Chapter Nine: 爛れた支配
To Masato Ren, the world did not consist of people. It instead consisted of meaty furnitures and obstacles.
Some pieces of furniture were expensive and decorative meant to be displayed until their upholstery faded. Others were cheap utilitarian stools meant to be kicked aside when they blocked a walkway. But every now and then, a piece of wood refused to take the stain he applied to it, or a human voice failed to bend into the precise pitch of obedience he demanded. When that happened, the air in Ren’s lungs turned into cold gas, filling his chest with an itch that could only be scratched by total, methodical destruction.
---
The turf of the main athletic field glowed under the harsh mid-afternoon sun, radiating a dense, chemical heat that made the horizon shimmer.
Whistles blew in rhythmic, sharp bursts. The first-string soccer team was thirty minutes into their high-intensity conditioning drills, their jerseys soaked in sweat, feet pounding against the green carpet in synchronized misery.
At the edge of the field, the heavy iron gate clicked open.
Ren walked through the entrance at relaxed pace. He was flanked by his two usual shadows who are named Kenji and Hiro, two third-year benchwarmers whose primary contribution was echoing Ren’s jokes and carrying his customized leather duffel bag. Ren hadn't even bother to change into his practice kit; his uniform jacket was draped over one shoulder, his tie loosened just enough to look artfully careless, his phone held loosely between his thumb and index finger as he lazily scrolled through his feeds.
The sharp whistle cut through the air once more, followed by the heavy, heavy thud of cleats coming to a sudden halt.
Hajime, the team captain, stood at the center of the midfield circle. His chest heaved with exhaustion, his face flushed red from the sun. He wiped a streak of mud and sweat from his forehead with his forearm, his dark eyes locking onto Ren with an expression of burning, unadulterated fury.
Hajime tossed his clipboard onto the grass and marched toward the sideline, his boots tearing small green fibers from the artificial turf.
"Hoi Masato!" Hajime yelled, his voice echoing off the concrete bleachers. "You’re forty-five goddamned minutes late! What the hell is your excuse this time?!"
Ren didn't stop walking. He didn't even lift his eyes from his phone screen. His thumb flicked upward, refreshing a social media page with cold, deliberate slowness.
"Traffic." Ren murmured. His voice was entirely flat, stripped of any attempt to sound plausible.
"Traffic?!" Hajime stopped, his fists clenched tightly at his sides. "You live five minutes away away from school! The rest of the team has been running shuttles in ninety-degree heat while you act like this club belonged to you! I don't care who your family is, Masato. If you can't respect the schedule, you won't play for upcoming Saturday game."
Before Ren could even respond, not that he intended to offer Hajime the dignity of a reply, a hand reached out and firmly caught Hajime’s shoulder.
It was Daichi, the vice-captain. Daichi was a pragmatic, tired-looking boy whose eyes were perpetually shadowed by stress. He pulled Hajime back half a step, leaning in close to whisper in the captain's ear, though his tone was heavy with a quiet, defeated desperation.
"Hajime... stop it." Daichi muttered under his breath, his eyes darting nervously toward Ren's impassive face.
" What do you mean stop it, Daichi?! " Hajime snapped, trying to shake off Daichi’s grip. " I'm done tolerate with his nonsense. He need to learn to respect for the others!"
" I understand your feeling, but our team is basically nothing without him." Daichi hissed, his voice dropping even lower, laced with a bitter, humiliating truth.
" Our team used to barely even passed second round at best before he joined. Not to tell that Masato's father has sponsored a lot for our club, or we can't even afford to replace the goal net. Not to mention he's scored twelve of our fifteen goals this season. If you bench him, our team will losing the only way to compete in tournament."
Hajime froze. His jaw tightened until the muscles along his cheeks quivered. He stared at Daichi, then looked back at Ren.
Ren had finally stopped scrolling. He slowly lowered his phone, his dark, vacant eyes meeting Hajime’s burning glare. There was no mockery in Ren’s expression. There was no anger, no smugness, no heat whatsoever.
There was only a terrifying, total absence of regard. To Ren, Hajime was not a team captain reprimanding a teammate; he was a stray dog barking at a passing luxury vehicle through a thick pane of soundproof glass.
