Category: English

1 I knew my family was struggling financially from a very young age. Being sick cost money. So, I was never allowed to get sick. When I was four years old and running a terrible fever, my mother picked me up by the collar and shoved me into the refrigerator. I was still conscious when she finally dragged me out. I just stared at her, blinking slowly. My face was freezing. My tears had frozen into tiny, icy rivers on my cheeks. I couldn’t even cry anymore. Mom glared at me, her voice dripping with annoyance. “I know you are just faking it to skip school. Look at you, you are not dead, are you?” After that day, I kept every single ache and pain completely to myself. I figured Mom was right. I must be faking it. If I wasn’t, how could my body naturally recover without a single pill or shot every time I felt unwell? That was until the mandatory health screening before middle school. I ran all the way home, clutching the official cancer diagnosis in my hand, my heart soaring with a strange, nervous joy. “Mom! I have cancer!” This time, with a real doctor’s note, Mom would definitely not think I was faking it. Mom, I am not lying to you this time. … I ran home with the medical paper, my heart pounding with a mix of excitement and anxiety. The doctor told me I only had three months left to live. Even though I didn’t want to die yet, I couldn’t help but look forward to the next three months. I was finally going to get some care and attention from my parents. Whenever my little brother got sick, the entire family would hover over him, waiting on him hand and foot. I wasn’t greedy. I would be completely satisfied if someone just held my hand and took me to the hospital. Pushing the front door open, I held the white diagnostic report high in the air, terrified my parents might miss it. “Mom! Dad! I got cancer!” The air went dead silent for two seconds. Then, hurried footsteps approached, accompanied by the familiar scent of Mom’s vanilla perfume. I lowered the paper and opened my arms wide, fully prepared to be swept into my mother’s warm embrace. Riiiip! With a sharp tear, the diagnosis was snatched from my hand and ripped to shreds. Before my brain could even process what had just happened, a burning pain exploded across my cheek. “Did you forget your brother is sleeping?! How dare you make up such a ridiculous lie!” Dad put down his newspaper and walked over. “Maite, you are a big girl now. You need to start acting your age. Everyone knows you have the constitution of an ox.” “You haven’t even caught a cold since you were a toddler. If you are going to lie, at least make it believable.” Cupping my stinging cheek, I pointed a trembling finger at the trash can. “But the doctor said it…” My parents had already turned their backs on me. They were busy discussing Noah’s premium meal plan. “Noah has lost a little weight recently. It seems the two-thousand-dollar monthly catering plan still isn’t nutritious enough for him.” Dad sighed, his face etched with deep worry. “But upgrading to the premium tier costs four thousand a month. We simply cannot afford that.” Mom suddenly shifted her gaze back to me. “My hospital is recruiting volunteers for a new clinical drug trial. They specifically need healthy individuals. The payout is fifteen thousand dollars per person.” “I was going to do it myself, but we are both way too busy with work.” Hearing the underlying meaning in her words, a spark of hope reignited in my chest. If volunteering required a clean bill of health, then the medical checkup would prove to my parents that I wasn’t lying. “Mom, let me be the volunteer.” Dad immediately scooped me up into his arms. “Our big girl is finally looking out for her baby brother. You know Noah has been frail since he was born. As his older sister, you need to be more understanding.” Mom let out a cold scoff. “Trying to take credit now that you know you messed up, huh? Fine, I will give you this chance.” She pulled a round, dark red pill out of her pocket and gestured for me to swallow it. “Good thing I am on the hospital staff. I bypassed all that tedious paperwork.” I didn’t take it. I stared at the pill nervously. “Mom… aren’t I supposed to get a physical exam first?” Mom’s eyebrows knitted together in sheer frustration. “What physical exam? You just want to waste our money! If your body isn’t healthy, then there isn’t a single healthy person left on this planet.” Hearing my sturdy little brother let out a soft cough from the living room, Dad grabbed the pill from Mom’s hand. He snatched a glass of water from the table. Ignoring my panicked struggles, he forced the pill directly down my throat. “Stop wasting time arguing with a kid. Noah just coughed. Go check if he is catching a cold.” I choked violently, unable to formulate a single word. Mom grabbed me by the arm, dragged me into my bedroom, and locked the door from the outside. “I already disinfected your room. You stay in there and behave.” “The observation period is three days. Once you pass, I will take you to the hospital to get the money. If you show a good attitude, Mom will treat you to McDonald’s.” My head began to throb violently. I wanted to tell Mom I felt incredibly sick, but my vocal cords refused to make a sound. 