Author: Momo Chan

1 I spent ten years building my top-veterinarian boyfriend into the internet’s most beloved pet doctor. When my five-year-old cat contracted a rare, life-threatening condition, I waited hours for an appointment at his clinic. But when my turn finally arrived, he refused to treat my cat, bumping me to the very end of the line under the guise of maintaining medical impartiality. Immediately afterward, he fast-tracked his childhood friend Amber so her cat could get a routine checkup. By the time my cat finally reached the operating table, she was barely breathing. When we got home, I packed my bags, my heart completely hardened. Tristan, usually the picture of cold composure, turned pale. He knelt before me with a velvet box in hand, blocking the front door. “Valerie, I thought you of all people would understand. My reputation is under constant scrutiny. You are my partner, so I have to avoid any appearance of favoritism.” He gripped my hands, his voice desperate. “Amber’s mother entrusted her to my family on her deathbed. Taking extra care of her is just basic decency.” My heart softened, and I accepted the ring. Until my wedding day. Thirty minutes before the ceremony was scheduled to begin, I accidentally overheard Tristan speaking with the officiant outside the green room. “Amber’s cat threw up a moment ago. Find an excuse to delay the ceremony for a bit while I run over to examine it.” Amber clung tightly to his arm, looking up at him with a sweet, coy pout. “Tristan, you spoil me so much. But what if Valerie gets mad?” Tristan stroked her hair affectionately, his tone dripping with casual indulgence. “I am giving her the wedding of her dreams. Spoiling you a little is only fair.” He paused, his voice utterly relaxed and certain. “Besides, she will not make a scene. A single wedding is enough to keep her satisfied.” I stood frozen in the corridor, an icy chill sweeping through my entire body. Ten years of devotion had earned me nothing more than a arrogant assurance that she will not make a scene. Slowly, I pulled off the diamond ring that had never quite fit my finger. I pushed open the door and looked at them with a completely calm expression. “If her cat is so important, why do we not just cancel the wedding altogether?” Tristan’s smile froze. He turned to me, his brow furrowing in instant irritation. “Stop being ridiculous! It is just a short delay.” It was supposed to be the most important event of our lives, yet in his mouth, it sounded like a casual game that could be delayed whenever he pleased. My gaze drifted over his attire. He wore a crisp, bespoke suit tailored to perfection. I had pulled countless favors six months ago to secure a top Italian designer specifically for this piece. The day the suit arrived, he had spun me around in his arms, swearing he would cherish my love forever. Now, Amber was clinging tightly to his sleeve, her grip crumpling the tailored fabric. He did not care in the least. Instead, he gently patted her hand to comfort her. I pulled my eyes away, my voice barely above a whisper. “Am I really the one being ridiculous, Tristan? You are the groom ditching his bride minutes before the altar to examine a childhood friend’s pet.” A dismissive smirk touched his lips. “Do not make a mountain out of a molehill. You are just jealous of Amber. It is a minor issue that can be solved by pushing the ceremony back an hour.” A minor issue. In Tristan’s eyes, everything concerning me was a minor issue. My cat almost dying from a delayed operation was a minor issue. Missing the sacred hour of our wedding was a minor issue. Yet a single sneeze from Amber’s cat was an urgent emergency. The officiant glanced nervously between us, carefully weighing his words. “Is there any chance another veterinarian at the clinic could examine the pet? That way, neither side is delayed. Missing the scheduled hour for the ceremony is really not ideal.” Amber bit her lip, looking visibly tense. Holding the diamond ring in my palm, I felt a faint, foolish flicker of hope rise in my chest. Tristan rejected the idea without a second thought. “No! I have always managed Cleo’s health personally. Amber does not trust any other doctor.” Amber’s posture relaxed immediately, a triumphant glint flashing beneath her innocent eyes. “But Tristan… what if Valerie really cancels the wedding?” “She is just trying to intimidate me.” Tristan looked at me, letting out a soft, mocking chuckle. “You fought so hard to finally get the title of Mrs. Vance. Do you really have the guts to walk away from this wedding?” So he knew. He knew exactly how much I valued him and this marriage. My love had simply become the weapon he used to trample over my dignity. I offered a self-deprecating smile, no longer hesitating. Dragging the heavy lace train of my bridal gown, I walked forward and set the ring on the table beside him. Tristan’s hand snapped out, clamping around my wrist with enough force to crush my bones. His eyes swept over the ring, then landed on my face. The smirk vanished from his lips, his voice pressed through gritted teeth. “Are you playing for real?” “I am.” Amber looked up at Tristan, her voice soft and fragile. “Forget it, Tristan. I will just take Cleo to the clinic by myself. Do not make Valerie upset.” Her words only darkened Tristan’s temper. His grip on my wrist tightened even further. “I gave you enough face today, Valerie,” he sneered, his tone turning commandingly cold. “Put the ring back on and wait here for me to finish. Otherwise, the imported medication for Butterscotch stops today.” I yanked my hand out of his grip, a sharp, stabbing pain tearing through my chest. “You are threatening me?” Butterscotch was my five-year-old cat suffering from the rare disease. After the previous near-fatal delay, Tristan had offered to keep Butterscotch at his main hospital facility, claiming she would receive top-tier round-the-clock care. Butterscotch had kept me company through countless lonely nights. I had genuinely believed he cared for her out of love for me. I never imagined he would use my cat’s life as leverage to bend me to his will. Tristan smoothed his crumpled sleeve, looking down at me with utter arrogance. “It is not a threat. I am simply teaching you to be compliant. Furthermore, my professional reputation cannot have any stains.” He turned to the officiant, issuing cold instructions. “Announce to the guests that the ceremony is delayed because the bride’s family is running late. After all, you do not have any family coming anyway, right?” I clenched my fists, the cruelty of his words choking the breath out of my lungs. Taking my silence as obedience, he reached out, lifted my chin, and leaned down to whisper near my ear. “That is a good girl. Wait for me to get back.” Without another word, he wrapped an arm around Amber’s waist and walked out the door. The officiant offered me a look of deep pity. “Miss Jiang… should I inform the guests according to Mr. Vance’s instructions?” I nodded mindlessly, my heart entirely numb. My family. Not a single person from my family would attend today. Tristan knew better than anyone why that was, yet he chose to use my deepest wound to strike me down. The air conditioning in the green room was turned up too high, making me shiver violently. I picked up the oversized ring from the table and walked toward the vanity mirror. After I accepted his proposal, I realized the ring was entirely the wrong size. My fingers were slender, and the ring slipped off multiple times every single day. Yet I had refused to take it off, clinging to the pathetic hope that it meant our relationship would last. Looking back now, even the ring size had been bought according to Amber’s measurements. Passing a trash bin near the doorway, I paused. With a gentle flick of my wrist, the diamond ring dropped straight into the garbage. I did not look back. Inside the dressing room, I pulled out my phone and typed a quick message to the hotel’s general manager. Outside, the officiant had already announced the delay to the main hall. My makeup artist stood nervously in the corner, while my two closest friends and bridesmaids looked at me with deep concern. I ripped the heavy veil off my head, offering a bitter laugh as I gave them a brief overview of what had happened. “This is absolutely outrageous!” Zoe paced back and forth across the room, her eyes burning with fury. “What kind of precious cat requires the groom to ditch his own wedding altar?! Are you really going to swallow this disrespect, Valerie?” Phoebe’s face was flushed with anger, her fists tightly clenched. “Absolutely not!” I reached out and took Zoe’s hand. “I need you to do something crucial for me right now. Take my ID and authorization forms, head straight to Tristan’s hospital while he is away with Amber, and discharge Butterscotch immediately.” “Leave it to me!” Zoe agreed instantly. “But what about her treatment? Only his hospital has access to the imported serum!” Phoebe pulled out her phone, her eyes flashing with determination. “Get her out first! We will figure out the medication later!” Zoe turned and rushed out without even changing out of her bridesmaid gown. Phoebe knelt beside me, gently rubbing my cold back. “I still cannot believe Tristan turned into such a monster. Was it really worth sacrificing everything for him back then?” Mentioning the past sent my mind drifting back to the man Tristan used to be. The Tristan who would run across half the city in a snowstorm just to buy me warm chestnuts, holding them inside his coat so they would stay hot for me. The Tristan who was so broke he only had a hundred dollars left, yet borrowed two hundred more just to treat me to a proper hotpot dinner. The Tristan who drove eight hundred miles straight just to watch the sunrise with me, willing to grant my every wish. I had no idea when that man had vanished. I finally accepted the painful truth: the Tristan worth sacrificing everything for had died long ago in the passage of time. I took a deep, steadying breath, stood up, and walked toward the changing room. Before I could reach the door, Tristan’s mother pushed her way inside, flanked by a group of groomsmen who blocked the entrance. Seeing my intent to strip off the wedding dress, Tristan’s mother crossed her arms, offering a sneer. “Tristan merely left to treat an ill animal. He will be back shortly. Valerie, throwing a temper tantrum on your own wedding day shows a severe lack of upbringing.” The groomsmen chimed in behind her. “Come on, bro’s girl, Tristan already said you had to beg for this wedding. Do not make things awkward for everyone.” One of the groomsmen initiated a video call with Tristan. On the screen, Tristan listened quietly to their chatter, a faint smirk touching his lips. On his wrist was the limited-edition luxury watch I had spent six months of my savings to buy for him. I let out a cold, mocking laugh. My eyes swept over the groomsmen, glanced past the phone screen, and finally locked onto Tristan’s mother. “Your son abandoned his bride minutes before the altar to run off with his childhood friend. Is that your definition of proper upbringing?” The old woman’s face flushed crimson with humiliation. “You freeloading orphan! You have no right to speak to me like that!” Tristan’s icy voice echoed through the phone speaker. “Watch your mouth, Valerie! How dare you speak to my mother like that!” He sneered through the screen. “Do you still think you are the wealthy heiress of the Harrison Maritime Group?” My chest tightened painfully. Years ago, after our relationship stabilized, I had confessed my true identity to him as the eldest daughter of the Harrison Shipping Empire and brought him to meet my father. My father had taken one look at him and demanded I break up with him immediately. Valerie, that boy’s heart is not pure. To be with Tristan, I had cut ties with my father and stormed out of the family mansion, refusing all contact for years. After I helped Tristan build his personal brand into a massive veterinary influencer, he never once mentioned visiting my father again. I had assumed he wanted to achieve greater success before seeking my father’s approval. It turned out he had simply harbored a bitter grudge, using my estrangement as a weapon to degrade me. Because I had no family backing me, he believed I deserved to be humiliated on my own wedding day. A tear slipped down my cheek, cold against my skin. I wiped it away casually. Tristan’s mother added her own taunts from beside the screen. “Harrison Maritime? We haven’t heard a peep from them in years! She probably made the whole thing up!” “She is just a lonely orphan clinging to my son,” she continued arrogantly. “Only a soft-hearted man like Tristan would still take in an aging woman like her.” The groomsmen laughed and nodded in agreement. Phoebe rushed forward, shielding me with her body. “Tristan Vance, have some decency! Her social media strategies made your entire career! Valerie gave up a life of luxury to suffer alongside you!” Amber squeezed into the phone frame, offering a sweet, mocking grin. “Following Tristan is never a sacrifice, Phoebe. It is pure sweetness!” Phoebe glared at her, refusing to engage. Seeing that I was still moving toward the changing room, the groomsmen stepped forward, physically grabbing my arms. In the chaos, I was shoved heavily to the floor. A section of my lace dress was crushed under heavy dress shoes, and my knee scraped hard against the tile, leaving a painful, bleeding gash. Two groomsmen pinned Phoebe’s arms behind her back. One of them reached his hand toward the hem of her skirt. My eyes went wide with horror. Sitting on the floor, I let out a frantic, desperate scream. “No! Stop!” “Enough! I will not change my dress!” I wept, shaking violently. “I will wait for the ceremony! Just leave her alone!” Seeing my pathetic state on the floor, a flicker of restraint flashed across Tristan’s face on the screen, but his heart hardened again instantly. “See? If you had been compliant from the beginning, none of this would have happened. Wait quietly for my return.” I shook violently with rage, ignoring his voice entirely. I dragged myself over to Phoebe, helping her up as we held each other in the corner. I apologized to her repeatedly through my tears. She held me back, her hands trembling as she whispered that she was okay. Hearing her comfort only broke my heart further. For the first time in my life, I truly hated someone. He could fall out of love with me, and I would accept my loss gracefully. But how dared he allow his friends to humiliate my loved ones and threaten my pet? How dared he! Leaving two groomsmen behind to guard the room, Tristan’s mother and the rest of the group headed to the main hall. The makeup artist walked over quietly, helping us fix our ruined attire. I squeezed Phoebe’s hand, offering her a subtle look to signal that this was far from over. Ten minutes later, my phone vibrated with an incoming notification. High-definition surveillance footage from both the green room and the dressing room had been successfully delivered to my personal cloud storage. Building Tristan into the top veterinary influencer had required exceptional technical skills, and capturing behind-the-scenes footage was second nature to me. To gather high-quality video material for our wedding to boost his channel’s engagement, I had personally sponsored ultra-high-definition 4K security cameras throughout the hotel venue, securing full administrative access from the general manager. I had never imagined those cameras would become my ultimate proof to expose the truth. An hour passed, and Tristan was still nowhere to be seen. In the main banquet hall, guests were growing restless, murmuring about how disrespectful the bride’s family was for causing such a massive delay. Amber posted an update on her social media feed, tagging my account directly. It was a photo taken from a girlfriend’s perspective, showing Tristan holding her cat gently during an examination. Caption: Cleo is so lucky! The moment her dad heard she was unwell, he put off his wedding to rush to her side. Tristan had commented below: As I should. Otherwise, a certain someone would be crying her eyes out again. A row of comments from the groomsmen sat right underneath: Bro is truly devoted. Looking at the post, I felt a strange sense of detachment. The pain in my chest had evaporated entirely. I even tapped a cold, emotionless like on the post. Two hours passed, and Tristan still had not returned. Many guests began leaving in frustration. The media outlets I had invited to cover the wedding were already recording negative commentary about the event’s organization. In the past, I was the one who meticulously managed his public relations and maintained those media contacts. Now, I sat quietly in the dressing room, watching the slow collapse of his reputation. Tristan’s mother paced outside the dressing room ten times, looking anxious and hesitant, but never stepped inside. Two and a half hours after the scheduled time, Tristan finally returned. Seeing me still wearing the wedding dress and sitting quietly on the sofa, he let out an instinctive sigh of relief. He immediately launched into an accusation. “Why are you sitting here instead of going out to comfort the guests?” I rolled my eyes, offering no response. A sudden wave of panic flared in his chest, as if something was slipping completely out of his control. “Your behavior today has been appalling. As a punishment, you will no longer manage my social media accounts.” “Amber will be taking over all your previous responsibilities. If you perform well during the remainder of the ceremony, I might consider giving you another chance.” I remained entirely silent. Seeing that I was not frantically begging for his forgiveness as I usually did, Tristan narrowed his eyes in suspicion. Amber stood beside him, her face flushed with excitement. “Tristan, I will do a much better job than Valerie!” She stood on her tiptoes and pressed a soft kiss against the corner of Tristan’s lips. Tristan froze, failing to pull away in time. Seeing that I still offered zero reaction, his anger flared again. My phone buzzed in my hand with an incoming text message from a contact number I knew by heart, yet had not dialed in years. Instinct told me that Phoebe had taken matters into her own hands. I stared at the screen for three seconds before opening the message: Stubborn girl! You are even more hard-headed than your old man! Would bowing your head kill you? I am arriving on my private jet right now. I will be at the venue in ten minutes. Reading the familiar words, I could almost picture my father standing in front of me, shouting at me with stern, booming affection. I bit my lip hard, forcing back the sob rising in my throat, but tears spilled over my lashes, cascading down my cheeks like broken pearls. I had not cried when I caught Tristan delaying the wedding for Amber’s cat. I had not cried when he used my cat’s life to threaten me. I had not cried when his mother and friends mocked me for being an orphan. Yet now, I could not stop my tears from falling. Tristan had assumed my father had abandoned me over the years. He never knew that the cold distance between us was the result of a ten-year bet I had made with my father to prove my love. I had agreed not to return home or use family resources until I proved Tristan was worthy. Seeing me weep, the panic in Tristan’s heart subsided. He assumed I was finally surrendering. He stepped forward, reaching out to wipe my tears, offering a condescending gesture of mercy. “It is good that you understand your mistake. When the ceremony starts, make sure to offer a proper apology to the guests.” “Tell them your family arrived late and caused the delay. If you do that, I will let you keep managing my accounts.” I let out a soft laugh, slapping his hand away. I closed my eyes, wiped my own face dry, and opened them with absolute clarity. The officiant’s voice echoed through the hallway speakers, announcing that the groom and bride were entering the main hall. I lifted the heavy skirt of my gown and walked firmly toward the main entrance. Tristan called out for me to wait, but I never turned back. Reaching the grand doors of the hall, I saw a tall, mountain-like man standing by the entrance, looking just as dependable as he had in my childhood memories. Seeing me look over, he offered a stern, reassuring nod. Tristan, who had caught up behind me, took one look at the man’s face, and his complexion turned as ghostly pale as a corpse. A wave of icy terror rushed straight up his spine.

