I encountered the school hunk in a remote and dirty alley in the rain.

The dream lover of almost every girl at our school, Landon Wood, was lying there with wounds all over his body.

I took out my cell phone and took pictures of his miserable presence. There was a Landon Club in the school. As far as I knew, the female members in it were very keen on collecting everything about Landon.

Such a special photo could fetch a lot of money, I supposed.

I carefully avoided his head and was about to continue walking home, but he grabbed the corner of my trousers.

I looked down at the person on the ground. Landon opened his eyes with great effort and asked for my help in a weak and hoarse voice, "Please, help me..."

I shook my feet, but he didn't let go of my trousers.

He coughed violently and continued saying with red eyes, "I will pay you."

I sighed. Although I loved money, I also hated being involved in trouble. He was obviously in a big trouble since he appeared here out of nowhere and looked like he had just been in an awful fight.

"I'll pay you five thousand dollars to let me stay at your house for a few days," he said.

I said, "Okay, but I don't want to give you a hand. You have to stand up and walk by yourself."

Well, five thousand dollars had convinced me to save this trouble.

I stuffed the smelling Landon into the bathroom, ordered him to wash himself, and prepared some medicine for his wounds.

Landon took more than half an hour to wash, which would make my water bill this month extremely high, so I urged him to hurry up.

Then, I heard him stammer, "Do I have any clothes?"

I searched through my closet but couldn't find any suitable clothes for him, so I could only bring him pink pajamas with cute bears and hearts.

He reluctantly looked at the clothes. "I would rather die than wear it."

"Well, you can leave. It's five thousand dollars for 72 hours. Since you have spent two precise hours of mine, you should pay me two hundred dollars," I said.

He protested, "Shouldn't it be one hundred and thirty-eight dollars?"

"Plus the water bill," I said.

He was speechless in the toilet for a while.

Then, the door opened, and Landon in the cute pajamas walked out. Flushing, he lowered his head to avoid looking at my teasing smile.

The loose pajamas now seemed very short and tight on him, adding to a sense of hilarity.

I took the opportunity to take out my phone and take a few more pictures of him, thinking I could sell them for a good price.

He frowned at me. "Why are you taking pictures of me?"

I threw the medicine at him and changed the subject. "I won't charge you for the medicine."

Then, I ran to the next door and knocked.

The door opened, and I saw Isaac Collins' handsome face that always looked aloof. Measuring his figure with my eyes, I found his body was similar to Landon's.

So, I said, "Nerd, give me one of your T-shirts and pants."

Isaac frowned and asked, "Why? Do you want to wear it?"

I ignored his weird expression and ran to his bedroom closet to get a few clothes. "It's for my tenant".

Isaac kept frowning until he saw Landon in my room, and his frown deepened.

Apparently, he regarded me as a playgirl and said, "Ruby Foster, I can't believe you are actually living with a strange man."

I was cooking in the kitchen and had no time to correct his thoughts.

Landon, who had changed his clothes, clarified our relationship with somehow weird explanations, "I'm not a strange man. I'm Ruby's classmate."

During the meal, Isaac kept trying to kick Landon out of my house, but Landon refuted him that he couldn't breach the contract between him and me.

Isaac was so angry that he took the only meat dish on the table back to his house, leaving Landon and I helplessly staring at the salads on the table.

Since then, Landon had temporarily lived in my rental house. When we went to school during the day, we tacitly pretended to be strangers. After school, he was responsible for sweeping the floor and washing dishes.

But three days later, neither did he leave nor did he give me any money.

The moment I was about to call the police, Landon hugged me around the waist and begged me, "I swear I will pay you. Please don't kick me out."

I looked at him sideways and said, "You don't have any money on you, do you?" He couldn't afford his underwear.

"I can earn it easily. Just wait for me for a couple of days!" he said.

Considering the suspicion in my eyes, he gritted his teeth and said, "If I lie to you, you can sell my nude photos. I know you have a bunch of weird photos of me on your phone."

Thinking of this, I shunned my eyes in guilt that he didn't know that I had made a small profit from that pile of photos.

I thought Landon would make money by gambling or by selling his body in a nightclub.

But when I saw him squatting at the door of a restaurant washing dishes, I knew my mind had been poisoned by the novels I read.

When I rode my bike towards him, he was sticking his butt out to rinse the plates.

I took a photo deftly and gave him a gentle kick in the ass.

He looked back at me in confusion. To be honest, his silly look was quite adorable.

I asked him, "How many dishes do you have to wash to earn the five thousand dollars?"

He seemed very humiliated with a blushed face and ignored me.

I shook my head and said, "Your highness, don't be so stubborn and go home so that you won't suffer such a pain in the live-as-an-ordinary-person game."

I knew Landon came from a rich family, so it's particularly imperceptible for me to understand why he made things difficult for himself.

However, Landon slammed the plate and shouted at me with tears, "Shut up! I'm not playing any games!"

He lowered his head and clenched his hands, saying in a low and hoarse voice, "I don't have home anymore."

However, the restaurant owner, Tom Burton, rushed to us in rage and pointed at the broken plate on the ground. "You have to pay fifty dollars for this! I'll take it from your wage!"

Landon immediately protested, "But I only get ten cents for washing a dish!"

Tom spat and patted his belly. "I bought them from an antique shop! Don't even think about leaving unless you pay!"

Immediately, I picked up a plate and threw it at him, yelling, "I bought this broken plate wholesale from the market next door for 20 cents each. How dare you blackmail him for fifty dollars?

"Let him go, or I'll tell everyone around that you are a cheat. Let's see if anyone will come to your restaurant.

"By the way, I know someone from the Market Supervision Administration. Do you have a health license? I'll tell my friend to check your restaurant three times a day!"