2 I pounded on the bedroom door with all my might, forcing a tiny whimper through my clenched teeth. “Mom… Dad… please come save me.” Bang! The door violently shuddered as Dad kicked it from the outside, his last shred of patience entirely gone. “The only reason your brother is so weak is because you absorbed all the nutrients in your mother’s womb! And you still have the nerve to complain? You clearly haven’t learned your lesson!” Mom suddenly let out a sharp gasp. For a fleeting second, I thought they had fished my diagnosis out of the trash and realized it was real. “Honey! Noah’s temperature is 99 degrees! He is almost running a fever!” “Hurry, get him to the ER!” Dad didn’t even bother listening to the muffled, agonizing sounds I was making against the wood. A cluster of keys jingled frantically. I heard the heavy thud of the front door slamming shut. Reaching up to touch my face, I realized two trails of thick blood were leaking out of my eye sockets. Mom. Dad. It hurts so much. My consciousness slowly faded into the dark, and the piercing, bone-deep agony eventually melted away. When I woke up again, I was floating mid-air. I easily drifted right through the solid bedroom door. That was wonderful. Mom and Dad had finally let me out. I sat down politely at the dining table. I promised myself I would apologize to them and explain everything properly the moment they returned. I didn’t know how much time had passed before the front door clicked open. Mom and Dad walked in holding a pink Hello Kitty cake. It smelled amazing. I couldn’t help but swallow hard. Usually, I only ever got to taste cake on Noah’s birthday. I didn’t expect that getting cancer meant I would get my very own cake today. Mom stared impatiently at my closed bedroom door. “Maite! Come out and eat your cake!” “You are lucky your little stunt didn’t scare your brother into a worse sickness. Otherwise, you would be getting the belt.” I looked at them in complete bewilderment. “Mom, Dad, I am right in front of you. I am sitting right here on the chair.” I stood up and walked over, wanting to hug them, but my arms passed straight through their bodies. They kept staring at the door. Ten seconds later, Mom banged her fist against the wood. “Throwing a tantrum and giving us the silent treatment now? I didn’t even punish you for putting your brother in the hospital, and you dare throw a fit?!” I was completely stunned. I phased back and forth around them, shouting directly into their ears. “Mom! Dad! I am right here! I am not throwing a tantrum!” But neither of them reacted. Dad took my beautiful cake and dumped it straight into the garbage can. “This is what happens when you spoil her too much. Let this be a lesson. Starving for three days won’t kill her.” A horrifying realization dawned on me. I drifted back through my bedroom door. A shriveled, grotesque figure was curled up tightly against the base of the door. Deep, bloody scratch marks from my fingernails scarred the wood. I looked so ugly. No wonder Mom and Dad never liked me. I was already dead. I couldn’t quite describe the feeling in my chest. Was I sad? I didn’t actually feel that heartbroken. It was just a shame. I thought I was going to get three months of love and care, but I didn’t even get a single day. But maybe this was for the best. At least now I could stay by my parents’ side forever without worrying about being a burden. Mom noticed the torn diagnosis paper in the trash, now smeared with frosting. Frowning, she pinched it with two fingers and picked it up. “Honey, this medical report actually looks real…” Dad glanced at it and scoffed loudly. “Susan, you work at a hospital. How can you fall for this?” “AI is incredibly advanced these days. It can easily fake a document like this. Watch, I will ask her right now.” He marched up to my bedroom door and delivered a few heavy kicks. “You forged this, didn’t you? Tell the truth, and I will let you eat tomorrow.” Floating in the air, fighting the stinging sensation in my ghostly eyes, I shook my head over and over again. Dad, I didn’t forge it. That is a real paper from a real doctor. The only response he got was the dramatic groaning coming from Noah’s bedroom. “See? She is too scared to answer. That means she admits it.” “I can’t believe this little brat learned to be a pathological liar at such a young age. If only she was half as sensible as her brother.” I wasn’t scared to answer. I simply couldn’t. I rushed back into the room and tightly hugged my stiff, decaying corpse. It was so cold. Maybe it was because I had never once ignored my parents in my entire life. After tending to Noah for a while, they returned to my door. “Maite, it is time to log your physical condition for the trial. Stop playing dead!” I am not playing dead, Mom. I am actually