3: 3

3

I looked at the fat sum swelling back up in my balance.

At noon, I treated myself to a feast in the dining hall.

The most expensive steak dinner they served.

I was right in the middle of enjoying it.

A familiar figure came and stood in front of me.

It was Stanley Dickerson, the male lead of the book.

He was cradling a glass jar in his hands, and it gave off a rotten, foul stink.

"Dawn, didn't you say you transferred all of this month's money to me?"

"Then how can you still afford steak this expensive?"

"Even the professors can't bring themselves to spend this much."

Hearing that, I had nothing to say.

The original supporting girl really was that stupid.

She gave everything to the male lead.

And in the end, what she got back wasn't a shred of gratitude, but his resentment.

A snake like this, I couldn't afford to provoke.

I looked at him coldly.

"Are you done?"

"If you're done, then get lost, and stop ruining my meal."

I thought I'd sounded plenty commanding.

The meaning was clear enough too.

But Stanley didn't leave. He just kept standing there.

I was about to shoo him off again when that two-faced tone of his came at me.

"Dawn, I know you're still angry about the time I left you behind."

"But there was nothing I could do that night. It was one in the morning, thundering and pouring rain, and Tilda's terrified of thunder. I couldn't just not go and be with her."

Every single word out of his mouth made me want to gag.

The original book did have a scene like this.

The supporting girl, to sweet-talk the male lead, took the entire month's living expenses her family had just given her and handed it all over so he could send it back home to treat his mother's illness.

She even went back to his hometown with him in person.

Worked and cooked the whole time she was there.

Kept at it until late into the night, and only then rode back to school on the back of his bike.

But even after everything she gave him.

Just because Tilda called and said she was scared of the thunder.

He dumped her right there, alone on a deserted road in the dead of night.

It poured that day too.

Lightning and thunder.

Yet even after being abandoned like that, the supporting girl stayed devoted to him.

Admired him even more, in fact.

Because she decided that meant he was loyal and true, a man who valued his bonds.

As long as she could move him, that devotion of his would one day belong to her alone.

Remembering all of that.

I just rolled my eyes.

No wonder Stanley had the nerve to act this shameless.

It was all because the supporting girl had spoiled him into it.

I said, flat out and without patience:

"Don't bother explaining any of that to me. I don't care."

But the words still didn't drive Stanley off. If anything, his eyes lit up.

He said, more certain than ever:

"Other people don't understand you, but do you think I don't?"

"The more you say you don't care, the more you actually do."

"All right, don't be angry."

"I'll stay and keep you company, and you treat me to steak too. Call it my apology for what I did last time, okay?"

"Oh, right."

He set the stinking jar down on the table.

"I also brought pickled radish from back home."

"My mom pickled this herself. I don't let just anyone eat it, you know."

"You're the only one I'm willing to share it with."

His fakeness and his shamelessness dropped my jaw clean off.

Treat him to a feast, and that counts as his apology?

His rotten, stinking pickles, that not just anyone gets to eat?

Then what kind of person does get to eat them?

Second class? Third? Fourth?

"Come on."

I was still reeling when someone gave my arm a little shake.

Stanley's voice again:

"I already apologized, and I even agreed to keep you company for steak. You're not still mad, are you? Hurry up and have them bring another steak dinner, I'm actually starving."

That killed whatever mood I had left.

Forget looking dignified. I swallowed the last of the steak in two or three bites.

Then, in a voice loud enough for the entire dining hall to hear, I roared at Stanley like a lion:

"You're a grown man. What are you doing playing the two-faced fake?"

"You want steak, go buy it yourself. Don't come to me putting on your poor little victim act!"

4: 4

4

My lung power was no joke.

For one instant the whole dining hall seemed to freeze, just a fraction of a second.

Then, all at once, every head turned toward us.

Stanley's face flushed a hot, angry red.

He glared at me with pure resentment.

"Dawn, Dawn Henson, what, what do you think you're doing?"

I said it right there, in front of everyone.

"What am I doing?"

"You're a grown man playing pitiful in front of a girl, tricking me out of my steak with a jar of stinking pickled radish. How do you even have the nerve?"

"If you want it, can't you buy it yourself?"

The chatter started up around us.

"Isn't that Stanley Dickerson, the campus heartthrob?"

"Didn't he always say he's poor but has too much backbone to ever live off a woman? So now he's turned into some kept boy?"

"Please. Big talk, and he's just a freeloader after all."

The comments kept coming, and every one of them cut deep.

Stanley looked like he wanted to shrink his head down into his neck.

Red-faced, he demanded, glaring at me with all that resentment,

"Dawn Henson, if you didn't want to treat me, fine, don't. Why humiliate me like this?"

"You did it on purpose, didn't you?"

I admitted it flat out.

"That's right. I did it on purpose."

Stanley was so wounded that tears actually spilled down his face.

"Dawn Henson, I hate you. I'll hate you for the rest of my life!"

He covered his face and ran out of the dining hall.

I hurried to remind him,

"Take your radish and pickles with you."

"Oh, and you borrow money from me every month. You owe me a hundred twenty-three thousand four hundred and five dollars now. Don't forget to pay it back."

Amid my shouting, Stanley fled as fast as he could.

The crowd around me broke up too.

But I knew perfectly well this was going to be the hottest gossip on campus for a while.

Just as I was feeling pleased with myself, thinking I'd gotten a bit of revenge for the original owner,

a few girls stepped up in front of me.

"Dawn Henson, you've really gone too far."

I looked up at the girls standing there.

Every one of them was a girl who was chasing after Stanley.

And the one in the white miniskirt was Tilda Simmons, the heroine, the love of Stanley's life.

"You know perfectly well Stanley's family is poor and he can't afford steak, that's why he came to you to treat him. How could you humiliate him in front of everyone like that?"

"Exactly. Baby Stanley is already having such a hard time, and he just wanted a bite to eat. Would it kill you to treat him? Why did you have to humiliate him?"

"How can you be so vicious to Baby Stanley?"

Faced with the whole group of them ganging up to accuse me,

I calmly asked back,

"Yeah, I did it on purpose. So what?"

The girls all froze.

None of them had expected me to answer like that.

For a moment it stuck in their throats.

It was the heroine, Tilda, who recovered fastest. She pointed at me and said,

"Dawn Henson, don't you think that's just vicious?"

"It's only one steak. Why couldn't you just treat him?"

"You know Stanley has a lot of pride. Humiliating him like this is the same as destroying him!"

I countered, perfectly calm,

"Easy for you to say. If it's so easy, why don't you treat him?"

Tilda put on her wounded look.

"I, I, I, my family doesn't give me much of an allowance. I can't afford it, or I definitely would have."

Of course she wouldn't.

All she ever did with Stanley was take. She never gave.

I looked at her and smiled. "You really feel that sorry for Stanley?"

"Funny, though. The way I remember it, for your last birthday you had him buy you a laptop."

"Oh, and last month, last month when you wanted a new bag, you had Stanley pay for it too, didn't you?"

"And last week, when you wanted to take your roommates out for karaoke, Stanley got stuck with the tab in the end, didn't he?"