Sweet Romance13 min read
I Found Out His Secret, and Then He Cornered Me on the Stairs
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I found out the school big shot was in the hospital for hemorrhoid surgery.
Then he cornered me on the stairs.
He was two heads taller than me, hands in his pockets, looking down like a statue. He smiled without warmth.
"Did you go telling everyone I got surgery for hemorrhoids?" he asked, his tongue touching the back of his teeth like a warning.
1
Last week my father suddenly had a hemorrhoid flare-up.
He paced the room and could not sit.
After two days of thin congee he finally broke.
"I am getting surgery!" he wailed through the house, pain and stubbornness tangled together.
The next morning, in the hospital, there came a sound from the bathroom I will never forget.
"Ahhhh!" my father screamed, miserable and ridiculous, "I will never do surgery again—wahhh!"
I was texting with my friends when that howl cut through my screen-time bubble. Someone was gossiping about a rumor: mind-reading is contagious now. I laughed out loud. I was in the middle of writing a silly story.
But when my father howled again I stopped laughing and called my mother to hurry to the ward.
The neighbor bed stayed empty the whole morning.
I was a girl alone at a man's hospital room; I did not feel comfortable.
When my father finally came out of the bathroom his face was deathly pale, like he had run a silent marathon.
My mother was still on the way.
I took a step toward the door and froze.
A boy barged in.
Black hair, black eyes, expression blank.
He had a phone clutched to his ear with his shoulder, fumbling at the buttons of the ugly hospital gown. The gown hung wrong on him but somehow did not make him look bad.
I clutched my bag and almost squealed. "—!?"
This was the school’s big shot—Bram Chapman.
2
I angled my body so we would not crash.
Bram, infamous for his temper and for having once thrown a chair at intruders who made trouble in his class, ignored me. He walked around my bed toward the next bed as if he owned the corridor.
It took a second for my brain to catch up.
Bram Chapman... having hemorrhoid surgery? That was the kind of gossip that exploded like someone had pushed the wrong button.
I was equal parts delighted and mildly comforted. If the most perfect boy in school could have hemorrhoids, then the world had some fairness. I might not be beautiful, but I had a lively soul. And I did not have hemorrhoids—yet.
I planned to slip out quietly.
He stopped.
"From Hengyang?" he asked.
3
Great.
I was still in my school uniform.
If the big shot realized his secret was seen, would he snap? I froze, not daring to turn.
I tried to bluff. "No, this is my sister's uniform. I'm from Sanshui."
No response.
I prepared to escape.
A cold laugh, then, "Your sister? Stop lying."
Bram had finished fixing his gown. The broad shoulders made the awful hospital clothes look like a fashion choice. He sat on his bed and, with casual cruelty, began to unhook his trousers.
My eyes nearly popped out. "!!!!!!"
He changed and straightened, and a sliver of his abdomen showed—neat, flat, like the kind you see in magazine shots.
I thought, blessedly: some people are ridiculously built without trying.
Then he lifted his eyelids and finally looked at me—slowly, with interest. For an instant I felt how small I actually was. He said, low, "If you tell one soul about me being hospitalized…"
My father snored on cue, loud as an industrial drill.
Bram glanced at my father with something almost like pity, then back at me.
Opportunity, I thought. While Bram's attention drifted to the snoring, I slipped out the room.
Downstairs, a girl stopped me.
She spoke with a strange accent and wore a whisper of Harajuku style. She held her phone out: Bram Chapman's photo.
"Have you seen this boy?" she asked.
I fumbled for composure. "No, sorry."
She muttered, "Weird—I heard he was in this hospital."
I walked away and pretended not to think about it. Bram's hemorrhoid rumor was scandalous but dangerous—he was exactly the kind of boy you didn't provoke.
Days later my mother called and told me to come to the hospital again.
"No," I said. "I am busy."
She said, without missing a beat, "Ten minutes. Be here or your dollhouse set goes in the dumpster."
She was impossible and she won. I went.
4
When I arrived the ward was sparsely occupied. My mother fussed as usual and left early. My father, exhausted, told me, "Go eat. I'll be fine."
I dashed out for food and came back to an empty bed. His phone buzzed on the pillow.
Then I heard water running. That chatter of plumbing made my heart jump.
I rounded the bathroom door and froze.
A boy half-bent, pants still imperfect, and his hands clumsy. Bram. He was washing his hands like any man, but completely composed. He looked at me.
"Come here," he said.
He wasn't asking.
"Why?" I tried to be superior.
He smiled with a small cruel curl. "Because you're from Hengyang, aren't you?"
