This if my first time actually writing on here and I have no idea what I'm doing so please bare with me guys.
Jongho never knew what sexual hunger felt like. To him, the concept was something out of a sci-fi flick, an out-of-place joke in his perfectly polished world. Every person in this fucking university knew how to get a hot cock, and Jongho knew exactly where to shove his.
Hot girls in micro-skirts and half-naked hotties threw themselves at him like rabid dogs after a piece of raw meat. Especially after concerts, when he was wired on a line of coke and could stay awake until dawn, feeling like the god of this rotten place.
But every paradise has a thorn in the ass, and his name was Mingi. That prick had a talent for dreaming up such heavy shit that after every one of his "brilliant" plans, there were more problems than in Jongho's entire previous life.
That evening, Mingi was sprawled on a ragged sofa in their rehearsal space. The coke was pressing pleasantly on his brain; words came out slowly, as if he were choking on his own spit.
A bet. A simple childhood game, except instead of candy, something much more serious was on the line, and instead of kids, there were two total fucking assholes who were used to breaking everything they touched.
The terms were simple as hell: fuck one of those pathetic scholarship students that "Aurora" University—an elite shithole in Jeju Island—took in just for show. Just to stroke their own egos and pretend they weren't a closed club for rich pricks who wipe their asses with dollars, but a perfectly decent institution. He had to get the "trash" into bed, film the porn performance on video, and present the evidence.
See Jongho was different from most of the people here, he didn't give a fuck about anything or anyone, he was just going through the motions of things around him but if there was anything that he cared about more than his peace, it was the feeling of a pretty guitar in his hands, so when Mingi told him that was the prize, he agreed without a second thought. Fuck a scholarship student? Piece of cake. Those paupers were always suckers for attention, cash, and the illusion of belonging to the beautiful life.
A victim was found quickly, Yeosang, a pretty freshman that was too pretty to be broke, at least that's what Jongho thought. This year’s freshmen were almost entirely made up of this "garbage" looking around hopefully, naively believing they could stand alongside those who own the world. Jongho hated poor people. To him, they were disease carriers, unworthy of even cleaning his shoes. But for the sake of the sport and, of course, that guitar from Mingi’s collection—the one he cherished like the soul of his firstborn—it was worth the trouble.
For a whole month, he played the role of a caring, sensitive guy. For a month, he choked back nausea, sitting in shitty dorm rooms and listening to talk about homework. He didn't normally go for guys but he wanted that guitar and Yeosang was undeniable pretty. Yeosang turned out to be a tough nut to crack, the longest siege of his life, but not impossible.
Everything worked perfectly. When He finally spread his legs, Jongho fucked him without a single drop of mercy. Roughly, harshly, ignoring any pleas. He didn’t even have to hide the camera—a few sweet words about "a video just for us to remember" worked on Yeosang like honey.
He bailed before dawn. Just threw on his clothes and walked out like a total piece of shit without looking back. Bet won, video in his pocket, and the new silver-contoured guitar was practically his.
Jongho hadn't planned on leaking the video. Not because of a conscience—he was just bored as fuck. But Mingi, that soulless bastard, sent the recording to the campus group chat just for a laugh. Now every other nerd had managed to jerk off to that "grey shit" several times.
"You're out of your mind. What if they kill themselves? My old man already has enough of a headache after we burned down the art building," Jongho muttered lazily, tuning the strings on his new guitar. Ash from his cigarette fell directly onto the dirty floor.
"So what?" Mingi snorted. "You think I give a fuck about the fate of some little slut that half the uni has already come to? I’m sure our pervert teacher did it too. Twice."
Seonghwa and Wooyoung walked into the room with pizza.
"Jongho, the 'campus star' is waiting for you outside. Better go deal with it now; I don't want him breaking our gear again like last time," Wooyoung whined, wiping greasy fingers on his pants which Seonghwa was already trying to wipe off with a disgusted face.
Jongho rolled his eyes, throwing a look of pure hatred at Mingi, who was already dying of laughter, stuffing his face with pizza.
"This is exactly the headache I was talking about. Asshole," he said, slamming the door hard as he left.
His steps were heavy and lazy. He headed down to where Yeosang was waiting.
"Fuck, not this," he muttered, stopping right in front of him. Jongho took one last deep drag and flicked the cigarette butt under his feet. "If you came here to cry—fuck off right now. I didn't leak the video. Just get over it, people find something else to gossip about fast. Anyway, say what you need and get lost, my pizza’s getting cold."
"how could you? I knew that you were an asshole but you just ruined my career, I lost my friends, my family is disgusted, I lost my scholarship because of you." Yeosang voice trembled as he took out a long knife from behind his back with a look that was a pathetic attempt to look scary. "I could kill you right now, it's not like I have anything to lose. Tell me why I shouldn't kill you right now?" It seemed like he was asking himself more than Jongho.