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My boyfriend is the psycho final boss in a horror game. At midnight, his dark, sleek tentacles wrap around me in a needy, possessive embrace. “Stop it,” I murmur, dodging his hungry, unsated kiss. The grand boss lowers his gloomy eyes, pouting like an aggrieved child as he buries his face into the crook of my neck, sucking firmly to leave a bruised hickey. “No kiss? Then no clearing the stage.” 1 “Welcome, players, to the instance: The Shadow Courier.” “Main Objective: Successfully complete three delivery runs.” “Difficulty Rank: SS.” “The trial is about to begin. Prepare yourselves…” The cold electronic chime faded into silence. A dozen players, including me, materialized inside a dimly lit, weathered courtyard. Unlike the sheer panic I felt during my very first horror game, I was surprisingly calm now. Dusk bled into midnight. A thick, eerie fog blanketed the ground, swirling around a gnarled, ancient oak rooted in the center of the yard. Its massive branches curled like jagged talons overhead, looming over us as if ready to impale anyone who moved. My brow twitched. I reached up and touched the cool pendant resting against my collarbone. My boyfriend Gideon’s handsome, composed face immediately flashed in my mind. No matter how terrifying the monsters in this realm were, none of them held a candle to my lover. When Gideon unleashed his true form, those boundless, writhing tentacles were infinitely more suffocating than a creepy old tree. If I wasn’t afraid of the ultimate boss himself, why should I fear some overgrown plant? I squared my shoulders, my gaze hardening. “What the hell?!” a man suddenly screeched. “An SS rank instance?!” “Holy shit, I’ve only cleared one A rank map! I haven’t even unlocked S rank yet, why am I thrown into SS rank?!” “Even top tier leaderboard players can’t guarantee survival in an SS rank game! Why me?! I’m just a casual player who got carried by my team!” “What are you guys talking about? What instance? I was on the beach two seconds ago! Send me back right now!” A complete rookie? I blinked in surprise. To think someone was even unluckier than me, starting off their nightmare in an SS rank map. The other players cast sympathetic glances at the panic-stricken newcomer. If this were a low rank map, someone might have taken pity and given him a quick rundown of the rules. But in an SS rank instance, everyone was fighting for their own survival. Seeing that nobody answered him, the rookie’s confusion quickly turned into blinding rage. “Bringing me here is illegal kidnapping! You won’t answer me? Fine! I’m calling the cops!” He whipped out his phone, only to see ‘No Service’. Panic flickered in his eyes, but he put the phone to his ear anyway, pretending to make a call as he bolted toward the courtyard gates. “Don’t run outside!” someone called out in warning. The man flinched, but it only made him run faster. My pulse quickened. Something felt off. A faint rustling sound echoed in my ears, like wind sweeping dry leaves across pavement. Except there wasn’t a single breath of wind. “It… it’s moving!” someone gasped. The jagged branches overhead groaned like an old man stretching his aching joints. Creak. Crack. The branches sharpened into wooden spears, twisting and stretching toward the man nearing the exit. Just as he was about to cross the threshold, a hand snagged his collar and yanked him back. A massive wooden branch slammed violently into the doorway with a loud thump. One more step, and he would have been skewered through the chest. A suffocating silence fell over the yard. The other players and I backed away, eyeing the ancient oak with deep caution. The rookie, having narrowly escaped death, collapsed onto the pavement, shaking uncontrollably. That’s when a paper puppet ambled out from the shadows of the inner estate, wearing a painted, creepy grin. Its eyes were nothing more than two sloppy ink dots, yet when it stared at us, it felt like hollow eyeballs were rolling in their sockets. “Greetings, couriers. Midnight has arrived. Time to hit the road with your cargo.” The game had officially begun. In this instance, we were couriers tasked with delivering mysterious packages. The roads were fraught with danger, teeming with hungry ghouls waiting in the dark. Frankly, I suspected those monsters were far more interested in eating us than whatever was inside our boxes. Some players quietly grabbed their designated packages; others huddled together, negotiating pairs and groups. I, however, kept my eyes fixed on the paper puppet. It had been facing away from me, but in the next second, its paper head snapped one hundred eighty degrees with a sickening tear. Those two void-like eyes locked directly onto mine. Its face was painted into a wide, unnatural smile, but its voice was bone-chillingly cold. “Why aren’t you moving?” I tilted my head. “Who drew your eyes?” The puppet visibly froze. Clearly, no player had ever asked it such an absurd question before. It glared at me menacingly. “That is none of your business.” I stared back at its face, strangely finding it somewhat endearing. Just as I opened my mouth to ask more, a hand reached out and pulled me back. It was a young woman. She pressed a finger to her lips, shaking her head frantically to tell me to shut up. Once the paper puppet glided away into the dark, she let out a long breath of relief. “Are you crazy? Why are you provoking the NPCs? I heard this map is brutally dangerous, especially that paper guy. It holds grudges like you wouldn’t believe!” I wasn’t trying to seek death. It was just that the atrocious artwork on the puppet’s face looked eerily similar to the bizarre emojis Gideon used to draw for me. Ugly, weird, and bizarrely charming. I used to try and teach him how to draw, but no matter how hard I tried, Gideon stuck to his horrifyingly unique artistic taste. Eventually, I was almost dragged down to his level. Seeing that signature art style after so long actually gave me a weird sense of comfort. Seeing me stay quiet, the girl assumed I was terrified. She patted my shoulder gently. “Don’t be scared. I can tell you’re new here. I’ll cover your back. The name’s Lexi.” 2 My delivery cargo was a small box of face powder. Lexi’s was a pair of antique crimson satin shoes that looked like they were dripping with fresh blood. By a stroke of luck, both our packages were bound for the exact same recipient. Night fell heavily. Clutching our cargo, we crept out of the estate. This time, the massive oak tree didn’t attack us. Lexi was a chatty one. “Face powder and blood red shoes… our client must be some high maintenance beauty.” “Man, these shoes are creeping me out. Look how red they are.” “Do you think we’ll actually make it alive?” “Hey, I didn’t catch your name earlier. How many instances have you cleared? Ever done an SS rank before?” “A top player once told me this map is crawling with abominations hiding in the dark. They could pop out behind you at any second.” To prove her point, Lexi made a goofy monster face to scare me. Without missing a beat, I unsheathed the heavy courier sword at my waist and thrust it straight at her face. She shrieked, “I know I talk a lot, but you don’t have to murder me?!” The blade sliced through the crisp night air with a sharp whoosh. The steel narrowly grazed Lexi’s shoulder, impaling a withered, decaying corpse that had materialized silently right behind her. Lexi blinked, realizing what just happened. “Holy shit! Badass!” My eyebrows twitched. “Draw your weapon! There’s more!” 3 Clouds parted overhead, revealing a sickly green crescent moon hanging in the abyss. Dozens of desiccated corpses sprouted from the muddy earth like grotesque mushrooms. No matter how many we slashed, more crawled out. An hour later, the fog finally swallowed the green moon again, and we stumbled out of the woods, bruised and battered. “Damn, those dead bastards had some grip…” Lexi winced, holding her cheek where a claw had grazed her. I reached over and plucked a rotten tooth out of her tangled hair. Strangely enough, the undead swarm had focused almost all their aggression on Lexi. They barely even looked at me. My messy state was purely from jumping in to save her. Suddenly, my eyes caught something on her feet. “Do you… like vintage shoes?” I asked. “Hell no,” Lexi scoffed. “Those things are bad luck.” “Look down.” The blood red satin shoes we were supposed to deliver were now neatly fitted onto Lexi’s feet. “WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?!” she screamed, trying to kick them off, but they were stuck like glue. Before she could process it, her feet began moving on their own, sprinting forward at full speed. “I can’t control my legs!” she wailed. I bolted after her. We ran all the way to a desolate hill, stopping near a ruined shrine where a figure in a vivid red gown sat before a bronze mirror, quietly combing her long black hair. “Finally… you’ve arrived,” the female specter murmured softly. Her silhouette was breathtakingly elegant, but when she turned, her face was a bruised purple, her neck marred by jagged lash marks. Yet, seeing us gasping for air, she let out a melodic, chilling laugh. My legs felt like jelly, but I forced my voice to stay steady. “Are you the recipient of the shoes and rouge?” “I am.” With a wave of her sleeve, the cosmetics box in my pack and the red shoes on Lexi’s feet flew straight into her delicate hands. I checked my system interface: Progress: 1/3 Complete. I wiped the sweat from my forehead. A close call, but we made it. Just as Lexi and I turned to leave, the specter finished applying her makeup, admiring her reflection. “Hmm… it still feels like something is missing,” she whispered. A spike of dread hit me. “Run!” I yelled, grabbing Lexi’s hand. Too late. In the blink of an eye, my vision warped. I was suddenly sitting on four paws, transformed into a fluffy white rabbit trapped in the ghost’s arms. And Lexi? She had been turned into a delicate jade hairpin, stuck firmly in the ghost’s intricate hair bun. The specter stroked my soft rabbit ears, preening in the mirror with a dreamy smile. “Ah, perfect. The Sovereign of the Undead will awaken soon. This look will surely captivate His Majesty.” She carried us into a grand, twisted palace deep beneath the earth. Ornate pillars, vaulted ceilings, magnificent, yet steeped in death. Chilling winds swept through dark corridors where monstrous entities dressed in aristocratic attire whispered to one another, eagerly awaiting the grand spectacle. We had stumbled into something big. Taking advantage of her distraction, I unleashed a stream of rabbit pee right onto her pristine gown. The ghost hissed in rage, but to maintain her regal appearance, she hastily set me down to clean herself. Now! I kicked off her lap and bolted. The palace was a sprawling labyrinth. Several ghastly creatures spotted a juicy live rabbit and gave chase, snapping their jaws. I squeezed through a tiny crevice in the stone wall to throw them off. With no way back, I pushed forward, wriggling deeper into the narrow tunnel. Finally, the space widened. It was pitch black, cold, and heavy with a suffocating, ancient chill. My furry little rabbit paws stepped onto something soft yet firm. I was standing on a human face. 4 The cavern was freezing and dead silent. My mind instantly pictured the rotting, maggot-infested mug of a ghoul, and a surge of nausea hit me. I frantically tried to back out of the hole, but the entrance had vanished. Trap! I padded along the stone walls, completely sealed. It was as if the tunnel I crawled through had never existed. How on earth did I get in here? The frost in the air grew thicker, biting through my thick rabbit fur. Yet, what terrified me more than freezing to death was the corpse beneath me suddenly springing to life and swallowing me whole. Finding no exit on the floor, I decided to test my rabbit hops, leaping upward toward the ceiling. Maybe the way out was above me. I hopped again and again, hopelessly bouncing around the dark room. And every time I came down, I landed right back on top of the corpse. Though he’s dead, his physique is surprisingly good, I couldn’t help thinking. Reminds me of Gideon. Landing on his chest, I could feel the distinct, rock-hard outline of eight-pack abs through the fabric of his robes. Still, the thought of a creepy, mutilated face was enough to keep me jumping. Until I was completely exhausted. Great. Looks like I’m spending the night with a corpse. Silence in a closed space is a breeding ground for terror. Especially when the corpse beside you suddenly twitched. The figure shifted, slowly turning onto his side to face me. Though the darkness obscured everything, I felt an intense, suffocating gaze locking onto my small, furry body. My blood ran cold. The corpse didn’t move again. By late night, the frost became unbearable. Defeated, I curled myself into a tight little ball and squirmed beneath his heavy outer robes. Oddly enough, it wasn’t cold anymore.

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My parents ran a grade-based allowance system every month. I always thought my sister got the money. Until I ended up at Station 2 in the campus dining hall. Interviews were paying seven bucks an hour, hiring only one person, and there she was. Her voice was raspy as she uttered the most shocking words I had ever heard. “Is this a joke to you, Nora?” “Just to humiliate me, you came to steal this job even with an eight-hundred-dollar monthly allowance?” I froze. The words spilled out before I could stop them: “What eight hundred dollars? Didn’t Mom and Dad give all that money to you?” Pathy went dead silent. And right then, something clicked in my head. Unless… that money was never meant for either of us from the start. 01 My twin sister and I were raised by two of the city’s most celebrated educators. They had shelf-loads of state honors, featured constantly in local educational press. Their golden rule was simple: “Pressure drives competition, competition drives effort, and effort brings success.” So, from the moment we were born, Pathy and I were pitted against each other. For other babies, rolling over, sitting up, and crawling were natural milestones. For us, they were points on a scoreboard. Whoever learned first got the point. If you earned five points a day, you got milk. If you failed, you went hungry for twenty-four hours. For over ten years, Pathy and I lived in a relentless warzone. We treated each other like bitter rivals, fighting purely for a plate of food. Until the day our acceptance letters to a top-tier university arrived. Our parents made us a solemn promise: “Once you start college, we will give each of you eight hundred dollars a month for living expenses.” Pathy and I burst into tears right there. We thought our nightmare was finally over. Then came the night before move-in day. They placed two identical exam packets in front of us. “We custom-made these tests covering everything from high school. Finish them, hand them in, and we’ll grade them.” “Take it seriously. This determines who gets the college allowance for the first month.” I couldn’t help asking, “What do you mean, Dad?” They answered with smooth, reasonable composure: “We looked into it. College is when kids ruin themselves most easily. For your own good, we will issue a specialized exam at the end of every month.” “The highest score gets the eight-hundred-dollar monthly allowance. The lower score gets zero.” Pathy and I stared in disbelief. We protested together. “That’s crazy! You promised us! You said eight hundred each once we got into college! How can you go back on your word?” Dad’s face darkened instantly, his voice dripping with intimidation. “Who are you to question us? I am your father. You live under my roof and eat my food, so you follow my rules.” “Besides, isn’t this for your own good? If you’re going to be this ungrateful, neither of you gets a single cent.” Once again, Pathy and I backed down. A college student with zero allowance is like a fish out of water, bound to suffocate. 02 When college started, I had zero dollars. “Nora, you scored two points lower than your sister,” my parents told me. “So, no allowance for your first month.” I begged them not to be so cruel, but they didn’t care. I had to dig out the eighty dollars in birthday money I had hidden under my bed just to survive. To stretch every cent, I lived on cheap stale bagels, only allowing myself a single hard-boiled egg in the morning. Going hungry brought sharp stomach pains, and stomach pains meant needing medicine, which I couldn’t afford. Day by day, my face grew pale and hollow. My roommates quickly noticed. They asked gently, “Nora, are your parents not giving you allowance? Why are you eating so little?” “You’re going to ruin your health like this.” I managed a bitter smile and briefly explained the twisted competition rule at home. My roommates were horrified, looking at me with deep sympathy. “Did you apply for financial hardship aid?” I shook my head. “My parents won’t let me.” If people found out two award-winning educators had a daughter applying for hardship aid, they thought it would bring shame to their reputation. From that day on, my roommates constantly found excuses to feed me. “Nora, this milk expires soon and I hate it, drink it for me.” “Nora, this sandwich has eggs and I’m allergic, take it.” “Nora, these plums from my garden are way too sour, please finish them.” My chest felt warm and aching at the same time. The warmth I had never felt at home, I was receiving here. 03 Eighty dollars, no matter how carefully spent, couldn’t last a whole month. A little over two weeks in, I had ten dollars left in my wallet. I was completely out of options. In desperation, I considered applying for online loans, but legitimate platforms rejected me due to my lack of credit history. Driven into a corner, I called my mother for help. First call, unanswered. Second call, rejected. Third call, she finally picked up. Before I could say a word, her sharp, irritated voice snapped: “Are you out of your mind?” “Don’t you know your father and I are busy at work? Calling nonstop, are you trying to drive me crazy?” I kept my voice as low as possible, pleading with pathetic weakness. “Mom, I don’t have money to buy food.” “Please, just give me a little bit of allowance.” “I really can’t make it through the month.” I thought no matter how cold parents were, hearing their child starve would soften their hearts. I was wrong. Her tone was icy. “If you can’t make it, figure it out yourself. Who told you to score lower than your sister?” “If you want money, beat her at the end of the month. Otherwise, don’t even dream about it.” Click. She hung up. At that moment, all the bottled-up pain surged over me. Standing alone in the stairwell, heavy tears spilled down my cheeks. I had never felt so utterly helpless. I couldn’t understand it. Why did other parents worry about their children going hungry, while mine watched me starve without batting an eye? 04 I walked back to my dorm with red, swollen eyes. Seeing me like that, my roommates immediately gathered around. I told them everything. They instantly offered to lend me money, but I refused. Even though I was broke, I didn’t want to tarnish this pure friendship with financial debts. Helpless, my roommate offered another idea. “Why don’t you try borrowing from your sister? You’re twins, she can’t be completely heartless, right?” “Yeah, your parents gave her eight hundred dollars. Asking to borrow fifty bucks isn’t much.” I hesitated. “But… Pathy and I don’t get along.” Ten years of ruthless competition had made us treat each other like enemies. My roommate encouraged me, “Just try. Maybe she’s not as cold as you think.” I gritted my teeth and dialed my sister’s number. 05 The moment the call went through, Pathy spoke with total impatience. “Spit it out, don’t waste my time.” My roommates were right beside me, hearing every word. My face burned with shame, but I forced myself to whisper, “Pathy, could you lend me fifty dollars?” “I promise I’ll pay you back next month.” The next second, Pathy exploded. “Borrow money from me? Have you lost your mind, Nora?” “You blew through your own cash and now you come begging to me?” “Have some damn pride!” Before I could respond, she slammed the phone down. A stinging sensation filled my nose as I tried to hold back tears. My roommates blew up in rage. “What the hell! Is your sister crazy? If she doesn’t want to lend it, she doesn’t have to be so nasty!” “Unbelievable! She gets eight hundred bucks and won’t even lend fifty to her own twin!” “And calling you a big spender? Is she blind? You’ve been starving on dry crusts for days!” I stayed silent, feeling both furious and deeply hurt. To be honest, Pathy’s reaction didn’t really surprise me. She had been like this since childhood, attacking me before hearing the full story. We were used to treating each other this way. A moment later, my roommate showed me a screenshot of a part-time job. “This local diner needs weekend help. It pays daily, fifteen bucks an hour.” I grabbed onto it like a lifeline, hugging her tightly while whispering endless thanks. She smiled and patted my back. “Just help me with the group projects later.” 