My Romance Life System-Chapter 58: Aftermath

Nina just stared at me, her face a mess of disbelief and disgust. "A moment? They’re beating the crap out of her, Kofi! There is no ’moment’!"

She ripped her arm out of my grip. The look she gave me was worse than Tyler’s punch. It was a look of pure, cutting disappointment.

"I can’t believe you," she whispered, her voice shaking. "I thought you were different."

And then she was gone. She didn’t run into the fight. She just turned and ran the other way, down the hall, away from the crowd, away from the girl on the floor. Away from me.

I stood there, my hand still half-raised in the air where her arm used to be. The whispers of the crowd buzzed around me, but they felt a million miles away. All I could hear was her voice replaying in my head. ’I thought you were different.’

’Yeah, me too,’ I thought, a bitter, hollow feeling settling in my gut.

I finally dropped my hand and looked back at the scene. The crowd had pushed in a little closer now, a tight circle of ghouls with their phones out. I could see the girl on the floor clearly. Her lip was split, a trickle of blood running down her chin. One of the girls had her by the hair, yanking her head back while she screamed something I couldn’t make out.

Another girl stood a few feet away, a bored look on her face as she held her phone up high, getting a perfect angle of the whole thing. Her thumb was steady. She wasn’t just filming; she was documenting. Creating evidence.

My first instinct, the one I’d been fighting down, was to just charge in there, consequences be damned. To just start swinging.

But the colder, quieter part of my brain, the part that had gotten me through my entire life, took over. It saw the whole scene not as a fight, but as a setup. The crowd. The phones. The way the main bully was yelling, performing for the cameras.

This wasn’t just a beating. It was a show. And they wanted an audience. They wanted a reaction. Rushing in would just make me part of their stupid, ugly play. It wouldn’t save the girl on the floor, it would just give them another target and more footage.

I felt sick. I felt like a coward. But my gut, the same one that told me to push Nina out of the way of that car, was screaming at me that this was a different kind of danger. One you couldn’t just run at.

I had seen enough. Standing here, being another pair of eyes in the crowd, wasn’t helping anyone. fɾeewebnoveℓ.co๓

I took a slow breath, my hands balling into fists inside my pockets. Then, I turned my back on the whole damn thing.

I started walking away, down the empty stretch of hallway Nina had just disappeared down. The sounds of the yelling and the sick, excited whispers of the crowd faded behind me with every step.

My mind was racing, replaying what I’d seen. The blood. The bored look on the girl’s face as she filmed. The way no one was doing a damn thing.

This was bad, but it had nothing to do with me, such is life.

I didn’t go after her.

What was I even going to say? ’Sorry I acted like a coward, but I had a good reason I can’t explain’? Yeah, that would go over great.

Her words just kept replaying in my head.

I pushed open the heavy doors and walked outside, the sudden sunlight making me squint. The main courtyard was still packed with people, so I turned and walked along the side of the building until I found an empty bench tucked away near the sports fields.

It was quiet here. I could still hear the distant noise of the school, but it was just a low hum. I sat down and just stared at the empty soccer field for a minute.

I felt like crap. Seeing Nina look at me like that, with so much disappointment... it was awful. But a part of me saw the whole thing as a setup, still thought I’d made the right call. It was a messed up feeling, being right and feeling wrong at the same time.

I finally pulled my lunch out of my bag. It was just a sandwich. I unwrapped it and just looked at it. I wasn’t really hungry anymore, but I figured I should eat something.

I took a bite and yeah, It tasted like nothing.

After a few minutes of just sitting there, I pulled out my phone and started scrolling. It was a reflex, something to do with my hands when my brain was too loud. I wasn’t even seeing the videos, just flicking my thumb up, over and over.

That’s when I saw her.

She came out of the same side door I had, her movements slow and shaky. It was the girl from the floor. She was alone now, the crowd and the bullies gone.

She was still crying, these quiet, hiccupping sobs that she was trying to stifle with the back of her hand. Her lip was swollen and definitely bleeding, and her face was already starting to bruise. She was limping, favoring her left leg as she made her way over to the grass, away from everyone.

I just watched her, my sandwich forgotten in my hand. This was the aftermath. This was what was left when all the ghouls with their phones got bored and moved on.

She eventually just sank down onto the grass, pulling her knees to her chest. Her shoulders shaking.

My stomach felt sick. I already knew what was happening. It’s always the same.

I pulled out my phone, my thumb hesitating for a second over the group chat icon. I didn’t want to look, but I had to. I had to see how bad it was.

I tapped it open.

And there it was. My feed was a wall of it. Video after video, all of the same thing. Different angles. Some were blurry, some were way too clear. You could hear the main girl yelling, the sound of a slap, the crowd laughing.

Underneath each video, the comments were a total dumpster fire.

"lol she totally deserved it," one said.

"what did she do to piss them off??"

Someone else had just posted a long line of skull emojis. A few people were trying to say it was messed up, that someone should have helped, but they were just getting drowned out by people calling them soft.

I looked up from the screen, back at the real girl on the grass.

She wasn’t a video. She wasn’t a bunch of skull emojis or a hot take. She was just a person, crying by herself after getting kicked in front of the whole school.

And everyone else was just watching the replay. Sharing it. Making jokes.

This whole thing was so screwed up. Life was so damn unfair. You try to just exist, to get through the day, and then something like this happens. Your worst, most humiliating moment gets turned into content for everyone else to consume.

This is why I stayed invisible for so long. This is what I was trying to avoid. Becoming someone’s entertainment.

The sourc𝗲 of this content is fre(e)novelkiss