dead. Dad took a deep, angry breath. “You are really pushing your luck.” I watched him march out toward the balcony where the cat bed was. A dreadful premonition seized my heart. “Dad, no, please…” The tall man roughly grabbed Snowball out of the little cardboard house I had built for her. He carried the struggling cat straight to my door. “If you don’t make a sound right now, I am going to teach your cat a lesson!” I lunged forward, desperately trying to snatch my kitten back. Snowball was the only one in this house who ever listened to me. But my ghostly hands passed right through her fur. Dad! I am talking! Please put Snowball down! I don’t have cancer! I was lying! I made it all up! 3 Mom was growing impatient. She pinched the back of Snowball’s neck hard. The usually gentle kitten puffed up instantly, letting out a series of frantic, bloodcurdling screeches. I opened my mouth as wide as I could. Souls couldn’t shed tears, so I could only tremble violently. I screamed until my invisible throat felt like it was tearing apart. “No!” But it was utterly useless. Seeing the cat scratching so fiercely, Dad lost his temper and hurled it away. But he had forgotten that my bedroom door opened right next to the balcony. My mind went entirely blank. A heavy thud echoed from the street below. Mom tried to reach out and stop him, but it was too late. Seeing the neighbors gathering downstairs, she clicked her tongue in annoyance. “Someone is definitely going to ask us how the cat died. We can’t let this ruin our family’s reputation.” “We will just say Maite accidentally dropped it. We will make her go down and apologize.” The moment the words left her mouth, Dad snapped out of his shock. He grabbed my doorknob and rattled it furiously. “This is all your fault for throwing a tantrum! You got your own cat killed! You brought this upon yourself!” Staring down at Snowball’s lifeless body, I was so numb I couldn’t even form a thought. But heaven seemed to take pity on me. Snowball’s little soul floated up and rubbed against my leg. Only then did I pull myself together enough to keep my spirit from completely shattering. Her fluffy ghostly fur felt exactly the same. I carried her back into the apartment. Were Mom and Dad finally going to check on me? What would their reaction be? Ring! Ring! Ring! Dad’s phone suddenly blared. It was a police officer on the other end of the line. “We caught Marcus! Are you coming down to the station to press charges?” Hearing that name, my sorrow was instantly swallowed by sheer terror. That man hiding in the alley had asked me for directions to the bus stop. When I wasn’t looking, he dragged me into the shadows. He pinned me against the cold brick wall, his filthy hands grabbing at my clothes, whispering the most sickening, terrifying threats into my ear as I struggled. When I finally escaped and ran home, I scrubbed my skin in the shower until it bled. When Mom found out, she took me to the police station that very night to file a report. Since then, she had been walking me to and from school. But predators were hard to catch. It took them until today to finally arrest him. Dad and Mom exchanged a loaded look, before a look of absolute resolve settled over their faces. “Did you know? That boy’s wealthy father tracked me down. He said he would give us fifty thousand dollars if we just let this go.” Mom glanced at my tightly shut bedroom door. “That money could cover Noah’s premium meal plan for the whole year. The damage done to Maite cannot be undone anyway. As long as that boy knows he was wrong…” “Besides, look at the terrible attitude Maite is giving us right now. A little harsh reality might be exactly the lesson she needs.” Holding my kitten, I sat in the backseat of their car as they drove to the police station. The face that haunted my darkest nightmares was sitting in the lobby, casually crossing his legs. He looked at my parents with absolute disdain. His overweight father grabbed my dad’s hand warmly. “My good friend, let’s step outside and have a little chat.” I listened to my dad eagerly agreeing to the fifty-thousand-dollar hush money. Every syllable sounded exactly like the sound of my heart shattering into pieces. The monster swaggered out of the police station a free man. I wanted to lunge at him, tear his flesh, and drink his blood. But my own parents had just sold me out. I could never get my justice now. The car ride back was suffocatingly silent. What were they thinking about? “Robert, I still feel like taking this money is wrong…” Dad’s grip on the steering wheel tightened, as if he was terrified he might change his mind. “I know you are worried it will break Maite’s heart. So we just won’t tell her.” “Maite has been perfectly healthy her whole life. Noah is so sickly it breaks my heart. Let’s just consider this the ultimate sacrifice Maite is making for her little brother.” “When we get home, we will let her out and take her somewhere fun to relax. We won’t make her do the drug trial anymore.” Sitting in the backseat, my soul was reduced to ashes. Dad, you don’t have to bother. I am already dead. I can’t go anywhere fun. Mom’s phone suddenly rang. It was my homeroom teacher, Mrs. Bennett. “Mrs. Bennett, how can I help you? We already called in sick for Maite for the past few days.” “I know this must be an incredibly agonizing time for you as parents. But you have to stay strong and not show your despair in front of the child…” Mom cut her off, thoroughly confused. “Mrs. Bennett, what do you mean? Agonizing time?” “Wait. Didn’t Maite show you her cancer diagnosis? Haven’t you been taking her to the hospital for tests these past few days?”