06 Two days of grueling work earned me a hundred and twenty dollars. With that money, I dragged myself through another two weeks. It was brutally hard, counting every single penny just to eat. During a break between classes, our advisor posted a list of work-study campus jobs in the group chat. On-campus positions! Long-term! Overjoyed, I registered immediately, grabbing contact details and sending private messages. Every single one turned me down. The higher-paying ones were taken instantly. The flexible ones clashed with my heavy class schedule. Rejection after rejection broke my spirit. Just as I was about to give up, a new posting appeared in the chat. Dining Hall Assistant. Seven dollars an hour. Includes free lunch and free dinner. The only downside: only hiring one person. Seeing the words “includes free meals,” my eyes burned red. This was my only way to survive. Without wasting a single second, I added the manager’s contact, terrified someone else would snatch it. “Hello, I’d like to apply for the Dining Hall Assistant position.” Five minutes later, the reply came: “Sorry, another student just messaged me a step ahead of you.” My throat constricted with panic. I messaged back furiously, pleading: “Please give me a chance! I work really hard and I’m not afraid of tough work. I promise I won’t slack off or cause trouble!” After a long silence, the manager finally replied: “Come to Dining Hall Station 2 tomorrow after class for an interview.” 07 The next day, I waited eagerly for class to end. Right before the final bell, our advisor dropped a message in the chat: “Don’t leave after class. We are having a mandatory class meeting. Class president, organize everyone.” I froze in shock. I wanted to run, but I didn’t dare. Our advisor was notoriously strict. Getting caught skipping meant standing in the office for a week reciting English vocabulary. Throughout the meeting, I sat on pins and needles, checking my phone constantly, my mind in chaos. My roommate kept whispering, “It’s fine, don’t panic, it’ll end soon.” In the end, it dragged on for far too long. The second it ended, I grabbed my books and sprinted toward the dining hall. Twenty minutes late. My heart sank. It was over. The job was gone. I walked up to Station 2, my voice trembling. “Excuse me, ma’am, I’m here for the work-study interview. Who should I speak to?” The cafeteria worker looked me up and down. “Take a seat over there, sweetie. The manager is interviewing someone else right now.” I sat on a chair, my palms soaked in cold sweat. Despair crept over me. A few minutes later, the manager walked out from the kitchen, followed by another student. I looked up, and my eyes widened in total shock. It was my twin sister, Pathy. 08 Our eyes met, both of us frozen in disbelief. The manager looked at me. “Are you the student who messaged me about the interview?” I nodded quickly. He led me into the back kitchen for a quick chat. Because I had rehearsed answers with my roommate, I answered every question smoothly. Finally, he asked, “The pay here is really low. Are you sure you can accept seven dollars an hour?” I nodded aggressively. “As long as meals are included.” The manager looked at me with a complicated expression, sighing softly. “What is wrong with kids these days…” “Working so hard just for a meal. Do your parents not feed you at home?” I didn’t understand what he meant, nor did I have time to ponder it. He led me back outside and spoke to both Pathy and me. “Wait here for a moment while I decide who to hire.” 09 The moment the manager stepped away, the tension exploded. Pathy suddenly shoved me hard. Losing my balance, I slammed into the ground. Furious and confused, I scrambled up. “Are you crazy, Pathy? What did you shove me for?” She stared at me, her eyes brimming with tears. My heart skipped a beat as I remembered drama tropes of girls faking injuries. I took two steps back nervously. “Hey, don’t try to play the victim! You pushed me first, I didn’t touch you!” Instead, her voice broke, raspy and choked with emotions, delivering the most shocking words of my life. “Is this a joke to you, Nora?” “Just to humiliate me, you came to steal this job even with an eight-hundred-dollar monthly allowance?” I froze completely, my mind going blank. I stared at her in utter disbelief and blurted out: “What eight hundred dollars?” “Didn’t Mom and Dad give all that money to you?” Pathy’s rage flared up instantly. “Stop acting! How can you keep lying to my face?” “I know you’re smarter than me. No matter what test Mom and Dad give us, you always score higher.” “But do you have any idea? Because of you, I’ve been starving in this school for almost a month!” “Every day, all I think about is saving money, eating cheap one-dollar bagels from the breakfast cart for every meal!” I was rendered speechless. Pathy grabbed my hands, her voice breaking into a plea. “I’m begging you, Nora. Can’t you just let this go for once, for the sake of being sisters?” “I desperately need this job. I am so, so hungry every single day.” A chill ran down my spine. “But Mom and Dad told me they gave the entire eight hundred dollars to you,” I stammered. Pathy completely lost control, screaming with bloodshot eyes: “How could they have given it all to me? If I had eight hundred dollars, why would I be living like a dog?” “Besides, if I actually had that money, even as much as I hate you, I would have lent you fifty bucks when you asked!” I tried to explain, “But I really didn’t get a cent! I’ve been starving for a month just like you, living on nothing but dry bread!” Pathy shoved my hands away, bordering on hysteria. “Are you trying to trick me again? If Mom and Dad didn’t give the money to you or me, who else could they possibly give it to…” Her voice abruptly cut off. The air turned dead silent. And right then, something clicked in my head. Unless… that money was never meant for either of us from the start.

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My sister had her eyes on my husband. She secretly dug a used condom out of the trash bag by our front door. When I accidentally caught her in the act, she flew into a hysterical rage and shoved me down the staircase. I died in a pool of my own blood. Then, I opened my eyes. I was back on the exact day she was rummaging through the garbage. This time, I quietly walked away. After all, that little latex wrapper belonged to my father-in-law and his boyfriend. 01 The muffled rustling outside the door was what woke me up. That was the moment I realized I had been given a second chance at life. In my previous life, I had opened the front door to take out the trash, only to catch Brittany elbow-deep in our garbage bag. She pulled out a crumpled, used condom. We stared at each other in dead silence. For a split second, she froze, but then a twisted, unhinged smile crept across her face. “Well, Stella, since you saw everything, you can’t blame me for this.” She lunged at me like a feral animal. “Go to hell! Once you’re dead, Preston is going to be all mine!” I instinctively tried to dodge. But Brittany seized the opening and violently shoved me toward the stairs. The back of my head slammed against the sharp edge of the wooden steps. My consciousness began to bleed out along with the agonizing pain. The very last thing I saw was Brittany standing at the top of the landing, looking down at me with absolute disgust. “Preston is a catch. I just wanted to give him a baby! Is that a crime? Blame your own rotten luck for walking out at the wrong time. You deserve to die!” After my funeral, my mother put on a tearful show. Then she provided a rock-solid fake alibi for my sister. I remember my spirit lingering as my mother sighed at my framed memorial photo. “Brittany just wanted a child, Stella. It’s not like she asked you to get a divorce. Why did you have to be so selfish about it? I’ve already lost you. I can’t lose Brittany too. You forgive me, right?” “Stupid bitch! Was she that desperate for a man? Disgusting.” Brittany’s venomous muttering slipped through the crack of the door, pulling me violently back to the present. This time, I kept my hand far away from the doorknob. Peeking through the peephole, I watched Brittany slip the stolen prize into her pocket and walk away with a triumphant smirk. A slow smile tugged at the corners of my mouth. What my sweet little sister didn’t know was that the trash bag didn’t belong to our household. It belonged to our next-door neighbor, Victor. Victor was my father-in-law’s absolute best friend. He walked with a heavy limp from a youth spent doing hard labor. Because of his bad leg, he often left his trash in front of our door, and I would always take it down for him out of sheer pity. In this life, I genuinely wished my sister the absolute best of luck. I hope she gets pregnant on the first try. 02 The moment Brittany’s footsteps faded down the hall, my father-in-law, Arthur, stepped out of the guest bathroom. He had just finished a shower, his thinning hair still dripping wet. He threw a sideways glance at me. Seeing me still standing in the living room, his bushy eyebrows immediately pulled together in a scowl. “Weren’t you supposed to take the trash out? Why are you just standing there like a statue?” “Work emergency. Just replying to an email.” He rolled his eyes dramatically. “Always an excuse when I ask you to do one simple chore. Hurry up and get that garbage out of here before it attracts rats.” Watching his bizarre sense of urgency, a wild, absurd thought sparked in my brain. Whenever Arthur had free time, he loved going over to Victor’s place to play cards. Every single time he came back from those long card games, he looked completely drained, heavily sweating, and the very first thing he did was hit the shower. I had never thought much of it before. But now, the puzzle pieces were snapping into place. Were they actually playing cards? Who exactly used the latex wrapper in that trash bag? Victor lived entirely alone. He didn’t date, didn’t have female visitors, and kept to himself. The only person who visited him several times a week was Arthur. Could it be? My eyes widened in shock, accidentally meeting Arthur’s impatient glare. His face darkened with anger. “What the hell are you staring at? Move it!” 03 The very next afternoon. The minute my mother-in-law, Martha, grabbed her gym bag and headed out to her senior Zumba class, Arthur grabbed a six-pack of imported craft beer and hurried next door. I quietly slipped out and followed him. Arthur punched in the keypad code to Victor’s apartment with practiced ease. I pressed my ear flat against the heavy oak door for a long time. There was no sound of cards shuffling. No casual banter or laughter. Just faint, muffled groans. It sounded like someone trying desperately to hold back, only to fail miserably. A cold shiver crawled straight down my spine. That night in bed, I cautiously tested the waters with my husband, Preston. “Hey, have you ever thought that… your dad and Victor are a little too close?” He was lying flat on his back, endlessly scrolling through TikTok, not even bothering to look up. “They’ve been best buddies for decades. Grew up in the same dirt-poor town. It’s called loyalty, Stella.” “But every time your dad goes over there, he stays for hours on end. Isn’t that a bit excessive?” Preston finally peeled his eyes away from his glowing screen. His forehead creased with intense annoyance. “What exactly are you trying to say?” I bit the inside of my cheek, taking the plunge. “Victor hasn’t had a woman in his life for as long as I’ve known him. You don’t think he might be into m…” “Stella! What the hell is wrong with your sick mind?” “I saw something in his trash bag today…” “Shut your mouth!” Preston cut me off sharply, his tone dropping to freezing temperatures. “If I ever hear you disrespecting Victor like that again, we are going to have a serious problem.” I swallowed the rest of my words. Preston and Victor had a deep bond. When Preston was a kid and his parents were working double shifts to keep the lights on, he basically lived at Victor’s house. In Preston’s eyes, Victor was practically a second father, maybe even more respected than Arthur himself. Telling him my theories now would only backfire. Whatever. I would wait until I had undeniable proof. 04 Over the next few weeks, I racked my brain trying to gather evidence of Arthur and Victor’s secret affair. But these two old men were incredibly paranoid. The door was always deadbolted. I pressed my ear against the wood several times. Aside from the occasional choked gasp, it was impossible to record anything solid. The trash bags, however, told a different story. Every few days, a fresh batch of used wrappers would magically appear. Brittany was putting in the work, too. Terrified that she wouldn’t catch on the first try, she sneaked over multiple nights a week to raid the garbage. Honestly, I was praying for her success even harder than she was. 05 A month later, we hosted a birthday dinner for Martha. Arthur invited Victor. Martha invited Brittany. The whole cast of characters was gathered under one roof. My gut told me tonight’s dinner was going to be a blockbuster show. Brittany walked in wearing a skin-tight white cocktail dress. Her waistline was visibly thicker, the fabric stretching uncomfortably across her midsection. According to my mother, Brittany had been dealing with terrible nausea lately, throwing up almost everything she ate. My mom had been blowing up the family group chat, demanding I take time off work to escort my sister to a doctor. She threw around lines like, “Your baby sister is sick, and you have a duty to take care of her.” I left her on read. So she sent me a dozen back-to-back voice memos. Every single one was a tearful rant calling me cold-blooded and selfish. I raised an eyebrow as Brittany took a seat. Did she actually hit the jackpot? My gaze naturally drifted over to Arthur and Victor. They were sitting on the living room sofa, a chessboard set up between them. Knee touching knee. Shoulder brushing against shoulder. As Arthur reached out to move a pawn, his fingers delicately grazed the back of Victor’s hand. They shared a brief, loaded look. Both of them wore faint, secretive smiles that spoke volumes. I fell into deep thought, trying not to laugh out loud. Who exactly was the father of Brittany’s miracle baby? 06 Brittany pulled a velvet box from her designer knock-off purse and slid a heavy gold bracelet onto Martha’s wrist. “Happy birthday, Martha! I spent weeks picking this out. Do you love it?” Martha’s wrinkled face bloomed with absolute delight. “Oh, Brittany, sweetheart, you didn’t have to spend so much! This must have cost a fortune. You work so hard for your money, you shouldn’t be spoiling an old woman like me.” Her words were humble, but she immediately held her arm up to catch the living room lighting. I stared at that gold bracelet for exactly two seconds. Wow. That was the exact same bracelet I had bought for my own mother last month. When Mom opened my gift, she had carelessly tossed it onto the coffee table without a second glance. But when Brittany gifted her a cheap, ten-dollar acrylic scarf from a discount bin, my mom wore it around her neck the very next day. In the middle of a sweltering summer heatwave. She paraded it around the neighborhood, bragging to anyone who would listen. “My youngest made this just for me. It’s the thought that counts. Unlike my eldest, who just throws money at problems to shut me up.” One of her friends actually tried to defend me. “Why wear a heavy scarf in July? Gold is a great investment.” My mom’s face had instantly turned sour. “You people don’t understand love! The weather is getting breezy at night anyway.” She did wear it at night. And ended up with a massive heat rash across her collarbone. “As long as you love it, Martha!” Brittany’s sugary voice snapped me back to the present. “So, Martha, what did my big sister buy you?” Martha shot me a side-eye loaded with venom. “I wouldn’t dare expect luxury from her. All I did was ask when she plans on giving me a grandchild, and she’s been giving me attitude all week.” Saying that, Martha playfully squeezed Brittany’s hip. She offered a knowing, calculating smile. “You know, Brittany, you look like you’ve put on a little healthy weight. You’ve got the perfect figure for having babies. If only you were my daughter-in-law.” Brittany immediately shot a hopeful glance at Preston, her cheeks flushing crimson. Too bad Preston wasn’t even looking at her. He was entirely fixated on Arthur and Victor’s chess game. Martha noticed me standing there and her smile vanished. “What are you staring at? Go check on the roast! Do you expect me to serve you on my own birthday?” I gave a tight smile and turned toward the kitchen. Behind me, Martha’s cackling continued. “Brittany, honey, don’t you think this bracelet needs a matching necklace to really pop?” Brittany hesitated for a fraction of a second. “Um… sure! We can go shopping at the mall next week. See if we find something you like.” “Oh, I couldn’t possibly ask that of you.” “It’s nothing, really. Whatever makes you happy.” “Well, thank you in advance, sweetheart.” I grinned wildly to myself as I checked the oven. Brittany was chronically unemployed, living off my mother. Her bank account was emptier than her head. She was going to bleed cash for this little stunt. 07 By the time I carried the final platter of roasted vegetables to the dining table, Brittany had already claimed the seat directly next to Preston. She tilted her head, her eyes flashing with pure arrogance. “Stella, Martha told me to sit here. You don’t mind, do you?” I smiled warmly, saying absolutely nothing. I dragged a spare folding chair from the corner and quietly sat down right next to her. The folding chair was significantly lower than the dining chairs. It felt like I was crouching. But the low angle gave me a crystal-clear view of the real action happening under the tablecloth. Brittany slipped off her high heel and stretched her foot toward Preston’s direction. First, she lightly brushed his calf. When Preston didn’t pull away, she grew bolder. Her toes began to slowly, deliberately trail up the inside of his leg. Suddenly, Preston jolted. His hand, holding a glass of water, froze in mid-air. His ears turned violently red in a matter of seconds. I narrowed my eyes. This reaction was wrong. Preston was notoriously germaphobic and had severe anxiety around women. Aside from me and his mother, if a woman even bumped into him at the grocery store, he would freeze up and break into a cold sweat. But Brittany’s foot was practically in his lap, and not only was he not dodging, he was blushing? Had he been hooking up with Brittany this whole time? But that didn’t make any sense. If they were already sleeping together, why on earth would she need to repeatedly dig through a biohazard trash bag for used condoms? Brittany’s lips curled into a smug smile. She picked up a prime cut of roast beef and placed it on Preston’s plate. “Eat up, Preston. You’ve been looking so overworked lately.” Preston stared blankly at the meat on his plate. His brow furrowed deeply. With a swift flick of his fork, he shoved the beef right off his plate onto the table. The movement was brutal and efficient. Not a single second of hesitation. Brittany’s smile instantly shattered. “Preston, what are you doing?” “Sorry. I don’t eat food other people touch.” Preston’s face was completely devoid of emotion. He didn’t even grant her a glance. Brittany’s lower lip trembled, tears rapidly pooling in her oversized eyes. Martha scrambled to defuse the tension, using her own fork to scoop up the discarded meat and shove it into her mouth. “If he won’t eat it, I will! Anything Brittany serves is delicious!” Brittany bit her lip, desperately trying to keep the tears from falling. But under the table, her foot tensed up with a vengeance. This time, she aimed straight for the prize. “Ugh… ah!” A strangled, breathy gasp tore out of Preston’s throat. It ended on an embarrassingly high note, sounding incredibly fragile and flushed. Every single person at the table dropped their forks. 08 Martha stared at Preston in utter panic. “Honey, what’s wrong?” Preston’s face was the color of a ripe tomato. But his eyes weren’t on Brittany. They were locked onto Victor, who was sitting across the table. The look in Preston’s eyes was chaotic. There was sheer panic, desperate pleading, and a bizarre hint of… shyness. He looked like a blushing bride caught in a scandal. My brain felt like it was short-circuiting. No way. There was absolutely no way. Victor stared right back at him, his voice dripping with exaggerated concern. “What is it, kiddo? Are you feeling sick?” Preston rapidly broke eye contact, staring intensely at his empty plate. His voice was muffled. “Nothing. Just bit my tongue.” Brittany’s lips formed a vicious smirk. Under the table, her foot didn’t stop. In fact, she doubled down, moving faster, clearly punishing him for rejecting her roast beef in front of everyone. Preston was squirming in his chair. He bit down brutally on his lower lip. The veins on his forehead popped, and beads of sweat dripped down his temples. Yet, he still didn’t pull away. Instead, his body subconsciously leaned further in. Right at that moment, Victor set down his beer and stood up. He pulled a few napkins from the dispenser and held them out to Preston. “You’re sweating buckets, Preston. Is it too warm in here for you?” Seeing Victor suddenly loom over him, Preston’s pupils dilated in sheer terror. He instinctively glanced down under the table. Brittany’s foot was still working its magic. Preston’s face went from flushed red, to chalk white, to a sickly shade of green. “Jesus! It’s YOU?” He shot up out of his chair like he had been electrocuted. “I need to use the bathroom.” Preston practically sprinted out of the dining room. Brittany sat frozen in her seat, her face burning with utter humiliation. I calmly picked up my wine glass, took a delicate sip, and spoke in a syrupy sweet tone. “Don’t take it personally, Brittany. My husband has terrible germaphobia. He hates being touched by women. Make sure you keep your feet to yourself next time, so you don’t accidentally bump into him again.” I placed heavy emphasis on the word accidentally. Brittany shot me a look of pure, venomous hatred.

