Liar and Liar - Chapter 4

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 4

Danielle Ryu slowly answered the phone after checking the caller ID on her phone screen.

[Mom, what’s up?]

-[Oh, Danielle. You’re not in class right now, are you? I thought it was lunch time so I called.]

[Yeah. It is lunch time.]

Danielle Ryu bit her lower lip as her gaze wavered up and down.

In this harsh battlefield where she had no allies, her family’s voice easily burst something inside Danielle’s heart.

At some point, Danielle never shared her troubles with her mom, but rarely her mouth moved on its own.

[Mom, today I…]

-[Danielle.]

Their voices overlapped at the same time, and Danielle rubbed around her eyes with one hand.

-[Oh, what about today?]

[No. Mom, you go first.]

She could feel her mom’s hesitation in the brief silence, but that was only momentary.

-[…It would be better to say this face to face… Eunho was dropped from the clinical trial he was supposed to enter this time.]

Danielle tilted her head back slightly and squeezed her eyes shut.

[But you said it was certain last time.]

-[Mom doesn’t know what’s going on either… So, that’s why, Danielle.]

Danielle had no idea why her mom was calling her. However, another disaster that fell upon Danielle once again easily exceeded her imagination.

-[I heard that at that school you attend, Elmir Westlake, there’s a nephew of the director of Providence Hospital here. And he’s in the same Upper School as you.]

Danielle felt the blood drain from her face.

[…So? Don’t tell me you want me to go ask him for a favor?]

-[You’re schoolmates, so if he knows the situation, he might help out a little-]

Schoolmates?

Danielle almost screamed. What ‘schoolmates’ does a full scholarship student at a private school have?

These kids are all rich with overflowing money, so they don’t even treat scholarship students who attend school with their donation money as human beings. I’m not even human here.

Her mom, who mistook Danielle’s silence as a green light, delivered the final blow.

-[His name is Frederick Bastia, do you happen to know him, Danielle?]

S**t.

Danielle silently swallowed her curse.

-[Aren’t you close with him…? Still, try to find an opportunity to bring it up. It’s not even a difficult favor for him, so he’ll do it.]

When has mom ever met Frederick Bastia?

Danielle’s red-rimmed eyes dried up without moisture, taking on a different atmosphere. Her voice had also become chillingly low.

[He’s a psychopath.]

-[Huh, …what?]

Her mom Hyeju’s confusion was clearly transmitted through the phone.

[He’ll help, sure. But then later he’ll take photos of Eunho and us crying and hold a photo exhibition at Getty under his own name. Do you want to see that, Mom?]

Naturally, Hyeju was speechless and couldn’t say anything.

After a moment of silence, Hyeju asked hesitantly.

-[Danielle, is something wrong?]

Danielle raised one hand and irritably tousled her hair.

[No, nothing. My lunch break isn’t that long, I have to go now.]

-[Okay. Yes, hurry and eat lunch.]

As soon as the call ended, Danielle forcefully threw her phone into the sink that contained binders.

“Hah…”

She pressed both hands against her eyes. Though she had said whatever came to mind, Danielle knew very well that reality wasn’t like that. Her younger brother’s situation was a matter of life and death.

Regardless of whether he would actually help, Danielle had no choice but to ask Frederick Bastia about her brother’s situation.

However, Danielle felt wronged.

‘Why does it have to be Frederick Bastia, why?’

Ironically, reason easily derived the answer.

Frederick Bastia was special even at Elmir Westlake, which was full of natural-born diamond spoons and students who lived for their own arrogance.

His father was the CEO of a major financial management company and the owner of the MLB’s Los Angeles baseball team, LA Sharks.

Thanks to that, Bastia was also called the team owner at school, half-seriously, half-jokingly.

Frederick Bastia, who didn’t formally belong to any sports team himself but hung out with the captains and star players of successful sports teams from the football team to the basketball team to the lacrosse team, was more than a superstar athlete.

Being such a Frederick Bastia, if you dug into his family tree even a little, having a major hospital director was naturally expected.

‘So annoying…’

Understanding it intellectually and accepting it emotionally were different matters.

She had really endured all kinds of humiliation from morning until now. Despite experiencing all sorts of things, what hurt Danielle’s heart the most in the end was having to ask ‘Frederick Bastia’ about her brother’s situation.

Seven years in total.

Danielle had seen Frederick for seven years, starting from Lower School, through Middle School, and into Upper School. Her dislike of him wasn’t something that started yesterday.

“…”

“You worked so hard to become a research intern. Aren’t you upset?”

‘I really hate him…’

And at this moment, Danielle hated Frederick Bastia a little bit more. Exactly as much as that pathetic consolation he had casually offered.

* * *

Before history class started, the classroom was chaotic without the teacher present. Danielle sat in her seat, resting her chin on her hand and staring down at her book.

“Try-elle.”

Without warning, someone called out to Danielle.

