Yor Regret is Too Late!

17

"You... can actually laugh?"

Barrett’s deep, gravelly voice softened slightly, as if the thunder that usually roared from him had suddenly turned into a soothing drizzle. I flinched, realizing my lips were parted wide and the sound escaping my throat was something that had been buried for years beneath a mountain of insults.

I was laughing. So freely. It even made my thick glasses shift slightly as my cheeks turned up.

"Barrett, you... you are hilarious," I said, catching my breath. I had to hold my stomach, which felt tight from laughing. "Marriage? We are still wearing school uniforms, Barrett. We still have to stress over next semester's exams, and you... you tell everyone I'm going to be your wife?"

The entire Garuda High School cafeteria suddenly felt like a graveyard. If they had been silent earlier out of fear of the Wolf’s dangerous aura, they were silent now out of sheer confusion. I, the Aria who usually bowed her head like a shadow wishing to vanish into the floor, was now standing tall with a delinquent's arm wrapped around my shoulders—laughing at the craziest statement I had ever heard.

"What does it matter if we're still in uniform?" Barrett didn't loosen his grip. Instead, he leaned down a bit, staring at me with a wild spark in his eyes that now looked... amused. "This uniform is just fabric, Aria. It won't stay on our bodies forever. But my promise? That’s permanent."

I shook my head slowly, trying to calm my racing heart. "You are truly bizarre, Barrett. The strangest person I have ever met."

"I am strange. But I never lie," Barrett countered sharply, his eyes flashing as he shot a brief glance toward the main table in the center of the cafeteria.

*

(ASHER'S POV)

Thump.

My world felt as if it completely stopped spinning the exact second that laughter broke out. The sound was clear, bright, and possessed a melody that felt incredibly familiar to my ears. Like the tune of an old music box I used to own as a child, though its key had been lost long ago.

I was paralyzed. The spoon in my hand nearly dropped back onto the plate. My eyes locked onto the disheveled girl in the corner—Aria.

Until now, all I had ever seen of Aria was a slumped back, a face obscured by messy hair, and eyes that constantly stared at the floor as if begging the tiles to swallow her. But now... she was laughing. Her dull face seemed to shine beneath the cafeteria lights. There was a spark in her eyes that had always been completely dim before.

Why did my chest feel as though it had just been struck by a massive sledgehammer?

The pain arrived without warning. Sharp, suffocating, and completely absurd. It felt as if something incredibly precious to me, something I had kept locked away in a box in the corner of my heart all this time, had just been stolen by a stranger right in front of my eyes.

"Asher? Are you even listening to me?"

Aileen’s voice beside me sounded like an annoying buzz. I felt her gently squeeze my arm, but my focus remained entirely trapped by Barrett's rough hand resting so arrogantly on Aria's shoulder. The oversized black leather jacket wrapped around Aria's small frame, as if Barrett were building a fortress so that not a single one of my insults could ever touch her again.

Why was she laughing for that guy? Why wasn't it for me?

The question surfaced automatically, making me sick to my stomach. I shook my head slightly, trying to banish the insane thought. I turned my eyes toward Aileen. This beautiful girl beside me was "Ai." My childhood friend who had stitched the handkerchief for me. The girl who was the sole reason I always returned to the Maheswari home.

But why... why did Aria’s laughter just now feel infinitely closer to the "Ai" I remembered than Aileen’s laughter ever had?

"Asher, let's leave. I can't stand looking at them," Aileen whined, her eyes welling up with tears, showing a vulnerability that usually triggered my protective instincts instantly.

I took a deep breath, trying to suppress the strange turmoil in my chest. "Yeah, Ai. Let's go now."

I intentionally wrapped my arm around Aileen's shoulder, pulling her closer so everyone—especially Aria—could see. I leaned down, whispering something in Aileen’s ear that was actually just empty, meaningless words, purely to display how close we were. But even as my lips moved, my eyes still couldn't break away from the scene in the corner of the cafeteria.

Every time Barrett brushed Aria’s shoulder, it felt like claws scratching at my heart. I hated this feeling. I hated the fact that I felt jealous over a girl I always called trash. I hated the reality that the pure sincerity of Aria’s laughter just now made me feel... incredibly lonely right beside my own "Ai."

*

(ARIA'S POV)

I stopped laughing when the corner of my eye caught movement at the center table. Asher stood up. He wrapped his arm tightly around Aileen, as if displaying to the world that she belonged to him. He whispered something in my twin's ear, making Aileen smile sheepishly while her eyes kept watching me with a piercing look of victory.

Once, that sight would have made me want to run to the back cottage and cry until my chest turned tight. But today, beneath the weight of Barrett’s warm leather jacket, the pain felt a bit dull. Like an old wound that had begun to dry, even if the scar remained.

"Are you done laughing at our future?" Barrett asked, his voice returning to its cold, flat tone, though his hand didn't move an inch from my shoulder.

I looked at him, trying to find any lie in his wild eyes. "What future, Barrett? You don't know anything about me. You don't know how complicated it is to live in that house."

"I don't need to know the complications to know that you deserve better than that dumpster," Barrett stated sharply. He turned his gaze toward Asher, who was walking out of the cafeteria with Aileen. Barrett stared at Asher's retreating back with the eyes of a predator marking its territory.

"Let's get out of here. I know a much better place for sketching than a library locked from the outside," Barrett said, entirely ignoring the gazes of thousands of eyes still showering us with various speculations.

I allowed Barrett to guide me out. As we crossed paths with Asher near the exit, the air around us seemed to freeze. Asher paused for a second, his shoulders tense, his eyes glaring sharply at Barrett's hand on my shoulder.

For the very first time, I didn't look down. I stared straight ahead, passing right by Asher as if he were a complete stranger who happened to walk past. I didn't need his validation anymore. Not today.

"Barrett," I called out softly once we were in the corridor leading toward the back garden.

"What?"

"Are you... truly serious about earlier? About protecting me?" I asked, my voice nearly lost to the whistle of the corridor wind.

Barrett stopped walking. He released his grip on my shoulder, but shifted his position to stand directly in front of me. He grabbed both of my shoulders, forcing me to look straight into his dark brown eyes, which were filled with lines of pure rebellion.

"Listen to me, Aria. I'm a delinquent. I'm trash in the eyes of people like that Toad Prince," he said low, but every single word felt completely solid. "But I never play games when it comes to what I say. I will be a fortress for you. And if you're ever ready in the future, my words about you being my 'wife'... won't just be a bluff in the cafeteria."

My heart beat with an entirely new rhythm. In a world that always demanded I be perfect or vanish, there was one person standing right in front of me, acknowledging my existence with all my flaws, and promising to stay right there.

Perhaps he really was a Wolf. Wild and dangerous. But to me, who had been lost in the forest of the Maheswari family’s hypocrisy for so long, he was the only home whose door was always open—without conditions, without masks, and without lies.

In the distance, I could see Asher glancing back once more from behind a corridor pillar. He stood there, ignoring Aileen’s tugging hand, staring at us with an expression that was incredibly difficult to define—a mixture of boiling rage and a deep sorrow he was desperately trying to hide.

I turned my face away. Let him stay trapped in his own lies. Let him hold his fake "Ai." Because starting today, I was no longer the Aria who would cry begging for his attention. I was the Aria who had found her own protector.