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Right after accepting the proposal from Rio, the city’s elite trust-fund heir, I stumbled across a viral forum thread. “Idiot. She actually thinks I care about her personality. If she weren’t gorgeous, why would I date a mute?” “Once her looks fade, I’m dumping her.” The comment section was bashing him for being a total scumbag. He ignored them completely and kept updating: “She loves me so much, she’ll definitely be heartbroken when we break up. I’ll transfer some cash to compensate her first.” “The Maybach I just bought is pretty nice. I’ll give it to her so she doesn’t have to squeeze onto public buses after the breakup.” “The new luxury villa I bought is nice. I’ll give it to her so she isn’t homeless after the breakup.” The comment section was completely dumbfounded. Two years passed, and I ended up with countless luxury properties and cars under my name. His latest forum post: “Damn it, why is she getting prettier and prettier?” The comment section: “Bro, you two are literally married now, how is your mouth still this stubborn?” 1 Rio, the elite trust-fund heir of the city, had a mouth made of pure battery acid. If anyone annoyed him, he would tear them apart with a few sharp words. Yet, he spent six months pretending to be a sweet, devoted golden retriever just to woo me. He even learned American Sign Language just so he could communicate with me. When he confessed his feelings to me yet again, I built up the courage to sign back: “Why do you like me? I’m mute, and I’m an orphan. With your status, you deserve someone much better.” He smiled gently, his eyes filled with unwavering conviction. “Because you’re sweet and kind. I care about what’s on the inside.” Watching him clumsily move his fingers to sign those words, I was deeply moved and accepted his proposal to date. 2 Shortly after, I stumbled upon a viral forum thread while scrolling on my phone. “Idiot. She actually thinks I care about her personality. If she weren’t gorgeous, why would I date a mute?” “Once her looks fade, I’m dumping her immediately.” My heart skipped a beat. I tapped into the thread. The comment section was calling him out for being toxic. “That’s terrible.” “Holy hell, we found a real-life scumbag.” “Putting myself in the girl’s shoes, this is devastating. She has a disability and thought she found true love, only to end up with a shallow jerk who’s just using her for her looks.” “I’m begging you, dump her already. She deserves better, not a bottom-tier jerk like you.” The original poster skipped past all the insults and replied directly to the comment telling him to break up: “Telling me to dump her so you can steal her, right? Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to, you filthy home-wrecker.” “I spent months acting like a sweet little puppy in front of her, forcing myself not to utter a single curse word, wearing those ridiculous soft-boy hoodies.” “I don’t get why she likes the sweet puppy type. If she wants a dog, why doesn’t she just buy a real one?” “When she gets mad, she gives me the silent treatment, forcing me to swallow my pride and beg for forgiveness. I’m such an idiot, crawling back even when she ignores me.” “Once I dump her, I’m going back to being my true self.” The poster posted complaint after complaint. It was clear he had been holding in his resentment for a long time. The comment section didn’t hold back either: “Hilarious. You chose to pursue her, nobody forced you. What are you whining about now?” “Seriously, she’s so unlucky to run into a guy like you.” He replied furiously: “How is she unlucky? To chase her, I became her maid, her driver, and I destroyed my hands learning ASL, even though she can hear fine!” “Dammit, ASL is so hard, my fingers are almost broken. I don’t know how she deals with it every day, enduring so much malice from people.” The commenters subtly picked up on something strange. “Wait, is he actually feeling sorry for her?” “Hold on, ladies, something feels off about this guy…” “Bro, why force yourself to learn ASL if she can hear you?” He replied boastfully: “Because it shows sincerity! You have no idea how moved she was when she saw me signing. She even cried!” “She is utterly obsessed with me. When I drop the breakup bomb, she’ll probably pass out crying.” I looked at the familiar avatar and location tag. I smiled. Pass out crying? Not likely. 3 I typed a comment under an alt account. “OP, I support you. Once she isn’t pretty anymore, dump her immediately.” He replied within seconds: “Watch your mouth, you jerk!” I was speechless. Could my comment be any worse than his battery-acid tongue? I continued commenting: “I dated someone similar before. After breaking up, she stalked me relentlessly and even threatened to end her life.” He seemed startled and asked hurriedly: “How did you solve it?” “I gave her a $300,000 breakup payout.” He replied: “Only $300k? You cheapskate. I’m transferring money to her right now.” The next second, my phone buzzed with a $300,000 wire transfer notification. Then came a text from Rio: “Babe, you are my whole world. I’ll love you forever.” Me: “Babe, thank you! You’re so good to me. If you ever dump me, I’ll never recover.” Rio: “Don’t overthink, babe. I’m not that kind of guy.” Then he wired another $300,000. Looking at my bank balance, my shoulders shook with silent laughter. Idiot. Did he really think I was in this for love? I was here for his money, of course. Rio posted a screenshot of the transfer on the thread and made a point to reply to my comment. “Bro, your advice worked.” Suppressing my excitement, I kept prompting him: “Next step, I suggest you dump her fast. Ideally within a month, or it gets harder to break off.” Once I made enough cash, who wanted to keep working as his girlfriend? Unexpectedly, he ignored my comment completely and posted: “The Maybach I bought is nice. I’ll gift it to her so she doesn’t have to take the bus after we split.” “The new mansion is nice too. I’ll give it to her so she isn’t homeless after the breakup.” I covered my mouth in shock. Jackpot! The comment section exploded with question marks. “Are you pulling my leg?” “Did I stumble into a billionaire’s thread?” “Wait, are you for real? Who are you backstabbing?” “Ladies, this twist is hitting my poor nerves.” “I thought he was a shallow jerk, but he’s a billionaire learning ASL and gifting mansions while totally oblivious that he’s whipped!” He replied: “You know nothing. I’m just pretending to be whipped. It’s all part of my master plan.” Comments: “Your mouth is harder than tungsten steel.” “If you fell face first, your stubborn mouth would puncture the Earth.” “Sir, your mouth isn’t soft at all.” “If you told us you were like this earlier, I wouldn’t have insulted you. I’d call you hubby right now.” “Hubby, I’m mute too, and I’m very pretty.” “Me too! I’m not mute, but I’m gorgeous. Check your DMs.” “Hubby, I’m not picky. I don’t want your mansion or Maybach, I just want to get dumped by you.” In an instant, the comment section shifted completely. Women were calling him hubby and posting pretty selfies. Dammit, so many competitors appeared out of nowhere. Rio is a superficial playboy. What if someone steals him away? My Maybach and mansion haven’t even been transferred to my name yet. Can everyone wait until I secure the assets before trying to steal him? I was genuinely worried. 4 To my surprise, Rio blasted them directly: “Back off, all of you! I hate gold-digging home-wreckers the most. Blocked!” The comment section fought back: “You call us gold-diggers, but did you ever think your girlfriend is in it for your money too? Why else did she accept your cash?” “Exactly! Maybe the person telling you to transfer money in the comments IS your girlfriend’s burner account!” I froze. Are netizens really this sharp nowadays? What if Rio actually believes them? While I was panicking… Rio replied with his usual battery acid: “Shut your trash mouth. Your heart is filthy so you see filth everywhere. My babe is nothing like that!” “Say another word and I’ll flame you until you delete your account.” 5 Actually, long before I met Rio, I had heard of his reputation. He was an outright superficial playboy. None of his relationships lasted past two months. Once he broke up with someone, he would hand them a massive breakup payout. A girl from my dorm used to date him, and when they split, he gave her a $100,000 payout. I nearly died of jealousy back then. Unexpectedly, that roommate refused the money, crying and threatening to jump off a roof to win him back. Rio didn’t even show his face. He turned around and flew to Europe with another girl. Eventually, that roommate suffered a breakdown and dropped out of school. Back then, I thought to myself: if it were me, I wouldn’t throw a fit. I’d just ask for a bigger payout. As a poor orphan who was mute, finding a job was extremely difficult. Even if I found one, surviving in the workplace would be tough. If I could somehow get a large sum of money, I’d be set for the rest of my life. So, I spent a bit of money to track down his schedule and the places he frequented. Then, I casually crossed paths with him. To my surprise, he took the bait the very first time we met. Turns out, attracting a shallow guy is easy. As long as you’re gorgeous enough, you don’t have to do anything and he’ll come right over. Now, besides cash, I unexpectedly scored a mansion and a car. I overachieved my goal. Next, all I had to do was behave and wait for him to dump me. 6 Strangely enough, two months passed. I waited every single day for Rio to drop the breakup bomb, but he showed no intention of breaking up. I couldn’t figure out what went wrong. Did I get prettier again? I walked over to the mirror and checked. Not at all. Lately, because of my senior thesis, I had been pulling all-nighters. Dark circles hung down to my cheeks, breakouts popped up everywhere, and my face was puffy. I looked so rough I scared myself. Right on cue, Rio sent a text message. “Babe, let me take you out on the yacht this weekend, okay? I haven’t seen you in two days, I miss you so much.” Here came my chance. If I showed up looking like this, Rio would definitely dump me on the spot. Sure enough, on the yacht… The moment Rio saw me, the smile on his face froze. Without a word, he stood up and left the lounge. He left me standing there awkwardly, feeling at a loss. His friend noticed and walked over to greet me. Fearing the music was too loud for me to read lips, his friend spoke very slowly: “Rio is just tired. Sit here for a bit, I’ll go check on him.” I was slightly dazed. Every time Rio saw me in the past, he acted like an excited puppy seeing its owner, running over to hug and cuddle me. Now… See? Once a man loses interest in you, his disgust is undisguised. I picked a spot to sit down, pulled out my phone, and opened his forum thread. As expected, he updated. He probably wanted to ask netizens how to dump me. Opening it up, I was stunned. He posted: “We didn’t see each other for two days, why did she get even prettier?” “My heart is pounding so fast looking at her. I want to hold her and kiss her senseless, but I’m afraid she’ll get mad.” “Rookie mistake. I shouldn’t have invited other people today.” I was completely baffled. Does he have vision problems?! I looked terrible today! Where did I get prettier?! Comments: “Whipped into an idiot again, bro.” “Happily whipped, bro!” “Whether you’re a scumbag or romance-brained, I can tell.” “To be honest, I preferred your arrogant, rebellious attitude from before.” “Am I the only one curious about how gorgeous his girlfriend actually is? She turned him into a spinning top.” He shot back ruthlessly: “Who says I’m whipped? I’m stating facts! She did get prettier! Once her looks fade, I’m still going to dump her ruthlessly.” “With her temper, I can’t tolerate her for long.” The comments exposed him without mercy: “Then dump her already! Two months passed, you didn’t dump her, and you’re even more obsessed! What should I say about you?” He replied: “I know what I’m doing. Mind your own business.” Comments: “Your mouth is the toughest thing on your body. If you actually split, you’ll be weeping.” “Who understands? I really want to see OP get hit in the face after a breakup.” “He’ll definitely be crying like a boiling kettle while begging for her back, all while claiming he doesn’t care.” “Hahaha, just thinking about it is hilarious.” “By the way, can someone track down his girlfriend and send this thread to her? Then SHE can dump him, hahaha.” Rio snapped: “Is it that funny? Believe it or not, I’ll smash my head against a wall to show you!” What the commenters didn’t know was that guys like Rio, who fell hard and fast, dumped people the hardest. The real victims were the slow-burn types who fell in love right before getting dumped. So I kept reminding myself: I must never fall for him. He approached me with motives, and I was milking his money with a clear conscience. Maybe in another lifetime, if I reincarnate as a billionaire, I’ll repay him. 7 Scrolling down to a comment, I paused. “Stop romanticizing OP. He’s just obsessed because he hasn’t slept with her yet. Once a guy gets what he wants, he loses interest fast. No exceptions.” Is that true? “Babe, what are you looking at?” I didn’t know when Rio had appeared behind me. Startled, I hurriedly hid my phone behind my back. “Want to watch a movie?” I nodded. Inside the dim, private screening room… Rio slowly leaned closer, his voice raspy: “Stella, can I kiss you?” I suddenly remembered that comment. If doing this could make him dump me, it wouldn’t hurt to try. “Can I?” Rio asked again, his ears turning red. I bit my lip and nodded. He immediately leaned in and kissed me. His hot palm pressed against the back of my head, kissing me with urgent intensity. It was as if he had been holding back for a long time. At such close range, Rio’s face looked even more refined. Sharp brows, deep eyes, a high nose bridge. Although he was a shallow guy, he was undeniably handsome. With these looks, even male celebrities would pale in comparison. No wonder my former roommate threatened to jump off a roof instead of breaking up with him. I still remembered the first time I met him, I was completely stunned. My roommate had described him as average-looking, humorous, and great at charming girls. What I saw was a guy with striking looks and a mouth made of pure battery acid. He once took me to meet his friends. One girl mocked me covertly for being a mute on financial assistance, claiming I didn’t deserve Rio, the city’s elite heir. Rio slammed his glass down and flamed her on the spot: “Who gave you permission to judge my girlfriend? What kind of trash are you?” “You act tough around guys every day, but the moment a girl shows up, you reveal your toxic nature?” “Are you going to get lost yourself, or stay and let me finish flaming you?” The girl slunk away in embarrassment. Turning around, meeting my startled eyes, his face instantly softened as he comforted me gently: “Babe, ignore her. She’s a terrible person. You deserve me eight hundred times over.” “You’re way out of my league.” It made me wonder if I had mistaken him for someone else. After all, many people shared the same name. It wasn’t until I found his forum thread that I confirmed I hadn’t mistaken him. It was just playboy tactics. They loved playing the devoted lover, but when the breakup arrived, you could jump off a building and it still wouldn’t win them back. 8 Rio’s kiss deepened, as if trying to swallow me whole. After kissing for ten minutes, he finally released me, his eyes hazy and breath heavy: “Stella, it hurts… can we?” “Don’t worry, I haven’t done this before. I’m clean.” I rolled my eyes internally. He was practically living like a playboy, yet he claimed he hadn’t done it before? He could lie all he wanted, but did he think I’d buy it? Still, this fit my goal. Besides, I had been eyeing his physique for a while too. I feigned bashfulness, lowering my head and signing: “Your friends are outside… they’ll hear…” “It’s fine, I locked the door.” But… My gaze shifted downward… Looking at his impressive build… I furrowed my brows in concern. With our size difference, doing this might actually be the end of me. As if sensing my hesitation, he patted his chest like an obedient puppy, promising firmly: “Don’t be scared, I’ll be gentle. If it’s too much, tap my back and I’ll stop, okay?” 9 I believed his trick. When it became too much and I slammed my hands against his back frantically… He acted like he had lost all feeling. In the end, I had no choice but to kick him off the bed before he finally behaved. Afterward, he knelt on one knee before me, helping me clean up while signing earnestly: “Babe, I’m sorry. When you tapped so fast, I thought you were praising me and telling me to go faster.” My face burned bright red hearing that. I lifted my foot to kick him again. He caught my ankle firmly. Rio’s throat bobbed: “If you don’t believe me, let me show you again. I promise I won’t do that this time.” Get lost! His hidden motives were practically written on his face. Wasn’t he exhausted after so many rounds? Whatever, I couldn’t be bothered to argue with him. I lay on the bed and fell into a heavy sleep. In my half-dazed state, I felt him wrapping his arms around me, dropping his puppy act and speaking in a low, possessive tone: “Stella, you are mine. Mine for the rest of your life.” Where did this possessive ghost come from? Get away! Scared, I sat straight up. Thank goodness it was just a dream. I thought after that night, he would lose interest in me completely. To my absolute dismay, he became even more clingy. I was in despair. Why wasn’t this guy following the playbook?!

