#57: Chapter 57 — Snatching the Villain’s Precious Princess

He coughed violently and spat out the water in his mouth. The water mixed with saliva and blood, turning a faint reddish-orange color.

Even after being beaten terribly, his eyes still burned with fighting spirit.

“Even if he’s a newbie, someone who’s only waiting for a chance to leave isn’t a comrade. Usually, you call someone like that a traitor or a two-faced rat.”

“Don’t throw words around carelessly. Until he leaves, he’s still our comrade.”

Morae understood that they had a huge fight, but she couldn’t allow words like that.

When she spoke firmly, Jihong’s voice rose sharply.

“You’re saying that so kindly, but that bastard—”

“Seven people jumped me and still got completely beaten. Yet your mouth is still working fine. Should I show you what betrayal really looks like? Your precious Morae—”

“Yu Pado! Shut up!!”

She couldn’t let Pado’s provocation slide either.

Hearing Morae’s thunderous shout, Pado closed his mouth.

He stared intensely at Morae as she began tending to the injured.

“…You don’t even know what happened.”

“Whatever happened, comrades don’t seriously fight each other.”

“Looks like they don’t consider me a comrade anyway. But why are you wearing the same clothes as yesterday? Where did you sleep?”

“Why are you changing the subject? Don’t be sarcastic. Are you trying to embarrass me?”

There were too many people watching.

When Morae pressed him sharply, Pado let out a breath and turned away. As he walked off with an expression that looked like his heart had been hurt more than his body, several people around them began murmuring.

A couple of people followed Pado to try to calm him down, and even Jimin, who had been fidgeting anxiously, chased after his retreating figure.

Morae watched his back with narrowed eyes.

She was already angry at Pado for causing a disturbance, and she was also a little angry at Jimin for leaving her behind to follow him.

Even the friends who had mocked Pado in front of her were irritating.

Morae relaxed her tightly furrowed expression and shouted at the people gathered around.

“Everyone’s the same. Stop staring and disperse! This is just a fight between kids, so don’t go spreading nonsense!”

If the atmosphere turned into one where everyone started judging who was right and wrong, Pado would end up isolated.

Once she quickly settled the situation, everyone reluctantly left.

“Why did you fight?”

Morae brought her friends somewhere away from other people’s eyes and asked.

The seven who had been thoroughly defeated groaned as they treated each other’s injuries.

Two of them still hadn’t woken up, and one didn’t even have enough strength to speak, only swaying weakly.

Only about four people still had enough energy to talk.

“It was a matter of a man’s pride.”

Jihong said while touching his swollen, split lip.

Morae pointed at the two women among them one by one.

“There are women here too.”

“It was a matter of a woman’s pride as well.”

“You only have a mouth left after getting beaten like that… Speak properly.”

The four who were conscious nudged each other with their elbows and exchanged looks.

‘You tell her.’

‘No, you tell her.’

‘Is it okay to say this?’

Their silent conversation was obvious.

None of them looked willing.

“What is it? Is it something you can’t tell me?”

“It’s just…”

“You seven all know about it, but you can’t tell me? Am I really that much of an outsider?”

When Morae pressured them as if asking how they could do this to her, Jihong, pushed by the others, finally opened his mouth.

“It’s because of you.”

“What did I do?”

“You went all the way with that guy!”

When he shouted, the other three clenched their fists or nodded in agreement.

Morae’s face turned red from being caught off guard.

After getting involved with Pado in front of others several times, it was only natural that many people had guessed their relationship.

The rumors that had started spreading after the day Pado casually carried Morae away while asking if he was the one who would relieve her had reached their peak after the kidnapping incident.

There was no way to hide the fact that they had been pressed together naked inside that narrow closet.

It seemed like the rumor had somehow not reached her parents’ ears, but even that was impossible to know for sure.

Regardless, even if everyone already knew, hearing it directly to her face was embarrassing.

“So what if I did?”

Morae deliberately acted cold, but her friends weren’t fooled at all.

“Honestly, I didn’t like how some guy who had only just arrived from outside completely swept you away. But we didn’t say anything because he’s the first man you’ve ever shown interest in.”

“I’m not that interested.”

Yuna, whose hair still hadn’t completely dried after almost drowning and barely surviving, scoffed.

“Don’t lie. You’ve been looking for Yu Pado every chance you get lately. Whenever Pado is nearby, your eyes keep following him. Do you think I’ve only known you for a day or two?”

“Who says that? Me?”

Morae denied it repeatedly because she had no memory of doing such a thing, but her friends didn’t even pretend to listen.

They seemed to think Morae’s reaction was just embarrassment.

Since she herself hadn’t realized it, Morae found everyone’s reaction confusing.

Had she really looked at Pado so much that everyone noticed?

Had she really been that obvious?

Ignoring Morae’s flustered reaction, Jihong continued.

“But whenever you approached Yu Pado, he would subtly avoid you, so I went over and joked around with him. I told him he should take better care of you. I said I never expected to see you chasing after someone like a puppy, and asked what he had done to you.”