Jongho didn't flinch. He didn't even move his hands from his pockets. He just stood there, towering over him, his 176 cm bulky frame casting a intimidating shadow over his small figure that looked more fragile than normal. The sight of the knife should have triggered some primal instinct a flash of adrenaline or a defensive stance but Jongho was too high on fentanyl and nicotine to be bothered by a piece of sharpened steel held by someone who barely reached his chest.
He let out a heavy, loud exhale, the sound of pure, unadulterated boredom. He looked down at the blade, then up at his face, his brown doe eyes scanning his features with a cold, clinical detachment. He didn't see a boy on the verge of a breakdown; he saw a nuisance that was interrupting his craving for greasy pizza.
"A career?" he repeated, his voice low, raspy, and dripping with a cruel sort of amusement. A dark, mocking smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth, the silver labret piercing catching the harsh lights beaming in the hallway. "What career, Yeosang? You’re a scholarship student. Your 'career' is supposed to be a desk job and a lifetime of being grateful that people like us let you breathe the same air. Don't act like you were destined for the Nobel Prize."
He took a slow, predatory step forward, deliberately closing the distance between them, forcing him to either hold his ground or stumble back. He wanted to see if his hands would shake. He wanted to see if that 'anger' in his eyes was real or just another performance.
"And the scholarship?" He shrugged, his broad shoulders moving beneath his leather jacket. "If the dean is too much of a pussy to keep a smart guy just because of a little video, then you weren't meant to be here anyway. This place is a shark tank. You should've known that before you let a guy like me into your bed."
He leaned down slightly, bringing his face closer to his, the scent of expensive Cuban tobacco and Tom Ford leather enveloping his. His gaze was intense, almost suffocating.
"Why shouldn't you kill me?" He echoed his question, his voice dropping to a velvety, dangerous whisper. "Because if you do, you’ll be the guy who murdered a Vice. The headlines won't talk about your 'ruined reputation' then; they'll talk about the pretty little blonde psycho who stabbed a god in the chest. You'll go from a 'disgrace' to a criminal in a heartbeat."
He reached out, not to grab the knife, but to lazily flick the tip of the blade with a long, tattooed finger, his expression turning sharp and mocking.
Yeosang was visibly shaken up but he was also determined to prove his point. he stepped back and with a sudden uncoordinated jerk he reached out and ran the blade across Jongho's face. Leaving a small incision on the side of his face with the knife that Mingi would definitely giggle about when he saw it. It wasn't deep enough for real damage but sharp enough to sting and leave a mark. "I don't care, you already took everything from me. I'll kill myself and haunt you for the rest of your life if i have to."
The sting was sudden, a sharp, hot line of sensation that sliced through the lazy haze of his nicotine high. Jongho’s head jerked slightly to the side as the blade bit into his cheek. A thin bead of crimson blood began to well up, tracing a slow, jagged path down his jawline, contrasting violently against the dark ink of the raven tattoos on his neck.
For a second, there was a heavy, suffocating silence, except from Yeosang, who's eyes had widen as if he was the one who the knife had sliced, breathing heavy, either out of panic or exhaustion, Jongho didn't really care. He was getting tired of this bullshit.
Jongho didn't scream. He didn't even curse. He just stood there, the blood warming his skin, feeling the sting settle into a dull, rhythmic throb. He slowly turned his head back to face him, his expression unreadable.
Then, he laughed. It wasn't a warm or comforting sound; it was a dry, raspy bark of genuine, cynical disbelief.
"Haunt me?" he repeated, the word dripping with sarcasm. He reached up, his long, veiny fingers smearing the blood across his cheekbone rather than wiping it away, a gesture of pure, unbothered defiance. "That's fucking dramatic, even for a boy like you."
His eyes narrowed, losing their bored sheen and replacing it with something sharper something predatory. He hated when people got 'deep.' He hated the talk of suicide, the talk of 'taking everything,' because it implied that there was something of value in him soul that he had actually managed to touch. To him, Yeosang was a resource, and a resource didn't have the right to go extinct just to spite the owner.
"You think you're the first person to want to die because they got caught in the crossfire of someone else's fun?" He took another step, this time ignoring the knife entirely, stepping so deep into his personal space that the tip of the blade was practically pressed against the leather of his jacket. He wasn't that much taller than Yeosang but he was definitely bulkier than him by far, so much that he felt like a mountain looming over a pebble.
"Listen to yourself," he growled, his voice losing its velvet and turning into a low, dangerous rumble. "You're talking about killing yourself because a bunch of bored assholes saw you naked? You're giving them too much power, Yeosang. You're letting them win." Granted he was partially responsible for this but that wasn't the point
He reached out, his movements sudden and forceful. He didn't grab the knife; he grabbed Yeosang's chin, his thumb pressing firmly into the soft skin just below his lip, forcing him to look up at him.
