Chapter 194: A DEAL.

Chapter 194: 194: A DEAL.

"You monster..." Finn muttered in contempt as he slowly looked up to meet Rayder’s gaze. "What else do you want from me...? Haven’t you had enough...?"

But Rayder smiled as their eyes met. He seemed pleased as he said, "Oh, you look feisty. I like that..." He leaned down, holding Finn’s chin between his fingers. "But that’s certainly not going to help you in this situation." He smiled.

Finn glared at him as he demanded, "What do you want from me, you... you..." His voice faltered with anger, but he quickly continued, "You monster! You killed him... You were the one who killed him, so why are you pushing the accusations onto me? Why are you even doing this?" he demanded.

Rayder simply smiled. "Oh, you do know a lot... That’s not so good." He sighed, straightening up and folding his arms across his chest. "But since I’m generous, I’ll let you live..." He smiled as Finn continued glaring at him.

Rayder sighed and paced around in front of him. "But that will certainly be under one condition..." He smirked. "Do you want to guess what it is, or should I just tell you?"

Finn stared at him without a word. The sheer amount of hatred on his face was impossible to miss. If he could, he would have killed Rayder right there.

Rayder smiled. "That wasn’t the happy face I was expecting, but I’ll go on anyway." He continued, seemingly unbothered by Finn’s reaction.

"Let’s keep it simple. All you have to do is take the full blame, cooperate, and accept everything. Do that, and you’ll survive."

He smiled as he added, "You’ll be able to end your miserable stay in this school and leave with some rewards. A great deal of rewards, in fact. How does that sound?"

Finn stared at him, the contempt still lingering in his eyes. "You’re rich enough to cover up whatever you want, so why are you asking me to handle this? Haven’t you ruined my reputation enough?"

Finn scoffed. "I guess things aren’t going as well as you thought they would, so now you need a backup, huh?"

He glared at Rayder. "You couldn’t control your temper and ended up messing things up at such a crucial moment. With so much attention on the matter now, you’re certainly in a tight spot..."

Rayder smiled, holding Finn’s chin up with a finger. "You know me too well. That’s cute..." he remarked.

"That’s good, then. At least you understand why you’re important here. It’s annoying how these authorities will soon start paying attention to this, so that’s where you come in. You’ll clear things up for me, won’t you?"

Finn said nothing. Instead, he brushed Rayder’s fingers away from his chin.

Rayder smiled. "You have no choice but to..." He cracked his neck before continuing, "That’s the only way you can help yourself, especially with the money reward attached to this. You can start a new life with it."

He smiled again. "Besides, you don’t have to worry too much about them. I’ll make sure you don’t get thrown into jail or anything. I’m rich enough to help you through that. Okay?" He tilted his head. "So just do your part. I’ll give you all the details of the lie you need to tell."

Finn simply sat there, staring at him without a word. Once Rayder was done speaking, he finally muttered, "You’re worse than I thought..."

Rayder casually smiled down at him. "Right? I get that a lot..." he said before turning his back on Finn and heading for the door. "Remember to play your part well, unless..."

He scoffed. "You end up dead next."

With that, he walked away, leaving Finn sitting there, shattered, as tears slowly streamed down his face. 𝐟𝑟ⅇ

---

The news spread around the school like wildfire. Before long, everyone was talking about how Finn was the one who had actually killed the young man.

According to the reports circulating around the academy, Finn had finally turned himself in after investigations supposedly pointed to him as the culprit. The evidence was said to be against him, leaving little room for doubt.

He had allegedly admitted to the crime, claiming that he hated the young man. The victim had constantly bullied him, talked down to him, and even made uncomfortable advances towards him.

The harassment had supposedly left Finn psychologically distressed until he finally snapped and pushed the young man off the building, killing him.

With this revelation, the school quickly took matters into its own hands and expelled Finn almost immediately. Just like that, he was out of the academy without any further questions.

And everyone seemed to believe the story, convinced that Finn was malicious enough to commit such a crime.

"Such lowly F-rankers are always like that... So brutal."

"Being poor must have made him aggressive, too."

"What if the real story is that he couldn’t seduce the rich young man after losing Simon, so he decided to kill him instead?"

"So does that mean Simon is next?" they joked, laughing among themselves.

To them, it was nothing more than another piece of gossip. They brushed it off without a second thought.

But as June sat in his dorm room, scrolling through the posts on the school forum on his phone, he couldn’t help feeling uneasy about everything that was happening.

Ryan was lying on his bed, going through the same posts. It was the academy’s hottest topic, something practically everyone was talking about, so naturally, they had both been keeping an eye on it.

June sighed, biting his lower lip. "I have a bad feeling about all this... Why do I feel like..." He trailed off, staring at his screen.

"Do you think he’s capable of doing that?" Ryan asked. "Finn, I mean..." He hesitated before continuing, "I mean, yeah, he did that to us at the academy and all, but considering the story being presented online, do you think he actually did it?"

June fell silent, lost in thought as he stared at his screen. He honestly didn’t know what to believe at the moment. The information had come so suddenly that it was difficult to process everything.

At this point, June wasn’t sure what to believe. Finn had already become a very different character from the one June remembered in the original storyline, making it difficult to determine just how much of the accusations could be true or false...