At that point, Yuna clenched her fist.

She naturally picked up Jihong’s story and raised her voice.

“Then do you know what that guy said? That he had nothing going on with you.”

“When we asked why you two weren’t anything, he rudely told us to ask Eun Morae herself.”

“When we asked him how he could say that after doing everything already, and whether he was seriously admitting that he had used Morae and thrown her away, he acted cold and said that wasn’t what he intended from the beginning. He told us that if he had something to say, we shouldn’t waste time and should tell you ourselves!”

Her friends took turns passionately explaining what happened.

They were clearly genuinely angry, their voices almost turning into complaints.

“What’s wrong with you that you have to be treated like that? It’s infuriating! Am I wrong?”

“Did you know he was that kind of person?”

Morae had stayed silent ever since they started passionately defending her.

She was grateful that her friends were getting angry on her behalf, worried that she was being mistreated. But from Morae’s perspective, the situation had become incredibly awkward.

If she picked apart Pado’s words one by one, there wasn’t anything wrong with them. His only problem was the way he said them.

‘We’re nothing.’

That was true.

They weren’t anything. Morae herself had denied being his girlfriend or even his sex partner. They weren’t even in that vague stage of being “more than friends but less than lovers.”

They were just… something strange that existed somewhere in between.

‘That wasn’t what I was trying to do from the beginning.’

That was true as well.

If he had devoured and thrown her away, then at the very least, he would have had to seduce her first.

Their first time had happened exactly as he said. Neither of them had intended for it to happen, but somehow, they ended up sleeping together. What happened afterward was a little different, though.

Because of that, Morae had no comeback.

Her friends misunderstood her silence and became even more heated.

“He’s unbelievable! I’m telling you, that guy’s just like that.”

“You treat him so well, and he doesn’t even know his place!”

“Does being strong mean everything? Does having powerful abilities mean everything? Morae, you have Nokyeong. What does that kind of strength even matter compared to that?”

Thanks to how fiercely they were taking her side, Morae could roughly guess what had happened between them.

Her friends must have felt offended, thinking Morae was being treated poorly. They probably gathered together and criticized Pado, and Pado, unable to stand being insulted anymore, ended up fighting them.

She could imagine Pado’s expression after being attacked by several people at once, his anger reaching its limit. From his perspective, it was understandable that he might feel like he had been falsely accused.

The fact that he had fought back right there, in front of so many people, showed just how irritated he had been.

Morae looked at her friends, who had ruined Pado’s mood because of friendship and loyalty.

She was thankful that they cared about her. She was sorry they had probably gotten hurt fighting Pado.

But because of them, Pado had taken another step away from her.

The hardest part was deciding whose side she should take.

She couldn’t tell them, “Why are you provoking Pado when you don’t even know the whole story?”

But she also couldn’t tell Pado, “Why are you getting angry over this?”

Her friends, who were protecting her, and Pado, who couldn’t explain the details of what happened between them, had collided perfectly.

She couldn’t blame any one person.

More than anything, she was embarrassed that her friends had noticed the way she kept glancing at Pado.

“Th-thanks, but I’m not that interested in Pado. We were close for a while, but it just happened somehow.”

“Why are you hiding things from us? Don’t do that.”

“You don’t even pay attention to me anymore these days. It’s been a while since you asked me to hang out.”

Yuna’s words, coming from someone who had always been as close as a best friend, struck Morae.

She said it like it was nothing, but suddenly Morae felt guilty toward Yuna.

“It’s not like you started avoiding me because you hated me. You just didn’t have time to hang out with me because you were always with Yu Pado. You only took care of Pado.”

There was no way for Morae to deny that.

If she denied it here, it would sound like she had intentionally distanced herself from Yuna and her other friends.

That was absolutely not true.

She had just been busy.

Had she really neglected Yuna that much?

Looking back, Morae couldn’t even remember the last time she had spent an entire day with her.

Yuna swung her tail-like strand of hair and clenched her fist, trembling with anger.

“Do you know what really pissed me off? I asked him if he was going to keep acting cold toward you now that he got what he wanted. And you know what he said? He said he wasn’t going to do that.”

She continued, her voice rising.

“He said that if he just waited, you’d get impatient and couldn’t stand it anymore, so you’d come to him first. He said he was going to wait for that.”

Before the final words—‘Does that even make sense?’—could leave her mouth, Morae let out a very loud scoff.

The sound was so sharp that the angry friends briefly flinched.

The expression on Morae’s face changed completely.

The worried, slightly discouraged look she had while listening disappeared.

Now her expression was so cold and prickly that one wrong word felt like it would leave someone covered in thorns.

Couldn’t stand it and come to him first?

Who was he talking about?

“Pado said that?”

“Yeah!”

“Really? Yu Pado really said that?”

Morae asked with a sharp smile, each word falling separately.

She believed them, but there was a clear warning underneath her words.