Sweet Romance15 min read
The Stubborn Red Bellyband
ButterPicks11 views
I woke to the system’s cheery chime like a relentless alarm.
"Hello, adorable Pit #213 at your service!" the voice sang, metallic but infuriating.
I sat up, heart jumping. "What is this voice? Explain."
"Host, this is a bellyband," the system said. "Cute, charming, auspicious."
I pulled the bright red cloth from under my pajama top and held it up. It was ridiculous. It was a literal marriage-luck bellyband — a traditional, ridiculous prop.
"You put this on the hero?" I said flatly. "You want a CEO to wear this in public?"
"Task assigned," the system chirped. "Deliver the finger of fortune to the male lead. Reward: riches, souvenirs."
I pressed the heel of my hand into my forehead. My name—my present name—was Justice Williams. My job—well, my body’s original job—was graphic designer at a game company. My situation? Married-on-paper to Khalid Han, hometown-friend-turned-ceo, newly engaged. My problem? The original me, the woman whose life I had been grafted into, had been messy. She had left messes: lovers, rumors, a history of playing with people’s hearts. The world in the script hated her. My system insisted I was the one to "fix" the plot: by giving Khalid a gift that would become his golden edge in his world — a "golden finger" of fortune. The gift chosen for that miraculous fate was the red bellyband in my pocket.
I had sold hairbrushes to bald men. I had sold wheelchairs to marathoners. Selling a silly cloth to an arrogant CEO should be child's play. Right?
"Listen," I told the system. "Tell me the plot straight."
"Plot delivered," it said. "Male lead missing golden finger. You must give it."
"And you pick a bellyband. Of course you do," I muttered. The word "of course" was all I needed to know that this would be ridiculous.
I called "Auntie Khalid" — his mother, who was somehow an ally — and used my best smile to get a foot in the door of Khalid’s company as a designer. I told his mother I would help; she adored me and ensured the job. So I stamped my heels and marched into the skyscraper that housed Khalid Han’s empire with the bellyband hidden like contraband.
I had barely stepped into the mall across the street when a tall figure stopped the world.
He was Khalid Han. He was everything the script promised: tall, composed, the kind of clean presence that cooled the air. He watched my left hand.
My hand.
My stupid, ridiculous hand held the bellyband on the breeze because the system, for reasons I could not accept, had teleported the prop to me. The precious red cloth fluttered like a flag.
I would have thought I could hide it. I was wrong.
Khalid’s voice was low when he said, "You came to seduce me already, Justice?"
"I’m just gathering material," I lied, because lying poorly is my talent. "For design research."
"Don’t play games," Khalid warned, and left.
I watched him go, thinking that a single line — "don’t play games" — sounded like a verdict. It sounded like a threat wrapped in silk.
At the office next morning, small talk curdled into gossip.
"She’s his fiancée," someone said in the breakroom.
"So what? She’s all a show," another woman scoffed.
I hated eavesdroppers. "Company isn’t a gossip lounge," I said loud enough to make them flinch. "Do your job instead." They gawked, anger rising like steam in their tea. I made a note: remember faces.
"Did you see her?" whispered someone else.
"She just told the new girl to show her skills," someone replied with a smirk. "Remind me to watch the show."
I went upstairs to my office where I found the other designer — the heroine of the plot, Emilia Poulsen. She was young, quick to smile, and she grabbed my attention by being earnest.
"Thank you," she said. "You... you defended me earlier."
"Study hard," I told her. "Show results." I wanted to be helpful; she made that surprising thing called "doing good" look effortless.
Across the room, two men watched everything, enjoying the small shuffles of fate: Khalid and Gene Knudsen — an actor with the nickname "the Emperor" for how paparazzi adored him. Gene grinned at Khalid, "Is she that hard to handle?"
"Don’t invest in my life," Khalid said. He sounded tired. He sounded like someone who had been stabbed by the world at close range and learned not to flinch. I noted it; I also noted that Gene’s charm had the exact timing of someone who knew how to get what he wanted.
I did my job: help Emilia finish the pitch; keep my head down in the office. But every small kindness I gave to Emilia became fuel for the office rumor mill. That would complicate my plan — which was simple: get Khalid to wear the bellyband once. Done. Reward. Done.
