My Taboo Harem!-Chapter 250: Emily, the Dean’s Summon
Emily caught the shift in his face and let out a nervous trill of laughter. "You’re looking at me weird. Do I have something on my face? I probably have something on my face. I always have something on my face when I’m trying to make a good impression, it’s like a curse—"
"Last spring," Phei said, voice velvet-wrapped steel. "In the hallway."
She froze. Eyes cartoon-wide. Then another laugh, this one trembling on the edge of tears.
"Oh my god. You actually—" Hand fluttering to her chest like she needed to confirm her heart was still beating. "Okay. Okay, wow. I didn’t think you’d remember. I mean, why would you? It was just one moment, and you probably have a million things going on, and I’m just some random girl who was crying in a hallway like a total disaster—"
"Tell me," he said, cutting the spiral clean in half. "What happened. That day."
She stared, stunned that he wanted the story from her own trembling lips instead of assuming he already knew every sordid detail. Then something melted in her expression—gratitude so naked it was almost obscene.
"I was crying because the entire cheerleaders squad told everyone I was wearing knockoff shoes."
She smiled faintly.
"Which, okay, they were knockoffs, but my family isn’t—we’re not Legacy or rich as the families in Downtown Paradise we’re not even close, my dad works in accounting for the Montgomery Group and my mom teaches elementary school outside Paradise, so yeah, my shoes were from a discount store, and cheerleaders made sure everyone knew, and I was so embarrassed—"
No breath. No mercy on herself.
"—and I just couldn’t stop crying, you know, emotional teenager girl shit? And everyone kept walking past me like I wasn’t even there, like I was invisible, like my pain didn’t matter because I wasn’t important enough to notice. And I thought, this is it, this is what Ashford is, this is what Paradise is, just cruel people stepping over you while you’re down—"
Her hands danced, frantic little conductor of her own tragedy.
"And then you stopped."
Phei let the silence press against her throat.
"You didn’t say anything. You just appeared out of nowhere with this tissue—I don’t even know where you got it, probably your pocket or something—and you held it out. And your hand was shaking a little, like maybe you were scared too, like maybe talking to people wasn’t easy for you either. But you still stopped. You still saw me."
Her eyes shimmered, dangerously close to overflow.
"No one else stopped. Not a single person. But you did. The boy everyone called a charity case. The one they treated like garbage. And I thought—" Lips pressed tight, fighting for dignity. "I thought, if he can still be kind when no one’s watching, maybe there’s still something good in this school."
"It was just a tissue."
"No." Sudden ferocity. "It wasn’t. It was everything."
"What’s your name?"
"Emily." Shy smile blooming like blood on snow. "Emily Hartwell."
"Emily." He tasted the name, rolled it around like expensive wine. "Thank you. For remembering."
She went nuclear-pink, but held his gaze like a soldier. "Thank you. It is the most worth-remembering this in my life at this academy."
A deliberate beat.
"Can I ask you something?" Phei murmured.
"Anything."
"Why do you want to handle my locker? My kits? All of that?" Head tilt. Genuine curiosity edged with something darker. "That’s a lot of work for someone you gave a tissue to once."
The transformation was instantaneous.
Shy freshman vanished. In her place: crisp, terrifyingly efficient, corporate-assistant-from-hell energy. Spine steel. Hands moving in precise, rehearsed arcs. Voice dropping into the clipped cadence of someone who briefs CEOs before breakfast.
She was ready to make her case.
And Phei—despite everything—found himself leaning in to listen.
"Okay, so," Emily began, fingers ticking off points with the crisp brutality of a CFO gutting projections in front of board members who already know they’re about to be fired. "First—organization is my thing. I color-code everything. My notes, my closet, my schedule. I have spreadsheets for my spreadsheets. When I commit to something, it gets done, and it gets done right."
Her hands sliced the air—sharp, economical, turning the mundane act of locker-stewardship into a goddamn TED Talk on domination through folding techniques.
"Second—I know fabrics. My mom taught me. I can tell you exactly how to wash athletic wear so it doesn’t lose elasticity, how to prevent jersey numbers from cracking, how to break in new shoes without causing blisters."
Three fingers up, rigid, like she was about to take a blood oath on the altar of premium cotton blends. "These are skills, Phei. Valuable skills that most people don’t have."
Phei felt the corner of his mouth twitch, fighting the smile the way a serial killer fights the urge to keep the souvenir.