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Word was spreading fast through high society that Howard Hargrove’s long-rumored overseas fiancee was finally back in the country. That exact same afternoon, a video of me slapping his face right outside the Hargrove Group headquarters went viral online. In the clip, he stood drenched in the rain, wearing a tailored three-piece suit. My palm hit his cheek with a crisp crack, snapping his head to the side, yet he didn’t utter a single word of protest. The internet tore me apart within minutes. Who does this gold digger think she is? Does she actually think she’s Mrs. Hargrove? Howard’s patience is terrifying. Security should’ve dragged her off the property. By evening, heiress Dianne Crawford posted a photo from a lavish gala. In the picture, Howard’s designer suit jacket was draped over her shoulders. Her caption read: After all these years, right back where I belong. Within ten minutes, the hashtag #FutureMrsHargrove hit the top of the trending page. I tossed my phone onto the mattress, looking down at the man beside me. “Well, Mr. Hargrove,” I murmured, “your fiancee certainly knows how to curate a scene.” He took my hand, resting my palm flat against his jawline. “Babe,” he whispered, “did hitting me hurt your hand?” 1 I looked down at him. Howard was kneeling by the edge of the bed, his crisp white shirt sleeves rolled up to his forearms, his silk tie half-loosened. One of his hands gently held my wrist while the other carefully smoothed soothing ointment over my palm. His dark brows were tightly knit. If a passerby walked in right now, they would assume I was the one who had been struck. I tried to pull my hand back, but his grip remained firm yet tender. He lowered his head, continuing to rub the ointment into my skin. “It’s red right here,” he muttered. “That’s from slapping your face.” “Which is why it hurts,” he replied without missing a beat. He looked up, his eyes dead serious. “Next time, don’t do it yourself.” “Who should do it then?” “I’ll do it.” I stared at him for two full seconds. Fearing I hadn’t grasped his meaning, he added quietly, “Tell me where you want it to hit, and I’ll smack myself in front of the mirror.” A sharp laugh escaped my throat despite myself. “Howard Hargrove, do you honestly think you’re being funny right now?” He shut his mouth instantly. My phone was still buzzing relentlessly on the sheets. I didn’t even need to look to know that social media was exploding. Dianne’s photo was a masterclass in subtle manipulation. Under the gala’s golden chandeliers and beside a champagne tower, she sat with Howard’s dark suit jacket draped over her shoulders, her face half-hidden in the lapel. Howard stood beside her, looking down at a stack of documents. From that angle, it looked like he was shielding her from the draft. Her caption was just as clever: After all these years, right back where I belong. Neither confirming nor denying anything, leaving the rest to the internet’s imagination. I casually tapped into the comment section. I knew Mr. Hargrove had a fiancee. High society guys never marry random influencers. Dianne’s elegance screams primary wife energy. Was that girl who slapped him outside the building yesterday just an angry side chick losing her mind? He didn’t even fight back. He probably just gave her a graceful exit out of pity for their past. As I read the last comment out loud, Howard’s thumb froze against my palm. His expression hardened, temperature dropping instantly. “Stop reading it.” “I’m not finished.” “There’s nothing good about watching people trash you.” “I find it entertaining.” Howard pressed his lips into a tight line. I knew him well enough to know he was already itching to scrub the trending topics and file lawsuits against every single commenter. In the three years we had been married, the one thing he could never tolerate was anyone speaking ill of me. He hated it even more than I did. I used my free hand to poke his forehead gently. “Alright, big boss, hold off on the lawyer letters for a second. Explain to me first, how did your suit jacket end up on Dianne’s shoulders?” Howard sat up straight immediately. “I didn’t put it on her.” “It’s your jacket in the picture.” “It is mine, but I didn’t give it to her.” “So it grew legs and walked over to her on its own?” Howard’s throat bobbed. Knowing the explanation sounded thin, he lowered his eyes, carefully capped the ointment tube, and wrapped my hand in a warm, damp towel. He was dragging out the process to buy time. I smiled warmly at him. “Mr. Hargrove, I’ll give you three seconds.” “Three.” He blurted it out instantly. “Reporters blocked me at the gala entrance, so I took off my jacket and handed it to Garrett so he could block the camera lenses.” “Dianne spilled red wine on her dress during a toast. Garrett assumed she was an important guest that the hosts needed catered to, so he handed her the jacket. I had already gone upstairs to the second-floor conference room and didn’t see any of it.” I raised an eyebrow. “Garrett certainly knows how to be helpful.” A faint cough sounded from the bedroom doorway. Garrett stood outside, his face as pale as a man who had just received a life sentence. “Ma’am, I was wrong.” I turned my head. Garrett was Howard’s head assistant, having served him for seven full years. Today was indeed a massive blunder on his part. Glancing nervously at Howard, Garrett forced himself to continue. “The lighting was dim, and Miss Crawford’s assistant mentioned she was cold. I didn’t think much of it. Right after I handed it over, Mr. Hargrove went upstairs. The photo must have been snapped during that window.” Howard’s voice was crisp. “Year-end bonus gone.” “Deserved,” Garrett whispered. I nearly broke out laughing. “You can go, Garrett.” Garrett turned to leave, but at the doorway, he quickly added, “Ma’am, the PR department has a statement ready, and Mr. Hargrove already instructed the legal team to document all libelous posts.” Howard frowned. “I told you to leave.” Fearing further wrath, Garrett vanished in seconds, shutting the door tightly behind him. Silence washed over the bedroom. Howard turned back to me. The man who had just coldly berated his assistant now spoke in a voice lowered by several octaves. “Babe, do you believe me?” I looked into his eyes. Dark circles shadowed his skin. This morning, outside the corporate building, he had stood in the pouring rain while I slapped his cheek. He hadn’t explained, hadn’t dodged, and hadn’t gotten angry. Every camera caught his head turning from the strike. Yet no camera captured the fact that before the slap, his stomach spasms were so severe his hands were trembling. I had told him to go to the hospital. He said he had to wait until the board meeting ended. I told him it was raining outside, and he said it didn’t matter. He had always been like this. Business, the Hargrove empire, my needs, he put everything first. The only thing he relegated to the very back was himself. So I couldn’t stop myself from raising my hand. I wasn’t angry at Dianne Crawford. I was furious at him for treating his own body like trash. I let out a soft sigh. “I believe you.” “You can hit me again if you want.” “Get lost.” “Can’t,” he muttered, pulling me closer. “I just got official status. I can’t get lost.” “Where did you get official status?” “From our marriage license.” 2 Howard and I had been secretly married for three years. Very few people knew about it. So few that high society genuinely assumed Howard was keeping a mysterious fiancee overseas for years. The rumor wasn’t entirely wrong. I had indeed spent a long time abroad, and I had indeed spent a massive amount of his money. However, I wasn’t being kept like a pet. I was managing overseas mergers and acquisitions on his behalf. The green energy sector, which was currently the Hargrove Group’s most lucrative asset, was almost poached by foreign venture capital three years ago. Howard had just taken over the conglomerate back then. Internal chaos and external threats plagued him, with half the board plotting to oust him. He couldn’t leave the country, so I went in his place. We had been married for less than three months at the time. Stepping out of the registry office, Howard held my hand tightly by the car, asking softly, “Can we go public tonight?” “No.” His brows knitted instantly. “Why not?” “I fly to Zurich tomorrow morning.” “And?” “I don’t want to negotiate a multibillion-dollar acquisition under the title of Mrs. Hargrove.” “You are Mrs. Hargrove.” “Still no.” Howard stayed silent the entire ride home. Once inside, he locked both copies of our marriage license into his office safe. That night, he pulled me into his arms from behind. “Nora.” “Yeah?” “Are you trying to hide me forever?” I turned around in his embrace and kissed his jawline gently. “Wait until the acquisition closes.” “How long?” “Six months max.” Howard believed me. Six months later, the acquisition remained locked in intense negotiations. I stayed in Europe, grinding through endless meetings with ruthless investors. A year passed before the clean energy deal finally settled. Then Howard’s scheming uncle targeted me. His uncle believed I was merely a pawn Howard placed overseas. If he discovered we were legally wed, he would use me as leverage to cripple Howard. So I kept our marriage under wraps. Howard endured it, month after month. During the second winter, he flew to London to spend Christmas with me. Snow fell heavily outside the apartment while I prepped a hotpot in the kitchen. Howard sat on the couch watching a live business interview on his phone. On screen, the host asked him with a smile if good news was on the horizon regarding his personal life. Howard looked straight into the camera. “Yes.” I poked my head out from the kitchen. “Howard Hargrove!” “I didn’t say who,” he replied innocently. “How is that any different from telling them?” “I’m almost thirty.” “And?” “I’m married, but nobody knows.” I stuffed a pair of chopsticks into his hand. “Just wait a little longer.” “You said that last time.” “This time it’s for real.” Howard stared at me intently. “Nora, you better not be playing me.” As it turned out, I played him again. In the third year, the Hargrove Group completely stabilized, and I finally returned home for good. Howard had been organizing public announcement ideas for a month prior to my arrival. Every night, he would slide his phone over to me. “How about this picture?” “Too goofy.” The next day he would swap it out. “This one?” “You look like a sappy groom.” “I am a sappy groom.” Before we could finalize an announcement strategy, Dianne Crawford returned to the country. She was the eldest daughter of the Crawford family, Howard’s childhood neighbor, and the exact type of childhood sweetheart the public loved to romanticize. High society quickly matched her with the rumored overseas fiancee. When Howard learned about the gossip, his immediate reaction was to release a formal denial. I stopped him. The Crawfords had recently partnered with the Hargrove Group on a major commercial venture. Dianne’s sudden return and her deliberate fueling of rumors weren’t out of nostalgia. She wanted the leverage and status that came with being viewed as the future Mrs. Hargrove. Since she wanted to put on a show, I wanted to see just how far she could perform. Turns out, by afternoon, her performance had catapulted her straight to number one on the trending topics. 3 The next morning, Howard was kicked awake by me. He had insisted on sleeping in my bed last night, claiming he was being cyberbullied online and needed comfort from his lawful wife. Finding him annoying, I ignored him, so he sat at the foot of the bed wrapped in a blanket, staring at me silently. Eventually, his puppy-dog eyes gave me a headache, and I gave in, letting him slide under the duvet. The result was a night of utter restlessness on his part. One moment he was touching my palm to check if it still hurt, and the next he was wrapping his arms around my waist to ask if I was still mad. At three in the morning, he even snuck out of bed to draft a public statement on his laptop. Exhausted, I grabbed his phone and shut it down. “Go to sleep.” He lay back down, but two minutes later he whispered, “Nora.” “Say one more word and you’re sleeping in the guest room.” “I had a dream you didn’t want me anymore.” With my eyes closed, I reached out and patted his hair. “I want you.” He finally settled down. Now, as dawn broke, his phone was buzzing incessantly again. I nudged his leg with my foot. “Answer the phone.” Howard opened his eyes with a heavy frown. His first instinct wasn’t to grab the phone, but to reach out and check my wrist. “Does it still hurt?” “No.” He checked my palm carefully, making sure there was no swelling before picking up the call. The moment he answered, Garrett’s panicked voice echoed through the speaker. “Mr. Hargrove, Miss Crawford posted again.” Howard’s face darkened instantly. I sat up and grabbed my own phone. In the early hours of the morning, Dianne had shared a throwback photo. In the picture, a teenage Howard in a high school uniform stood beneath a sprawling oak tree, his profile cold and distant. She had cropped the shot so only half his face and her own shadow on the grass were visible. Her caption read: Some people have been standing there since youth. The comment section was going wild. Is this the power of childhood sweethearts? Gosh, Howard was so handsome as a teenager. Who wouldn’t fall for him? Dianne really kept this hidden for so many years. When is that violent girl from yesterday going to apologize? I tapped on the photo to expand it. The teenage boy was indeed Howard. But I recognized the photo instantly. I was right there on the day it was taken. It was our prep academy’s anniversary celebration, and Howard had been dragged into volunteering by the student council. Dianne was secretly taking pictures of him. A second after that frame was taken, I stepped out from behind the tree and pressed an icy bottle of water against his cheek. Howard dodged with a scowl, but naturally reached out to take my heavy backpack off my shoulders. Dianne had simply cropped me out completely. I held my phone screen in front of Howard’s face. “‘Standing there since youth’?” Howard’s heart skipped a beat. “I was waiting for you that day.” “She didn’t capture that part.” “I have the original photo.” He leapt out of bed immediately, not even bothering with slippers, and marched into the home office to boot up his computer. I leaned against the doorway, watching him. In less than a minute, he pulled up an image from an encrypted album. Under the exact same tree, on the exact same afternoon. In the uncropped photo, teenage Howard held my backpack in one hand and my half-empty water bottle in the other. I stood beside him, draping his oversized school jacket over my shoulders. The shadow Dianne claimed as her intimate presence was merely her standing several feet behind us, completely ignored. Looking at the screen, a chuckle escaped my lips. “How do you even still have this?” “I had it taken.” “Who took it?” “Garrett.” “You were bossing Garrett around back in high school?” “He was my desk mate back then.” “You made your desk mate secretly snap photos of me?” “He did it voluntarily.” A faint cough sounded near the doorway. Garrett stood outside the office. “Ma’am, I was not voluntary.” Howard cast him a dark glare. Garrett instantly pivoted. “Though I grew to do it voluntarily over time.” I couldn’t stop laughing. Howard, however, wasn’t smiling. He exported the original high-resolution photo and prepared to forward it directly to the PR department. I pressed my hand over his wrist. “Don’t rush.” “She’s stepping on you.” “She’s stepping on you too.” “Which is why we can’t be hasty.” I saved Dianne’s cropped photo to my phone. “The more elaborate her fantasy is right now, the sweeter her downfall will be later.” Howard looked at me, falling silent for a moment. “You’ve already planned everything, haven’t you?” “Pretty much.” “When did you start planning?” “The moment she posted that gala photo.” He reached out, pulling me into his arms and resting his chin on my shoulder. “Nora.” “What?” “Are you actually going to let us go public?” I looked at him. Howard had been remarkably obedient since last night, refraining from aggressive public statements, avoiding reckless confrontations, and holding back his legal team from suing the entire internet. Yet I knew deep down how desperately long he had waited for this moment. I raised my hand, gently smoothing down his messy morning hair. “I’m giving you your chance.” His eyes lit up instantly. “Tonight is the Crawford family gala. I’m taking you with me to shatter her fantasy.”