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1 My husband was keeping a mistress behind my back. And this mistress happened to be a somewhat famous food influencer on the internet. Every day, she showed off on her social media, flaunting the lovingly prepared lunches she had made for her boyfriend. Those exquisite meals packed in delicate wooden boxes earned her countless gasps of admiration from her followers. But those crazy fans hitting the like button had no idea about the truth. Every single bite of that food was meticulously chosen and prepared by me. I dragged myself out of bed at five in the morning, standing in the kitchen until my eyes were completely bloodshot. I sacrificed everything for my husband. And this betrayal was my only reward. … A few weeks later, right during her most popular live stream, I put on a delivery uniform and knocked on the door of her luxury apartment. In front of hundreds of thousands of viewers, I held up a long delivery receipt directly to the camera. “Miss, this is the twenty-third premium private chef meal you ordered from our store this month. If you are satisfied with the taste, please leave a five-star review on the app.” The live chat, which had been flooded with hearts and praises just a second ago, was instantly drowned in a massive wave of question marks. She had no idea this was only the first step of dragging them straight to hell. The whole thing started on a perfectly normal afternoon. I was leaning against the couch scrolling through short videos when the algorithm pushed a food influencer’s update to my feed. The cover of the video showed a young girl with immaculate makeup wearing a silk slip dress. Sitting right in front of her was a very familiar handmade walnut wood bento box. Immediately after, a sickly sweet and overly rehearsed voice drifted out of my phone speaker. “Hello babies! Today I am sharing a brand new recipe I developed called Black Truffle Angel Hair Pasta. This dish requires extremely strict knife skills and temperature control. But for him, all the hard work is totally worth it.” The camera cut to a close-up of the dish. The hand-kneaded pasta was sliced as thin as strands of hair, topped with expensive caviar and micro-herbs. I frowned. My heart skipped a heavy beat. Everything from the plating to the ingredients was exactly identical to the lunch I had packed for my husband early this morning. But the thing that truly made my scalp tingle was that walnut wood box. It was an exact replica of the one my husband used. There was a very faint scratch right next to the brass latch. That was a flaw I accidentally left behind with my carving knife when I polished the wood myself years ago. I held my breath and clicked into the profile named “LexiBites.” Six hundred thousand followers. The influencer’s real name was Lexi. I scrolled through her posts from the past month. There were fifteen heavily edited lunch videos, and every single one felt like a heavy hammer smashing against my nerves. French butter-baked lobster. I had stayed up for several nights researching Michelin recipes just to recreate that dish for our fifth wedding anniversary. Twelve-hour slow-simmered Wagyu consomme. Just last week, my husband Henry complained about feeling under the weather. I stood by the stove for half a day and night just to nourish his body. Every single dish was infused with my blood, sweat, and tears. They were the result of me standing in a freezing kitchen at five in the morning, fighting off exhaustion just to provide for my husband. And now, all my love and devotion had been framed as Lexi’s proud masterpieces. They became the stepping stones for her perfect girlfriend persona. They became the chips she used to flaunt her fake romance to hundreds of thousands of strangers. My trembling fingers opened the comment section. It was entirely filled with overwhelming envy. “Oh my god, she is the absolute perfect girlfriend! I am so jealous. Guys, I want to marry her!” “Her knife skills are insane. This is literally Michelin level!” The phone screen went dark, reflecting my pale and haggard face. The light in my eyes slowly died out, but a fire deep within started burning brighter than ever. For the past five years, I completely abandoned my dream of opening a high-end private restaurant just to be the woman behind Henry. I willingly trapped myself between the grease