Drawn by the voice, Danielle, who had been staring at her book, slowly raised her head.

The male student sitting in the front seat, Cove, had turned around and was looking down at Danielle. The first thing that caught her eye was his reddish-tinged blonde hair. Next were his brown eyes.

The corners of his mouth were curled up. Naturally, to Danielle’s eyes, it just looked like mockery.

“Just let me borrow your glasses for a moment. Just for a moment.”

Danielle’s brow furrowed slightly. Setting aside his annoying tone, the content was strange.

“Did you mean glasses cleaner?”

In the chaotic atmosphere, Cove’s voice easily drew attention. Joshua, sitting by the window, was covering his mouth with his hand, trying to hold back laughter.

But you don’t even wear glasses?

Danielle was about to say that while looking at Cove’s face, but Cove’s words came faster.

“No, glasses.”

What are you talking about? Danielle unconsciously spun the mechanical pencil in her hand and glared at Cove with narrowed eyes.

Cove Blanton. Lacrosse team captain. One of the power players at Elmir Westlake who sat at the same central cafeteria table as Frederick.

But for Danielle, Cove Blanton’s most important characteristic was something else.

‘Why is a racist talking to me?’

And what’s with this sudden glasses nonsense?

In the completely incomprehensible context, Danielle tried to give Cove a clear answer.

With some wrapping around the main point of telling him to stop talking nonsense and get lost-

No. Way.

“Sorry I’m a bit late. Let’s start class.”

However, because the teacher came in, the timing to respond passed. Joshua and Cove, who had been wearing some inexplicable smile that might have been mockery, soon turned back around.

All that remained was an unpleasant feeling.

Danielle’s daily life wasn’t originally this chaotic. It was a quiet daily life where she was thoroughly isolated from regular students who paid both tuition and donations, and she just silently did what she had to do.

But why on earth.

“Hey, Try-elle. Have some coffee.”

Danielle, who was walking down the hallway, was forced to stop due to a takeout coffee cup that suddenly approached close enough to almost touch her mouth. The person holding the cup was Joshua, the swim team captain.

Danielle immediately leaned her upper body back. Hot steam was rising from the coffee.

“No thanks-“

“Don’t be like that. At least consider my sincerity. Hmm?”

Did they all eat crazy mushroom soup together or something? Why are they acting like this?

“Logically, if you were me, would you drink it? It’s too out of the blue.”

“Huh, we’ve known each other for how many years. What’s so serious about just one cup of coffee.”

Joshua shrugged his shoulders. Naturally, it was something that wouldn’t work on Danielle at all.

Your inner thoughts seem darker than that black americano in your cup.

Though he had quieted down since entering high school, from Lower School through Middle School he had been so troublesome with his pranks that his parents were summoned almost every month.

“I don’t know what scheme you’re plotting, but if you’re going to bring up how long we’ve known each other, can’t you just tell me straight what’s going on?”

“Scheme? What scheme. There’s no way that’s the case, haha.”

He flipped his platinum hair that had taken on a pale green tint from the pool water and laughed irritatingly.

To a stranger, it would have been a pretty smile that could make one’s face flush, but Danielle just found it unpleasant.

Making others look like fools while laughing cheerfully by himself was Joshua Roder’s specialty.

“Then I’ll pass on the coffee too.”

Just then, two other male students sitting at Frederick’s table suddenly butted into Joshua and Danielle’s conversation.

“What’s this, Josh? Already making moves on Try-elle?”

Danielle looked back and forth with a displeased gaze at Cove, the lacrosse team captain, and Mateo, the football team captain and quarterback who had approached silently.

The gazes of three male students she had never even thought of getting involved with were all directed at Danielle.

Seven years since Lower School. This was the first time such a situation had occurred.

‘What the hell?’

To be precise, the word “making moves” was the problem. What kind of novel harassment was this supposed to be?

“Making moves. Well, you could say that.”

“You’re just answering carelessly again, right? No matter what, there’s no way you’d have those kinds of thoughts about Try-elle.”

In the brief moment while Cove and Joshua were talking, Danielle quietly slipped away to the side.

It was a moment where her years of nerd life’s mastered skill of killing her presence shone. She had instantly ditched even the sports team captains.

“What? She was just here. Where did she go?”

Due to Danielle disappearing in the blink of an eye, only the sports team captains, who would be hurt to be called second in athletic ability, were left standing there with blank faces.

* * *

‘I’m tired…’

With so much that had happened, there were many things she needed to do right away. However, instead of hurrying her steps, Danielle pressed her fingers firmly against her temples due to the overwhelming fatigue.

‘Why is everything going crazy?’

She could sense there was some scheme, but she couldn’t grasp at all what purpose the Center Table Boys had for poking at her in this incomprehensible way.

Just as she let out a long sigh, Danielle’s gaze was drawn to the commotion coming from the 1st Floor Lounge.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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