Sweet Romance10 min read
The Lollipop Oath
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I was leaning against a brick wall in a back alley in Northwest T, chewing the stub of a lemon lollipop like it was a life preserver.
"You're late," the system piped in my head.
"I sleep before eleven," I said out loud, because I had to argue with something, even if it was only an invisible voice. "My back hurts if I stay up."
"You volunteered," the system said, very patient. "Blake Schultz is in the alley. He was stabbed. Go."
I walked. The smell of garbage and something metallic led me to a tipped-over bin and the man sitting beside it. He looked like a statue someone had tried to scratch: pale, beautiful, and bleeding through white cotton.
"You okay?" I asked.
He looked at me like I had asked him if the moon was cold. "Get away."
"Not tonight," I said, and pulled my cap down over my eyes.
His hand held a small, ugly gun. I ignored it. He was a famous man with a famous face—Blake Schultz—and his eyes were tired in a way that made me want to fold the world around him.
"Why would you—" he rasped, then almost smiled. "You're the kind of trouble a man reads about."
"Am I?" I slid the cap off his head and flicked it to the side. "You're bleeding."
"You shouldn't touch me," he said, sharper now. "You shouldn't be here."
"Then stop being the kind of man who gets stabbed in alleys," I said. I was ridiculous. I knew that. But the system had told me my job—stop the future villain from becoming the villain. Save him and guide him so he dies naturally later. It was precise and absurd, like a recipe for a fairy tale.
Footsteps. A pack of men shuffled closer.
"Move," Blake said, and lifted the gun.
"Too loud." I pushed him back and dropped my jacket on his stomach like a stained flag. "Don't. People are watching."
"You!" one of the intruders shouted. "What are you doing with him?"
I sat on Blake's legs, pressed him against the wall, and—on impulse and because I had once read it in a ridiculous romance novel—kissed him.
The lemon was there; my lips still smelled of it. His eyes widened. For one ridiculous second the world narrowed to the sweet, sharp press of lips and the sound of men clomping past.
"She's got us," one muttered as they slipped away, embarrassed and convinced. Someone left a small box of condoms on the ground as if to stage the scene.
"You planned that?" Blake asked when I stood, wiping my lips.
"No," I said. "But you can thank the system."
"It gave you props?" He sounded incredulous.
"It gives me everything I need," I said, and then I hit them.
I threw a metal baton that extended from my wrist like something from a different life, and the alley erupted. I wasn't supposed to enjoy this, but I did. When the last of them knelt, spitting and bloody, I looked down at them like I was looking at ants.
"You will apologize to him," I said.
"We're sorry! We're sorry!" they screamed, which is the part where a person finds power through fear.
Blake watched, his expression a study in confusion and a little spark of something else.
"You saved me," he said later as we walked to his car. "Why?"
"I like lemons," I answered. "And I don't like being bossed around by a system that won't let me sleep. Also—" I pulled a lollipop from my pocket and popped it into my mouth—"your chest is a good place to be."
He laughed a little, surprised by his own laugh. "I'm Blake. Blake Schultz."
"I'm Aurora," I said. "Aurora Larsson. I don't think I could fake being your fan."
"You weren't," he said, but he didn't finish the thought.
Manuel Mendes—the driver—arrived in an expensive black car and took Blake away. He looked at me with a practiced smile that made me itch.
"Thank you," I said.
"Your fee," Manuel said, and handed me an envelope, then watched my face as if he meant to know every secret before Blake could.
I took the money—an absurd amount—and left. The system sighed approvingly.
"Why did you take the money?" it asked later.
"Because I need to sleep sometimes," I said. "Because people are always buying safety, and sometimes you have to take the currency they offer."
"You could be caught."
"I'll be careful," I said. "Besides, if I act like I want nothing, they will want me more."
The days blurred. I became an annoyance wrapped in charisma to Northwest District's gangs. Bronson Bradley and I had words and then fewer words after I broke his best man like a twig. He swore revenge and then he didn't because the packs of men in this district knew when to stop.
We patched blisters and chaos into a map of domination, and I learned more about Blake. He had been a child star, picked up by the Lionel—no, by the Lu family—to be a shield. The family crafted him into Blake Schultz, the face the world adored. Behind the applause was a wiring room of traps. Blake had been used; it was ugly and precise and wrong.
"You want to know the truth about the Lu family?" the system asked once, calmly.
"Is it as ugly as it looks?" I asked, finishing a lollipop like a confession.
"Worse," it said. "They used him."
"Then we'll make them pay," I said.