"If you die, you're just a fucking statistic. A tragic little story the university tells for a week before they replace you with the next scholarship brat," Jongho hissed, his face inches from Yeosang's, the scent of tobacco and leather overwhelming. "You want to haunt me? Then don't die. Live. Stay here and let them stare. Let them whisper. Be the 'slut' they want you to be, but do it with your head held high so they can see it doesn't fucking break you."
His grip on his chin tightened just a fraction not enough to hurt, but enough to command his absolute attention.
"Don't be a cliché," he whispered, his eyes searching Yeosang's with a flicker of something that wasn't quite pity, but wasn't quite contempt either. "It's fucking boring."
Yeosang's eyes flicker with a look that signaled him calming down before it flashed with irritation and he tried to push Jongho's hands away, he failed desperately, but he tried.
"Bold of you to say, our video got leaked but everyone is looking at you with heart eyes and everyone is looking at me with disgust, i can't eat in the cafeteria because those guys keep on trying to touch me, calling me names, threating to beat me for being gay and everyone watches and doesn't say anything, even the teachers because everyone saw one video and decided that I didn't deserve human decency." Yeosang's voice and eyes were in a competition to see what could tremble more violently as tiny crystals slid down his angelic face.
He spoke again before Jongho could say anything "Did you know that a janitor almost raped me yesterday and no one helped me?" That was a rhetoric question that Jongho foolishly tried to answer but Yeosang beat him to it. " No, i bet you didn't cause nothing changed for you. I can't go to classes because the teachers keep stopping lessons to lecture us about safety and homosexuality, I can't go home because my parents don't want a gay son. I have nothing, no one to live for. I had one thing left, my pathetic scholarship and that's gone too, all because I trusted a boy like you. I'm stuck on dorm where people leave nasty notes and rotten eggs on my doorstep everyday because my parents don't want me home."
Jongho’s thumb stilled against his chin. For the first time since they had met, the mask of lazy indifference didn't just slip it cracked.
The sheer, unbridled weight of Yeosang's words hit him like a physical blow, though he’d never admit it. He was used to the superficiality of Aurora. He was used to people crying because their credit card was declined or because a breakup ruined their social standing. He was used to the "tragedies" of the elite, which were usually just inconveniences wrapped in silk. But this? This was raw. This was the kind of filth that actually stained a person.
The mention of the janitor made his jaw tighten so hard a muscle jumped in his cheek, right next to the fresh cut. A sudden, hot flash of rage not at Yeosang, but at the sheer, predictable ugliness of the world he lived in surged through him. He lived in the center of the storm, but he had always been the one controlling the wind. He hadn't realized he had accidentally unleashed a hurricane on someone so fragile.
He let out a long, shaky exhale, his eyes searching Yeosang's. He saw the hollowed out look in his eyes, the way he looked like he was already a ghost haunting his own life. It made a strange, uncomfortable tightness form in his chest a sensation he usually drowned out with a line of coke or a heavy bassline.
"You're right," he said, his voice dropping to a low, uncharacteristically honest register. He didn't offer a lie. He didn't tell him it would be okay, because he knew, in this place, it wouldn't be. "Nothing changed for me. The world kept spinning, the music kept playing, and I just kept playing the part of the winner."
He released his chin, but he didn't step back. He stayed in his space, his presence heavy and shielding.
"But you're wrong about one thing," he muttered, looking away for a split second as if the sincerity was physically painful. "You don't have nothing."
He reached into the pocket of his leather jacket and pulled out a crumpled wad of hundred dollar bills the kind of money he threw around like it was scrap paper. He didn't hand it to him like a charity case; he shoved it toward his chest, almost aggressively.
"Take it. Fuck the scholarship. Take this and get a place to stay that isn't a dorm filled with assholes. Buy some clothes that make you feel like you aren't a target. Eat whatever the fuck you want so you don't starve while you're busy being 'disgusted' by everyone."
He looked back at him, his gaze fierce, eyes burning with a sudden, strange purpose. "And if anyone a janitor, a student, or a fucking dean tries to touch you or talk down to you again..." He leaned in, his face inches from Yeosang's, his voice a deadly, quiet promise. "You tell them you're with Choi Jongho. You tell them you're the boy who broke the king. Because as long as you're under my shadow, they can look, and they can whisper, but they better not fucking touch."
He paused, his expression softening just a fraction, a rare moment of vulnerability peeking through the cracks of his armor.
"Don't die just to spite them, Yeosang. That's too easy for them. Live, and make them feel like absolute shit for being too cowardly to stand by you." He turned and walked away, afraid to look at Yeosang's pitiful face any longer even though he would never admit how much he cares.
But what neither of them knew was that another wreckage was waiting for Yeosang's arrival in his dorm and a life altering experience that would make him reach the headlines and change everyone's life at Aurora university.
That's the end of part one, if this goes good then I'll upload more. Please leave your opinions, corrections and tips if you have any. I'm open for criticism.