Then everything tilted. Khalid was abducted.
When the call came, system chimes buzzing like anxious insects, I froze. "Where?" I demanded.
"Abandoned building," the system said. "Target male lead captured."
"On my way."
At the ruin, Khalid sat with his hands bound, face unmoved, eyes sharp. The kid held a knife and yelled, "You stole her from me!"
"Who is 'her'?" Khalid asked coldly.
This is where the plot snapped. The kid’s eyes locked on me as if I'd always belonged to him. He called my name, the original name that belonged to the woman who had used hearts like toys. The system cheerfully explained: the past had followed us. The kid was her former lover — a man scorned, who named me with venom because this body had been his refuge before Khalid. My jaw clenched. I had not done those things, but the body I wore had a paper trail of betrayal.
"Khalid, run," I wanted to yell. Instead I watched the scene go wrong: the man lunged, and I threw myself forward as if the script had ordained me as cannon fodder. A blade cut; I screamed and tasted iron.
Khalid moved fast, raw anger entering his clean face, and he disarmed the man with a speed that made me think the man had been an amateur. We escaped. Khalid’s hands were bloodless but shaking.
"Why did he say your name?" Khalid asked, bewildered.
"He called me something from before," I said. "This body had a messy past."
The hospital was sterile and bright. I needed stitches, and the world slowed into narrow tubes of light and pain. Gene sat at my bedside, sunken and oddly tender. He had kept watch overnight, he said with a sigh. Khalid hovered outside the door and then — like a reluctant lighthouse — left.
I woke, and Gene was there. "You’re awake," he said. "You saved him."
"Why would you stay with me?" I sniffed.
He shrugged, stubborn grin quirking. "Someone had to. You crawled into danger like a hero."
Khalid did not come in. He chose to remain at the door, feeling out of place as if he could not cross a line between them. When I told him how I had thrown myself forward, he looked at me like a man seeing a mirror break.
"Are you trying to die?" he asked in that metal voice.
"Would you wear this for me?" I blurted, holding up the bellyband like a ridiculous vow.
He looked at the cloth as if it were scalding.
"Put that away." He was flat. "Put it away, Justice."
I realized then how flimsy my plan was. I'm not a heroine; I'm a fixer jumping into someone else's script. But I had one stubborn obsession: the bellyband. It had to be worn. It had to become his boon.
Every attempt to make Khalid wear it failed like a sitcom gag. He refused. He mocked. He said the thing many men bred to say when wounded: "I wouldn't let you humiliate me."
I tried everything. I tried artful persuasion, practical reason, naked bribes. Gene's help soured into something complicated. He said gentler things when he thought I needed soothing.
"An invitation," he told me once. "Join me for dinner and I’ll help you with design choices."
"That's not why you are kind," I said.
"I am kind because I like you," he said simply.
I could have said yes. The man was clean and strong, and perhaps he would have made a good story. But I couldn't. Khalid's shadow pulled me like gravity. Gene took it with a stoic smile and left that night with a bruised look that almost looked like heartbreak.
Then came the turning point. At a studio shoot, the part that had been designated for Khalid was given — shockingly — to Gene. The system's "plot" said Khalid would star; the world said otherwise. My head spun.
I strode to Khalid's office. "This is your game," I told him, shoving my designs on his desk. "You can be the face. Your involvement will help the launch."
"You designed the character after me," I lied convincingly. "I want you."
He looked at me like someone tasting poison. "You’re not to decide my life."
"Fine." I was forced to recalibrate. If he wouldn’t wear it for pride, I’d make him need it another way.
Days passed. There were small conquests: Emilia’s proposal succeeded. Our campaign soared. The studio's ad did well. The company hosted a launch party that glittered like a thesis statement — everyone relevant from the board was there. Khalid was present, a black suit and a cold cliff of indifference. I found him in the crowd and said quietly, "We need to talk."
He looked at me. "After the party," he said.
"Now." I tugged on his sleeve, because that's what people do when they are tired of formalities.
He said only one thing: "Wear less."
I was stunned. Then he did something unexpected: he threw his jacket at me and guided me to the balcony. He put his hand firm on the small of my back, almost as if to arrange me like a portrait.
