Part 2He Ruined the Girl Who Saved Him

Neither Christopher nor I had parents, so as we grew closer, my grandmother became his family, too.

His grades were terrible, but Grandma saw his talent for music. During our senior year of high school, she used her meager savings to sign him up for classical vocal training.

Christopher stared at the expensive receipt for a long time. Suddenly, he fell to his knees and bowed his head to the floor before Grandma.

"Grandma, I'll work harder than anyone," he swore, his voice thick with tears. "I won't let you down. And I won't let Anna down."

Christopher kept his word. He passed his auditions and got into a top-tier music conservatory. We moved to the same city for college, just as we had planned.

On our first day of university, the breeze was gentle and the sky was a perfect, clear blue. The future we had promised each other was finally within reach, and everything felt full of hope.

But life has a way of tearing down beautiful things.

The insurance payout from my parents' accident had already been drained by our tuition and living expenses. Grandma, who had worked herself to the bone to support us, suddenly collapsed.

Lying in her hospital bed, she wept silently. She wasn't crying because of the agonizing pain of her illness, but because the tuition money we had saved for the next semester had to be spent on her medical bills.

I didn't tell Christopher any of this.

He had started his musical training late, and the conservatory was packed with prodigies. He spent day and night practicing in the studios, barely having time to sleep, let alone worry about money.

So, I skipped every class I could. I ran myself ragged working multiple part-time jobs to pay for Grandma's treatments and our daily expenses.

Under the weight of it all, I was sleeping barely four hours a night, yet the tuition deadline was fast approaching, and my bank account was still nearly empty.

That was when an agency offered me a high-paying job as a waitress at an exclusive, private members-only lounge. They promised I could make enough money in just three days.

Despite the bad feeling in my gut, I looked at my bank balance and took the job.

I was assigned to a VIP room. The guests were heavily intoxicated, and as I bent down to clear the table, one of them slid his hand up my thigh.

Panicking, I reacted on instinct and slapped him across the face.

The guest flew into a rage and summoned the manager. The manager bowed, apologized profusely, and dragged me out into the hallway.

The moment the door closed, the manager slapped me back, twice as hard.

"What, a little touch is going to kill you?" he hissed. "You're supposed to be a college student, and you don't even know how the world works!"

The promised wages were gone. I sat in a twenty-four-hour convenience store all night, staring blankly at the streetlights.

When I finally turned my phone back on, a barrage of missed calls and messages flooded the screen. Most were from Christopher, but some were from classmates.

A dark dread settled in my chest. I tapped open a link sent by a classmate.

It was a post on our university's anonymous forum: Is the department sweetheart selling her body for quick cash?

Attached was a photo of me standing in the hallway outside the VIP lounge, my cheek bruised, being humiliated by the manager.

The comments below were ruthless.

No wonder she's always skipping class. I guess this is what she’s actually doing.

Isn’t she deaf in one ear? Rich guys really aren’t picky these days.

With a face like that, who cares? I bet she's got some great skills in bed.

Her boyfriend is so handsome, yet he's getting cheated on by a gold-digger. Sucks to be him.

The malice suffocated me.

Christopher called again, but I couldn't bring myself to answer. I didn't have the courage to face his questions, his suspicion, or his disappointment.

But he found me anyway.

He ran to the convenience store, threw his arms around me, and held me tightly against his chest. "I believe you," he whispered over and over.

He gently touched the faint red mark on my cheek, his eyes filled with pure anguish. "Does it hurt?"

The dam broke. All the exhaustion, humiliation, and terror I had bottled up over the past weeks poured out of me, and I sobbed uncontrollably into his shoulder.

I told him everything.

That night, Christopher tracked down the lounge manager in a dark alley with no security cameras and beat him to a pulp. Then, he wrote a detailed post explaining the truth and uploaded it to the school forum.

But the post was deleted within five minutes.

An ant cannot bring down a mountain. There were powerful people involved, people we couldn't afford to anger.

So, Christopher posted a new thread. It contained only one sentence.

I knew her long before the whispers started.

He held my hand tightly. The poverty and violence of our youth had never managed to break his spirit, but in that moment, he cried. His warm tears fell onto my hand, burning straight through to my heart.

"Anna," he promised, his voice thick with emotion. "I will build a world for you where no one will ever dare to hurt you again."

By this point, the host's eyes were glistening with tears, and the live chat was overflowing with sympathy.

Oh my god, this is heartbreaking.

Please, let them have a happy ending. Why is fate so cruel to them?