunting his blatant favoritism for me. Who wouldn't fall for someone like that? I liked Liam. And I had carefully, secretly fantasized about our future together countless times. Maybe we would start dating. Maybe after graduation, he would gently, formally take my hand and confess. Thinking about that, Maya's face suddenly flashed in my mind. Liam holding her in his arms, smirking, letting her stand on her tiptoes to kiss him. I squeezed my eyes shut, my eyes burning with unshed tears. My mom was asking me. "Liam hasn't been walking you home lately. "Did you guys get into a fight? "Your teacher called his mom and said Liam is dating someone. Did you guys..." I shook my head, cutting her off. "He isn't dating me." My mom froze, clearly wanting to say something else. But I suddenly looked up and asked her. "A few days ago, that magnet school offered me a spot to boost their Ivy League acceptance rate, right? "I thought about it. I'll transfer." Before, Liam had told me he wanted to stay by my side forever. And I had the exact same hope. But now. I had absolutely no reason to stay here anymore. 05 Liam and I established an unspoken agreement to keep our distance. His relationship with Maya became the biggest gossip in school. In the past, people had speculated if Liam and I were secretly dating. But since we never crossed any physical boundaries, it remained just rumors. Now, things were different. Liam was skipping class and taking Maya with him. Even the teachers knew about it. During P.E., my desk mate suddenly ran over to me. "Chloe! Liam is going to beat a guy to death! You have to go stop him!" I froze slightly. "A fight?" In my memory, whenever Liam fought someone, it was almost always because of me. When I got there, Liam had a guy pinned against the brick wall. Both of them had blood on their mouths. Liam casually wiped the blood off his face and raised his fist again. "I'll ask you one more time. Are you going to apologize to her or not?" "I FUCKING TOLD YOU! I never insulted her shoes!" Maya was hiding behind Liam's back. She was sobbing. "He... he definitely stared at my shoes and judged them." Liam pulled his fist back to swing. But out of the corner of his eye, he saw me, and he froze. I understood instantly. He was fighting for Maya. Well, I had no intention of interrupting his "knight in shining armor" moment. I turned to leave, but the guy pinned against the wall used Liam's momentary distraction to kick him away, and then grabbed my arm. I gasped in shock. I recognized him—he was the leader of the local delinquent gang. "Well, well. If it isn't your little childhood sweetheart." "You falsely accused me, and you hit me? Liam, if you don't apologize to me right now, I'm going to punch her in the face!" He gripped my arm with crushing force. I started to panic. "Whatever is going on between you two has absolutely nothing to do with me!" He ignored me. He glared at Liam. "Scared now? I heard you care about her a lot." Maybe I was just too terrified, but in that moment, I harbored a pathetic, unwarranted sliver of hope for Liam. If it were the old him, he would have done absolutely anything to protect me. But the words asking for help died in my throat. Because Liam laughed first. "You heard wrong." He lazily lifted his eyes, his gaze sweeping over me with chilling indifference. "Go ahead and hit her. But I am not letting what happened to Maya go." I stared blankly as he gently wiped Maya's tears away, and then walked away with her. Above me, I heard a vicious curse. "Motherfucker, I don't believe him." The delinquent gritted his teeth. And slammed his fist directly into my face. 06 I blacked out. The punch was agonizing. I never knew getting hit felt like that. In my memories, Liam had taken countless hits like that. Sometimes he got them from fighting for me. Sometimes he got them from his dad beating him for failing his classes. He would always come to me, begging me to apply the ointment. "It hurts so much, Chloe. Don't you feel sorry for me?" He would say it looking like a pitiful puppy. My heart would pound uncontrollably every time. While I dabbed iodine on his cuts, I would ask. "Can't you just focus on school? Then your dad wouldn't hit you." Liam would go silent. I only ever asked him that once. That day, the atmosphere between us plummeted to freezing. Later, I found out the truth. Liam's parents had practically been divorced for years. They both had affairs. But to maintain the illusion of a perfect family for Liam, they pretended everything was fine. Ever since Liam discovered the truth, he started getting into fights, skipping class, and staying out all night, pushing everyone away. Once I found out, I never told him to "focus on school" again. He had his own way of rebelling against his broken world. He seemed to severely lack a sense of security. He would ask me, "Chloe, I'm never going to get into a top college like you. Are you going to stop talking to me?" I shook my head. "Never. I'll always be by your side." The dream cut off right there. I could hear people arguing next to my ear. It sounded like Liam's father. "What the hell is going through your head?! Refusing to study is one thing, but you just stood there and watched someone beat Chloe like that?!" Liam's mother was crying nearby. "How could you do this? Chloe fell from a balcony when she was little, you know she has a history of concussions! Didn't you always swear you would protect her?" Liam, who had been completely silent, suddenly let out an impatient scoff. He kicked something on the floor. "Fucking hell, protect what? Isn't she a human being? Does she need me to protect her?" Smack. Liam's father slapped him hard across the face. His voice was trembling with rage. "And that... that Maya girl! Why is she the only one you stand up for?!" "Heh..." Liam let out a soft laugh. "Yeah. She's willing to skip class with me. She's willing to fight with me." "What the hell is Chloe compared to that?"
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