Chapter 224: How to Comfort a Girl

Chapter 224: How to Comfort a Girl

Layla’s red, swollen eyes, gleaming with anger from crying, were locked onto the object Cassian was holding in his hand. A piece of fabric patterned with a dragon breathing little pink hearts out of its mouth instead of fire...

"What is that!?" Layla mumbled, sniffing and looking at the handkerchief with a disgusted expression.

"A handkerchief."

"I can see that it’s a handkerchief, you freak!" she yelled, her voice echoing in the cold air.

"I don’t need your childish, stupid handkerchief! Stay away from me!"

Cassian shrugged.

Without feeling the need to ask Layla for permission, he sat down on the bench right next to her in an extremely casual manner. He reached out his hand and began wiping the handkerchief across Layla’s wet face without permission.

"Hey! Stop it! What are you doing?!" Layla tried to lean back in panic, trying to pull her face away. "I said stop, don’t touch me!"

But Cassian continued to wipe the tears from the girl’s cheeks with systematic movements, as if he were dusting off a piece of furniture.

This weird, rude, and forced intervention completely shattered the fragile walls inside Layla. Her nerves, already a mess because of Felix, were completely thrown into chaos by the nonsensical actions of this psychopath. Her tears flowed even harder, and she burst into sobs.

Finally, when she reached an unbearable breaking point, she lunged forward furiously and snatched the pink dragon handkerchief from Cassian’s hand. She quickly turned around, turning her back to Cassian, wiped her face with the handkerchief, and blew her nose loudly.

A heavy, strange silence descended upon the bench, save for the howling of the wind.

For a few seconds, maybe even a full minute, neither of them spoke. With her back turned, Layla tried to suppress her sobs, while Cassian rested his hands on his knees, watching the girl’s shaking shoulders with a completely flat expression.

Seeing that Layla remained silent, Cassian slowly reached down. He scooped a handful of snow from the ground. Then, without making a sound, he reached his hand behind Layla, brought it level with her shoulders, and...

Suddenly dumped the snow down the wide collar of her uniform, right down her bare neck and onto her back.

When the freezing snow met Layla’s warm skin...

"KYAAAAAH!"

Layla leaped up from the bench, letting out a high-pitched, deafening shriek as if a piece of glowing ember had been thrown down her back. Her body stiffened, her hands frantically roaming her back in panic. Jumping, squirming, making movements resembling weird dance figures, she tried to get the snow out of her uniform.

"Cold! Cold! Cold! Damn it, it’s so cold!"

When she finally managed to shake most of the snow out with her trembling hands, her face was bright red from embarrassment, anger, and the cold. Panting, her chest heaving rapidly, she glared at Cassian as if she were literally going to commit murder.

Her eyes were blazing with fury. She quickly bent down, grabbed a large handful of snow from the ground, packed it into a hard snowball, and threw it straight at Cassian’s face with all her might, screaming, "Drop dead, you freak!"

However, Cassian, without breaking the dull expression on his face by a single millimeter, merely tilted his neck slightly to the right. The snowball flew right past his ear and shattered against the trunk of a tree behind him.

"What is wrong with you?!" Layla shrieked, clenching her fists.

"You were crying."

"None of your business!" Layla hissed, gritting her teeth.

"Why were you crying?" Cassian asked, directly and persistently.

Layla curled her lips into a disdainful sneer. She raised her right hand into the air, and with an arrogant, tsundere attitude, looked right into Cassian’s eyes and flipped him the middle finger.

"Like I’d tell you, Pervert!" she said with hatred.

Cassian didn’t take this rude hand gesture personally in the slightest. Simply shifting his gaze from the middle finger to the girl’s eyes, he began listing facts one after another.

"I know you wouldn’t tell your secret to anyone else but me," Cassian said, his voice colder than the wind.

Layla’s eyes widened, her hands beginning to tremble.

"You don’t know anything, pervert!" Layla yelled, taking hard steps toward Cassian. "I don’t have a problem with Felix or anything! You are the real problem! Yes, you are a pervert!"

Cassian frowned slightly. "I am not a pervert."

"Yes, you are!" Layla continued screaming, pointing her index finger at Cassian’s chest.

"You’re hitting on me right now! You caught me crying and are trying to gain my trust by comforting me! I know you’re interested in me, that you desire my body, you freak!"

Cassian’s eyes blinked unresponsively for a second.

"You were even staring at me on the day of the exam!" Layla continued without taking a breath. "You secretly look at me even in class! There are so many girls around you... There’s a ton of gossip about you in the academy, you have a disgusting history as a playboy! That’s why you’re interested in me too!"

"I bet you even injured Felix just because you were jealous of him over me!"

Cassian listened to Layla’s long, screaming tirade with great attention. He couldn’t help but feel a deep admiration for her imagination.

"No, you are completely wrong," Cassian said, without a shred of emotion in his voice. "First of all, you’re not my type. You are weak, prone to uncontrollable emotional outbursts, and have low strategic value. Secondly... I’m talking to you because I care about Felix. On the contrary, the only reason I’m communicating with you is Felix."

