Sweet CEO’s First Love - Chapter 61

“Ring!” Tone squeaked, looking over into the startlingly hostile, but rich eyes of the Prince of Thailand.

Ring was glowering at him.

The proud, pompous man who never had time to do anything. Anything, except looking down at the world, and apparently judging even someone’s groan. The man behind the voice he wished he could stop replaying in his dreams. The voice that he had tried not to think about for the past year of his life.

Ring scoffed. “Why are you swearing at me?”

“You’re the one who got in the elevator, despite me already being on it. Are you blind?” Ring’s voice echoed in the small steel box, almost painfully so.

Tone blinked at him stupidly before picking up his deserted and scattered marbles, and instead schooled his face into what he hoped was a mask of indifference.

He scoffed, jutting his chin out, effectively angling his face, issuing a challenge at Ring.

“Maybe it might surprise you to hear this Ring. But the whole world doesn’t revolve around you.Some people don’t care if you are around or not.” Tone paused, waiting for that to sink in.

“Some people have a life and better things to do. You do know that, don’t you? Some people don’t feel like they need to constantly check the world around them to see what a pompous idiot with about as much personality as a tree is doing today.”

Ring fumed, his eyes flashing with disdain, and he licked his lips with aggravation and anger. Tone met him glare for glare. Hoping Ring couldn’t see through his bluff, see the way he was sweating now, or that his hands nervously twitched.

Ring glower faded to a sneer. The atmosphere in the elevator was as cold and as desolate as the Antarctic.

“Oh really, you sure? You sure you don’t give a lick if I exist in your circle?” He sneered, bursting into clearly fake laughter.

“Sure, says the boy who looks like a little walking copycat of me day after day. Aren’t you just a crazy, stinted fanboy! Haven’t you always been? What? Did you see the tabloid news and are crushed because you’re a little delulu fanboy dreams will never come true? Did the tabloids upset your saesang heart…Is masturbating so bad, or do you have to follow me around for the rest of my life just to make you feel satisfied?”

Tone stared at the slightly taller boy, shocked.

Ring stepped closer, egging him on.

Tone slinked back a step, reacting on impulse to Ring’s assertive behavior.

‘You can’t let him win.’

Tone’s eyes glinted, and he stepped forward. The two of their faces were inches away from each other. Tone glanced down slightly, his eyes catching the movements of Ring’s hands clenching tightly. Ring’s eyes flashed with a resentful, seething heat, and Tone could tell that the fists were not an intentional choice. Rather, something he was doing, naturally, as a reaction to the abrasive tension in the room.

He scoffed, a brief glint of a smirk playing across his plump red lips.

“You think I am your fanboy?”

“You think I would want to masturbate to your nasty face every day… let alone ever?”

“Are you broken?”

“Are you that needy and demanding for attention that you don’t think for half a second that maybe some people in the world just don’t care about you.”

Ring growled.

“Take that back.” He reached out and grabbed the collar of Tone’s shirt.

“No. Why should I? Why should I stop insulting someone who deserves it?” Tone sneered.

“What kind of image do you have of your fans, Ring?”

“I know your fans believe you are a nice person, if a bit cold and uncaring sometimes.”

“Should I tell them, should there be a real scandal today?”

“Real Ring so full of himself accuses innocent bystanders of being a pervert stalker fan.”

“Should I scream for help, maybe make a scene that you will have no way to get out of without all those tabloids saying something not so nice about you? See, I think that is much more clickbaity and much better than the original title page.”

“Are you so full of yourself that you think your fans must get off on images of you or from just standing in your presence?”

“Actually, to be honest, I wouldn’t be too worried about me. I am your anti-fan. I don’t want to be caught dead in public with you anywhere.”

Ring laughed hollowly. “Oh, how nice? I have never met any of my anti-fans in person before. Do you slander me online? Do you egg my vehicle? Are you one of the ones who are vandalizing my billboards. Do you boycott everything I do? Because you don’t seem to have a ban on items I endorse.”

“A bit of a hypocrite, aren’t you?”

“Acting like an exact replica of me, but then saying you are an anti-fan. You mimic my everyday life, and I am supposed to believe you are an anti?”

Ring Tsked.

“Pick a better lie next time.”

The elevator dinged, and Ring stepped back immediately in reaction to the sound.

He schooled his face into the pleasant mask he wore every time someone took a picture of him outside.

