Chapter 23
Chapter 23
He could only emit a dark, gloomy aura at that terrible word that had suddenly dropped.
“Ha… friends.”
Unbelievable.
The man rolled the word around in his mouth a few times, then finally let out a hollow laugh. Sweet Milana. Cruel Milana. If she couldn’t accept his feelings, it would’ve been better if she’d just thrown out cold, harsh words. Instead, she tossed him “friends” like charity. He let a curse slip.
“Fu…”
Milana had been scraping together every bit of courage she had, trying to ask why he hated her. She was stunned. His physical pain had vanished. He’d seemed so much brighter. She had hoped maybe they could go back to the way things were. That hope shattered completely. His mouth twisted up at one corner, sneering, like he was mocking her. ‘You? My friend?’ She couldn’t say anything more.
“Milana, friends don’t have s*x.”
A declaration, delivered low. And Milana, so unlike her usual self, snapped back without thinking. It felt like all the friendship they’d built was crumbling to dust in an instant.
“Th-That was s*x for treatment!”
She really, truly didn’t want to lose Bova.
Wow.
“What did you say…?”
Vladimir ground his teeth.
He’d been smacked in the back of the head plenty of times during brutal training. But he could swear he’d never felt pain like this. The shock was so great his brain went numb for a moment. Sure, he’d used Milana’s guilt and pity to get here. But when the truth came spilling out of her mouth, that the whole thing was just for that, he felt the ground collapse under him.
And on top of it all, her cocoa-brown eyes were glistening with tears, looking up at him full of desperate hope. A truly aching gaze. Her small hand crept forward, hesitating, and gently covered his, which had gone stiff as stone on the table.
“You don’t want to stay friends with me? Am I asking for too much?”
Vladimir felt the slender fingers holding his hand tremble. He heard the moisture gathering in her words.
He had always thought to himself: if Milana, this lovely person, ever asked him for something, he’d never be able to refuse.
It pained him, how Milana could never bring herself to ask him for anything, not even the smallest things. She had a willing doormat right next to her, but she never used him. She just struggled on her own. So he always had to help from behind the scenes. And whenever she did manage to work up the nerve to ask him something, he never once refused.
“Vladimir, I liked you. I still do, even knowing who you are. Please don’t throw me away.”
With the happiest heart.
‘Who’s throwing who away right now? Who’s the one getting beaten to a pulp with words…’
But this was not what he’d expected at all.
Milana had translated his love into something shocking: “throwing away a friendship.” In front of her, he was at a complete loss for words.
“Vladi… mir?”
Her anxious voice wavered thin in the air. The man’s entire demeanor shifted. He brushed the bread crumbs off his hands, slowly folded his arms, leaned back diagonally against the chair, and crossed his legs. His face had suddenly hardened into that of a proper scumbag. He looked at the ceiling, then at the table, deep in thought. A menacing aura rippled behind him, almost like bloodlust.
And Milana, who had gotten her hopes up seeing his unusually happy expression earlier, who had gathered her courage only to hear him say they weren’t friends, couldn’t take it anymore. The hurt swelled up. She dropped her head and pressed her nose to the table.
If you hated me this much, why were you so good to me…
The two of them, completely misunderstanding each other, sat frozen in arctic cold.
“Friends. Fine.”
Vladimir spoke first. His words dripped with blatant sarcasm.
“You’re begging me this hard. How could I say no?”
“Why are you talking like that.”
“But Milana.”
Vladimir tilted his head and spoke.
“So according to what you just said, friends can have s*x, right? And with this magic side effect, it looks like I’ll be in pain regularly. So we’ll have to do it often. Whenever I need it?”
The man had completely lost any pretense of gentleness. The rosy future he’d believed was within reach had vanished like a bubble. What settled over his fine face was a coldness like a subzero blizzard.
“Milana, you really treasure your friends. So you can do that for me, right? Right?”
S*x? Whenever he wants?
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