On a moonlit terrace, I lifted my drink to him and said nothing. For the briefest moment we stood like actors before a camera. I counted down silently. "Five, four, three, two, one..." and Khalid collapsed against me, drunk before he could fully fall. The world tilted, and someone with a steady face came and carried him to a room.
It should have been the perfect moment for me to slip that bellyband on him, but I was sloppy. I poured a sample of liquor into a tiny cup designed not to be noticed and planned to bottle him with it. He was an infuriatingly stubborn man: he did not open his mouth for the cup, so I climbed into the bed with him, because plots are softer with proximity. I kissed him at the edge of the night; the world blurred.
I woke with my body heavy and warm and the bellyband tied around my own throat. The memory of my kiss was like a splinter. I had drunk too much. The system scolded my antics with a mechanical giggle, and Khalid — immaculately dressed — left the room and later left a note while I slept: "I will take responsibility."
"I will take responsibility?" I read it over and over, meaningless in one way, monumental in another.
Khalid walked into the office next day with a question that could demolish me: "When will you design the shampoo ad?"
I looked up, stunned. "You mean the one the client specifically asked me to do?"
His expression folded. "They insist you lead."
A chance, then. A real professional opening. My old life would have lit up at that. I smiled.
"On one condition," I said, and for a blink he thought I was making a joke. "Wear the bellyband when we close the campaign."
He laughed once, not bitter, not kind. "You want me to wear a folk charm?"
"No," I said. "I want you to accept something silly for luck. It'll be our secret."
"You are making demands now," he said.
We compromised by ignoring one another. I dove into the ad. Months of nights and moods stitched into a film. The campaign rose like a tide and blew open like a market wind: downloads spiked, stocks ticked up. There was a banquet held to celebrate.
I found Khalid near the dais, black-suited, a ridge above the others. My heart pinged like a poor metronome. The room was full; champagne laughed in crystal. I walked over and guided him outside, to a private garden where the night smelled like cut grass and success.
He said plainly, "Let's end this bet. I will let you go, or we will stay. If you want freedom, ask now."
"I want the bellyband to be yours," I said, foolishly sincere. "Then I will leave you to your life."
He stopped. I had never asked him for anything so silly and so personal. His face softened in a way that could have been mistaken for mercy.
"Your demands are childish," he said, "but I agree. One time."
We returned to the party together. I had the red cloth in my coat pocket like contraband again. A hush passed over me as I moved.
At the dais, before everything and everyone — shareholders, journalists, assistants, the gossip-addicted crowd — I pulled Khalid aside.
"Do it," I said. "Put it on for me."
He looked at the crowd like a man looking at an edge. In one motion, he untied something from his own wrist, and the brilliance of his composure fractured. He took the bellyband and, to my shock, drew it over his head and tied it.
The room gasped; a dozen phones rose. "What is that?" someone cried. Cameras flashed.
Khalid’s face changed color as if he had been living in a pale room and someone had suddenly turned on light. He blinked slowly, then anger rose, then denial, then a strange break — a softness that made him real.
"Stop this," he said at first, his tone sharp. "This is absurd."
"Why are you doing that?" a board member demanded, incredulous.
Khalid laughed — a sound like metal breaking. "Because she asked once as a joke."
"You're making a spectacle!" an investor shouted.
He was suddenly not a ruler but a man unmoored. He turned to me: "This — you —"
I met his eyes and held their heat. The crowd murmured. People took pictures; someone started a live stream. Phones buzzed. A reporter shouted, "Is this a new internal ritual?"
Khalid's expression cracked. "You made me wear it," he said, voice shaking, "in front of everyone. Why humiliate me like this?"
"I didn't humiliate you," I answered. "I... wanted to give you something lucky. I thought it's a joke we could share."
He looked around as if the world had become a game board and none of the squares fit him anymore. "You don't understand…" he started, then stopped. His bravado crumbled into something human. "You used my name," he whispered. "You think you're in charge?"
Then the gesture of a man who'd held sway for years: standing still and measured, he pulled the bellyband tighter and walked to the stage like someone walking to a noose. Everyone stared like a thousand moths. He lifted his head and met the cameras, and his voice — low and cleaving — went through the room.
"I accept this," Khalid said, and the words hit like thunder. "I accept this humiliation because I chose to. I choose to wear what she gives me because I'm not afraid of the small things."