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1 I designed the digital wedding invitations for my best friend Sienna and built the platform myself. A week before the ceremony, I noticed one account had viewed her invitation page 298 times. It belonged to Chris, my boyfriend of seven years. When I asked him why, he snapped, “How do you even know that?” I blurted out, “Because I built the platform.” He went silent, then looked up, eyes bloodshot. “Because I can’t stand the thought of watching her marry another man.” That was how I learned they dated in college. I turned to leave, but he grabbed my arm. “Piper, please. Don’t ruin her wedding.” The next morning, HR received an anonymous report accusing me of running an undeclared side business and using company property for private commercial projects. I was currently ranked number one for Regional Creative Director. Sienna was number two. The attached backend screenshots were accessible only to Chris. Last night’s confession wasn’t honesty. It was me handing him the ammunition to destroy my career. … Staring at the screenshots in the compliance file, my head throbbed so violently that the print began to blur into double vision. Those were the exact backend pages I had shown Chris on my laptop. The lead investigator from Compliance slid the folder across the desk toward me. “We received an anonymous tip alleging that you failed to disclose a related side business and leveraged corporate assets to take on private wedding contracts.” “There is also a record of a two-hundred-dollar Venmo transfer from Sienna.” I pulled out my phone and tapped open the transaction history. “That was a fee for licensing music rights for her ceremony. The memo line clearly states it.” The investigator glanced briefly at the screen. “The payment description can be verified, but the fact remains that you failed to declare the platform’s existence to HR.” “Pending the outcome of this investigation, your eligibility for tomorrow’s final review for Regional Creative Director is temporarily suspended.” Coldness seeped into my fingertips. The final review was scheduled for tomorrow afternoon. I had poured two years of my life into this promotion, pulling endless late nights and sacrificing my health to reach the top spot. “How long will the investigation take?” “Seven business days.” I opened my mouth, but my voice came out choked and thick with unshed tears. “But the final panel evaluation starts tomorrow.” The investigator avoided my gaze. “The promotional review will not be delayed for an individual inquiry.” The office door swung open abruptly. Sienna burst in, her eyes red and brimming with tears. She grabbed my hand tightly. “Piper, I swear I didn’t know it would turn into this!” “Someone came to me demanding an explanation for that two-hundred-dollar transfer. I was so terrified that I signed the statement they put in front of me.” My eyes locked onto the document clutched in her fingers. I previously commissioned Piper to design my wedding invitations for compensation. Black ink on white paper, bearing her signature at the bottom. She had rebranded a simple two-hundred-dollar music royalty fee into an illegal private design fee. I yanked my hand back, blinking rapidly to force back the tears stinging my eyes. I turned my face away from her. I didn’t want her to see me break, and I couldn’t bear to look at her performative sorrow for another second. “Who made you sign it?” Her lips trembled, but no sound came out. A second later, Chris rushed into the room. He held a warm oat milk latte from my favorite coffee shop, beads of sweat glistening at his temples. Yet his very first words weren’t aimed at comforting me. “Can Sienna still use her wedding invites normally?” The air in the room plummeted to freezing. Realizing how cold he sounded, he quickly added, “The wedding is only seven days away. The guest RSVPs and seating charts are all hosted on that link. Shutting it down right now will create total chaos.” Sienna looked at him, her eyes glistening with tears. “If Piper doesn’t want me to use it, I can find a replacement.” “Except there’s no time to swap everything out,” Chris blurted out. “Your dress fitting is tomorrow, and the final reminder blasts need to go out Friday.” I wiped a stray tear from the corner of my eye and let out a soft, bitter laugh. Some questions didn’t even need asking anymore. Sienna lowered her head, tears still clinging to her lashes. Chris stole a quick glance at her before forcing his gaze back to me. He grabbed my wrist and pulled me out into the hallway. “Don’t shut down the invitation link yet, and don’t reach out to her fiance,” he whispered urgently. “Once the wedding is over, I’ll help you resolve this mess with HR.” I stared into his eyes. “Was it you who reported me?” Chris hesitated for two agonizing seconds. “Does it really matter who submitted the report right now?” “HR will clear your name once they finish investigating.” “Sienna only gets one wedding in her life.” A wave of sour pain rushed up my throat. “Her wedding is once in a lifetime.” “So my promotion can just be sacrificed and restarted whenever it suits you?” He offered no answer. His silence cut deeper than any confession ever could. That evening, a company-wide email landed in my inbox. Due to an ongoing investigation regarding undeclared secondary business activities, Piper’s candidacy for the Regional Creative Director position has been suspended. Her place in the final review panel will be filled by the runner-up candidate, Sienna. I sat alone in the dark office, staring at the presentation deck I had perfected over the last two years. It seemed I wouldn’t be needing it anymore. A ping chimed from my laptop. The backend notification panel refreshed. User GH has accessed Sienna’s wedding invitation. Total views: 299. A moment later, a system update showed that Sienna had changed her ceremony’s background track. The new song was the exact indie ballad Chris had played on repeat for four straight years during college. I stared at the title on the screen as tears crashed onto my keyboard. The groom standing at the altar wouldn’t be him. Yet every hidden detail of her wedding was infused with his shadow. I didn’t sleep a single minute that night. I scrolled through years of Chris’s and Sienna’s social media posts, public comments, and old group chats. The more I read, the more I realized what a pathetic joke I had been. During a team dinner months ago, a platter of spicy blackened fish was placed right between Sienna and me. Chris had immediately reached across the table, swapping it with a plain steamed dish from the far end. I had frowned at the time. “You know I don’t like steamed fish.” He had smiled gently. “You’ve been breaking out lately, babe. Spicy food isn’t good for your skin.” I thought he was looking out for me. Only now did I realize he was simply catering to Sienna, who couldn’t handle spicy food. Another time, when Sienna was stuck working late during a violent rainstorm, Chris had driven halfway across the city to pick her up. When he returned home, he had grinned at me. “You’re always worrying about her staying out late alone, right? I went and picked her up for you.” Not only had I suspected nothing, but I had genuinely believed I was blessed to have a boyfriend who got along so well with my best friend. Whenever we went out for dinner, caught a movie, or booked a weekend getaway, I was always the one eagerly inviting Sienna along. Looking back now, I finally saw the truth. Every single move Chris made toward Sienna was executed under the guise of caring for me. And I had acted like a brainless fool, orchestrating their reunions over and over again. By dawn, a sharp, rhythmic throbbing hammered against my temples. The moment I pushed myself up from the couch, my vision flickered dark. The doorbell rang. Chris stood outside holding a bag of fresh crab dumplings, unsweetened soy milk, and my favorite brand of migraine medication. “I knew you wouldn’t sleep well last night,” he murmured softly. He pulled the curtains shut, coaxed me to lie down, and expertly began rubbing my temples. His pressure was identical to the way he had massaged my forehead over the last seven years. My body almost instinctively relaxed under his touch. Then the image of the HR complaint screenshot flashed across my mind. I violently slapped his hands away and forced myself upright. A wave of dizziness nearly knocked me off my feet, forcing me to grip the coffee table for support, but a scorching fire blazed inside my chest. “I have to go to work.” He reached out to steady me. “I already called in sick for you.” “Who gave you permission to call in sick for me?” Chris frowned, his tone exasperated. “Look at the state of you. How can you possibly work today?” “Besides, haven’t I always handled your sick leave before?” I braced myself against the sofa, my stomach churning violently. “Before was before.” “What gives you the right to make decisions for my life?” His expression hardened. “Piper, I am trying to help you.” I changed into my work clothes and headed for the door. As the elevator doors began to slide shut, he caught the frame, leaning in. “Going there won’t change anything.” “The internal audit takes seven days, and the final panel evaluation starts this afternoon.” I lifted my head, locking my eyes onto his. “How do you know it takes seven days?” Chris froze for a split second. “You mentioned it last night.” I hadn’t said a single word about the timeline last night. I barely remembered how I walked out of the building or how I made it to the office. All I felt was the searing ache behind my eyes and the blurred landscape passing by. By the time I reached the regional office, my face was terrifyingly pale. My supervisor sighed the moment he saw me. “Didn’t Chris call in sick for you? If you’re unwell, go home and rest.” Coworkers gathered around my desk. “He called early this morning saying your migraines flared up.” “Where do you even find a boyfriend that attentive?” Someone else chimed in with a laugh, “Piper, you really don’t have to worry about a thing. Chris plans everything out for you.” I stood in the center of the bustling office, my hands and feet icy cold, a loud ringing buzzing in my ears. I couldn’t process a single word they said after that. Everyone envied me. Nobody knew that the man who claimed to know me best had personally orchestrated my professional execution. I marched straight to the division head’s office, demanding to submit supplemental evidence. He simply closed the folder on his desk. “Sienna is already in the final review prep room. You cannot enter.” “Why?” “Chris came by this morning.” “He told us you discovered he dated Sienna in college and that your emotional state is severely unstable right now.” “He was concerned that your personal drama would disrupt today’s final evaluation process.” I gripped the edge of his desk, my knuckles turning bone-white. So he hadn’t brought breakfast to my apartment out of concern for my headache. He had come to personally ensure I would be incapacitated and unable to show up at work. My boss let out a long sigh. “Piper, Chris is trying so hard to protect you. Don’t make things difficult for him.” Applause erupted outside the glass office. Sienna stepped out of the presentation room wearing the sleek professional suit I had gifted her for her birthday. Clutched tightly against her chest was the printed binder containing the exact promotional strategy I had spent two years building. The moment the presentation room doors clicked shut, a system email popped up on everyone’s screens. Following panel review, Sienna has been appointed Regional Creative Director. The office went silent for a beat before bursting into enthusiastic applause. Sienna stood surrounded by the team, clutching my binder, her eyes brimming with modest tears. “Piper, maybe I should step down,” she whispered softly. Yet even as she spoke of stepping down, the brand-new Director ID badge was already clipped proudly to her lapel. A thick, metallic taste gathered in my throat. I pushed right past her, shoving her aside. She stumbled against the corner of a desk, prompting a chorus of gasps from the onlookers. I didn’t look back, heading straight into my manager’s office. “The audit isn’t even finished! On what grounds are you revoking my qualification?” My manager slid a client transfer sheet across the table. “Your three primary accounts are being reassigned to Sienna.” Those were accounts I had nurtured for six months. To secure the toughest client, I had attended four separate menu tastings and pulled all-nighters revising event flowcharts. I slammed my palm onto the paper, my fingernails digging into the printed margins. “I won those accounts!” “While under compliance review, you are barred from managing corporate accounts.” Hushed voices whispered outside the cracked door. “She ran a shady side hustle behind our backs and blames everyone else when caught.” “Talk about poor character. The moment she loses a promotion, she claims people are stealing her clients.” “She was always ranked number one. Now that Sienna beat her once, she completely lost her mind.” My chest heaved violently as I fought to draw air into my lungs. Those malicious whispers scraped against my eardrums, setting off a sharp, throbbing pain behind my temples and causing my fingers to tremble uncontrollably. The rage inside me boiled over. I whipped the door open. The gossip died instantly. Sienna walked toward me with tear-filled eyes. “Piper, I really had no idea it would come to this.” “That two hundred dollars, I didn’t even have to send it. I just wanted to support your little project.” I couldn’t hold it back any longer. My voice shattered the silence. “That was a music licensing fee, and you know it better than anyone!” Tears spilled down her cheeks in torrents. Chris immediately stepped in front of her, shielding her from my gaze. “Piper, that’s enough!” “You’re the one who hid an undeclared business, and now you’re pinning the blame on Sienna?” I stared at him, the buzzing in my ears deafening. “Get out!” I turned and bolted into my private workspace, slamming the heavy wooden door behind me with a crash that rattled the glass panels. Bracing my back against the door, my legs buckled. I slid slowly down to the floor, collapsing onto the cold carpet. When tears finally burst from my eyes, I didn’t even have the strength left to wipe them away. That afternoon, legal counsel and the product compliance team called me in for an emergency meeting. They demanded I hand over all backend administrative credentials, source code, and user data for the wedding invitation platform. “The platform leveraged corporate project templates and case studies. It qualifies as company intellectual property.” “Pending the audit, the company is taking full operational control.” I forced out a raspy, strained answer. “I developed that software entirely on my personal time, using my own money and private server infrastructure.” The corporate lawyer slid the surrender agreement closer. “Hand it over first. We can discuss ownership rights after the investigation wraps up.” I stared at the word Transfer printed on the form and let out a soft, bitter laugh. If I handed it over now, would I ever see it again? Before the workday ended, I exported every system log, backed up the entire codebase, and shut down the platform servers completely. Sienna’s digital wedding invitation link went dead instantly. An hour later, my college alumni chat group exploded. Wait, did Piper seriously just find out today that Chris and Sienna used to date? Literally our entire graduating class knew about them. She got caught doing shady side work, lost her promotion, and now she’s sabotaging her best friend’s wedding out of spite. That’s absurdly petty. Staring at the phrase entire graduating class knew, my shaking fingers could barely hold the phone. Everyone knew. I was the only idiot kept in the dark for seven full years. My phone chimed while I was still curled up on the floor behind my locked office door. Seeing the word Mom on the screen, I hurriedly wiped my face and swallowed a sob before answering. “Mom…” Before I could say another word, her furious voice screamed through the speaker. “Chris called me and explained everything!” “How can you be so petty and vindictive? Just because Sienna got promoted, you go and shut down her wedding invitations?” “This whole drama is spinning out of control! Relatives are calling me left and right asking what’s wrong with you! How am I supposed to show my face?” I pressed my hand tightly over my mouth, but tears still trickled through my fingers. Notifications flooded my screen in a relentless stream. Digital invitation app unexpectedly pulled offline. Rumors cite founder’s promotional failure and romantic rivalry for malicious service disruption. Platform taking user money then pulling the plug, serious breach of trust. I stared at the multiplying hate comments. I didn’t even register the exact moment HR walked in and unclipped my employee badge from my desk. My phone kept vibrating uncontrollably. A high-priority email from Legal flashed on screen. Failure to hand over administrative access and source code by 18:00 today will result in immediate legal action. Carrying a single cardboard box of personal belongings out of the office, every eye in the building locked onto me. Some held up their smartphones to snap photos, while others whispered behind their hands. “She acted so high and mighty, turns out she’s a sore loser.” The distinct click of a camera shutter sounded behind my back. I didn’t turn around. I simply gripped the cardboard box tighter against my chest. In less than ten minutes, a photo of me was uploaded online. In the picture, my face was ghostly pale, holding my box with swollen, bloodshot eyes. Overlaid across the image were four bold words: Sore Loser Meltdown. The comments snowballed instantly. Lost the promotion to her best friend, boyfriend still carries a torch for the friend, completely broke down. Can you imagine hiring a wedding planner like this? What if she snaps on your big day? My hands were so cold I could barely hold my phone. Sienna’s fiance called my cell directly. “Piper, I’ve known about Chris and Sienna’s past for a long time.” “Sienna was completely transparent with me, and Chris never crossed any lines.” “Sabotaging her wedding just because you failed to get a promotion is vile.” I opened my mouth to speak, but my throat tasted like copper and blood. They all knew. Every single one of them. Chris’s call came in right after. “Piper, bring the invitation server back online.” “If you keep acting like this, we are done.” A hysterical laugh bubbled up from my chest, tears cascading down my cheeks. “Fine.” “Let’s break up.” Silence hung on the line for a few seconds before his voice turned ice-cold. “Don’t regret this.” He hung up. I sank onto the curb outside the building, feeling as though my chest had been hollowed out. Seven years of love, ended with a cold snap of a phone call. Meanwhile, my platform’s support inbox was overwhelmed. Fraud allegations, refund demands, and formal complaints flooded the system. People accused me of running a scam, taking money then shutting down service, while others rallied users to file a class-action suit. You ruined my wedding timeline! Can you afford to pay us back? The link won’t open! Who is paying for my emergency reprint costs? We’re suing for emotional distress! The phone vibrated so violently my palm went numb. By late afternoon, two police officers arrived at my apartment door. Someone had filed a formal report alleging my app was an illegal operation engaging in financial fraud and data theft. I sat at the station for hours, patiently explaining that the server shutdown was necessary to preserve data logs and evidence. The officers requested my system logs, payment receipts, and user agreement terms. By the time I walked out of the precinct, the sky was completely dark. Over a dozen angry platform users were waiting outside my apartment complex, waving smartphones in my face and screaming for refunds. One woman shoved a printed refund claim right against my cheek. “You thought you were so clever? Pay us back now!” The sharp edge of the paper scraped across my eyelid, leaving a stinging, hot tear. I backed up against the brick wall, my knees trembling so violently I could barely stand. It wasn’t until building security intervened that I managed to break free from the mob. My phone vibrated endlessly through the night. Once inside, I immediately booted up my laptop, compiling server access records, financial transaction histories, and time-stamped chat logs into a secure file. If they wanted an investigation, I was going to give them an exhaustive one. At three in the morning, I dispatched the compressed data archive simultaneously to the police, corporate compliance, and the executive board at Corporate Headquarters. At dawn, an email chimed in my inbox from Corporate HR. Following an executive review, procedural irregularities were identified in the regional branch’s evaluation process. The selection for Regional Creative Director will be reset, and responsible administrators face disciplinary action. The position of Corporate Director of Digital Wedding Solutions is currently open. Miss Piper Wilde, would you be interested in joining Corporate Headquarters? Ten minutes after receiving the email, the Chief Human Resources Officer called my cell. “Piper, this offer isn’t a temporary consolation prize.” “Corporate HQ has spent six months prepping the new Digital Wedding Division. We’ve been searching for a leader who understands the wedding industry inside out and possesses the technical capability to build proprietary software.” “Your platform passed our corporate tech audit with flying colors.” “The role comes with double your previous salary. You will retain one hundred percent personal ownership of the platform, and the corporation will license it via an enterprise partnership model.” I gripped my phone, my fingers still trembling. The screams, the police sirens, and the paper scraping across my face from last night were still ringing in my ears. I could hardly believe that the very thing everyone labeled a career-ending stain had become my golden ticket to the top. This time, I didn’t hesitate for a single second. “I accept.”

