My Taboo Harem!

Chapter 948: Deer Stops Running

A murmur rolled through the audience before the production crew could smother it and the anchor’s smile thinned.

Phei tilted his head. "Did anyone ask me beforehand what I was comfortable with? Did a single member of your team come to me and say — Mr. Ryujin Tiamat, are there any boundaries we ought to respect before we turn this into public theatre? No?" His smile deepened, still beautiful, still almost gentle, which of course made it worse. "Then what was the expectation, exactly? That because the cameras were live, I was meant to swallow anything you set in front of me, however uncomfortable, and smile for the lens?"

He shrugged. "Sorry to disappoint."

The anchor’s mouth opened — he was paid to control conversations and he rarely enjoyed being walked by the throat into his own corner — and he reached for the recovery. "So, the Ryujin Tiamat young master is—"

Phei raised one finger, the anchor stopped instinctively.

That was the worst part of it, and the most delicious; he stopped before he’d registered that he was obeying, and the garden felt the obedience happen, the little interruption should have been nothing — a finger lifted between two speaking men — but authority in Phei lived in the quietest places.

Some people spent four decades cultivating such presence and got a corner office for their trouble; Phei had been issued his at no charge and now sat under studio lights weaponizing bone structure and silence against a professional who’d trained his whole life for this and was losing anyway.

"Before you continue," Phei said, "did it occur to you that there might be a medical reason behind discomfort with physical contact?"

The anchor’s throat moved.

Phei held his gaze, steady. "There are people with tactile aversion. People with trauma responses and sensory conditions where unexpected contact causes genuine distress, even revulsion. Did you care to ask if maybe I also have such situation? You didn’t ask. You simply assumed arrogance — because arrogance made the better headline."

The stage lights seemed, abruptly, less flattering on the anchor.

The man swallowed hard, and for the first time since Phei had walked into the garden he looked smaller than his own chair he felt diminished in real time, on a live feed, in front of an audience that had stopped watching Phei and started watching him; in their head they were rewinding the greeting and baseless accusation he’d done on Phei, in their heads.

The cameras were still hot, which meant every twitch of his face now carried freight, and consequences were such unappealing things the moment they stopped happening exclusively to other people.

"I... apologize," the anchor managed after a careful breath, the polish in his voice developing its first hairline crack. "If my approach made you uncomfortable, Mr. Ryujin Tiamat, that was never my intention."

Phei smiled faintly — because of course it had been the intention, every inch of it, but compelling a man to lie politely in front of witnesses carried its own small nourishment. Petty, yes.

"I hope we can put it behind us," the anchor continued, clawing back an inch at a time, because professional snakes did not stop slithering merely because someone had stepped on the tail, "and proceed with the interview."

Phei gestured lightly. "Proceed."

The anchor crossed one leg over the other, gathering composure, glancing down at his cards — which Phei now trusted roughly as far as one trusted a beloved relative loitering near the inheritance paperwork.

"Then let’s begin properly," the man said. "From what the public knows, before everything changed, you were often referred to as a Charity Case at Ashford Elite Academy. There were other names too, though some of them I’m uncomfortable repeating."

’Convenient discomfort. Very noble. Practically saintly, if saints had specialized in laundering insults through implication and calling it restraint.’

"Then, barely two weeks later," the anchor went on, "you challenged the academy basketball team — and somehow forced Marcus Heavenchild, the Prince of Earth himself who had retired from the game, to play. Just to, as the phrase saturated during that time; ’put you in your place.’ That was the wording the media used. Correct?"

Phei smiled. "Not only the media, but the academy also used it too."

The anchor paused, plainly not expecting the answer handed over so freely.

"Right," he said slowly. "Then — how did it feel? To go from being mocked in public to standing on that court and beating them?"

Phei didn’t answer at once. He let his gaze drift past the lights, out toward the front row, toward the faces that held pieces of the truth and watched him now with several different flavors of concern.

Then he came back to the anchor, and considered the question seriously, despite all the poison that had carried them to it.

"Actually," he said at last with a smile, "it felt thrilling."

The anchor’s eyebrows lifted.

Phei leaned back, faint smile in place, and when he spoke again the earlier softness had gone out of his voice without anything harsh moving in to fill the gap, he was finally a teenager telling his tory of a fight he’d won and opening a door now and inviting the whole garden to look at the room behind it.

"Ashford Elite Academy has always had a hierarchy. Everyone there knows it, even the ones who pretend otherwise. Marcus Heavenchild sat at the very top, and beneath him the other Legacy boys — heirs, old names, sons who moved through the academy as though it belonged to them. Which, to be fair; the academy does indeed belong to Legacies. But the boys, just like all the past generations have ruled with iron hands and polished shoes and family names old enough to bore history itself."

Some nervous laughter stirred, Phei went on:

"And among the students trapped underneath all that — I was the favorite entertainment."

The air changed again discomfort painting faces, bullying in schools had always been a hot discussion but it was just that; discussion.

"For ten years," Phei said, the smile still there though something colder had come to rest behind it, "I was the charity case. The easy target. The boy you could humiliate at no cost, because no one important would ever rise to defend him. So, when I challenged them and won — yes. It was one of the most satisfying things I have ever done in my life."

Provided it wasn’t as good as when he dominated Sierra in the hallways when he’d just got his powers. The comparison was, unlike the game which happened after Phei had become frighteningly powerful and used to his abilities, that time with Sierra had been different entirely!

The anchor watched him closely. "Satisfying enough to humiliate them in return?"

Phei’s smile widened a fraction. "You make winning sound impolite."

This time the laughter came more openly.

"It wasn’t about humiliating them," he continued, though the amusement threading his voice suggested he hadn’t minded in the least when humiliation turned up anyway, as a decorative side dish nobody had ordered.

"It was about proving something very simple; that prey does not stay prey forever, merely because the predators have grown comfortable with the arrangement."

The garden quieted.

"Imagine a deer," Phei said, conversational, almost gentle, "surrounded by lions. For years. Not chased once — surrounded with a piece of its body being eaten by the same lions, one part at a time every single day. Imagine that pain, being helplessly preyed at with not even a thread of mercy from the lions to make it painless and end it. Kept around as entertainment, because the lions mistook patience for weakness and never once thought to ask which one it actually was." He looked directly at the anchor.

"Then one day the deer stops running."

A beat.

"And wins."

Nobody moved.

Phei’s smile became almost beautiful, which under the circumstances was the most dangerous thing it could possibly have done.

"Not by escaping. Not by outlasting the cruelty until pity finally wandered over to help. By strength."

The audience had gone so still that even the production crew seemed to be rationing their breathing.

"That," Phei said, settling back into his chair like a thing that owned it, "is how it felt."