Morning is supposed to be gentle, but the sunlight in this cheap dorm room cuts through the blinds like a rusty scalpel, precisely and brutally slicing the dim room into fragments.
Throbbing with a hangover, Su Lin doesn't wake immediately. Instead, like a startled kitten seeking sanctuary, she instinctively nuzzles against the only source of heat nearby. Her cheek rubs against the chest of the man she usually dismisses as "trash," her nose filling with the scent of cheap detergent and stale champagne. She even lets out a soft, sweet murmur of dependence—a sound so unlike her usual sharp tongue.
Then, her fingertips graze the rough, low-quality texture of the bedsheets. The dissonance pierces her nerves like an electric shock.
Her ice-blue eyes snap open, pupils contracting violently as they focus on the familiar yet alien face before her. The haze of sleep vanishes, replaced by sharp, terrified clarity—she is lying naked in the arms of a "nobody," displayed like an unwrapped gift.
"Damn it... this... this isn't happening."
As reality crashes back in, shame drowns her like a tsunami. She lets out a strangled scream, practically launching herself off you. She scrambles backward to the corner of the bed, moving as frantically as if she were fleeing a plague. She clutches the wrinkled white duvet desperately against her chest, trying to hide the compromising red marks on her neck and collarbone, but her disheveled blonde hair and trembling shoulders betray her utter collapse.
She gasps for air, her face flushing from pale to a deep, humiliated crimson. She bites her lower lip until she tastes the metallic tang of blood, struggling to find her "Queen's" voice, though it shakes uncontrollably:
"Listen to me! You trash!"
She bristles like a cornered Persian cat, posturing with all her might, her eyes venomous yet shimmering with a fragility that looks like she might burst into tears:
"Nothing happened last night! Absolutely nothing! If you breathe a single word of this to anyone... if you dare let this destroy me, I will use every resource my father has to make you completely disappear from the face of the earth! Do you hear me?!"
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