Ren stepped around Hajime without saying a single word. He didn't even offer any kind of remorse much less wanting to apology. He simply walked past the captain, his designer sneakers gliding over the grass, establishing with absolute, effortless clarity that the laws of this small low class world did not, and would never, apply to him.
---
The third-period history lecture was a dull hum of white noise that bounced off the wooden desks and faded into the warm air of the second-floor classroom. The teacher, an elderly man with a stooped back, drew frantic chalk diagrams on the blackboard, his voice rising and falling in a rhythmic hypnotic monotone.
Ren sat in the very back row near the window. His notebook lay completely blank before him, his mechanical pencil resting undisturbed beside a silver wrist watch that cost more than the teacher’s one year salary.
He leaned his chin on his palm, his eyes staring blankly out the glass window down into the sunlit central courtyard.
The world outside was quiet, saved for the occasional breeze that rustled the tops of the trees. Then, a figure walked into the frame of his vision.
It's Katsuragi Rin.
She was carrying a wooden box of things look like files across the courtyard, walking toward the school building. Her golden long hair is waving freely like flag as the wind blews. Her posture was perfectly erect, her chin held level, her stride measured and elegant. She moved through the open space with an effortless and unbothered dignity that seemed completely immune to the sticky, humid heat of the nine of morning.
Ren’s fingers twitched slightly against his cheek. His dark pupils dilated, shrinking into tight, needle-like points.
A memory that is cold, vivid, and agonizingly fresh flooded into his mind, tearing through his calm exterior like a splash of acid.
* A month ago. Behind the main gymnasium.*
The sun had been setting, painting the brick walls in shades of deep violet and bronze. Ren had pinned Rin at the wall. He had rehearsed the scene down to the second. He wore his finest custom-tailored coat, held a bouquet of imported pale white roses, and deployed the precise elegant charm that had made every girl in his previous middle school fall instantly into his lap. He showered the golden haired girl with every sweet words he could think off, followed by a confession crafted to sound exclusive, grand, and romantic with the offer to take her to some nice place.
He had expected her cheeks to flush like what he saw to the other girls he had done the same. He had expected her to stammer, to act flustered, to offer the predictable, performative resistance of a prize waiting to be claimed.
Instead, Rin doesn't show any reaction. Heck, she hadn't even looked at the roses.
Before he could even finish his entire sweet words, right in the middle of his carefully constructed speech about 'sharing a rare perspective on life', Rin had raised one slender hand, cutting him off mid-word.
" Sorry. I am not interested, Masato-kun," She had said with a forced polite smile but one could clearly see the annoyance behind the smile.
Her tone wasn't sharp. It was flat, polite, but completely cold, the exact same voice she used to rejected countless men before Ren, at that school she's just transfered into in that week alone.
" My mom told me that followed a man you don't know to somewhere is so scary. " she had added smoothly, stepping cleanly around him without a second glance, leaving him standing alone in the damp shade of the gym with a bundle of flowers in his hand.
Ren’s chest heaved with a silent, shallow breath as he stared through the classroom window down at her retreating form.
She rejected him. She had treated his presence as same level as the other guys in his school, which means his fame mean nothing to Rin.
Since that day, the rejection has left a mark inside him, rotted inside his mind like a corpse buried in shallow soil. Every time he looked at his own reflection, every time another girl swooned at his feet, the image of Rin’s calm eyes returned to mock him. His pride could not accept it. It was an anomaly in his perfect world, a broken gear in his perfect machine. And slowly, agonizingly, that wounded vanity had festered into a quiet, black obsession that consumed his every waking thought.
He is more that want to date Katsuragi Rin. He wanted to dismantle her. He wanted to strip away that insufferable, regal composure piece by piece until she was crawling across the concrete floor of his life, sobbing, broken, and begging for a single crumb of his attention.
---
The loud chime of the bell echoed through the corridors, signaling the start of the forty-minute lunch break. Within seconds, the quiet hallways exploded into a chaotic sea of chatter, laughing students, and sliding classroom doors.
Ren stepped out into the main second-floor corridor, his hands casually shoved into his trousers.
"Ren-kun~!"
A high-pitched voice cut through the noise.
Before he could even turn his head, Yumiko materialized at his side, wrapping both of her arms tightly around his left elbow. She was wearing an abundance of sweet rose perfume that so strong that it made Ren’s nose itch. Her short skirts were rolled up at the waist, her bleached hair styled to perfection, her eyes shining with an intense, desperate need to be seen attached to his side.
