Chapter 1 ~The Boy Who Once Saved Me
Chapter 1
The Boy Who Once Saved Me
“David, I dare you to date that unusual junior—the scholarship student.”
“You cannot be serious.”
David’s voice drifted through the corridor, followed by a quiet burst of laughter from his friends.
“You expect me, of all people, to be seen with her? She barely reaches my shoulder. And her figure is hardly what anyone would call ideal.”
Another round of laughter followed.
“That girl’s reputation for being strange precedes her wherever she goes.”
“Come on, David.” One of his friends grinned. “Are you afraid?”
“Afraid?” David let out a low scoff. “It isn’t fear. It’s aesthetic preservation.”
His friends laughed again.
“She’s a tragedy in human form,” he continued, his voice laced with amusement. “A frame that was given far too much.”
He paused, as though considering her for a moment.
“Though I suppose she has good hips.”
The laughter that followed seemed to echo through the corridor.
“David, you’re unbelievable.”
“Anyway, it’s true.”
Alice heard every word.
She stood motionless just beyond the doorway, her fingers tightening around the books in her arms.
His words did not merely hurt.
They pierced through her heart with a cruelty she had never imagined coming from him, leaving wounds she feared would remain long after the laughter had faded.
It was a beautiful afternoon in the middle of June. The sun hung low above the school grounds, spilling golden light across the paths and windows. The sky stretched endlessly overhead, clear and blue, without a single cloud to disturb its serenity.
Everything around her was beautiful.
And yet, in that moment, Alice had never felt so broken.
She turned and ran.
She ran as though distance could silence the words that continued to echo inside her mind. Her vision blurred beneath a veil of tears, and each breath came unevenly as she hurried through the corridors.
She needed somewhere no one could find her.
Somewhere she could fall apart without an audience.
At last, she found an abandoned classroom.
She pushed the door open, slipped inside, and locked it behind her—as though a simple lock could shut out the entire world.
Then she collapsed.
Her books slipped from her arms and landed forgotten on the floor.
Alice pressed a trembling hand over her mouth, but it did little to contain the sob that escaped her.
She had loved him for more than a year.
For more than a year, she had held on to the memory of the boy who had once appeared when she needed someone most—the boy who had protected her, spoken kindly to her, and told her that life could be better.
Those words had become a quiet source of strength.
Because of him, she had worked harder than she ever thought possible. She had studied until exhaustion blurred the pages before her eyes. She had pushed herself beyond every limit she once believed she had.
She had earned a scholarship.
She had entered this school.
She had come here believing that perhaps, one day, she might finally be worthy of standing beside him.
She had spent a year trying to shape herself into someone exceptional.
Someone worthy.
Someone he could choose.
But now, sitting alone in that empty classroom, Alice realized something that hurt far more than his laughter.
He had never looked for the person she was beneath everything else—the person who loved him.
He had only seen her flaws.
Not the girl who had loved him so desperately that, somewhere along the way, she had forgotten how to love herself.
Life would go on.
The sun would set. The halls would fill with laughter again. Students would return to their classes, teachers would continue their lessons, and tomorrow would arrive as though nothing had happened.
But Alice knew something inside her would never be quite the same.
The hope she had carried so carefully for the past year had shattered in a single afternoon.
She had once believed that loving someone meant believing in the possibility of being loved in return.
Now, she wondered if she had simply been foolish.
She wiped the tears from her cheeks, though more continued to fall.
“I won’t love him anymore,” she whispered to herself.
The words sounded unfamiliar.
She repeated them, as though saying them enough times might make them true.
“I won’t love a man who thinks of me that way.”
It was the decision she wanted to make.
The sensible decision.
The dignified one.
If David could look at her and see nothing but an awkward figure, an unusual girl, and a source of amusement for his friends, then she would no longer give him the privilege of being loved by her.
She would forget him.
She would stop waiting for his smile.
Stop searching for him in crowded corridors.
Stop imagining what it might be like to hear him say her name with affection.
She would stop loving him.
At least, that was what she told herself.
Because the cruelest truth was that her heart had not stopped loving him simply because he had broken it.
She still loved him.
And perhaps that was what hurt the most.
Because before David became the boy who had humiliated her, he had been the boy who had given her hope.
The boy who had appeared on the worst day of her life.
The boy who had made her believe she could become someone more than the frightened girl she had always thought herself to be.
And it had all begun one year ago.
A year earlier...
Alice had been walking home alone.
The afternoon had been cooler then, the sky covered by heavy clouds that threatened rain. Her schoolbag hung loosely from one shoulder, while her fingers curled tightly around the strap as she hurried along the nearly empty street.
She had learned to walk quickly.
To keep her eyes lowered.
To avoid attracting attention.
But that afternoon, avoiding attention was no longer enough.
“Hey, look who we have here.”
Alice stopped.
Her heart sank.
Three girls from her middle school stood several steps behind her.
She recognized them immediately.
They had been tormenting her for months—sometimes with whispers, sometimes with cruel laughter, and sometimes with hands that left bruises hidden beneath her sleeves.
Alice tightened her grip on her bag.
“Please,” she murmured. “Just leave me alone.”
One of them laughed.
“What was that? Speak louder.”
Alice lowered her gaze.
“I said, please leave me alone.”
A hand suddenly seized her bag and yanked it from her shoulder.
“Give it back.”
She reached for it, but the girl held it above her head.
“Come and get it.”
The others laughed.
Alice’s cheeks burned.
She hated this.
She hated feeling small.
She hated that no matter how hard she tried, she could never seem to become invisible enough to escape them.
“Give it back,” she repeated, her voice trembling.
Instead, the girl shoved her.
Alice stumbled backward.
Her shoulder struck the wall.
Pain shot through her arm.
The laughter around her grew louder.
And then—
“That’s enough.”
A boy’s voice cut through the street.
Everything went silent.
Alice slowly lifted her head.
A boy stood several feet away.
He wore the dark uniform of one of the city’s most prestigious schools, his coat hanging neatly over his shoulders. He looked completely out of place in that ugly little moment.
Yet there was something about him that made the entire street seem quieter.
His expression was calm.
His eyes were not.
They held a quiet warning that made the girls exchange uneasy glances.
“Leave her alone,” he said.
One of the girls scoffed.
“And who are you?”
The boy took a step forward.
“Someone telling you to leave.”
His voice wasn’t loud.
It didn’t need to be.
The girls exchanged glances before finally dropping Alice’s bag.
It fell to the pavement with a dull thud.
They muttered something under their breath and walked away.
Alice remained against the wall, too stunned to move.
The boy bent down, picked up her bag, and approached her.
“Are you all right?”
She nodded quickly.
But she wasn’t.
She had spent so long convincing herself that nobody would ever notice when she was hurting that she didn’t know what to do with kindness when it finally found her.
The boy removed his coat and gently placed it around her shoulders.
Alice looked up at him.
For the first time, she truly saw his face.
And she thought he was the most beautiful person she had ever seen.
But it wasn’t his appearance that stayed with her.
It was what he said next.
“Don’t let people like that decide who you are.”
Alice stared at him.
“You don’t have to stay the girl they think you are.”
His voice softened.
“Life can be better than this.”
Something inside her trembled.
For a girl who had spent years believing she was too strange, too ordinary, too inadequate to deserve anything beautiful, those words felt like a door opening in a room she had thought was locked forever.
She didn’t know his name yet.
She didn’t know that he would become the reason she worked harder than she ever had before.
She didn’t know that she would spend an entire year loving him.
And she certainly didn’t know that one day, the same boy who had taught her to believe in herself would be the one to make her question everything she believed about herself.
To be continued...