"—No," I lied. "This is my sister."
He smiled a different way, patient and cold. "You're lying."
My father poked his head in at that moment.
Everything screamed disaster.
5
Bram's hand slid over my mouth before I could shout.
His palm was cool, smelled faintly of antiseptic and mint. For reasons I still can't explain, my tongue flicked out and licked the place. My face burned.
Bram jerked like I'd surprised him.
He answered my father's voice: "Yes, it's me."
My father, in typical fashion, chirped on: "Have you added our girl on WeChat?"
Bram glanced at me and said, "Not yet."
My cheeks burned. My spine felt like a live wire.
Then, close to my ear, Bram whispered, "If you make a sound, I'll tell your father you undid my pants."
6
I was furious, but also terrified.
I slipped from his grip when my father left; I fled like an eel.
For days after, my mother made extra portions for the ward. She confided about Bram's mother's friend and how Bram's mom used to know her.
Bram didn't add me back after I rejected his friend requests.
The world was strangely unfair: the boy who had me feeding him chicken drumsticks for five hundred bucks worth of freedom could also snap his fingers and freeze me in place.
He did not add me. And yet he left a mess in my stomach.
One Saturday I texted him and got a teasing reply: "Miss me?"
I walked past the school clinic and found him sitting outside, twisting a pen with one hand.
"I saw you were at the hospital," I tried.
He looked at me like someone examines a broken thing. "Do you miss me?"
I stared at him.
"How can you be so unbothered?" I demanded.
He shrugged. "People have secrets. You saw mine. Now keep it."
7
When Bram left the hospital he walked out like he had not left anything behind. The empty bed felt unexpectedly personal.
I sent him a text that night: "Are you out?"
He replied a day later with a teasing, "Are you missing your brother?"
I took offense.
Then came the day he appeared at school again.
During PE I saw him near the hoops with a small group of boys. My friends teased me about staring. I tried to pretend I hadn't.
Then I walked up close—he was there, as cold and composed as a glacier.
I walked over and grabbed his sleeve in front of a hundred eyes. "Why did you delete me?"
He looked at me like I was a stranger. "We weren't that familiar."
"Then why did you make me feed you for a week?"
"You let me," he said. "Why did you keep doing it?"
He smiled like it was some trivial puzzle. "If we were that close, why can't I delete you?"
8
Later he walked me off a crowded bus without leaving a trace.
He said one night in a narrow alley, "I know someone with mind-reading."
My heartbeat jumped.
"Do you?" I asked, suspicious and hopeful.
He kept his voice low. "She ruined a lot of things. She once turned to violence at twelve and never stopped."
He went on, his shoulders slumping. "She is obsessed with me. She reads me like an open book. She hurt people. She was sent away."
I felt the blood drain from my face. "Who is she?"
He looked away. "My half-sister."
My mind mapped the danger, a cold track.
9
One day he grew faint near me. He took out a tiny box of candies and popped one into his mouth. The smell of alcohol made my stomach flip.
"I'm allergic to alcohol," he said sloppily, then smiled. "But when there's alcohol in my system, she can't read me."
I understood. He had been masking his mind for months to evade her.
"How is that safe?" I asked. "You could get worse."
He smiled and said, "I wanted to explain. Please don't tell anyone."
I promised like a child swearing to a dare.
10
But then the rumor spilled.
At graduation a friend, Belen Lynch, sent me a frantic invitation: a class reunion that night. I went, half-hoping to avoid Bram.
The place was packed. Drinks flowed. The music thinned my thinking.
I saw him across the room with Giuliana Schaefer—she was beautiful, like a living picture—and a laugh like glass. They walked in like a couple on purpose.
I was a winded little animal.
I felt like he did not belong to me anymore.
11
I ducked into the hallway and saw a girl with a hat—Delilah Barron—eyes bright and too still. I remembered her from the library, smiling in Japanese and then slipping a silver blade into her pocket.
She had been Bram's ghost once—12 years old, sent away like a broken doll.
I felt cold.
I spotted Giuliana in the center of the room. She was laughing.
Delilah moved like a coiled snake. My mouth went dry.
I called Bram. "Bram, can we talk?"
He answered curtly, "I'm with my girlfriend."
A small bell rang in my head. He misunderstood me. "I just—"
He cut me off, "Don't come near me."
12
I saw Delilah's hat tip, the hand in her pocket.
Everything flared.
She lunged at Giuliana.
I moved without thinking and intercepted.
A tiny knife slid into my chest. It did not hit my heart, it missed by a breath, but the pain was bright and hot.
I smiled at Delilah like a mad person.