and the stove. In the end, my sacrifices became nothing but a massive joke in someone else’s eyes. I did not know how long I sat frozen on that couch. By the time I snapped out of it, I had already dialed my former assistant Sarah. “Sarah, look someone up for me right now. An influencer named LexiBites. Real name Lexi. I want a deep dive into her entire background. Most importantly, I need to know exactly what kind of dirty business is going on between her and my husband Henry.” Less than half an hour later, an encrypted file quietly landed in my inbox. Lexi was twenty-five years old. She was a micro-influencer recently signed to the exact marketing agency where Henry worked. And Henry, coincidentally enough, was her direct talent manager. Attached at the bottom of the email were several high-resolution candid photos taken in a dimly lit underground parking garage. In the photos, Henry and Lexi were standing incredibly close to each other. His hand was naturally raised, affectionately tucking a strand of blonde hair behind her ear. Looking at that gesture full of possessiveness and tenderness, I felt a suffocating pang in my chest. Good. This was just perfect. Henry and Lexi. One was the thief, the other fenced the stolen goods. They were truly a match made in heaven. Since they loved acting in front of the camera so much, I did not mind getting my hands dirty to build them a world-class stage. I was going to let the entire internet enjoy a front-row seat to their sickening, picture-perfect romance. 2 The next evening, Henry came home from work right on time. At the dinner table, I served him a bowl of soup as usual and spoke in a very casual tone. “Honey, my old private chef studio just landed a groundbreaking catering gig. A massive tech company in Silicon Valley specifically requested me to be the executive chef for their annual gala.” He paused his steak knife, his eyes lighting up immediately. “Really? That is amazing, baby! This is an opportunity of a lifetime.” I pursed my lips, offering a perfectly timed, guilty smile. “It is a great opportunity. But for the next entire month, I will probably be buried in the studio developing the new menu. I doubt I will even have time to sleep.” I paused for a second, looking straight into his eyes. “So I really won’t have the time to prep your lunch boxes every morning.” Just as I expected, the smile on his face froze instantly. A brief flash of panic crossed his eyes. But his cover-up was flawless. He simply took a sip of red wine without changing his expression. “That is totally fine. Work comes first. I can just order some delivery or eat at the restaurant downstairs. Please do not stress over it.” I sneered in my heart. Totally fine? If his lunch supply was cut off, Lexi’s daily video content would dry up completely. How could he not be panicking? I could bet my life that within three days, he would be beating around the bush begging me for help. When that time came, I would personally hand this cheating couple a gift they would never forget. Over the next two days, I set my plan into motion with ruthless efficiency. The first step was registering a private kitchen on an elite delivery app designed specifically for wealthy neighborhoods. I spent an entire afternoon perfecting the visual aesthetics of the storefront. The shop was named “Velvet Spoon.” The avatar was a minimalist black and gold logo. The bio consisted of a single, cold line: Providing only the ultimate customized private dining experience. Every meal is an unrepeatable piece of art. Serious inquiries only. Everything was ready. I just needed to wait for the rats to walk into the trap. Sure enough, on the third night, Henry furiously poked at the salad on his plate and let out a very deliberate, heavy sigh. “Man, eating those mass-produced diet meals at work for the past few days has completely ruined my appetite. I am so used to your god-tier cooking. Outside food is basically inedible.” I put down my fork. Frowning, I put on a highly distressed act. “Henry, it is not that I want to be cruel and ignore you. This project is at its most critical stage right now. I am working around the clock.” Seeing the growing frustration in his eyes, I quickly pivoted. “However…” I pulled out my phone and pushed the screen toward him. It was the ordering page for Velvet Spoon. “A friend in the catering circle recommended this place to me. They specialize in ultra-luxury private meals and only take a limited number of orders every day. I reviewed their menu with a very critical eye. Their ingredients and techniques are honestly even more meticulous than mine. You can order from them for now to treat your stomach.” Henry stared at the exquisite food photos on the screen, raising his eyebrows in disbelief. “Are you serious? Can it really be as good as your cooking?” “Absolutely.” My tone was firm, carrying the authority of a professional. “The head chef has incredible skills, and many of their rare ingredients are flown in daily. You can trust me on this. It will definitely hit the spot.” His eyes darted around. He probably figured that a place recommended by an executive chef like me could not possibly be bad. Passing it off to Lexi for her videos would definitely work. He immediately put on a grateful smile. “Alright. As long as you recommend it, I will place an order tomorrow.” 