The Knight and Her Rose

I encountered the school hunk in a remote and dirty alley in the rain.

The dream lover of almost every girl at our school, Landon Wood, was lying there with wounds all over his body.

I took out my cell phone and took pictures of his miserable presence. There was a Landon Club in the school. As far as I knew, the female members in it were very keen on collecting everything about Landon.

Such a special photo could fetch a lot of money, I supposed.

I carefully avoided his head and was about to continue walking home, but he grabbed the corner of my trousers.

I looked down at the person on the ground. Landon opened his eyes with great effort and asked for my help in a weak and hoarse voice, "Please, help me..."

I shook my feet, but he didn't let go of my trousers.

He coughed violently and continued saying with red eyes, "I will pay you."

I sighed. Although I loved money, I also hated being involved in trouble. He was obviously in a big trouble since he appeared here out of nowhere and looked like he had just been in an awful fight.

"I'll pay you five thousand dollars to let me stay at your house for a few days," he said.

I said, "Okay, but I don't want to give you a hand. You have to stand up and walk by yourself."

Well, five thousand dollars had convinced me to save this trouble.

I stuffed the smelling Landon into the bathroom, ordered him to wash himself, and prepared some medicine for his wounds.

Landon took more than half an hour to wash, which would make my water bill this month extremely high, so I urged him to hurry up.

Then, I heard him stammer, "Do I have any clothes?"

I searched through my closet but couldn't find any suitable clothes for him, so I could only bring him pink pajamas with cute bears and hearts.

He reluctantly looked at the clothes. "I would rather die than wear it."

"Well, you can leave. It's five thousand dollars for 72 hours. Since you have spent two precise hours of mine, you should pay me two hundred dollars," I said.

He protested, "Shouldn't it be one hundred and thirty-eight dollars?"

"Plus the water bill," I said.

He was speechless in the toilet for a while.

Then, the door opened, and Landon in the cute pajamas walked out. Flushing, he lowered his head to avoid looking at my teasing smile.

The loose pajamas now seemed very short and tight on him, adding to a sense of hilarity.

I took the opportunity to take out my phone and take a few more pictures of him, thinking I could sell them for a good price.

He frowned at me. "Why are you taking pictures of me?"

I threw the medicine at him and changed the subject. "I won't charge you for the medicine."

Then, I ran to the next door and knocked.

The door opened, and I saw Isaac Collins' handsome face that always looked aloof. Measuring his figure with my eyes, I found his body was similar to Landon's.

So, I said, "Nerd, give me one of your T-shirts and pants."

Isaac frowned and asked, "Why? Do you want to wear it?"

I ignored his weird expression and ran to his bedroom closet to get a few clothes. "It's for my tenant".

Isaac kept frowning until he saw Landon in my room, and his frown deepened.

Apparently, he regarded me as a playgirl and said, "Ruby Foster, I can't believe you are actually living with a strange man."

I was cooking in the kitchen and had no time to correct his thoughts.

Landon, who had changed his clothes, clarified our relationship with somehow weird explanations, "I'm not a strange man. I'm Ruby's classmate."

During the meal, Isaac kept trying to kick Landon out of my house, but Landon refuted him that he couldn't breach the contract between him and me.

Isaac was so angry that he took the only meat dish on the table back to his house, leaving Landon and I helplessly staring at the salads on the table.

Since then, Landon had temporarily lived in my rental house. When we went to school during the day, we tacitly pretended to be strangers. After school, he was responsible for sweeping the floor and washing dishes.

But three days later, neither did he leave nor did he give me any money.

The moment I was about to call the police, Landon hugged me around the waist and begged me, "I swear I will pay you. Please don't kick me out."

I looked at him sideways and said, "You don't have any money on you, do you?" He couldn't afford his underwear.

"I can earn it easily. Just wait for me for a couple of days!" he said.

Considering the suspicion in my eyes, he gritted his teeth and said, "If I lie to you, you can sell my nude photos. I know you have a bunch of weird photos of me on your phone."

Thinking of this, I shunned my eyes in guilt that he didn't know that I had made a small profit from that pile of photos.