Johann | YOUR BULLY

There were countless reasons why you wished you’d never met Johann Morgenstern.

First, he was ridiculously egotistical, arrogant, and completely detached from reality.

Second, his father owned the company—or rather, the whole brand, conglomerate and business your father had faithfully devoted his health and soul for over the last twenty years of his life.

Third, Johann Morgenstern was your bully.

The scholarship program had been nothing more than another publicity campaign to polish the company’s image, but your parents had insisted you apply, hoping it would give you the chance to study at one of the country’s most prestigious academies.

And it worked. You earned your place at the most expensive and renowned academy in the nation, a school that would carry you from high school all the way through university.

You also earned yourself a one-way ticket to hell on earth.

Johann vaguely remembered seeing your name on the acceptance list. It hadn’t meant much to him. He forgot about it almost immediately.

You were just another scholarship student—someone who had clawed their way up from the bottom through sheer determination alone. Except... you hadn’t.

No remarkable talent. No extraordinary intelligence. No hidden gift waiting to bloom.

You hovered near the bottom of every ranking, barely scraping by with passing grades while everyone else breezed through classes with the help of private tutors, elite preparatory schools, and generations of inherited privilege.

Objectively speaking...You were painfully average.

It was honestly laughable. Even Johann struggled to find it funny after a while. A complete waste. A scholarship handed to someone who barely deserved to exist, in his opinion.

That was when Johann decided you should at least be useful.

And you agreed. You were forced to. Because someone hanging by a thread, one failed exam away from losing their scholarship—and from crushing their parents’ hopes, not to mention putting their father’s career at risk—didn’t have the luxury of refusing.

You became his puppy, his slave.

Carrying his books. Fetching his drinks. Holding his blazer like a human coat rack. Doing his homework.

Your classmates found it amusing. His friends found it even more entertaining. The bruises. The laughter. The water dumped over your head. The stolen assignments. The endless humiliation.

A sharp whistle jolted you awake from your nap.

After spending the entire night finishing Johann’s chemistry projects—and his friends’ as well—you were utterly exhausted.

Your uniform still clung damply to your skin from where one of his inner circle had “accidentally” spilled a sports drink all over you twenty minutes earlier.

“Did you go deaf? Get over here.” Johann snapped his fingers from where he sat on the bleachers. Resting his chin against one hand, he watched your face with quiet amusement. “I’ve got something I need my slave to do.”

The floodlights surrounding the academy’s premier football pitch hummed overhead, casting long, razor-sharp shadows across the perfectly manicured grass.

Most of the students had already drifted toward the locker rooms, getting ready to head back to the dormitories, leaving behind only Johann, his inner circle, and, of course, you.

His friends bickered among themselves, none of them willing to play goalkeeper for the last round of penalty kicks. Johann rolled his eyes, visibly bored, until his gaze landed on you.

You stood huddled near the goalpost, one sports bag clutched in your hands and another slung over your shoulder.

He stretched lazily, rolling his shoulders before speaking.

“Put the bags down.” His voice carried easily across the field, loud enough for you to hear—and for the rest of his friends to fall silent.

He knew every survival instinct in your body screamed at you to turn around and run.

But he also knew your own mind was far crueler than he ever had to be, constantly reminding you of the tuition fees, your family’s mounting debts, and the glittering future he had dangled just out of your reach.

Slowly, you obeyed. Step by step, you walked until your back pressed against the net of the goal.

“Don’t let them score.” The corners of Johann’s lips curled into something dangerously close to a sadistic smile. “And I might not cut your scholarship. Maybe even let it extend until you get a major degree.”

Before you could even take a breath to answer, he stepped back and raised a hand toward the others. “There. You’ve got your goalkeeper.”

The first ball slammed into your shoulder.

The second crashed into your thigh.

The third struck your stomach hard enough to fold you in half.

“Come on, pup!” one of his friends shouted. “Don’t you want your scholarship!?”

Before long, they weren’t aiming for the goal anymore. They were aiming for you.

Your ribs. Your knees. Your face. Your head.

You couldn’t tell whether the dampness running down your cheek was sweat, tears or blood.

“Not the ribs, you idiots,” Johann complained. But he made no move to stop them. Instead, he calmly unscrewed a bottle of water and took a leisurely sip while he watched.

After that fateful night on the football field, things changed. It was hard to say whether for better or for worse.

You were hospitalized. One surgery. Three long weeks confined to a hospital bed. Even though your recovery progressed well, the doctor refused to discharge you until he was satisfied every last concern had been addressed, as if he had a gun aimed at his head.

Weeks had passed since that night.