The crowd shifted. Some laughed. Some applauded. Some took more pictures. But in that crowd a ripple moved: admiration. People love a man who makes a strange move for love. Phones clicked; the moment fed itself. The man who had been near-inaccessible changed into legend for one evening.
Then came the punishment scene no one expected.
A blogger, obsessed with the old scandals, uploaded archived messages showing that the body I wore had indeed cheated — lovers arranged, a public betrayal long-suspected but never publicly shown. The footage cut and layered like a blade: messages, receipts, an ex's bitter confession.
The room swarmed. Voices rose. People who had once whispered now shouted. "She used him," "She played two men," "How dare she—"
Khalid froze and then did the impossible. He stepped forward, raised his hand, and silenced the storm with one calm move.
"This is not the person I fell for," he said, then, louder, "But this is the truth I must face anyway."
The room turned its attention like a tide.
"Justice Williams," he said, and everyone sparked toward my name. "Tell them."
People yelled for explanations. Phones pushed in. Reporters leaned forward like trained animals. My heart thumped.
I did not dodge. I straightened. "The body I inhabit lived those words," I said. "But I am not her."
"Then why are you here?" someone demanded.
"Because I was given a job," I answered. "Because the world we stepped into needs me to fix it. And because people like you want a villain to point at, but the truth is messy."
Then something happened I didn't expect: someone from the crowd — a woman whose voice had been silent before — stood up with a phone. She scrolled and played a video of the kidnapping scene where the ex-lover blamed me, the same video reporters had dug up before. The crowd yelped; the ex-lover's face appeared, recognized at once. He had been in the bar earlier that week, eyes full of hate.
"Where's he now?" someone asked. "Who is he?"
My chest thudded. This was the opening I had dreaded — a public trial.
Then Khalid leaned forward and began to speak as if he had practiced a dozen sermons in secret. "He is an assailant and a liar," he said. "He came to hurt me and to frame her. He will face the consequences."
Phones fluttered toward him like birds. The crowd demanded justice, the kind of justice that thrives on spectacle. Security moved. The ex-lover was found in the lobby, dizzy with guilt and a phone full of confessions. The press surged.
The punishment we staged was public and thorough. Khalid, flushed with a hard cocktail of pride and fury, stood on the dais and told the whole truth.
"Everyone," he said, "I once chose to forgive betrayal. I thought I was noble. But I will not accept violence or intimidation against me or anyone." He turned to the ex-lover. "Stand."
The man was dragged forward. He was smaller than his rumors, pale and frantic. The room was a ring of judges. Censors recorded everything. Phones recorded it all for the net to digest.
"Why did you do it?" Khalid demanded.
"I loved her!" the man cried. "She left me. She chose him. I—"
"You kidnapped me and threatened me," Khalid said. "You tried to hurt me to force a reaction. You broke the law."
The man’s face flicked through emotions like changing lamps: arrogance, panic, pleading, denial, collapse.
"You're a liar," the crowd shouted. "A coward!"
Khalid didn't shout. He produced a sealed envelope — evidence he had kept — and handed it to a security director. It contained messages proving the man had planned the act, with boasts to a friend and arrangements. The crowd's mood shifted from spectacle to moral certainty.
"Listen," Khalid said, and his voice was the clearest sound in the hall. "He will be charged. He will be judged by the law. But I want this to be known: whoever uses violence, whoever threatens others to settle scores, will be made small in public. This is not a mercy I will grant."
The ex-lover began to wobble, then tried the oldest trick: denial. "I didn't—"
Khalid stepped forward. "You did. You knocked. You planned it. You will face the law."
The man begged. He pleaded. "Please! I was wrong! I loved her! I never meant—"
"No," the crowd said. "Enough."
They recorded him pleading, his suit wrinkled and his bravado gone. People around pressed their phones forward. Journalists asked questions. The ex-lover's face went white. He went from haughty to pleading to kneeling, all in the span of a broadcast.
The fall was staggering. Cameras caught him kneeling, begging on the stairs. People took videos. He tried to lift his eyes, but the room echoed with whispers and clicks and a single slow clap from someone who had watched the cruel games he had played.
