Chapter 13 The Delusion

Chapter 13 The Delusion
Following the exact same deeply compromising method, Coach Lynes guided Ruth through several more shots.
Unsurprisingly, trying to learn basketball while your brain is entirely focused on the scent of mint and the feeling of a man's chest against your back was highly ineffective.
But Ruth didn't ask him to stop.
As long as Coach Lynes was standing behind her, guiding her hands, the ball went in every single time. But the exact second he let go, the ball would violently veer off-course. Hitting the backboard was a lucky break; half the time, she completely air-balled.
Finally, after noticing a faint sheen of sweat forming on the girl's forehead, Coach Lynes reluctantly called a stop to the lesson.
"You took twenty-one shots, and you made three on your own..." Coach Lynes summarized, nodding solemnly. "Yeah, you were right."
Ruth was currently leaning over, resting her hands on her knees to catch her breath. She looked up, completely confused. "Right about what?"
"You really don't have any talent."
Excuse me?!
When I say I have no talent, it's called self-deprecation! When YOU say it, it's just insulting!
What happened to the smooth, flirting bastard from five minutes ago?!
Ruth was already exhausted, and standing up straight, her face flushed red with indignation. "...Didn't you literally just say that basketball isn't about talent, it's about having a good coach?!" She glared at him, her large eyes wide. "If the coach is garbage and can't teach, how is that the student's fault?!"
The girl's voice was naturally sweet, and combined with her slight breathlessness from the exercise, even her angry accusations sounded incredibly cute.
"I did say that," Matthew agreed, clearly enjoying her reaction far too much. His smile deepened. "But surely you know the saying: The master leads you to the door, but the cultivation is up to the individual?"
"..." Oh, so you're just full of excuses, aren't you?
Ruth stood up completely straight, staring at him expressionlessly for a long moment. She realized that continuing this debate was highly unwise, as it would only result in further humiliation of her athletic abilities.
She abruptly changed the subject. "Let's go eat fish sometime."
Matthew blinked. "?"
Ruth sneered. "Since you clearly love picking bones."
Coach Lynes finally fell silent, implicitly accepting the truce. They agreed to visit a famous fish restaurant near Cal U in the near future. To make amends for the basketball bloodbath, Coach Lynes officially surrendered and bought Student Keen a cup of Harvarti-Boba.
The boba shop was packed with students, leaving absolutely no empty seats, so they decided to order their drinks to go. When Matthew pulled out his phone to scan his payment app, Ruth casually glanced at his screen and froze.
There was a very obvious, jagged crack running across the top corner of the glass.
Even though the cracked area was small, to someone like Ruth—who suffered from bizarre, highly specific obsessive-compulsive tendencies—even the tiniest crack on a screen felt like it was being magnified eight hundred times right in front of her eyes.
Her attention was entirely captivated by it. She completely ignored the relentless stares they were getting from the other students, staying fixated on the screen until they finally walked out of the shop side-by-side.
Ruth hesitated several times before she finally couldn't hold it in anymore. "Um... Matthew."
"Hmm?"
"I just noticed... your phone screen is cracked?"
Matthew looked down at the phone in his hand, slightly surprised.
The screen had cracked just this morning.
He was notoriously grumpy when he didn't get enough sleep. This morning, his sleep deprivation had reached historic levels. After his alarm went off for the third time, he blindly grabbed his phone and hurled it across the room. It tragically smashed directly into the corner of his nightstand, terrifying his chubby orange cat so badly it leaped three feet into the air.
"Is it badly broken?" Ruth asked, trying to sound casual and entirely failing to hide her deep concern. "Um... I heard that if the internal display gets damaged, it can ruin the whole phone."
"It's not too bad, just the outer glass." Matthew casually fell into his usual, teasing rhythm. "I finally managed to save up for a new phone, and now the screen is already busted..." He let out a highly exaggerated, dramatic sigh. "And I can't even afford to fix it."
It had literally just broken that morning, and since it didn't affect the phone's functionality, he simply hadn't bothered to get it replaced yet.
When he said he couldn't afford it, he hadn't thought much of it. He fully intended to follow it up with a quick 'Just kidding, I'm getting it fixed this afternoon'. But before he could, he caught the look in Ruth's eyes.
Her eyes were practically screaming: He can't even afford to fix his screen?! What kind of cruel world is this?! This poor, pathetic baby is suffering so much!