My threats worked. Tom apparently wanted to refute but was frustrated by my threats. Then, he gestured to us to leave and said, "Never come here again, you kids. Don't get on my never again."

I spat in his face and pointed at Landon, who was standing there in a daze. "Pay him all his wages now!"

Then, Landon sat on the back seat of my bike with his head leaning on my back, and said in a muffled voice, "Ruby, you are awesome."

"Yeah, you still need to learn a lot from me," I said perfunctorily.

The hands around my waist tightened, and I felt a little wet on my back.

His choked voice was blown by the wind. "You're the first one defending me like this."

I thought, "So, the most popular boy in our school was also a crybaby."

I mocked him in my heart, but somehow, his words made me a little sad, probably because he cried like a baby.

Although Landon didn't make any money, he still stuck to living in my house. After all, he was too shameless.

In order to ensure that he could pay back my money as soon as possible, I found him a part-time job in the bakery where I worked.

Landon said he liked this job very much. I thought it was probably because he could eat cake for free after the store closed.

After getting off work, there was a piece of chestnut cake left in the store, so I packed it up and took it to school.

When I arrived at the classroom, I saw Landon sitting by the window in a daze. I handed him the cake and said, "Here. It's your favorite chestnut cake."

To my surprise, he threw the cake at me as if he was greatly shocked. "Bitch, stop getting close to me. You're disgusting. I'll never date an ugly girl like you!"

"Piss off!" His eyes were wide open with bloodshot.

All our classmates around were whispering and laughing at me.

I slowly wiped the cake off my face and looked at him coldly.

"Landon, calm down, okay? Remember to be nice to girls." A tall and robust young man walked towards us.

I looked up at him and saw his gentle smile at me. Before he raised his hand to wipe the cream off my hair, I slapped it away and said, "Don't touch me."

He was a little stunned but soon showed me a friendly smile.

He introduced himself, "I'm Xavier Wood, Landon's younger brother. Today is my first day at this school. Nice to see you guys."

In a terrible mood, I directly went back to my apartment without even looking at him. After cleaning myself, I started to pack Landon's stuff.

After throwing his toothbrush, towel, underwear and pajamas into a plastic bag, I threw it into the trash can without mercy.

Looking at the big bag, I felt that I had been too close to Landon recently. It's actually not bad to end our relationship now.

"No, please don't throw my things away."

I looked in the direction of the voice and saw Landon holding a tattered cake box, looking at me with slightly red eyes.

Such a pitiful expression appeared on his face again, as if he was an abandoned dog of mine. I felt a little annoyed and simply turned around.

He chased after me and even got his hand squeezed by the door when stopping me closing it. He apologized eagerly, "I'm sorry, Ruby, I didn't mean to do that this morning. It's all my fault."

"I brought the cake back. Look."

Landon took out the cake, more accurately, the cake crumble, in his hand like he was presenting me the most precious gift in the world.

The cream had melted into a smudge of dark liquid, and the broken, shapeless cake base was stained with dust and sand.

The next second, he grabbed a piece of cake and stuffed it into his mouth, chewing it without hesitation.

But I did nothing but watched him coldly as he ate all the cake crumbs.

Landon begged me with tears. "I have finished eating it. Can I go in?"

My expression must have been so forbidding at that time. I said to him indifferently, "Don't forget to pay me back the five thousand dollars you owe me."

The next second, I slammed the door shut.

In the middle of the night, the rumbling sound of heavy rain woke me up. When I gradually regained consciousness, I heard someone knocking on my door.

I intended to ignore it, but as the sound was getting louder and louder, I couldn't stand it and prepared to scold whoever was going crazy at midnight. However, after opening the door, Isaac frowned at me outside.

He asked in an anxious tone, "Why did you leave your boyfriend outside?"

"Huh?" I was a little confused.

He pulled me to the stairs to show me that Landon was sleeping curled up there with a big trash bag in his arms, and his face looked abnormally flushed.

I recognized he was holding the bag of his things I threw out at noon.

Isaac touched his forehead and looked at me with some reproach. "He's having a serious fever. You should take him to the hospital as soon as possible."

At first, I wanted to clarify for myself that neither was he my boyfriend, nor did I have the responsibility to take care of him.

But seeing his painful face in fever, I quit speaking anymore and opened my phone to call a taxi.

However, in the middle of a heavily rainy night, it was almost impossible to find any taxi.

After waiting for nearly twenty minutes, no taxi showed up. As Landon's forehead became increasingly heated, I gritted my teeth and asked Isaac to help me put him on my bike.

Then, I put a raincoat on him, patted his face to see if I could wake him up, and shouted, "I'm taking you to the hospital now. Hold me tight if you don't want to fall."

Isaac was a little worried and said, "Be careful on the road." Then, he murmured in guilt, "It's a pity that I can't ride a bike..."

I nodded at him and set off carefully.

Raindrops kept hitting my face. I endured the pain and tried to open my eyes to see the road clearly. Suddenly, I felt a space above my head to shelter me from the rain.

Landon gained a little consciousness and struggled to cover my head with his raincoat. His head leaned weakly on my shoulder, and he spoke weakly with hot breath, "Ruby, it's too dangerous. Don't ride anymore."

I ignored his advice. After a while, since Landon's hands dropped again, he seemed to have fainted again.

It startled me so hard that I accelerated. Finally, I managed to take him to the hospital in the heavy rain and dragged his wet body to the emergency room.

After the nurse gave him the intravenous injection, I finally signed a breath of relief. Suddenly, I sneezed, realizing that all my clothes were still wet and stuck to my body.

"Go to my room and change your clothes." Then, I heard a clear and mellow voice from behind.

I turned around and saw a gorgeous face. He was looking at me with a smile.

It was Xavier.