3 Early the next morning, my phone screen lit up with a crisp notification chime. Client Lexi placed a six-hundred-dollar order for a “Chef’s Exclusive Blind Box Meal.” The delivery address was a highly secured luxury apartment building downtown, a place I had never set foot in. I stared at the name on the order, a cold smirk curling on my lips. Turning around to enter the kitchen, I tied on my dark black apron and began prepping the ingredients methodically. It was the same premium Wagyu beef. The same tedious cooking process. But this time, to make the evidence completely airtight, I had set up high-definition cameras in every blind spot of the kitchen. From trimming the meat to julienning the vegetables, and all the way to the precise final plating, every single movement was recorded in crystal clarity. A red timestamp accurate to the second flashed in the bottom right corner of the footage. Not only that, but when adding the final garnishes to each dish, I used a special edible pigment that only glowed under UV light. I painted a tiny, exclusive watermark at the bottom of an inconspicuous side dish. At exactly seven-thirty in the morning, Lexi’s video went live on her social platforms. In the footage, she smiled at the camera like an innocent angel, carefully opening that terribly familiar walnut wood box. “Good morning babies! Look at how breathtaking today’s bento is! To get this perfect color, I was busy in the kitchen since five AM. Honestly, I am so exhausted. But whenever I think about the look of surprise on his face when he opens it for lunch, I feel like all the hard work is worth it.” She babbled on about her so-called cooking tips, completely omitting the fact that this was a six-hundred-dollar takeout order. Of course she couldn’t mention it. Her meticulously crafted label was the perfect girlfriend who cooked with love. If she admitted these art-like meals were bought with money, her fragile tower of lies would instantly collapse. Just like that, an absurd and sickening cycle was officially established. For every single delivery and pickup that followed, I hired private investigators to record the entire handoff process from start to finish. Every exorbitant meal payment was processed through corporate bank accounts, leaving behind undeniable transfer records in the banking system. A full month passed. Day after day. During this month, I acted like an emotionless machine, personally serving twenty-three exquisite meals to my own rival. And Lexi, feeding off my blood and sweat, crazily pumped out fifteen viral videos with millions of views. Her follower count skyrocketed from six hundred thousand to eight hundred thousand. Moreover, she signed five endorsement deals with high-end kitchenware and food brands in one breath. The total endorsement fees amounted to millions of dollars. The massive profit completely blinded her. She even started dropping bold hints in her core fan group, claiming that she and her mysterious, wealthy boyfriend were about to walk down the aisle. As for Henry, his status at the agency rose alongside his cash cow’s soaring popularity. His attitude toward me became unprecedentedly gentle and considerate. A few days ago, he even bought me a limited-edition Hermes bag, claiming it was a fat bonus he got for leading a highly successful project. I sat on the couch holding that expensive leather bag against my chest. Looking into his eyes full of deep affection and deceit, I felt a violent wave of nausea churn in my stomach. Using dirty money earned by draining my lifeblood to buy me a pacifying gift? This was truly the most vicious dark comedy in the world. Swallowing the disgust, I gently looped my arm through his, blooming with an incredibly gentle smile. “Thank you, honey. You are so good to me.” I was waiting. Like a hunter holding her breath in the dark, waiting for the exact moment the prey let its guard down completely. I wanted to wait until she climbed to the clouds, to the absolute peak where everyone was looking up at her. And then, I would personally and ruthlessly kick away the ladder I had built for her. I wanted to watch her fall from the sky, shattering into pieces, never to recover. And that perfect moment was fast approaching. 