Even if he was slightly misinterpreting her exact thoughts, he was absolutely certain of one thing. The look in her large, watery eyes was pure, unadulterated... pity.
...Does she actually think I'm destitute?
Over a cracked phone screen?
Even though he had absolutely no idea what kind of tragic backstory her brain was currently inventing for him, looking at those wide, glittering eyes... he suddenly decided he wasn't going to fix the screen at all. It didn't matter anyway.
Matthew paused for a second, then seamlessly leaned into his new persona. He adjusted his expression to look bravely resigned. "It's fine. It's just a little crack. It still works."
Later that night, Ruth, entirely unable to keep the interaction to herself, dragged Olivia and Anne out to a private bar. After thoroughly bragging about her recent romantic victories, she dramatically recounted the tragic tale of Matthew's broken phone screen.
As she reached the climax of the story, she looked down at her own phone. "The way he said it... it just broke my heart, honestly."
Coincidentally, when Ruth had stepped out of her ride-share an hour earlier, her phone had slipped out of her hand. It hit the pavement face-first. The phone survived, but the top right corner of the screen was completely shattered.
To a normal person, this was just a minor inconvenience. But Ruth was not a normal person.
"Hold on," Anne said, staring at her in deep suspicion. "I specifically remember back in high school, you dropped your phone during PE and cracked the screen. You, the ultimate good girl, literally skipped class and snuck off campus just to get it replaced because you said looking at the crack made your skin crawl." Anne pointed an accusing finger at her. "Ru, have you been body-snatched?!"
"Seriously," Olivia chimed in. "You've had that OCD tick since we were kids. You're telling me Hot Ass cured your neurosis with a single shattered screen?"
It was true. Ruth had severe OCD when it came to broken screens. It wasn't just phones—if she saw a cracked vase or a chipped porcelain cup, she felt physically uncomfortable. It drove her so crazy she usually wanted to pay out of her own pocket just to have it fixed so she wouldn't have to look at it.
But she couldn't stop replaying the scene from this afternoon in her head.
The way Matthew had looked at his phone was just so perfect. He had seemed a little regretful, but mostly just effortlessly easygoing. His long eyelashes had fluttered as he bravely told her that it didn't matter, comforting her about his lack of funds.
So what if he doesn't have the money to fix it? That just means he's practical! Why throw away perfectly good money fixing something that still works?
—Of course, it was entirely possible that she was severely over-romanticizing the situation. But the point was, Ruth wanted to romanticize it.
She looked down at her own cracked phone and muttered, "Whatever, I'm not fixing mine either..."
"Hey, did you guys notice? My phone cracked in the exact same corner his did!" Ruth flipped her phone over, admiring the shattered glass like it was a piece of fine jewelry. Her smile grew wider. "We accidentally made a matching couple's set!"
Olivia: "..." She has absolutely been body-snatched.
Anne: "..." Just how powerful is this Hot Ass?
"Poor Tyler Cosmo. The guy goes on one blind date with you and is still hopelessly hung up on you," Anne sighed dramatically. "And in the end, he loses to a broke college student with a nice ass who can't even afford a screen repair."
Ruth frowned, completely unsatisfied with that summary. "Don't forget his gorgeous face."
"Right, of course," Olivia mocked, raising her glass. "After all, who would have ever guessed that a certain billionaire heiress actually hates rich men?"
"Tyler Cosmo really lost the race before it even started," Anne laughed, clinking her glass against Olivia's. "Pour one out for the tragic Master Cosmo."
The two of them tag-teamed the teasing, leaving Ruth no room to pretend she didn't hear them.
"It's not that I hate rich men..." Ruth smiled faintly, tracing the rim of her glass. "I just look back at my twenty-something years of life, and I realize I've never been able to escape the shadow of my father."
They joked that Tyler Cosmo was obsessed with her, but the only reason she had ever agreed to let her grandfather set up that blind date was to get him off her back.
Tyler Cosmo wasn't just a man. He represented the entire Cosmo family empire.
So whether it was Tyler Cosmo, John Smith, or whoever else they threw at her, it was all the same. They were all from the same elite circle. And in that circle, nobody represented just themselves.
"When my dad married my mom, nobody knew it would end the way it did... I'm not saying my mom was completely blameless, but in the end, marriages in our world are never about love. They are entirely dictated by money and power."
"That's why I refuse to date anyone from our social circle. It's not that they're bad people. It's just that, after seeing and experiencing my parents' marriage firsthand, I am absolutely terrified to try it myself..."