The plan was simple in its brutality. We would not murder. We would not break laws beyond recognition. We would put the truth where everyone could see it.
Weeks later the annual Industry Night glittered in downtown T—cropped tuxes, prying cameras, the press with their teeth showing like a pack of eager dogs. Blake was scheduled to accept an award. His wound had been mended, but his soul was a different kind of bruise.
"You're not going?" Blake asked as we prepared in the limo.
"I have a costume," I said. "I also have a mic and a plan."
Manuel drove like a man who had seen too many accidents. Behind my eyelids I could see the system's tickers and a hundred tiny ways a plan could fall apart. I stripped that panic down to breathing.
At the event we were sat like a couple not-quite-accepted by their peerless wealth. Blake took the stage: his jaw set, his smile practiced.
"I accept this on behalf of everyone," he said, and the cameras ate him up. Manuel looked relieved.
I went on stage later to present a minor category. I held the microphone like a loaded thing.
"Before I announce the winner," I said, and the hush fell the way it does right before thunder. "There is something everyone here should know."
"What's wrong?" someone whispered.
"She's crazy," a paparazzo hissed.
"No," I told them. "He is not. He's been fed to wolves."
I clicked a button on a tiny remote. The auditorium lights flicked and the giant screen behind the stage lit up with footage: private security cams, intercepted transfers, recorded conversations where a man in a respectable suit and a man named Clive Johnston—the one who had been propped as king of a district, the one connected to the underworld—talked about moving "product" through the Lu family channels. I showed emails that listed names like "payment for protection" and numbers that matched accounts traced to Clive's shell companies.
"That's not—" Clive Johnston began, and his voice carried like someone who thought he could smooth over a spilled drink.
"This is what you call protection?" I asked into the microphone. "These are lists. These are payments. You called Blake 'bait' and you called his life a shield for your son, Isaiah Donaldson. You called the city your chessboard."
The audience leaned in. Phones came up like a forest of fireflies.
"No!" Clive shouted. "Those are—fabrications! You can't—"
"Sit down," I said. "Watch."
A clip showed Clive's smirk as he calculated, his voice recorded: "Keep him exposed. He'll draw the foxes away while the real heir learns in secret."
Smugness dissolved from his face. He paled. The room began to murmur.
"That's a lie!" Clive barked. "They planted this on my feed! They planted—"
"Denial," I narrated in a voice that felt like a bell. "He is denying the evidence. See how he clutches at threads."
Phones were recording. A woman behind me gasped and covered her mouth. Someone laughed and someone cried out. Blake's eyes cut to mine, and he looked simultaneously vindicated and shattered.
"You think a man is above the law because he owns a suit?" I asked. "You think a district lord can tell the city what to do? No. You're just a coward wearing other men's courage."
Clive's face was going red.
"We have bank transfers," I said. "We have messages. We have the men who ran your orders, ready to testify. But most importantly, we have this room who watched you smile and then destroyed a family for sport."
Clive's jaw worked. He snapped, "You have no proof!"
"That's the proof," I said, and played another clip: a late-night video of Clive's lieutenant discussing the exact operation of how Blake had been to be used as a diversion. There was Bronson Bradley, there were smaller names—each one snapping at his throat like a trap.
He staggered. The arrogance left and was replaced by confusion.
"Don't touch me!" he barked at the cameras as if they were animals.
Clive's team started to murmur and shift. Phones were out. Someone in the back started a live stream. The auditorium filled with a new sound: the buzz of witnesses recording everything.
"You're getting away with this?" Clive pleaded suddenly, and his voice had the fragile, guttering quality of someone whose scaffolding has been pulled.
"You thought so," I said. "You made him a target. You called him bait. Tonight, those songs you payed for will play for you and you will hear them as an indictment."
He rose on shaking legs and, in a scene that felt like a story tearing open, he walked down the stage steps. He went to the center of the floor, where the press and guests had gathered. People gave him space, some out of fear, some out of curiosity. The camera lights pinned him like insects.
"Clive!" someone shouted. "Explain yourself!"
"I didn't—" he began, then stopped because the phrase hung in the air like a loose rope.
The change on his face was cinematic: smugness → confusion → denial → disbelief → collapse.
"No, no, no. This is not how—this is false!" he cried, and his hands trembled.
"Proof," I told him, and played a final clip of him counting bills in a seedy warehouse. His composure broke. He looked like someone who had been caught smiling at the corpse he had buried.
He sank to his knees under the glittering chandeliers. The room held its breath. A hundred eyes met his forehead.