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The genius boy I secretly loved fell for a bad girl who smoked like a chimney and drank like a fish. He skipped classes, picked fights, and rented cheap motel rooms with her. His legendary grades plunged into the abyss. Out of pity and misplaced affection, I stepped aside and gave him my guaranteed spot at MIT. Years later, he made a fortune, became a rising tycoon in the tech industry, and invested heavily in my project. One month later, he framed me and threw me behind bars. When he visited me in prison, a faint, mocking smile touched his handsome face. “You stole my love story,” he whispered. “So I erased your future. Fair trade, wouldn’t you say?” When I opened my eyes again, I was sitting back in my high school classroom. Outside the window, the genius boy and the bad girl were sprinting through the pouring rain, looking like the tragic leads of a teenage melodrama. This time, I chose to stand back and let their wild, destructive passion burn itself out! 1 I was the definition of a good girl. Straight-A student, hardworking, predictable, reliable. The kind of kid teachers and parents held up as an example. Karl Mercer, on the other hand, was the boy God had personally blessed. He was bright, charming, and possessed a mind for numbers that bordered on terrifying. Without even trying, he could coast to perfect scores in physics, calculus, and chemistry. We were total opposites. I lacked raw talent, relying entirely on relentless grit. He lacked discipline, relying entirely on genius. Hoping we would balance each other out, our homeroom teacher made us desk mates. Karl used to ruffle my hair, leaning in close with a soft chuckle. “How can a girl be so innocent, Freya? You’re going to get eaten alive out there.” Or he’d toss his dark jacket over my head when a sudden thunderstorm hit. “Take it. I’m bulletproof. Rain can’t touch me.” He used to smile and whisper, “Study hard, Freya. Let’s make it to MIT together. We can sit at the same desk for four more years. Hell, let’s sit together forever.” A young boy’s affection is a wild thing, humble yet arrogant, gentle yet fiercely proud. He never hid his concern for me. And he never rejected the silent adoration in my eyes. Until the transfer student, Roxie, strutted into his world. She wore low-cut camisoles, scandalously short denim shorts, and streaks of vivid neon dye in her high ponytail. Bright green eyeshadow, plump glossy lips, glittering silver earrings. In our suffocating, monotonous high school, she shone like a flickering flame in a dark room. She always had a lollipop tucked into the corner of her mouth. She carried a confident, razor-sharp smirk that said she owned the room. Her beauty was a slap in the face to the dull, soul-crushing atmosphere of senior year. Out of place, wild, and utterly magnetic. Karl fell for her the second his eyes landed on her. I saw the way Roxie blew thick, sweet smoke rings directly into Karl’s face, and the hypnotic, intoxicated daze that settled in his eyes. I saw the way Roxie took Karl’s hand and pressed it flat against her chest, and the electric shock of raw, teenage wonder that exploded in his gaze. “Feel that?” Roxie had purred, her voice dripping with lazy confidence. “My heart is beating for you. God, Karl, how can a guy be this pretty? Why am I chasing you? Because I want you, obviously.” Her love was a forest fire. Wild, scorching, impossible to tame. Karl’s fall from grace was fast, public, and brutal. He ditched class to run through torrential rain with her, screaming vows into the storm. He fought older thugs in dark alleys for her, coming back with split lips and bruised knuckles, wearing his scars like badges of honor. They kissed beneath stadium bleachers, wrapped themselves around each other, and checked into grimy, five-dollar-a-night motels. They used no protection, letting their reckless impulse carry them to the absolute edge. Even when she ended up in a back-alley clinic getting an abortion, they treated the blood and pain as a badge of grand, tragic romance. And I was tossed into the dark corner of his mind, completely forgotten. To everyone else, I became the pitiful girl who lost. “Hey, Freya, I heard Karl went back to that motel with Roxie again. Aren’t you dying of jealousy?” “Acting so cold and refined… no wonder Karl left you in the dust for Roxie.” “Honestly, I envy Roxie. She lives so dangerously, so passionately. That’s real romance.” When we were young, forbidden fruit always looked sweet. In my past life, I had been devastated. I wept, I spiraled, I grieved for the boy I lost. But through it all, I kept my head down and stayed focused. I even tried to pull Karl back from the brink, begging him to focus on his studies. I voluntarily surrendered my spot in the National STEM Modeling Olympiad, handing him the automatic ticket into MIT. And what did I get for it? He hated me. He believed I had ripped him away from the love of his life. For four years, he accepted that fast-track program, only to be recruited straight into a classified military tech initiative due to his brilliant mind. Roxie couldn’t handle four years of total radio silence in a long-distance relationship. She dumped him. Desperate for money and easy thrill, she fell into human trafficking schemes, was dragged across the border, and died a nameless death in an offshore ditch. When Karl returned and found out, he blamed me for everything. He framed me, ruined me, and watched me rot in a cage. His revenge made sense, didn’t it? After all, to a romantic fool, love is paramount. Youth must be lived without regret. And I had given his youth the ultimate regret. 2 “Youth is about pushing yourself to the absolute limit!” Our homeroom teacher slammed his fist onto the podium, his face red with frustration. He glared around the classroom, his gaze locking heavily on certain empty desks. “It means grinding through thousands of test papers, mastering every single mistake, and fighting for top rank in this state! It means forcing the world to acknowledge you!” He took a sharp breath, his voice laced with venom. “Some students think they’re special. They think raw talent means they don’t have to work hard. Open your eyes and look at the leaderboard! Your scores are in the gutter!” “And some of you aren’t just destroying your own future, you’re dragging other people down into the mud with you! How do you sleep at night?” “Living without regret means taking responsibility for who you’re going to be tomorrow! It means having a spine!” “Love is paramount? Can romance pay your bills? Can love put food on your table?” To me, love certainly couldn’t buy a meal. But to Karl and Roxie, love wasn’t just food. It was their religion, their oxygen, the supreme purpose of their existence. So, when Karl’s mother came to me, holding my hands with tears pouring down her face, begging me to yield my STEM competition slot to Karl, I didn’t hide it. I went straight to Karl and Roxie and laid it all out. Karl was shocked at first, then exploded in a volcanic fury. He stormed home and unleashed a terrifying tirade against the mother who worshipped the ground he walked on. “You’ve been doing this my entire life!” he screamed at her. “You never give a damn about what I actually feel!” “I don’t care about your stupid competition! I don’t care about MIT! Keep your damn spot!” “I love Roxie! Even if I end up working a dead-end job, I’m staying with her!” That night, Karl brought Roxie back to his house. He stood in the living room and explicitly refused to take part in the contest, severing his fast-track future in front of his father and mother. I happened to be walking past his house after finishing a grueling late-night practice test. Through the iron gates of their garden, I saw Karl kneeling in the dirt, his father’s leather belt coming down across his back again and again. Roxie knelt right beside him, tears streaming down her face, screaming at his parents to accept their pure, unsullied love. Karl’s mother was sobbing uncontrollably, clutching her chest. “I poured my heart and soul into raising you!” she wept, her voice breaking. “I don’t ask you to pay me back, Karl! I just ask you not to throw your life away!” “You talk about love now, but what about ten years from now? When you get married and have kids and the bills start piling up, how are you going to feed her? How are you going to keep a roof over your head?” “You used to be my biggest pride, Karl. Now you’re my biggest embarrassment!” And how did Karl respond? He wiped the blood from his lip, looked his mother dead in the eyes, and spat: “My life is my own!” “I love Roxie. Without her, I’d rather be dead! College is just a path for boring, ordinary sheep!” “I’m a genius! Even without a diploma, I can crush this world!” He sounded so passionate, so righteous, so heroic. His mother, unable to contain the agonizing pain in her heart, rushed forward and slapped him across the face, over and over again. She wanted to wake him up. She wanted her brilliant, golden boy back. Karl just laughed through the blows. “Roxie didn’t fail at life! She just failed some stupid standardized test! Grades don’t define a human being!” “So what if our names aren’t on some Ivy League roster? There are a million roads under our feet!” “We aren’t committing crimes, we aren’t sick, we aren’t a burden on society!” “We just want to love each other! You’re the greedy ones! You just wanted a trophy child so you could show off to your snobbish friends!” “Take your high expectations and shove them! You call yourselves parents, but you’re just selfish tyrants!” I stood in the dark outside the gate, listening quietly. Then I turned around. I walked back home, pulled out a fresh book of practice problems, and went back to work. 3 The next morning, Karl’s mother blocked my path near the school gates. Her eyes were swollen, raw red from crying all night. She glared at me with a mix of betrayal and accusation. “Why did you tell Karl about the competition spot, Freya? You never used to be like this.” I stared at her, my expression entirely blank. Her tone grew sharper, her fingers digging into my arm. “You and Karl used to be so close! How could you just stand by and watch him ruin his life? Freya, where did that sweet, kind girl go?” I bit my lip, refusing to waste a single second of my energy arguing. It was senior year. Every minute counted. When I tried to pull away, she gripped me tighter, her voice dropping into a desperate sob. “He’s going to ruin himself! Freya, please, help me. Help Karl!” “Take the competition for him! With your discipline, you can win that guaranteed spot, and then you can transfer it to him! Please, I’m begging you!” “When Karl makes it big in the future, he’ll be grateful to you! He’ll realize you’re the only girl who was ever worthy of him!” I took a deep, steady breath. The memory of my cold, dark prison cell flashed through my mind. In my past life, after Karl framed me, my frantic parents had begged his mother for mercy. And what did this woman do? She manipulated my parents, driving them to sell our house, take out illegal loans, and attempt to bribe a federal prosecutor. When the sting operation exposed them, my parents were ruined. The night before the authorities came to arrest them, they lit a charcoal grill in our sealed living room and ended their lives. Karl was an arrogant, vengeful sociopath. And his mother was no better. I looked straight into her eyes, my voice cold and calm. “There’s only one guaranteed spot, Mrs. Mercer. The principal clearly stated it belongs to whoever ranks first in the state.” “Karl’s grades have plunged so low he can barely pass basic algebra. Handing him my hard-earned work would ruin my future. You’re asking me to cheat for him. If we get caught, do you have any idea what happens to my record?” “Besides, whether Karl thrives or rots in a gutter has absolutely nothing to do with me.” “I admit I used to like him. But I liked the bright, hardworking boy who looked toward the future. Not a brain-dead romantic who throws his life away for a girl.” “I don’t know if I’m ‘worthy’ of your son, Mrs. Mercer. But I know for a fact that he isn’t worth my time.” I ripped my arm out of her grip. I turned and walked toward the school building, my footsteps steady and deliberate. Karl’s youth was about chasing a foolish, tragic romance. My youth was about building a life that no one could ever tear down.

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I picked up a tiny, injured black snake and took care of him for three whole months. Yet, I always felt like something was deeply off. Because whenever I opened my phone’s camera, no matter where he was in the apartment, he would accurately glide into the lens the exact split-second before I hit the shutter button. Just as I was puzzling over it, floating live comments suddenly flashed before my eyes: [LMAO, does this cubicle-slave bottom even know who he picked up?] [It’s only because the snake is still injured and hasn’t fully recovered that he can’t do that yet, otherwise cutie, you’d be devoured on the spot!] [This scheming snake is so terrified of losing his wifey that he’s pretending to be an innocent noodle. Who gets it?!] [I can’t! Look at how harmless this bottom looks. Hasn’t he ever heard ‘never pick up stray snakes on the roadside’?!] 1 Three months ago, I found a tiny, dying black snake curling beside a soggy drainage ditch. It was filthy, wet, and cold. Multiple wounds covered its dark body, leaving it so weak it didn’t even have the strength to slither away when I approached. It looked so helpless. I swallowed my fear, gathered my courage, and gently scooped it up into my hands. On the way to the exotic vet clinic, I drove with one hand while whispering words of comfort to calm it down, telling it I was going to help, not hurt it. I don’t know if it actually understood human speech, but it rested its small triangular head right between my thighs and rubbed against me obediently. To heal it, I spent half a month’s paycheck at the vet. I even gave up half of my gaming room, setting up a large, climate-controlled terrarium so I could monitor its recovery around the clock. 2 Lately, though, something bizarre kept happening. Something impossible to ignore. Whenever I pulled out my phone, the little snake would glide into the camera frame the exact split-second before I pressed the shutter. Every single time. Without exception. It didn’t matter if I was trying to snapshot a newly opened flower on my balcony or photograph a meal I spent hours cooking. I scrolled back through my photo album from the past three months. Out of seven hundred pictures, there wasn’t a single photo without his dark, shimmering scales somewhere in the corner! It was creeping me out. 3 I stared at the little snake resting peacefully inside the glass box. If it was a coincidence, how could he be in nearly a thousand photos? But if it was his own deliberate choice… wasn’t that completely unscientific? I let out a long sigh. Time for one final test. Just in case I was overthinking things. I grabbed my phone, crept out of the room, and stealthily opened the camera app in the living room. The next second, I heard a soft slithering sound on the floorboards. Before I could blink, a cool, dark weight glided up my shoulder. Click. I checked the new photo. Black scales dominated the center of the screen. I looked at the photo, then turned my head to look at him. My skin went numb. Before I could even process what was happening, the culprit slithered down to wrap around my wrist, gazing at me with wide, innocent eyes. His black tail wagged softly back and forth like a happy golden retriever. “Little noodle?” I gently poked his head. He flicked his dark, parted tongue, softly licking my fingertip before wrapping his tail tighter around my palm. I stroked his smooth head, intending to put him back in his box, but he clung to my arm and refused to let go. I never knew a snake could be this needy. During the first few days when I applied ointment to his wounds, I had worried he might bite me once he healed. Now, instead of fangs, I saw his soft tongue almost every hour of the day. 4 The next evening, I brought this up over drinks with my best friend, Cody. Cody listened with absolute skepticism. “Give it a break, Jonah,” Cody chuckled, taking a sip of beer. “It’s a reptile. How big is a snake’s brain anyway? Photobombing you? You’ve been working too many late shifts, man.” His dismissive tone made me defensive. “Why would I make this up? Come to my apartment and see for yourself if you don’t believe me!” Cody possessed a deep, visceral terror of cold-blooded creatures. He flinched instantly. “Hell no! Just imagining a snake living in your apartment gives me goosebumps!” He rubbed his arms, looking genuinely unsettled. The day I picked up the snake, I had texted him a picture. Cody almost threw his phone across the room and sent five sixty-second voice messages warning me never to send snake pictures again. “Look, I asked you out so you could help me figure out what to do,” I muttered. “What is there to figure out?” Cody shrugged. “Keep feeding him. So what if he likes the camera? Storage space is cheap.” “Doesn’t it strike you as unnatural?” “Every pet has weird quirks. Besides, you’re the one who picked him up. You’ve gotta take responsibility. Unless you release him into the wild so I can finally come over to play video games again.” I opened my mouth to argue, but my hand caught the edge of my beer glass, knocking it over. Liquor splashed across my hands, shirt, and the leather couch. I stood up hastily, calling the waiter over to clean up the mess. Cody slid over on the booth couch to make room for me, handing me a stack of napkins. “Relax, bro. I’m just joking. Don’t go dumping him because of me.” Cody paused, tapping his chin. “If it really creeps you out, put him up for adoption online. Plenty of reptile enthusiasts out there.” 5 When I got home, I showered, washed my ruined clothes, and prepared for an early night. My mind kept spinning with thoughts of what to do with the snake, keeping sleep at bay. In the dark room, I heard a faint rustling noise. I opened my eyes. The little black snake was resting right on my pillow, inches from my face. I startled, sitting up. His dark, vertical slit pupils stared back at me silently. “No way, buddy. Sleeping together is dangerous. Back to your tank.” He didn’t budge. I sighed, picking him up gently and placing him back inside his terrarium. After locking the glass latch, I pulled out my phone and drafted an adoption post on a pet forum. I uploaded several high-resolution photos showcasing his glossy scales from different angles. Hopefully, I could find him a dedicated owner. 6 The next morning, I woke up to find the snake curled up right beside my head again. How did he get out? I knew for a fact I had locked both his tank and my bedroom door! Seeing me awake, he slowly slithered onto my palm. Was he… nudging me? I rubbed my tired eyes, hesitating before extending my hand to stroke his smooth head. He pressed his head eagerly against my palm, begging for affection. “Alright, alright. Why are you so clingy today?” He maneuvered smoothly, gliding beneath the hem of my pajama shirt and coiling his cool body right over my collarbone. The cool sensation tickled terribly. I reached up to lift him out. Snap! A sharp pain bit into the skin between my thumb and index finger. I gasped, pulling my hand back. He had bitten me! He had never bitten me before, not even when I cleaned his open wounds! I rubbed the tiny puncture mark, disinfected it in the bathroom, and placed him firmly back in his enclosure. I had only meant to foster him until his injuries healed. Now that he was starting to bite, it was definitely time to rehome him. As I brushed my teeth, my phone buzzed on the counter. I hit speakerphone. “Hello?” A man’s voice answered quickly. “Hey man! Is that black king snake on your post still available? I want him.” “Oh, you want to adopt?” “Yeah! My girlfriend loves reptiles. I saw your local post and thought I’d check. He looks awesome in those pictures. Is there anything wrong with him?” Before I could answer, a familiar cool sensation wrapped around my ankle. I looked down. The little black snake was slithering up my leg with terrifying speed. Panicking, I reached down to grab him. In that exact split second, floating bright text flashed across my vision! [LOL, this office bottom has no idea who he picked up! The snake smelled another man’s beer on him last night and was already furious, and now he’s trying to give him away!] [Host is completely stunned! A glass tank can’t hold a shifter!] [Getting caught trying to rehome your shifter boyfriend is peak awkwardness.] My brain went completely numb as the snake coiled around my waist. What? Host? Bottom? Are they talking about me?! I’m completely straight! And there is no way I’m a bottom! While my mind spiraled in chaos, more glowing comments flooded my vision like a live stream chat: [Wait, he slithered up right as host tried to grab him… won’t he misinterpret that?] [Definitely! It’s a good thing his internal core hasn’t fully healed, otherwise host would be devoured right here on the bathroom floor!] [This snake is so manipulative, pretending to be an innocent noodle!] [Does host even know who this shifter is? Never pick up random snakes off the street!] [That’s main character luck for you. Normal people don’t drag wild vipers home!] I turned my head slightly. The small black snake extended his dark tongue, gently licking the side of my throat. The caller’s impatient voice came through the speaker. “Bro? You still there?” “He’s… he’s gone! Adopted already! Sorry!” I blurted out. “Are you kidding me? You said he was available a second ago! What a freak!” The caller began cursing, but the little snake flicked his tail tip, hitting the red disconnect button on my screen. If my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me, the snake actually rolled his eyes at the phone! The floating text exploded again: [Side note: When he finally speaks, will he call host ‘Master’ or ‘Husband’ first?] [Ahhh, I’m impatient! When is he shifting into human form?!] [Soon! Beast shifters heal ridiculously fast. Give him a couple more days!] [Wait, look at where he’s rubbing!] Rubbing? I stared at the floating comments, utterly lost, feeling his cool weight squirming against my hips. When realization hit me, I reached down nervously, trying to pry his tail away from a certain sensitive area. He dodged my hand with unbelievable agility, slithering out of my shirt, darting straight into the gaming room, and slamming the door shut. The lock clicked from the inside! [He coiled up in the corner like a dark little lump of anger!] [Can you blame him? Host almost gave him away!] I stood frozen in the hallway, completely speechless.