"To put it bluntly," Ruth whispered, her thumb brushing gently over the jagged crack on her phone screen. "I'm a coward. I am terrified of variables."
She was terrified that no matter how pure the love was, it would eventually be crushed by reality.
She was terrified that if she accepted a corporate arranged marriage, her entire future would be permanently chained to profit margins and stock values.
If she said this to anyone else, they would think she was crazy. But Olivia and Anne knew every single detail of her family’s dark history. They were the only two people Ruth could vent to without needing to explain herself.
The two girls sighed internally, exchanging a quick look before simultaneously pivoting the conversation.
"...Ugh, whatever, enough of that depressing garbage. We were just joking anyway," Olivia said brightly. "Look at you now! You don't have to deal with anyone from our circle! You found a hot, broke college student! He's incredibly smooth but also super innocent—honestly, just talking about him makes me blush. He is an absolute top-tier catch, right?"
"Exactly!" Ruth nodded emphatically, her mood instantly lifting. "I honestly thought I had a phobia of marriage, but the other night I literally had a dream that we got our marriage license and moved in together! If it was him... I actually think I could get married!"
Anne aggressively refilled her glass. "Yes! Top-tier! Honestly, after hearing all the things he did today, even I think this Hot Ass is a keeper! If he's really that broke, just go for it! Become his sugar mommy!"
Olivia raised her glass high. "To Hot Ass!"
Ruth burst out laughing, the last remnants of her melancholy entirely swept away. Riding the alcohol buzz, she clinked her glass against theirs. "To Hot Ass!"

Miles away, sitting in an upscale VIP club room, the aforementioned Hot Ass suddenly sneezed while aggressively sweeping the poker table for the fifth hand in a row.
"Karma! That is literal karma!" Arthur Finlan yelled, having lost the most money. "Even God can't stand watching you rob us blind!"
Matthew glanced at him coolly. "So God's punishment was making me sneeze?"
Arthur: "..." Motherfucker.
Knowing he could never win a verbal spar against this absolute menace, Arthur immediately changed the subject. "Hey, you guys probably haven't heard, right? The thousand-year iron tree finally bloomed the second he got back to the States. Mattie is currently actively chasing a girl."
There were five people in the VIP room. Aside from Arthur, the other three were close friends from high school, none of whom belonged to their elite corporate circle.
Hearing this, all three of them dropped their cards in absolute shock.
"Holy shit, who is it?!"
"What kind of girl managed to lock down Master Lynes? Is she a literal goddess?"
"Master Lynes, do you even know? Just two days ago at our class reunion, the old class president was still asking me if I kept in touch with you and if you were single... She has a whole fiancé and she's still asking! I don't respect anyone in this world except you!"
"Don't even bring up high school. Do you remember how many girls literally went to war over him? Master Lynes only went to our school for two years, and the entire female population was practically ready to die for him."
"Fuck off, have you seen his face? If I was a girl, I'd be obsessed with him too."
The group laughed and shouted for a few minutes before someone finally asked the golden question.
"So is this a girl you just met? You came back, saw her, and instantly fell for her?"
To everyone's absolute shock, Matthew immediately denied it. "No."
A few seconds passed. In the dimly lit room, his sharp, elegant profile was half-hidden in the shadows, but his voice carried a strange, heavy sense of emotion.
"I've had my eye on her for years..." Matthew rubbed the bridge of his nose, a soft, genuine smile breaking across his face. "I finally found her."
The room instantly exploded.
"WHAT?!"
"Years?! I never pegged Master Lynes as the hopelessly devoted type!"
After the initial shock wore off, the group immediately started placing bets on how long it would take Matthew to officially lock the girl down.
Most of them guessed a month. One guy, assuming that any girl Matthew had been pining over for years must be incredibly difficult to court, guessed three months.
Matthew waited until they finished placing their bets. Then, he spoke, his voice slow and deliberate.
"I don't know. I'm trying hard..." He looked up at the ceiling, his voice dropping into a soft murmur. "Maybe half a year?"
"Half a year—?!"
"Are you kidding me?! Even YOU have to chase her for half a year?!" Arthur stared at him, completely appalled. "Have some confidence, Mattie!"
"Yeah, how is that even possi—"
"Hold on, you misunderstood me."
Matthew cleared his throat. The room instantly fell dead silent. His eyes curved into a brilliant, terrifyingly confident smile.
"I meant... half a year to get the marriage certificate."