love game; ℓ.н/ ρ.נ

chapter 22, jealousy, jealousy

Heeseung's pov 

"She's topped again" 

I seriously could not care less. 

"This girl is taking away your reputation, Heeseung," Mom put forth. "We need to do something about her" 

"Seriously guys," I said, sighing. "She's more hard-working and deserving than me. I don't see how it is a problem"

"You've always been on the top," Dad said. "It burns us to see your hard work being gone in vain like this, especially by that girl" 

"We need to get her out of the way," Dad said, in a low grumble.

I stared at him in disbelief. "You mean expel her?"

"Precisely," he replied, with a sly smile on his old face. "That's the only solution I can think of at this time"

I knew he did not want to expel her; was just nettling my ego.

"No," I said at once. "I'll get back my rank. But you can't expel her"

My indignation was more significant than my ego, and for once in my life, I was thankful for that.

"We'll see about that..."

***

I sat there watching her back as she giggled and joked around with him.

It was a free period and everyone else was busy with their group projects, except us. Who would want to disturb two long-lost love birds from their daydreams about each other?

I decided to do the project on my own. Curse them. They have better and more important things to do, right? 

With a last loathing glare at them, I turned away and aggressively banged my laptop on the desk, gaining irritated stares from the people around. 

It was hard to get into a flow state. Jia and Jay were probably the loudest in the room. Yet, my innocent actions like pulling out my laptop gained more attention than their ear-piercing, maniac laughs that were going on for the past hour. How just. 

Shaken from my thoughts, I received a notification on my laptop. It was an email with an unusual username. In hindsight, I realized I should not have opened the mail, for there were attachments; dreadful attachments of me. 

And her. 

Of all the times we hung out,  there were images of it. The endless encounters in the coffee shop, the rendezvous for the group project at Jay's house, heck, even me kissing her in detention. 

As I reached the end of the mail, I caught a text written in bold: 

If you want her safe, return what's ours. Han River. 10 pm today. Bring anyone and she's never seeing daylight again. 

Minutes ticked and my eyes couldn't leave the screen of my laptop. The worst part of it was that I knew who they were. And what they wanted. What I did not know was that I was being stalked. Don't get me wrong, being stalked by swooning girls is not the same as being stalked by an age-old enemy gang, whom I hadn't fronted since the start of this year. 

A loud, piercing sound of the bell alarmed me as I finally looked away from the screen. See, when you are secretly being watched, and the stalker randomly decides to email you a threat, your reflexes work up and you react to, well, every small thing, like it's a menace. 

"Heeseung!" I jumped up from my seat. There. Another example on reflexes. 

"Hey, what's wrong?" Sunghoon questioned, noticing my flinch.