"I waited for you outside your class earlier!" Yumiko purred, pressing her shoulder tightly against his arm as she giggled up at him. "Everyone in the class was so jealous when I told them we were going to get lunch together! Did you see the look on—"
Ren wasn't listening to a single word coming out of her mouth.
His gaze had just flicked past her shoulder, locking onto an intersecting hallway fifty feet ahead near the stairwell.
Walking side-by-side down the corridor were Kitou Marina and Nogami Akashi.
Marina with her new short blonde hair that he had casually suggested she get during their date yesterday. She was walking close to Akashi, holding a brown paper lunch bag, smiling warmly at something the boy was saying. Akashi was laughing, his face lit up with an innocent happiness, completely unaware of the truth behind his happy world.
Ren’s blood ran cold.
If Marina saw him right now with Yumiko clinging to his arm, the illusion he had built around her would shatter prematurely. The secret, thrill-seeking control he held over her would instantly turn into an unnecessary ear-deafening confrontation and he wasn't finished with his game yet. More importantly, he refused to let a piece of his property dictate the timing of his reveals.
In a split-second, mechanical motion, Ren acted.
He grabbed Yumiko by the shoulders, his grip tightening so violently that his fingers dug deep into her soft flesh. With a swift, powerful shove, he slammed her backward against the row of metal lockers lining the hallway wall.
*CRANG!*
The sharp, metallic impact echoed down the corridor. Several passing students flinched, turning their heads in surprise.
Yumiko’s breath hit her throat with a sharp gasp. The back of her head clicked lightly against the painted steel locker door. Her heart hammered against her ribs as Ren immediately closed the distance, stepping into her personal space and trapping her against the lockers.
He raised his right hand, slamming his palm flat against the metal right beside her ear, effectively pinning her in place and using his broad shoulders and body as a physical barricade to shield his face from the intersecting hallway.
Yumiko’s eyes widened in total shock. Her lips parted, a deep blush rushing straight to her cheeks.
She looked up at Ren’s face, at his dark intense gaze staring down at her, his strong frame hovering inches away from hers, trapping her completely against the wall in the middle of a crowded school hallway.
*Oh my goodness...*
Yumiko’s mind raced into a dizzying, romantic fantasy.
*He's... he's being so possessive! He can't even contain himself! He wants me so bad he's pinning me right here in public!*
She swooned, her eyelids fluttering with a dramatic, helpless submission. She raised her small hands, resting them gently against his chest, leaning her body up into his physical space. "R-Ren-kun... people are watching..." she whimpered, her voice dripping with artificial coyness. "You're being so rough..."
Ren ignored her entirely.
Over the crown of Yumiko’s bleached hair, his dark, narrow eyes peered through the tiny gap between the lockers and his own shoulder, tracking the movement of the couple in the distance.
Marina and Akashi walked past the intersection, completely oblivious to his presence, their hands brushing together as they turned the corner toward the roof access stairs.
Ren’s gaze locked onto the back of Nogami Akashi’s head.
Akashi was wearing an average, mass-market navy blue cardigan that was slightly stretched at the elbows. He moved with the quiet, unpretentious posture of someone who spent his evenings reading books and helping his parents with chores. He was entirely ordinary. A background extra. A nobody.
A wave of purely toxic disgust twisted Ren’s stomach, tasting like sour copper on the back of his tongue.
*Oh. Look at him.*
Ren thought, his jaw clenching so hard a vein throbbed on his temple.
*Look at that pathetic worm. Walking around, smiles like an idiot, holding hands like he's the only one that have a girlfriend. He actually thinks he's loved. He actually thinks he matters to her.*
Ren’s chest filled with a sickening and dark amusement. It was so remarkably easy to ruin people like Akashi. All it took was a few designer gifts, a casual compliment, and a dark room, and Akashi’s entire world which the girl he adored with his heart, the bond he trusted will became another of Ren’s toy.
Akashi was walking around carrying a hollow shell, blissfully unaware that the soul of his relationship had already been harvested and tossed into the gutter.
"Ren-kun...?" Yumiko whispered, leaning her head up toward his face, her lips parted expectation. "Are you... going to kiss me?"