Miraculously, there were no medical bills to pay, no disciplinary action from the academy, and not so much as a whisper of the accident reached the outside world. Or your family.

It was all brushed off as just some rough match.

Johann had cleaned up every trace of it, erasing the evidence of his own cruelty to protect both his family’s reputation and his newly discovered obsession.

Even his friends kept their distance now, too afraid to provoke whatever dark switch had flipped inside him.

The beatings had mostly stopped. But Johann still kept you on a leash.

The heavy, soundproof door of his private apartment on campus clicked shut, sealing the rest of the world outside.

To anyone else, it looked like another ordinary afternoon of Johann dragging you around because he couldn’t stand letting you out of his sight after your release from the hospital.

But today, the air inside felt suffocating.

He gently backed you against the wall by the entrance—gently, at least by Johann’s warped standards. The moment your still-healing back met the wood, your breath caught.

Before you could so much as murmur a protest, his hands settled around your waist, lifting you just enough to close the distance between you.

His lips crashed against yours in a deep, possessive kiss.

At first, you forced yourself to comply, your trembling hands clutching weakly at the lapels of his blazer, terrified of provoking that cold, unpredictable temper lurking beneath his calm exterior.

But the angle was wrong.

The pressure was too much.

A searing, white-hot pain exploded through your chest as the lingering injuries flared to life. Your healing ribs refused to expand. Your scarred, fragile lungs screamed for oxygen that simply wouldn’t come.

The instant Johann realized your lips had parted not to kiss him back, but in a desperate gasp for air—and your knees gave out beneath you—his world shattered.

He jerked away as though your skin had burned him.

“Hey—” The word died in his throat. His eyes turned frighteningly vacant, his pupils swallowing almost the entirety of his irises as panic—only the second he’d ever experienced in his life—sent a violent surge of adrenaline crashing through his body.

“Shit—no, no, no, look at me!” He dropped to his knees in front of you, his hands shaking so violently he could barely cup your face. “Breathe. Goddamn it, breathe for me. Look at me—look at my eyes!”

He pressed a trembling hand against your sternum, only to recoil in horror the moment he realized how easily he could have crushed you all over again. “Fuck... I’m sorry. I’m so sorry...”

A crushing silence settled over the apartment, broken only by your ragged, uneven breaths.

When you finally managed to draw a full breath, your forehead sagging weakly against his shoulder, he didn’t dare let go.

“You’re... still hurting? Even after the surgery?” The words ripped from his throat, hoarse, breathless, laden with genuine disbelief.

He leaned back only enough to search your face, his hands tightening around your upper arms with an iron grip that was somehow impossibly careful. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?”

His voice cracked. The frustration wasn’t directed at you. It was aimed entirely at himself—and at the fearful, obedient silence he had spent years conditioning into you.

He swallowed hard, his jaw tightening as a cold, horrifying realization settled over him, “You didn’t say a single word—are you a masochist!?”

Summer break was supposed to make forgetting you easy. It didn’t.

Miles away in Monaco, surrounded by the blistering Mediterranean sun and the effortless luxury of his family’s annual retreat, Johann had expected your painfully ordinary face to fade from his memory.

Instead, an unrelenting ache settled deep inside him.

A strange, restless longing clawed at his chest—a craving for the only person who had ever managed to make him feel anything in a life suffocated by absolute apathy.

When he casually mentioned your name during one of his infrequent calls home, his father merely chuckled, lazily swirling an expensive glass of whiskey.

”I am happy that you found a friend,” the older man murmured, wearing a cold, knowing smile. And that was all.

The moment Johann returned from Monaco, he made that choice for both of you.

He didn’t even bother asking.

Instead, he dragged you straight into one of the city’s most exclusive designer boutiques, brushing past security with nothing more than a dismissive wave of his hand.

Everyone could see how that poor creature lingered awkwardly near the entrance, arms folded tightly across the chest, fully expecting to spend the afternoon acting as nothing more than his glorified pack mule while he indulged in another extravagant shopping spree.

Instead, a small army of visibly anxious sales associates descended, like servants.

Then Johann’s voice sliced cleanly through the silence. “Go change.” He gestured toward the private VIP fitting rooms without taking his eyes off you. “The clothes.”

One outfit became five. Five became ten. Tailored silk blouses. Designer dresses worth more than your family’s yearly rent. Soft cashmere sweaters that swallowed your slight frame.

For the briefest moment, standing beneath the warm golden lights of the private fitting suite and staring at your own reflection, you wondered...

Was this what someone from Johann’s world looked like? Clean. Untouchable. Perfectly polished.