"Enjoy your time in prison," I spat through blood.
Her hand trembled and the girl with the knife snapped. "You don't understand—"
But the world had not gone silent. Giuliana reacted like a trained fighter, lost the dress in a motion and threw Delilah with a kung-fu move that belonged in a movie.
The room erupted in chaos. People screamed and shoved.
Bram grabbed me, careful as if I were glass. His hands under my shoulders, his voice broken, "Don't talk. Don't move."
13
Police officers who were at the venue for crowd control rushed in. Delilah thrashed and shrieked at the top of her lungs. Her voice was an animal's.
They held her down. Someone filmed. A hundred phones in frames.
Bram carried me to the ambulance; the lights were flashing like detached stars.
In the ambulance I asked between breaths, "Do you—do you like me?"
He pressed his lips to my forehead. "Yes. I've always—"
"It hurt," I breathed, voice small. "You left me that night when I told you I liked someone else."
He laughed, but there was an edge like broken glass. "You told me you loved Matteo," he said. Matteo Carver—kind, patient, the boy who had caught my water bottle on the bus.
I swallowed bile. "Yes. Because I was afraid."
He shook his head. "You are afraid of a monster. I don't blame you."
14
At the hospital Bram stayed and did not leave until I opened my eyes. He had been pale, exhausted, and—despite the hospital smell—purely present.
Bram told me the truth about Delilah: that she could read him until their bond broke, that she came from Japan, that she had been violent. He told me they had a trap ready and had staged a net to catch her when she moved. But she had moved early.
"You saved me," he said simply.
I coughed up blood and smiled a terrible grin. "I planned it, actually. I am studying medicine."
"You planned stabbing yourself?"
"I planned to be the magnet, not the casualty. But it worked anyway."
He kissed my forehead. "You are stubborn."
15
When Delilah was processed, the scene out front became the public punishment I had dreamed of in gossip satires, except it was very real.
They led her out in handcuffs. The venue emptied into a ring of strangers pushed by curiosity. Phones rose like a plague of small suns.
A man shouted, "You tried to kill someone!"
Another: "How could you?"
Delilah's hair was wild, eyes burning like a trapped animal. She screamed, "You all forced me—I've heard him my whole life—it's mine!"
Bram stepped forward. "Stop."
He walked up to the metal barrier between crowd and held-off area. He took off his jacket and showed his chest, scarred from pieces of the past, and he spoke, calm and slow, a voice that whispered like winter wind.
"This is a human being," he said. "She is fragile. She is mad. But do not let sympathy become excuse."
Delilah howled. "You lied! You promised me!"
Bram's face hurt with something I had not seen before: grief and terrible tenderness tangled. "I did not ask her to be a monster," he said. "She chose violent ways to keep me. She hurt people."
People around them shifted—some in judgment, some with sympathy. Phones recorded like insects.
16
"How dare you?" a student shouted. "She attacked my friend!"
"She was twelve when they sent her away!" someone countered.
Bram turned that storm with one small gesture. He stepped back and said, to the cameras and the crowd and to her, "Let the law do what law must. But listen—if you think this is a story about romance and betrayal, then you have not listened at all."
Delilah's expression changed. She had been fierce, basking in the attention. Now she looked like a child again. Her mouth fumbled for words that would make people love her, then shrank away.
"I loved him!" she shrieked. "I wanted him! I—"
"Stop." Bram's voice cut through the hubbub. "You hurt people. You ruined lives."
She kneaded the air like trying to catch smoke. The crowd's mood turned from curiosity to revulsion as details came out—how she had stalked classmates, threatened ex-lovers, and attacked people. Witnesses whispered. A photo circulated of her at twelve with a cruel smile.
17
Delilah's reaction was a small theater.
First a look of triumph as if she had won attention.
Then small disbelief as the security footage played on a stranger’s phone in the front row.
"That's—no," she cried.
Denial, then anger. "You are lying!"
Bram's voice did not rise. "Go to trial," he said. "Let the people speak. You're not above law."
Her eyelids fluttered. She tried to appeal to sympathy and, failing that, begged: "Please, please!"
"Don't reach out to me again," Bram said. "You have to answer for this."
Her voice dwindled. The crowd, who had once leaned forward, now backed away. Some filmed, others whispered "good." A woman clapped once, soft. Someone said "Finally. Finally."
Delilah collapsed into a shaking heap, more like someone who had run far too long and found the road end. The arrest was not theatrical; it was grim, and everyone who watched knew it was a moment that would follow her forever.
18
The punishment continued when the story broke online.