The dead-serious little face. The earnest conductor hands.
The way she spoke about sock-rolling like it was the key to controlling global supply chains—
Cute, he thought. Ridiculously, disarmingly, dangerously cute. The kind of cute that makes you want to ruin just to see if the devotion still holds when every dam in her is broken.
"Third—and this is the big one—" Emily leaned in, voice dropping into that intimate, felony-proud whisper people save for confessing they’ve been running an underground empire out of their dorm closet. "I’m the president of your fan club."
Phei blinked. Once. Slowly. Like a predator deciding whether the prey is worth the calories.
"My what?"
"Your fan club." She delivered it with the serene certainty of someone stating that oxygen is still optional. "I’m in charge of it. Might as well handle this too."
Phei stared at her.
"Fan club?"
Emily laughed—bright, genuine, a sound sharp enough to cut through the auditorium’s stale air like a razor through silk—and launched into manic explanation, hands windmilling about membership tiers, secret hand signals, quarterly newsletters, and a private Discord server that had definitely hosted at least one felony-level thirst post.
Phei found himself actually chuckling, the sound low, dark, and far too amused, their conversation swelling louder than it had any business being while Marcus Heavenchild was still up there preaching "professional boundaries" like a televangelist who’d just discovered the word ’no’.
Neither of them gave a solitary, glittering fuck.
On stage, Marcus’s silver eyes snapped toward the back—toward the laughter that had dared interrupt his coronation like an unwelcome erection at a funeral.
Marcus jaw tightened. Almost imperceptibly. Then Marcus hand slid into his pocket with the oily, practiced grace of a man who’d rehearsed this betrayal in front of a full-length mirror at least a dozen times.
Phone out. Fingers moving. Quick. Deliberate. The typing of a man composing a kill order with perfect capitalization and emoji restraint.
Phei caught every second of the pathetic little performance in perfect peripheral vision and did absolutely nothing.
Just kept talking to Emily. Kept laughing at whatever absurd thing she was saying about—
"Mr. Maxton."
A voice. Close. Professional. Bored to the point of clinical depression.
Phei looked up.
Middle-aged. Suit so sharp it could commit war crimes. Face locked into the kind of neutral that comes from years of delivering terminal diagnoses without emotional investment.
The Dean’s assistant. The human version of a quiet, polite assassination.
"You’ve been summoned to the Dean’s office," the man said quietly. "Immediately."
Emily’s laughter flatlined. Eyes ballooned—concern and fear chasing each other across her face like roaches fleeing the light.
The students nearby went tomb-silent. Heads swiveling. Whispers crawling through the rows like black oil.
The Dean’s office. Phei just got summoned to the Dean’s office. Right after publicly bending Marcus Heavenchild over the podium and making him gag on his own halo.
He’s so fucking dead.
Phei’s face remained serene as a guillotine blade waiting its turn. He gave one small, almost polite nod, rose from his seat with the lazy liquid calm of someone who knows the blood is going to be someone else’s, and—
[DING!]
[MISSION GENERATED!]
[Make a move on the Principal/The Dean!]
[NOTE: This is a DEATH SENTENCE only the foolish would attempt—or the boldest move only a Dragon would dare to make!]
[What are you: Dragon or fool?]
[REMINDER: Some people also manage to tame or kill dragons.]
Phei almost laughed out loud.
This motherfucker.
The system had given him a pat on the back only to knee him in the balls in the very next breath.
[REWARDS: 5,000 EXP, +50% progress on First Main Quest (Note: Making a move on the DEAN herself is worth more than Academy Belles) +15 Charisma Points 5,000 Points
NEW ABILITY: Hunger Touch
[HUNGER TOUCH — Description: When you’re in contact with any female (body contact only), you will instinctively know if she’s sexually deprived or starved.
[NOTE: This ability is instinctual and part of you. It does not require activation.]
Phei’s smile turned sharp—sharp enough to cut glass, sharp enough to draw blood.
Dragon or fool, huh?
He straightened his blazer with deliberate care, gave Emily a small, reassuring nod—we’ll continue this later—and followed the Dean’s assistant down the aisle.
Two thousand eyes tracked him like laser sights.
Marcus watched from the stage, phone still in hand, silver eyes gleaming with something that looked almost like satisfaction. Almost like victory.
And somewhere in the back of Phei’s mind, a very old, very patient dragon uncoiled itself, stretched its wings, and smiled with too many teeth.
Let’s find out.