Ren slowly turned his eyes down to look at her.
His face was inches from hers, but his expression was as dead as a stone slab. He released his grip on her shoulders, casually smoothing down the lapel of his own jacket as he stepped back, leaving her leaning awkwardly against the metal lockers.
"Not today, Yumiko." Ren said smoothly, his tone instantly shifting back to a pleasant, distant warmth that offered no real substance. "Let me go grab my bento first."
Yumiko blinked, her face flushed red with a mixture of confusion and lingering, desperate arousal. "O-Oh... okay! I'll wait for you at our usual bench!"
Ren didn't bother to watch her walk away. He simply turned toward the main stairwell, wiping his palm against his trousers to erase the faint scent of her strong perfume.
He's on the verge to puke earlier of having those perfume torturing his nostril earlier.
Ren even wondering. How people around her could even stand of being near her?
---
As Ren reached the top of the central stairwell landing, his foot paused on the polished floor.
Near the large glass windows overlooking the courtyard, two people were standing together.
It was Takumi and Miyuki.
They were standing close by the windowsill, looking over a shared printout of a literature draft. Miyuki was pointing at something on the paper, her slender fingers tracing the lines of text. Takumi was leaning in, his head tilted near hers, listening intently to her voice.
Suddenly, Takumi said something in a quiet, deadpan tone. Miyuki froze for a fraction of a second, and then a sudden, radiant burst of genuine laughter escaped her lips. She covered her mouth with her hand, her shoulders shaking, her eyes sparkling with pure joy. Takumi looked at her, a soft, comfortable smile spreading across his own face, a smile of pure, unshakeable affection and mutual understanding.
Ren stood frozen in the shadow of the stairwell archway.
His face hardened into a cold, terrifying glare.
The air around him seemed to drop ten degrees. The sight of their genuine laugh hit his nerves like a jagged piece of rusted metal dragged across a wound.
No, Ren will prefer that compared to this.
Ren harbored an intense, burning disdain for anyone he considered "beneath him." In his mind, the social hierarchy of the school was simple: those with status, wealth, and power rule the top, while ordinary, middle-class fodders like Takumi belonged at the bottom, existing merely to admire their superiors or suffer under their heel.
Yet here Takumi is. A boy with no status, no grand family, no wealth, standing in the warm sunlight, enjoying an authentic intimacy with a girl like Miyuki. A girl who had looked straight through his manipulative traps and rejected his overtures without a single second of hesitation.
They were happy. Genuinely happy.
They didn't need his permission. They didn't care about his status. They possessed something that Ren, despite all his father's money, his athletic prestige, and his collection of disposable lovers, could never have: a real connection.
*It's an eye-sore,*
Ren thought, his fingers digging into his palms until his nails nearly broke the skin.
*A pathetic, low-grade peasant walking around acting as if he own the place.*
The sight of their quiet joy made him sick; it filled him with a dark, malignant envy. Sn absolute urge to poison the well, to shatter their peace, and to watch the light drain from neither of their eyes until they two realized that no one in this school was allowed to be happy without his approval.
---
The Literature Clubroom was bathed in the blood-red glow of the setting sun. Long, distorted shadows stretched across the wooden floorboards, swallowing the empty desks and bookshelf rows in deep darkness.
The room smelled faintly of old paper, black coffee, and expensive lavender oil.
Sitting behind the main advisor's desk at the far end of the room was Mio. She was dressed in an elegant, dark silk blouse, her brown hair were comb to her left. She held a gold-nibbed fountain pen in her hand, carefully marking line edits on a stack of manuscript submissions.
The heavy wooden door opened without a knock.
Ren walked into the room, his stride long and careless. He didn't bother taking off his blazer or adjusting his tie. He walked straight over to the advisor's desk, pulled out the high-backed leather chair opposite her, and slouched into it, resting his polished shoes directly onto the corner of the polished mahogany desk.
"Hey there, Aunty Mio." Ren said casually, a lazy, arrogant smirk playing on his lips.
Mio’s fountain pen stopped instantly.
The nib hovered a millimeter above the paper, leaving a tiny, dark blotch of blue ink on the clean page. Her sharp, refined features hardened into an expression of absolute disgust. She slowly raised her eyes, her gaze locking onto him like two shards of ice.