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At our high school graduation party, my so-called best friend tossed an old enamel lapel pin into my lap. She laughed, saying she had way too many guys chasing her, and since the poorest one bore her to death, she was letting me pick up her sloppy seconds. The moment my fingers closed around the cool metal of the pin, floating text suddenly illuminated in the air right before my eyes: [Don’t believe her! That pin belongs to the male lead. If he sees you with it, he’ll think you’re a thief!] [The male lead and female lead grew up together. They’re practically one confession away from dating. Using random trash to make him jealous is her favorite game.] [Tonight, the side character is going to get her bag searched in front of everyone and become the laughingstock of the academy!] [After this, the male lead gets her scholarship revoked just to avenge his girl. Her entire future gets trashed!] It turned out that every single scrap of kindness she had ever shown me was just a joke for her own amusement. But she didn’t know one crucial detail. I knew the line of text scratched onto the back of that lapel pin better than anyone alive. The VIP room door swung open. Reed walked in, his gaze immediately locking onto the badge in my hand. His eyes turned freezing cold. Before he could speak, I slapped the metal pin face-down onto the glass table. “Hey, Reed.” “Didn’t you say this was Taylor’s most treasured possession?” “Then why is my childhood name scratched into the back of it?” 01 The entire room fell dead silent for two seconds. Then, the leather sofas erupted into mocking laughter. “Ruby, are you out of your mind with jealousy?” “Taylor throws you a piece of trash to play with, and you actually start acting out a soap opera?” “Your childhood name? What’s next, are you going to tell us you and Reed were secretly married in preschool?” Taylor sat in the center of the sectional sofa. She was wearing a designer white dress, her curled hair cascading over her shoulders, the corners of her eyes flushed a delicate pink from the champagne. She looked at everyone like a victim on the verge of tears. Hearing my words, she paused for a second before letting out a soft, condescending giggle. “Ruby, stop it.” She reached out to grab the pin, her voice dripping with the sugary sweetness of an adult coaxing a toddler. “This is Reed’s old badge. It means a lot to him. Even if you’re obsessed with it, you can’t make up wild jokes like that.” I didn’t let go. Taylor’s hand hovered awkwardly in mid-air. Reed’s eyes shifted toward me. He stood by the entrance, the sleeves of his black button-down shirt rolled up to his forearms. On the pale skin of his wrist sat a faint, jagged scar. He got that scar when he was seven years old, falling into a drainage ditch back in the Westside slums. The floating comments surged across my vision: [Oh no, the side character is trying to steal his childhood trauma now!] [The back of the badge says ‘Misty’, right? That’s the female lead’s childhood nickname!] [He’s been searching for his first love for ten years. He hates liars more than anything.] [Get ready for the bag search! Here comes the karma!] [Wait, doesn’t Ruby’s middle name happen to be Misty too?] [Just a coincidence, stop defending the thief.] The crowd was already eager to see me humiliated. A girl jumped up from the sofa and aggressively snatched my worn canvas tote bag. She ripped the zipper open. AP Calculus workbooks, a dollar-store chapstick, and my grandmother’s medical bills spilled all over the sticky floor. She picked up the hospital notice and read it aloud with theatrical pity: “Kidney dialysis, three thousand dollars past due?” “Ruby, are you so desperate for cash that you’re actually trying to con Reed into paying your bills?” The roar of laughter hit me like a physical slap, ringing sharply in my ears. Taylor furrowed her brow with fake concern. “Don’t be mean, guys. Ruby has a lot of pride.” She always did this. She would hand the knife to someone else. Then she would gently remind them not to twist the blade too deep. I bent down and quietly gathered my grandmother’s medical bills, one by one. When my fingers brushed against the enamel pin, I flipped it over. On the tarnished gold back, someone had clumsily scratched two words with a pocketknife: For Misty. The letter ‘S’ in Misty was carved backward. The kid who scratched it was only seven years old, too young to even write his own letters correctly. Reed’s expression finally cracked. He took a sharp step forward, reaching out for the pin. Taylor’s eyes welled up with tears first. “Reed, don’t listen to her.” “She’s just depressed because the Ivy League scholarship nominations come out next week. She probably just wants to prove that somebody cares about her.” “I’m not mad at her, really.” Reed stood in absolute silence for a long time. Then, he extended his hand toward me. “Ruby, give me the pin.” His voice wasn’t loud. But the entire room instantly quieted down. They were waiting for me to break, waiting for me to cry, waiting for me to bow my head and apologize just like I used to. Instead, I gave a small smile and dropped the cool metal into his palm. As my fingers brushed against his skin, he flinched. I looked him dead in the eye and spoke softly. “Reed.” “That pin isn’t the only thing you managed to throw away.” 02 Before I turned seven, my name wasn’t Ruby Shaw. My name was Misty. My father died young, and my mother remarried, claiming I was bad luck before dumping me on my grandmother in the Westside slums. My grandmother raised me by collecting scrap metal and cardboard boxes. Everyone in the neighborhood called me Misty. Later on, my grandmother legally updated my birth certificate and registration. The name Misty was buried at the bottom of a municipal relocation file, never to be seen again. The year I met Reed, he had just escaped from kidnappers. He was hiding behind the condemned stage of an abandoned theater, burning with a violent fever, his jaws clamped tightly around a shard of broken porcelain. He looked like a feral, stray dog soaked in the rain, terrified and aggressive. I crouched down and offered him half of my sugar cookie. “What’s your name?” “Wilder,” he rasped through dry lips. “I’m Misty,” I said. “Sounds cool together, doesn’t it?” He was delirious from the fever, but he still sneered. “Misty is a stupid name. Fog just blows away the second the wind hits it.” I didn’t hold it against him. That night, I stole aspirin from my grandmother’s cabinet and hid him inside a wooden crate beneath the old stage. The next morning, the men hunting him tracked him down to our alley. Terrified they would find him, I grabbed a loose brick and smashed the leader right above the eyebrow. The man kicked me so hard I flew into a pile of shattered glass, leaving a gash between my thumb and forefinger that required seven stitches. Eventually, his wealthy family found him. A fleet of black luxury cars blocked the entire dirt road. Before the bodyguards lifted Wilder into the car, he grabbed my hand and refused to let go. His eyes were bloodshot, but he tried to put on a brave, tough face. “Misty, wait for me.” “When I grow up, I’ll buy you a real academy badge.” Back then, Westridge Prep was the most elite school in the city. He always bragged that he would get in someday. I nodded. Years later, the slums were demolished, and my grandmother moved us into a cramped public housing flat. I became Ruby Shaw. In the second semester of my freshman year, I earned a full academic scholarship to Westridge Prep. My uniform was washed until the fabric turned gray, my sneakers were glued together at the seams, and my bangs hung long enough to hide my eyes. Nobody in the classroom wanted to sit next to the charity case. Only Taylor voluntarily moved her desk next to mine, flashing a brilliant smile. “Ruby, I think you’re really special.” I actually believed her back then. When she said she hated the cafeteria breakfast, I woke up at five in the morning and walked twelve extra blocks to buy her favorite bakery croissants. When she said she didn’t understand AP Calculus, I broke down my competition notes into the simplest, step-by-step explanations and tutored her for hours. When she said her parents were too strict about boys, I screened her messages for her. I threw away the love letters she didn’t want. I blocked the guys she didn’t care to see. Now and then, she would throw me a tiny bone. A half-used designer lip gloss, a headband she didn’t like anymore, or a casual, “Ruby, you’re literally my best friend.” That lasted until the winter of my sophomore year. I walked to the dance studio to drop off her winter coat and overheard her chatting with the cheer squad. “Do you seriously treat Ruby like a real friend?” someone asked. Taylor let out a delicate, airy laugh. “Her? She’s just useful.” “Poor people have fragile egos. If you throw them a tiny bit of validation, they’ll act like your personal servant.” I stood outside the door, my knuckles turning white as I gripped her coat. Just as I turned to run, someone reached out and offered me a small pack of tissues. Reed leaned casually against the lockers, his expression entirely unreadable. “Don’t cry on her expensive coat.” It wasn’t a nice thing to say. But he wasn’t laughing at me. After that day, I started paying attention to Reed. He was the “Reed” Taylor always bragged about. Their families lived in the same gated estate, running in the same wealthy circles since birth. Everyone at academy said it was only a matter of time before they made it official. I thought so too. Until one afternoon, I went to the gym equipment room to drop off a inventory log. The door was slightly cracked. I heard Taylor whining inside. “Reed, why won’t you just ask me out already?” His voice was quiet and heavy. “Taylor, I’m looking for someone.” “You mean that girl Misty again?” My heart slammed against my ribs so hard I thought it would crack my chest open. I wanted to push that door open. I wanted to tell him that I was Misty. But an instant later, Taylor opened the door from the inside. Seeing me standing there, her face didn’t register a single hint of surprise. “Ruby, you heard all of that?” She smiled, casually taking the clipboard out of my frozen hands. “Then you should know your place. In some stories, even if the poor girl tries to insert herself, she’ll never be the main character.” 03 The graduation party ended in total disaster. As I walked out of the VIP room, the whispers from my classmates still trailed down the hallway. “Is Ruby insane? Why would she fight Taylor over trash?” “She’s always been pathetic like that. Whatever Taylor has, she stares at like a hungry dog.” “I heard her scholarship nomination is in trouble. She probably just snapped.” I didn’t look back. Reed jogged out and caught up to me. “Ruby.” I stopped walking. He stood three steps away from me, his fingers clamped tightly around the old enamel badge. The dim hallway lights washed across his features, stripping away his usual cold arrogance and leaving behind raw panic. “What did you mean by what you said in there?” I looked back at him. “What do you want it to mean?” Reed stared intently at my face. “The old Westside slums. The abandoned theater. The sugar cookies.” “Do you know about those?” He had clearly investigated his past. He just hadn’t found the whole truth. The floating text surged again: [Wait, what is happening? Is the side character actually his first love?!] [No way! In the original plot, she just makes up lies to get attention, and the male lead chooses to believe the female lead anyway.] [Taylor, get out here and explain! Don’t let the liar steal your backstory!] [Why does the male lead look so desperate right now?] I looked at Reed. For a split second, I genuinely wanted to tell him everything. I wanted to tell him that when he was convulsing from a fever, I begged the clinic doctor to put the medicine on my tab. I wanted to tell him that when those men cornered him in the alley, I held a broken glass bottle in my bare hands to buy him time. But in the end, all I said was: “No idea.” The desperate light in his eyes instantly died out. His knuckles turned white around the badge. “Then how did you know about the engraving on the back?” Before I could answer, Taylor hurried out of the room. Her eyes were rimmed with red, playing the innocent victim to perfection. “Reed, stop questioning her.” “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have brought the pin out.” “Ruby is just jealous of my life. She didn’t mean any harm.” Her voice broke into delicate sobs. Reed’s jaw tightened. But for the first time ever, he didn’t immediately reach out to comfort her. Taylor froze in shock. I suddenly felt exhausted by the entire game. I turned around to leave. Taylor lunged forward and grabbed my wrist from behind. “Ruby, the final Ivy League recommendation list gets posted next week, right?” “You really wouldn’t want a nasty scandal ruining your chances at a time like this.” 04 Taylor’s retaliation arrived much faster than I expected. During first period the next morning, my guidance counselor called me into his office. A thick stack of printed chat logs sat on his desk. The printouts showed me offering competition answers in exchange for scholarship votes, along with fake bank transfers to faculty members. The screenshots were flawless. The profile picture, the handle, the timestamps, everything matched my account. The only problem was that I had never written a single word of it. The counselor looked disgusted. “Ruby, the administration is taking these allegations very seriously.” “Until the ethics board completes an investigation, your nomination for Valedictorian speaker is suspended.” I stared down at the printed papers. I didn’t cry, and I didn’t waste my breath defending myself. The floating comments were already spoiling the aftermath: [Here it comes! Her scholarship is officially gone!] [This is so satisfying. She never deserved to breathe the same air as the female lead.] [Taylor is just teaching her a little lesson. That’s what she gets for touching the male lead’s keepsake.] [Wait, did Ruby actually send those messages?] [Who cares? As long as everyone believes she did, that’s all that matters.] They were right. Did the truth even matter? Taylor’s greatest talent wasn’t creating a lie. It was making sure everyone around her was eager to believe it. By noon, an anonymous confession post popped up on the academy’s forum. [A certain scholarship student tried to steal her best friend’s crush, and now she’s caught cheating on her academics too.] It didn’t use my name. But the attached photo clearly showed my profile as I walked out of the guidance office with my head down. The comments broke three thousand in an hour. People called me a desperate gold-digger. People called me a fake intellectual. Someone even dug up my awful student ID photo from freshman year and captioned it: “Looking like a stray dog and she still thinks she can compete with Taylor? Delusional.” I sat on the concrete steps of the stairwell, scrolling through the comments one by one. A notification banner popped down from the top of my screen. Reed: [Where are you?] I ignored it. He sent another: [I know you didn’t do it.] My thumb hovered over the glass. A second later, an incoming call took over the screen. I answered, greeted instantly by his tense, frustrated voice. “Ruby, look up.” I raised my head. Reed stood at the top of the stairwell, holding a carton of milk and a pastry from the bakery. His eyes dropped to the bright red slap mark across my cheek, his pupils contracting sharply. “Who hit you?” I touched my face. Oh. One of Taylor’s cheerleaders had walked past me in the hall and decided to teach me a lesson. I didn’t fight back. Not because I couldn’t win. The hallway security camera was broken. If I fought back, they would just tell the principal I was the aggressor. Reed walked down the steps and crouched in front of me, his voice rough. “Why didn’t you dodge?” I offered a dry smile. “Hey, Reed. Aren’t you worried Taylor might cry if she sees you talking to the school pariah?” He didn’t answer. He unscrewed the cap of the milk bottle and held it out to me. “Eat something first.” I didn’t reach for it. He stayed silent for a moment, then grabbed my hand and forced the warm bottle into my palm. “Ruby, you don’t have to look at me like I’m your enemy.” I finally met his eyes. “Then how should I look at you?” “Do I need to squeeze out two pretty tears like Taylor before you believe I’m innocent?” Reed’s throat bobbed. “I don’t believe her.” “But you didn’t believe me either.” He stiffened. The moment the words left my mouth, I caught myself. It sounded too much like a complaint. A complaint that he hadn’t recognized me after all these years. A complaint that he had let Taylor wear my memory like a costume. A complaint that he had stood by and watched me get dragged into the dirt over and over again. I stood up and set the milk bottle down on the step. “I don’t need your charity, Reed.” “And stop searching for Misty.” “She stopped waiting for you a long time ago.” 05 That afternoon, the administration called an emergency senior assembly. The head of the scholarship committee stepped up to the podium and spoke into the microphone: “Due to recent controversies regarding academic integrity, Ruby Shaw’s nomination for the Ivy League endowment is officially suspended.” A wave of whispers rippled through the auditorium. Taylor sat in the front row, turning her head to look back at me. There wasn’t any obvious gloating in her eyes. Just a sickening, superior kind of pity. After the assembly dismissed, she cornered me in the restroom. “Ruby, it’s not too late to apologize,” she said, pulling a designer compact out of her purse to touch up her lipstick. “Give the lapel pin back to Reed, tell everyone you were making up stories last night, and I’ll personally talk to the dean for you.” I watched her reflection in the mirror. “Taylor, aren’t you exhausted?” Her smile faltered. “Stealing someone else’s childhood just so you can get babied for ten years. Doesn’t that get exhausting?” She raised her hand to slap me across the face. This time, I caught her wrist in mid-air. I squeezed hard. The blood drained from her face as she gasped in pain. I leaned in close to her ear and whispered: “Why do you think I haven’t released my statement yet?” Panic finally cracked her composed mask. That night, she sent a text demanding I meet her on the academy roof. By the time I pushed through the access door, the sky was pitch black. The wind was brutal, slamming the heavy iron door against its frame. She stood near the safety railing, her eyes puffy and wet. “Ruby, we were friends for three years.” “Do you really have to ruin everything over a stupid crush?” I gave a cold laugh. “A little late to play the best friend card, don’t you think?” She bit her lip. “Fine. I admit someone helped me edit those chat logs.” “But you aren’t innocent either!” “You knew Reed was obsessed with finding that little girl from the slums, and you deliberately used the badge to mess with his head.” I looked at her, truly amazed by her delusion. “Taylor, did your brain stop working? You literally threw that badge into my lap.” “So what?!” She finally dropped the act. Her pretty face twisted into something ugly in the darkness. “I can make you the most popular girl at Westridge Prep, or I can make you a pathetic joke before graduation! You belong to whatever category I put you in!” I tapped the screen of my phone, saving the voice memo. Her expression shattered as she lunged forward to grab my device. I stepped aside, letting her stumble. Suddenly, the heavy iron door burst open. Reed stood in the doorway. He was breathing heavily, clearly having sprinted up the stairs, his eyes fixated entirely on Taylor’s face. Taylor instantly burst into hysterical sobs. “Reed! It’s not what it sounded like!” “I was just terrified!” “I was scared she was going to take you away from me!” He walked out onto the roof, step by slow step. He didn’t even look at her. He walked straight toward me. “Did she hurt you?” Taylor’s sobs cut off instantly. The floating text exploded into chaos: [Wait, what is happening to the male lead?! Why is he checking on the side character?!] [This isn’t how the script goes!] [Taylor is crying her eyes out! Is he blind?!] I slid my phone safely into my blazer pocket, my voice flat. “No.” Reed let out a long, shaky breath. Taylor completely unraveled. “Reed!” “Did you forget who stayed by your side for the last ten years?!” “Does a decade of my life mean nothing compared to a few weeks in a slum?!” He finally turned his head to look at her. “Taylor, you know the only reason I ever let you stay around me was because your nickname was Misty too.” All the color drained from Taylor’s face in an instant. She opened her mouth, but her throat couldn’t produce a single sound. He looked away from her, his gaze dropping to my left hand, which I always kept tucked long inside my uniform cuff. His eyes turned red around the rims. “Ruby.” “Who are you, really?”

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