His face instantly fell into that familiar mask easily and Tone stared, intrigued by the instant change. Ring schooled it into the perfectly presentable Dark Prince he was known to be all the time seamlessly, now his stage persona.

“What? Pick a better lie…? Don’t pretend to be something I am not?”

“You are one to talk. You just played a whole one-eighty there… Come on Ring, do you only have a backbone when the doors are closed?” Tone sneered.

“Oh, and I am not faking it. I just happen to not care one lick about you at all, I don’t even notice when my mom buys something you wear or have. It goes by unnoticed. Because to me, you are nothing, not a superstar. The famous guy who everyone wants to emulate. The man everyone wants to be.”

“No.” Tone paused staring in disbelief, ‘The Idea that this is what that idiot had come up with. Irked him beyond measure.’

“To me, you are just a bully.” he snapped, venting out his frustration on Ring.

Ring bristled at the thrown down challenge, but didn’t turn around.

Instead, he walked out of the elevator, across the foyer and out the doors. The big crowd of reporters that the building doorman had kept from entering inside all crowded around him instantly. His world zoning in on the cameras in his face, till it seemed he had erased Tone’s existence from his mind completely.

Tone watched as Ring pushed through the mass of bodies quickly. One of his managers and the two big burly bodyguards attached themselves to him the moment he left the building.

After some squabbling with the crowd, and some very abundant shoo-ing from the bodyguards for the reporters to move. The girl finally shut the door of the black-tinted window van, then walked around the large body of it. Then hopped into the front of the vehicle before starting it up and pulling it away.

Tone shook his head.

‘God, why did he have to run into him?’

‘What was his fate lately that every time he wanted to not see the boy who almost ruined his life a year ago.’

‘That he would do exactly that…’

‘run into him….’

‘Every time since that damn bar…’

‘Everytime!’

Tone waited a moment inside the building, waiting for the reporters to disperse so he wouldn’t be cornered and asked questions as someone who was a fellow resident of the building.

He had that happen once, where someone saw what he was wearing and what building he was coming out of, then just assumed. Assumed that he must know something about Ring. God, in the seething mood he was in, he did not need that today. He ran his hands through his hair with a sigh.

“Why me, it’s always me! What did I do in a past life on this earth to deserve this!” He got into his car and slammed the door unhappily before sitting there for a moment. He leaned back and clicked his phone on so that he could use it.

*ISOaTone~ Can be there to study after first class. I actually have to miss my first class since my mom signed me up for music lessons so that I can learn music, then I can learn guitar. She said I have to meet with the people doing it today, or else I will have to wait all month as this is the only time free in their busy schedule.

…

I wish I could come. If you have it after the first class, I can do it. Just, I have to go do something after economics later today too.

…

If you see me slink out of the room early, don’t be too upset.

Oh, and grab the last notes for me too.

*Heartbeats4U* Okay… jeez you are leaving school so much you sure you will pass?

*ISOaTone~ I will pass better than you will. You miss so many economic classes Thursday evening. I am pretty sure you are failing this semester and next semesters lessons already.

*Heartbeats4U* hahaha, shhh, it’s not my fault. I blame it on my work schedule.

*ISOaTone~ It’s an internship, you are not even getting full pay.

You skip for more time with your man.

*Heartbeats4U* I am so getting paid.

…

I can go without seeing Saint for a day.

*ISOaTone~ pfftt, sure.

~HighHopes~ Oh, hey Tone, did you say you are going to have to leave economics early to go do something?

*ISOaTone~ Yeah, I have to go pick up my mom from work; she said she has something she needs to tell me.

~HighHopes~ Are you still able to make it to the H.M>L official launch party tonight then? The one to commemorate and announce the two new members to the public?

*ISOaTone~ Yeah, it should be all good. I told my mom that we all promised to go already since we know how nervous you both must be.

~HighHopes~ Okay, catch you in class then.

*ISOaTone~ *thumbs up* ????

Ring leaned back with a satisfied sigh, then started the engine.

‘Today was going to be fine, he just had to forget about this encounter. Life was going to start looking up for him. He just had to remember to stay as far away from Ring as possible.’

‘Yeah, as far away from Ring. That’s all.’

Tone turned the steering wheel and pulled out of the parking lot and onto the road.

“Just avoid that jerk, it’s that simple,” he muttered unhappily to himself.