He watched as you slowly stepped out of the fitting room, the hem of a dark velvet dress whispering across the gleaming hardwood floor.

A quiet hum escaped him.

He hadn’t tried on a single thing himself. “...Come here.” He rose from the velvet settee.

The height difference became impossible to ignore as he closed the distance, stopping directly in front of you.

His gaze wandered over you with agonizing slowness. Your collarbone. The way the fabric draped over your body. The quiet, anxious stiffness in your posture.

It was almost as though he were comparing the image before him to one that had existed only in his mind.

“...Do you like it? I do think the color suits you.” His expression remained impossible to read, frozen in the same aristocratic composure he always wore.

Yet a slow, heavy sigh slipped from his lips. Almost... Disappointed. His hand rose almost absentmindedly, his thumb tracing slow, deliberate circles over the fabric resting against your hip.

“I asked...” His voice dropped to a quiet murmur, rich with a possessive intensity that made the air between you feel unbearably thin. “...Do you like it?”

The dorm room was silent, save for the relentless hum of the laptop’s fan and the occasional scratch of a fountain pen across thick, cream-colored paper.

Johann watched you without saying a word, a bit unsettled by your posture slumped over the mahogany desk, your eyes fixed blankly on the blinking cursor in the center of an empty Word document.

It was well past midnight, and the deadline for your midterm essay loomed over you like a crushing weight. But your mind was completely empty. He knew you didn’t had the energy to do anything, but he also knew how you refused to accept his offer to just pay or threat the professor to pass her anyway.

The depression had settled into your bones months ago—a heavy, colorless fog that turned even the smallest task into something impossibly exhausting. Johann noticed. He always did, every single change, after that stupid event.

Simply surviving as the center of Johann’s obsessive world had drained everything you had left. A shadow fell across your desk.

A warm ceramic bowl was placed gently beside your keyboard, the comforting scent of ginger and chicken broth slowly filling the room.

He didn’t speak at first.

Instead, he pulled a chair up beside yours, the clean, familiar scent of his cologne cutting through the stale air. Without asking, he picked up the spoon, scooped a small mouthful of broth, blew on it softly, and held it in front of your lips.

“Open your mouth.” His voice was low and steady, stripped of the sharp aristocratic edge it usually carried.

The quiet patience in it frightened you far more than his anger ever had.

You didn’t respond. You simply continued staring at the blank document, shoulders curled inward as if trying to disappear.

“You haven’t eaten since yesterday morning.” He drew in a slow breath, his tone hardening just enough to leave no room for argument. “If you want to stay here until you finish that paper, fine.”

He held the spoon in place. “But you’re going to eat.” A brief pause. “Or I’ll feed you myself. Forcefully.”

Eventually, utterly defeated, you parted your lips and allowed him to feed you.

When the bowl was half empty, he quietly set it aside before pulling your laptop toward himself. Business and finance were his field. You were drowning in the humanities. That didn’t stop him. With effortless confidence, his fingers flew across the keyboard, weaving together coherent arguments, citing academic journals he had likely memorized for amusement alone, dragging you out of yet another disaster just as he always seemed to do.

“You’re doing it again.” His voice was barely above a whisper. He never looked away from the screen. “Sinking. I already told you, I can take you to a psychiatrist. A psychologist. The best in the whole continent. Why keep torturing yourself?”

The typing stopped. He turned to face you.

His eyes slowly swept over the dark circles beneath your eyes, the unwashed hair spilling over your shoulders, and the complete absence of life behind your expression.

A quiet sigh escaped him. Frustrated. Helpless.

He stood, rounded the desk, and crouched beside your chair.

Before you could protest, one arm slipped beneath your knees while the other supported your back, lifting you effortlessly into his arms.

A quiet gasp escaped you as your hands instinctively found his shoulders. Without a word, he carried you into the adjoining private bathroom.

He still didn’t set you down. Instead, he carefully placed you on the edge of the marble countertop before stepping between your knees.

The bathtub was already filling, steam rising from warm water scented with lavender oil.

He reached for the bottle of shampoo, “Take your shirt off.”

His voice remained calm as his thumbs rested lightly against the hem of your shirt. The moment you froze, shame flashing across your face, his expression softened into something almost unbearably gentle.

“I’m not going to touch you like that.” His eyes lingered on your hair. “Look at your hair. It’s greasy.”

Johann bit his tongue—he knew he could sound rude instead of caring with the way he phrased his thoughts, “You haven’t washed it in three days.”

His voice dropped into a quiet murmur, “...Let me take care of you. Just this time? Please.”

.