Delilah's parents, attempts at legal pulls, petitions for psychiatric help—none of it changed the fact that she had enacted violence in public. Videos circulated with slower and faster replays. People wrote op-eds. Bram's name was flooded with pity, praise, and an ugly old curiosity about the hemorrhoid rumor.
I was at his side every day after the surgery. He came to see me at the hospital, somber and ridiculous and very present.
"Why did you tell me to keep quiet about the hospital?" I asked him once.
He watched the drip bag sag. "I didn't want pity or jokes. But also—I knew if she smelled fear she'd strike sooner."
I touched his hand. "You were brave."
He smiled like a fox. "You stabbed a girl in the chest. Not brave."
I laughed, the sound ragged. "I meant: you were brave."
19
After the trial, when things settled, when Delilah's face had been turned from a shining news item to a quiet file in a system that rarely healed people, Bram came to me with an awkward seriousness.
"You said you'd love me only if you knew my secret," he said.
"I said that," I admitted. "Back when you threatened to tell my dad you undid your pants."
He sneered. "Why would you say such a childish thing?"
I shrugged. "To scare you."
He took my hand and said, simply, "You know my truth now."
I nodded. I thought of evenings feeding him like some odd ceremonial offering—chicken legs, soup bowls, the million tiny chores that had felt insulting and then, over time, intimate.
"I want a normal love," I said, remembering the alley. "No secrets. Nothing crazy."
Bram's fingers tightened. "I will give you ordinary things. I can try."
20
We walked a new path together.
I went to S University for clinical medicine. Bram chose law.
Matteo Carver—the boy who had made a would-be boyfriend title of convenience—went where I did with steady, patient smiles. He never pushed.
Giuliana Schaefer married the life of a future officer with a laugh and a brave face. She visited me in the hospital, joking and raw and fierce.
Bram studied law not only because he liked it but because he wanted the ability to keep monsters like Delilah behind glass.
21
Time rearranged things in smaller ways.
At the hospital bed, one night Bram kissed me and said, "Don't leave me like you did in the stairwell."
"I was afraid," I told him. "You said you would die for me."
He eyed me. "Then stay. Learn how heavy my hands can be when they hold you. Decide if you can trust them."
"Do you trust me?" I asked, frankly.
His face softened. "I trust you now. I trusted you the night you ran into the hallway with blood on your hands."
I smiled despite the ache in my chest. "We are both reckless."
"You let me be reckless with you," he said, with a small wicked grin.
22
At the graduation reunion, a thousand small things happened: old classmates found lovers, rumors faded, wounds healed, and scars remained.
Delilah got the punishment she deserved: public unraveling, trial, conviction. She was not simply humiliated and left to the wolves—she was processed; the law took over. She reacted with the stages the witnesses loved to watch: smugness, then shock, then denial, then collapse. People took pictures, some shamed, some recorded, some whispered prayers for the lost girl who had once been twelve and frightened.
It was not a revenge fantasy made neat and gleaming. It was messy and human and filled with ugly truths.
23
Once, in a quiet courtyard between classes, Bram held my chin in that same dangerous way and I laughed.
"You know," he said, "I didn't have hemorrhoids."
I blinked. "Wait."
He rolled his eyes. "I was over-dramatic. I had a condition that required an operation. It was embarrassing."
"So the whole rumor—"
"It made me vulnerable," he said. "It made people laugh, sure. But it also kept her from locating me for a time."
I hugged him, a small, braced thing. "Men and their secrets."
He kissed me, long and clumsy, then deadly earnest.
"Marry me," he said out of nowhere.
I blinked. "We just finished high school."
"Yes," he said. "But I want you for a long time. Keep my secret if I keep yours."
24
We made promises in small increments: breakfast at dawn, notes in margins of textbooks, feeding one another cheap hospital food like a strange courtship ritual.
When Delilah's saga closed, when the world moved on and rumors shifted, we were still there: two stubborn teenagers who had been through a knife, a rumor, and a thousand small humiliations for each other.
He would tease me later about the chicken leg ransom. I would answer by stealing his pen and hiding it in a book.
"Why do you love me?" he asked once on a cold morning.
"For stubbornness," I said.
He smiled like a sun in rare weather. "Stubbornness is love," he agreed.
25
We did not end on a soapbox. We ended on a small private oath: a silver finger-ring he bought at a little stall, terrible taste and perfect meaning.
"If you ever tell the story like some clean romance," I told him, sliding the ring into my pocket, "I'll make you eat antiseptic candies for a week."
He laughed. "Deal."
And then life, practical and ridiculous and sweet, settled into place.
The End
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