" I told you many times to not call me with that, Ren." Mio said, her voice dropping into a dangerous, razor-sharp register. " We're on same age for God sake. Just because I am you mother's little sister, it doesn't allowed you to call me however you want. It's disgusting."
Ren let out a short, dismissive laugh, leaning back in the chair and lacing his fingers behind his head. "Oh, come on. What the deal?"
Mio did not say a word. She set her pen down with a soft, precise *click*, crossing her hands over the manuscript stack. " So, what do you want, Ren? If it's not obvious to you, I right now is busy dealing with this departmental submissions for the national literary contest."
"Just thought on kill some boredom. " Ren replied smoothly, his tone dripping with self-satisfied vanity. "You know... family bonding time."
Mio leaned back slightly, her cold eyes studying him with an unreadable silence. " Okay."
Ren smirked, tapping his index finger against his knee.
" Mio, you still remember that Arisawa guy? I just saw him this morning. That fool looked like a walking ghost. He's still salty about me took that Yumiko girl from him, judged on how he look to me at the cafeteria. It's pathetic. Talk about someone that can't move on.
" Who?" Mio asks dryly, her tone completely unimpressed. " I have hard time to remember some loser's name."
" Whatever." Ren let that slide, which he then lean his body forward.
" So anyway. " Ren continued, his eyes sparkling with a dark, sadistic pride. " There is a girl named Kitou Marina. I took her out yesterday, had her cut her hair short. Just like I knew Nogami guy would notice. She's hanging on my every word now."
Ren giggles. "That idiot girl. She thinks she's playing some James Bond thriller game, sneaking out behind her sweet little boyfriend's back, while Akashi sits in cafes waiting for her like a loyal hound. It’s hilariously pathetic."
Mio listened, her face remaining entirely stoic. "And what of the Yumiko girl?"
Ren scoffed, waving his hand dismissively through the air as if discarding a piece of trash.
" Yumiko? Heh! Boring. Completely useless. She has zero substance, zero charm, and her voice sounds like that child-like characters in isekai anime. I'm mean, dude! She's cringe. Same with Marina, honestly. Marina lacks any real feminine elegance. She's just an easy target who likes shiny things. I think I want to dump them both already."
Ren take a deep breathe and he continues with a wide teethy grin. " That's what I would say, if I forget that I haven't made Marina dump her man yet, like how I made Yumiko before."
His grin faded slightly, replaced by a dark, irritation that clouded his features. "The only real nuisance is Miyuki. She's being surprisingly stubborn and clever. She didn't fell into my traps and still sticking right beside that loser Tendou. It’s annoying. She actually thinks their little relationship is untouchable."
Mio sat in silence for a long moment. Then, she let out a low, cold sigh—a sigh of pure, condescending disdain.
" Absolute horrid, Ren." Mio said, her voice completely stripped of warmth, as if there's any to begin with.
"You run around playing these cheap game, treating people like a toy to your sickening hobby. You think you are a genius on manipulating, but in reality, you are just a spoiled child pulling the wings off flies because your father bought you the garden."
Ren’s eyes narrowed, his smirk twisting into a sharp, dangerous scowl. " Oh, don't be harsh to your nephew, Mio. As if you're any different."
"Because we're happened to hate on same people, my nephew." Mio corrected smoothly, her eyes narrowing into two slivers of black glass. She leaned forward over the desk, her shadow falling across Ren’s lap.
"I do not care about your petty high school harem game, to be frank." Mio whispered, her voice laced with a dark, uncompromising authority. "I care about my writing prestige. And right now, Tendou’s manuscript is an obstacle."
Ren raised an eyebrow with a small teasing smile formed on his lips. " Eh~? Our genius writer is actually acknowledge someone's talent. Is the world gonna end soon?"
"It is, unfortunately." Mio admitted, her jaw tightening with subtle bitter resentment. "The committee is already expressing interest in his work. If his manuscript proceeds to the national contest entry, the attention will go entirely to him, or worse he will win that award. I want him gone from this club. I want him psychologically broken to the point where he voluntarily forfeits his entry so then I will show them my masterpiece and everyone will know my talent."
Mio reached into her desk drawer, pulling out a black USB flash drive and setting it onto the blotter between them.