What Cassian meant was that he wanted to use her as a pawn to manipulate Felix. However, Layla’s brain perceived this in a much different and far more disgusting way.

The angry expression on Layla’s face vanished instantly. Her eyes opened wide, her jaw dropped. An expression of literal nausea and disgust washed over her face. She stumbled backward.

"A-are you gay or something?!" Layla yelled, wrapping her arms around herself. "You’re talking to me to get to Felix, huh?! Disgusting! God, you really are a disgusting psychopath!"

Cassian paused for only a second at this absurd assumption. "I like girls," he said, instantly and clearly correcting this nonsense. But Layla had no intention of listening to him.

"Whatever!" Layla said, shaking her head as if wanting to plug her ears with her hands. "I hate you, pervert! Don’t talk to me! Go dig yourself a massive, deep hole, get in it, bury yourself alive, and never see the light of day again!"

"Pervert! Pervert! Pervert!"

The moment Layla turned around and attempted to hurry away, Cassian’s ice-cold voice pierced through the wind and filled her ears.

"If you hate me this much anyway, why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind?"

Layla paused. She slowly turned around and looked at him as if to say, *"What the hell are you talking about?"*

"Simple logic," Cassian continued, slowly standing up from the bench. "If you tell me your secret, you’ll feel relieved. I’ll have listened to you. Let’s say I go and spread this secret to the whole academy. Who would believe me? The whole academy knows very well that we’re on bad terms, that we hate each other. Plus, the fact that I’m crazy, a psychopath, and ’weird’ is public knowledge. So... your secret is completely safe with me. Because even if I talk, no one would believe me."

Layla was dumbfounded by this weird, yet equally flawless logic she was hearing. Narrowing her eyes, she snapped, "What kind of logic is that, idiot?!" "Why would I talk about my own personal problems with someone I hate, someone whose face I don’t even want to see? Are you mentally disabled or something?"

"Because," Cassian said, looking into her eyes, "I can help you."

Layla let out a mocking laugh. "Help? You? I don’t need help from a bloodthirsty, perverted psychopath like you!"

"Are you sure?"

Cassian said these two words in such a dark, heavy, and serious tone that... Layla’s laughter died in her throat. She swallowed involuntarily.

Cassian began walking toward Layla with slow, measured steps. With every step, the words falling from his mouth were like poisonous daggers piercing Layla’s heart. He knew the original story very well, the fact that Felix was the ’Main Character’ who would build a harem. And he used this fact to tear Layla apart.

"Do you think Rose is the only and biggest obstacle in your way as you try to reach Felix’s heart?" Cassian said, a ruthless mockery in his voice. "Poor girl."

Layla’s breath trembled; she wanted to take a step back, but her legs wouldn’t move.

"Felix," Cassian whispered, stopping right in front of the girl. "When you can’t even handle Rose yet, what are you going to do when others, much stronger, much more beautiful ones appear around him soon?"

"S-stop it," Layla trembled, her eyes starting to well up with tears.

"Wait, let me tell you what you’re going to do," Cassian said, without showing the slightest crumb of pity. "You will lock yourself in your room, heartbroken and shattered to pieces. You will cry for days, for nights. You will curse your weakness, sobbing, ’If only I had made different choices back then, if only I had confessed my feelings to him differently.’"

Cassian delivered the final and most lethal blow, as if etching it into Layla’s mind.

"While that boy you worship gets into other girls’ beds and fucks them, taking them into his arms... You will remain nothing but a pathetic, miserable fool, crying all alone in your room, still whispering his name to the darkness."

*Slaaaap*

The sound of a violent, painful slap tore through the silence.

Gritting her teeth hard enough to break them, gathering all her strength, all her desperation, anger, and the pain of her shattered heart into her right hand, Layla slapped Cassian across the face mercilessly.

Cassian’s face was thrown slightly to the right by the force of the blow. The red, burning mark of five fingers instantly appeared on his cheek. Yet, his shoulders didn’t flinch a millimeter, and the dull, soulless expression on his face showed not the slightest sign of pain.

New, hot tears poured from Layla’s eyes. Her hand was stinging and trembling from the force of the slap she had delivered. Unable to hold back her sobs, she screamed in a hate-filled, broken voice:

"You... You truly are a disgusting person!"

With tears dripping from her chin, she quickly turned around. Unable to bear staying there for even another second, she ran across the snow, practically fleeing the scene. Her sobs slowly faded away, mingling with the sound of the wind.

Cassian remained standing there, all alone in the middle of the freezing blizzard, in front of the bench. Despite the stinging red mark on his cheek, his facial muscles didn’t twitch. He tilted his head to the side slowly, like a mechanical doll.

Watching Layla’s disappearing silhouette with his bottomless red eyes, he murmured into the freezing air:

"Where did I make a mistake?"