"Please—" he whispered. "Please—this is a mistake—"
The words were thin and damp with fear. He scraped at the terrazzo floor as if the tiles held the only anchor left to him. The press swarmed: camera shutters, live streams, someone already yelling, "Kneel!" like a crowd picking a chorus. People recorded with breathless fascination. Others clapped—some out of righteous fury, some out of approval. A woman filmed with tears in her eyes; a man laughed; a teenage fan recorded and posted in seconds.
Clive's pleading shifted through the stages like a play: he began to deny, then to fury, then to bargaining, then to begging. "You don't understand. I built this. I—it's not what you think. Please—" His voice cracked like ice under weight.
He had been many things: smug local king, silent backer, a man in suits dining on other people's lives. Now he crawled to the edge of a pool of light and begged to be spared.
Blake stood. For the first time I saw him as not just the man who had been used, but a man with a voice.
"Stop," Blake said, flat and cold. "Get up."
Clive's begging paused. "Please—"
"You made me a target," Blake said. "You put a price on a child's life. You modelled cruelty for your employees."
"I did not—" Clive gasped.
"You did," Blake replied. "And they watched you do it. We watched. Tonight will not be your field of flourish."
People around us were shouting. Some left. Some stayed. Cameras were everywhere, and I could see the viral numbers climb in seconds.
Clive's face crumpled. He folded inward as if he could make himself smaller.
"Kneel and apologize," someone yelled. "Confess."
He did both. He knelt again, this time not because the city demanded it, but because the story had already crushed him.
He looked directly at Blake, and his voice was suddenly small. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry. Forgive me."
It was the last act: the villain reduced to a supplicant on a marble floor while tens of thousands around the world watched his fingers slide and his mouth form a sorry that would not bring back years.
Phones buzzed. Clips spread. The livestream hit the trending list. "Clive Johnston kneels" climbed as a headline; people recorded, some cheering, some booing, some quietly shaking their heads. A teenage girl uploaded a video with the caption: "We saw him fall." The room split into opinions like a river with many tributaries.
He tried to get up. Security hovered. Someone shoved a microphone in his face as if to collect his confession like a prize.
"Why?" a reporter asked.
He mumbled. "Fear. Greed."
"Do you realize what you've done?" Blake asked.
Clive's eyes focused on Blake like a man seeing the eyes of a mirror he hates.
"Please," he begged, then, "I can fix this. I'll pay—"
"No," Blake said. "You will own what you did. You will face what you built."
Clive's knees hit the floor again. He pressed his forehead to the tiles. The crowd watched: some took video, some clapped, others recorded the sound of him crying.
That was the beginning of the end for Clive Johnston. The footage went viral. Lawyers got involved. People demanded investigations. The man who had worn crowns of convenience found his crown unmade in public, and as he crawled from denial to collapse, cameras captured every frame. He begged. The witnesses' phones kept filming. He begged louder. People around him recorded, debated, applauded, and recorded again.
Blake watched him and then looked at me.
"Thank you," he said quietly.
"You left him a microphone," I said. "People will remember."
"He deserves everything," he said.
We left before the legal wheels bit, but the world had already formed its opinion.
Later, when the dust settled enough for me to sleep before eleven, I stood on the porch of the small house I had bought with the money from Manuel—money I had promised to the original body's wish: to leave Northwest for light and a decent bed—and Blake sat beside me.
"Do you regret saving me?" he asked.
I popped another lemon lollipop in my mouth and clicked my cap over my eyes. "No," I said. "We made one bad man very sorry tonight."
He turned and kissed my temple like he was thanking the moon.
"Why did you kiss me in the alley?" he asked.
"Because it worked," I said simply. "And because your lips tasted like trouble."
"You taste like candy," he replied, and both of us laughed.
He coughed, remembering the pain in his belly. "I may need you on set," he said. "Isaiah Donaldson is the next big thing, and the Lu family will try to rotate the cameras."
"Then I'll go," I said. "But you promise me something."
He looked surprised. "Name it."
"Stick by me when I say the word 'lemon,'" I said, and the moonlight made the lollipop glow like a tiny sore star.
"Like a talisman?" he asked.
"Like proof we've started something," I said. "And when the cameras come, remember this night."
He touched the lollipop-stick still in my mouth, then took it from me with a playful groan.
"You're impossible," he whispered.
"Only till eleven," I said.
We stood in the dim light, and for a second our hands found each other. The city around us was noisy and hungry, but in that small bubble, protected by a hat and a lollipop and a promise, we were simply two people who had conspired to make a villain fall.
The End
— Thank you for reading —