I watched him crumble. He moved through the stages the job required: arrogance, shock, denial, pleading, collapse. The crowd reacted exactly as the rulebook of public scandal requires: shocked at first, then gleeful, then vitriolic, then satisfied with the fall. Some people clapped. Some filmed with slack jaws. Someone shouted, "Good! Lock him up!"
He begged and begged. His voice quavered. "Please! I was in pain! I am sorry! Not this public—"
"No," Khalid said, calm now. "Not now. You will answer to the court, and you will answer to those you hurt."
Security took him away as the phones continued to flash. The live feed spiked. The video went viral for days. People debated and argued in the comment sections, some defending, some condemning. The man’s downfall was complete and humiliating. He had been a villain who thought he could erase consequences by cruelty. Instead he became a lesson.
I felt hollow afterwards, and oddly cleansed. The crowd’s anger had poured onto him. It had not landed on me. For a little while, the world’s appetite for spectacle had diverted into a lawful disgust that felt like justice.
Khalid stood beside me afterward, red-eyed but composed. "I'm sorry," he said quietly.
"For what?" I asked.
"For letting you bear the heat for too long," he said. "For grudges. For pride."
"Then do something delicate for me," I said, almost daring him.
He looked at me like he had five hearts, all heavy. "Name it."
"Keep working," I said. "Let me keep designing. Let the universe decide what seed grows."
He smiled finally, a small, honest thing. "We will handle it."
Weeks went on. The campaign kept climbing. Gene’s smile softened toward me into real warmth, and I returned it with gratitude for his patience. The office stopped gossiping — the scandal had redirected them all into a narrower narrative: who would sell what to whom and what would the markets do?
In the quiet after the storm, Khalid and I sat in his company garden, a rare place we could be alone. I moved my hands like a person trying to stitch an impossible seam.
"Why the bellyband?" he asked suddenly.
"It was a stupid system order," I said. "But it's become a talisman to me."
He looked at me long and then reached out and took one of my hands. "You never were frivolous," he murmured. "You are stubborn and ridiculous and brave."
"Those are fine traits," I said. "They helped me sell things I had no business selling."
He squeezed my fingers. "Then let's try being brave the right way."
I laughed, a surprise in the dark. "So you’ll keep it on?"
"If the world wants a spectacle, let it have one," he said. "But I will never be humiliated by it again."
I let out a breath I hadn't known I’d been holding.
Months passed. The ad's success burned long and bright. Gene left to film a period piece and sent me a postcard: "Designs look good on the face of victory." Emilia’s career blossomed. The man who had tried to hurt us faced legal repercussions and public shame that followed him for a long season. The law did its quiet duty; the crowd did its loud part. The punishment had been public, messy, and complete. The villain had gone from smugness to pleading, from denials to collapse, and finally to the cold, ordinary bars of reality. In public, people recorded everything — the arc of a man from danger to ruin — and the punishment played out exactly like the system's cruelly elegant checklist: arrogance → shock → denial → begging → collapse → removal. The witnesses were a chorus: cameras, phones, security, reporters. They documented the man’s reaction change in tight focus; his voice moved from bravado to tremor. People clapped. People filmed. People talked. The man’s fall fed the internet. Justice? Maybe. Exposure? Certainly.
In the weeks after, Khalid and I were quieter. We worked. We argued about invoices and color casts and ad placement. We argued about small kindnesses. In the end, he asked something I had never expected during the work grind.
"Justice," he said one morning as monitors hummed, "we will marry, properly. Openly. No jokes."
"You mean it?" I asked. The bellyband — our ridiculous red banner — hung folded in my drawer like a relic.
He smiled with the kind of tired honesty that made me forget how to breathe. "I mean it. Wear it if you must. But this time, we choose."
I took the bellyband into my hands and felt the weight of months, of scandal, of rescue and of an improbable tenderness. I thought of the system's chime and the job's absurd terms and how endings never came in neat little ribbons. I folded the red cloth, put it in a drawer, and then looked at Khalid.
"Okay," I said. "Let's make it ours."
Outside, the city thrummed. Inside, the ad screens glowed. And in a small, bright place between us, the red cloth waited — less a gag, more a promise. It would no longer be a mockery. It would be a charm that we chose to hold together.
The End
— Thank you for reading —