"Once you did what you always enjoyed to do; break his resolve by making his girl betray her. Making him think that he's some worthless trash." Mio continued, her eyes burning with a cold, predatory ambition. "The moment he submits his withdrawal, I will personally handle the digital files. I will purge his manuscript from the national entry database. I will 'burn' his work entirely, deleting every draft, every master file, every trace of his effort from the school server, leaving him with nothing."
Ren stared at the flash drive, a slow, sickening smile gradually creeping back onto his face.
" Wow. Ambitious, aren't we?" Ren murmured softly, his eyes sparkling with newfound delight. "No career. No girl. Pure pain."
"Precisely." Mio said coldness returning to her voice as she picked up her fountain pen once more. " Then what you were doing all these time with all those chances I gave you? I went through everything to pull Tendou away from Asahina. You better take things seriously."
" Worry not, Mio. Consider it done."
---
The sun had finally dipped beneath the horizon, leaving the school courtyard swathed in a deep twilight. Cold evening air settled over the stone benches and manicured hedges.
Ren stood near the central fountain, his hands shoved deep into his pockets as he waited.
Footsteps echoed along the stone path. Katsuragi Rin walked out from the main building archway, carrying her briefcase, heading toward the school gates. She was alone.
Ren stepped out from the shadow of the fountain, blocking her path.
Rin stopped instantly.
She didn't flinch. She didn't step back.
She simply stood three paces away, looking up at him with exhausted eyes that reflected the dim glow of the courtyard streetlamps.
"Masato-kun." Rin said, her voice flat and tired. "It is seven o'clock. The school gates are closing."
Ren took a slow step forward, closing the distance until he was standing uncomfortably close to her. He lowered his voice, dropping it into that smooth, velvety baritone he used to manipulate people.
"You work too hard, Rin." Ren murmured, offering her a subtle, dangerous smile. " Already busy with many club activities despite just been here for a month, always carrying the weight of the school on your shoulders. You look tired. Why don't you let me take you home? My driver is waiting outside."
Rin looked at him for two long seconds.
The silence between them stretched out, thick and heavy. Then, Rin let out a faint, barely audible breath—a breath of absolute, profound boredom.
"No, thank you." Rin said smoothly. Her tone was entirely unbothered, stripped of even the slight formality she usually maintained. "I prefer to walk. please."
" Is not a good idea for a girl to walk alone at this time, Rin—"
"I don't remember allowed you to call me by my name, Masato Ren." Rin cuts him off.
This time, her voice carried a quiet, icy authority that cut through the air like a steel blade.
She didn't look at his eyes; she looked past his shoulder, treating his physical frame as nothing more than a temporary obstruction in her path.
Without waiting for his response, she stepped firmly to the left, her shoulder brushing past his coat as she walked cleanly away, her heels clicking against the stone tiles in a steady, unbroken rhythm until she vanished through the main gate.
Ren stood completely motionless in the center of the dark courtyard.
The wind whistled softly through the trees, carrying the cold bite of the approaching night.
Ren’s chest began to heave with violent, rapid breaths. His heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped beast. His teeth ground together with such force that a sharp pain shot through his jaw.
He closed his eyes.
In the deep, pitch-black darkness of his mind, a sickening, grotesque fantasy exploded into vivid detail.
He saw them all.
He saw Rin. He saw Miyuki. He saw Marina. He saw Yumiko.
In the dark theater of his mind, they're mess. They were stripped of their pride, their names, their identities, and their free will. He saw himself successfully conquered them.
Dismantling Rin’s icy dignity until she wept at his feet, shattering Miyuki’s stubborn loyalty until she begged him to look at her, exposing Marina’s secret shame until she had nowhere left to run; and stripping Yumiko of her pathetic vanity until she existed only as an obedient shadow.
He imagined remodeling their minds, rewriting their neural architecture and resetting them into shapes that suited his desires. He would strip away their thoughts, their friends, their futures, until their entire universe narrowed down to a single, constant:
*Him*
They would live for his glance. They would breathe for his touch. They would exist only as hollow, beautiful shells, completely dependent on the tyrant who had destroyed them.
Ren opened his eyes.
The dark courtyard was empty, but a sinister, terrifying smile had spread across his face, a kind of smile so completely devoid of humanity that it looked like a tear in the fabric of reality itself.
" You can act though, dear Rin." Ren whispered into the cold, empty air. " Soon, you will only think about me."