4 To permanently solidify Lexi’s genius chef title, her management agency poured massive funds into planning a huge live stream event to pamper her fans. They bombarded every social media platform with teaser ads. They claimed Lexi would flawlessly recreate her hardest signature dish live in front of hundreds of thousands of fans this Saturday at eight PM. It was meant to be a vicious slap in the face to all the haters who accused her of using a ghost chef. The moment this bombshell dropped, her eight hundred thousand followers completely lost their minds. They flooded the comments, swearing to camp in the live stream to witness their goddess’s moment of glory. I stared at the provocative promo poster on my phone screen. The blood in my veins began to boil. I knew the time to close the net had finally arrived. At seven PM on Saturday, I pushed open my walk-in closet and pulled out a grey delivery uniform I had prepared long ago. I put on a black baseball cap and a thick medical mask, hiding my features flawlessly. Finally, I personally packed the freshly cooked, steaming ultimate love bento into a massive black thermal delivery bag. At seven fifty-five PM, my car parked precisely outside Lexi’s luxury apartment building. At eight PM sharp, Lexi’s live stream kicked off amidst a frenzy of comments. On screen, she was wearing a pure white silk French dress that hugged her curves perfectly. The open kitchen behind her glowed with warm ambient lighting. The marble countertops were spotless, looking as if they had never seen a drop of real grease. “Hello babies, I am right on time! Seeing the chat going so crazy makes me want to cry! To thank you all for your love, tonight I will show you step by step how to make the highly requested French butter-baked lobster right here on camera!” The screen was instantly buried in colorful comments screaming about how beautiful she looked and how perfect she was. She turned around and began pretending to prep the lobster on the cutting board. Her knife skills were incredibly clumsy. Even her grip on the handle was wrong. Anyone with eyes could tell she was an absolute amateur who never cooked. But she was very cunning. She knew exactly how to use camera angles to hide her guilt. Most of the time, she just let the camera zoom in on her innocent, makeup-perfected face. Whenever she needed to show precise knife work, the producer would instantly cut to a pre-recorded close-up video. Halfway through the stream, she put down her knife and picked up tweezers to prepare for plating. She elegantly wiped her fingers with a paper towel while giving the camera her signature sweet smile. “Actually, the ultimate secret to making top-tier food isn’t having master-level skills. It is about whether you cook with love. As long as your heart is full of that special someone, every bite of food you make will have the power to conquer the world.” Standing outside the door of her apartment, I looked at her hypocritical face on my phone screen. A cruel smirk curled on my lips. Now was the time. I took a deep breath and pressed the doorbell hard. Inside the live stream, Lexi, who was just about to brush butter on the lobster, clearly got spooked. Her hand froze in mid-air. But she quickly adjusted her expression, winking playfully at the camera. “Give me half a minute, babies. It might be my clumsy assistant who forgot her keys again, dropping something off for me.” To maintain the illusion of an unscripted, natural vibe, she did not mute her microphone or turn off the camera as she walked out of the frame. Along with the sound of the deadbolt turning, the heavy door swung open. When she saw a person dressed in a baggy delivery uniform, completely bundled up from head to toe, her delicate face instantly dropped. Her eyebrows twisted in pure disgust. “I didn’t order any takeout. You are on the wrong floor. Get lost!” I completely ignored her demands. Lowering my voice on purpose, I used the exhausted, robotic tone of a delivery driver and asked loudly, “Good evening, are you Miss Lexi?” “Yes, what exactly do you want…” I did not give her a chance to finish her sentence. Capitalizing on her moment of confusion, I forced my shoulder forward and aggressively squeezed into the entryway. My half-body, clad in the shabby uniform, was fully exposed to the high-definition camera pointing right at the door. I lifted the massive delivery box with both hands. My voice was not overly loud, but thanks to the highly sensitive microphone clipped to her collar, every single word exploded clearly across the entire live stream. “Miss Lexi, this is your twenty-fourth premium Velvet Spoon meal this month. Please open the box to verify your items. If the quality is to your liking, the platform requires a five-star review.” The chat, which had been scrolling at lightning speed a second ago, suddenly froze as if someone hit the pause button. A bizarre, three-second dead silence followed. Immediately after, the entire screen was devoured by a dense swarm of massive question marks that nearly crashed the servers. “Wait, am I blind? What delivery?” “Hold up! Did I hear that right? Isn’t the streamer cooking this herself? Why is food being delivered right now?!” “Velvet Spoon? Isn’t that the most expensive private delivery kitchen in the city? The one that costs hundreds of dollars a meal?!” Within a fraction of a second, all the color drained from Lexi’s face. She looked paler than the white dress she was wearing. Like a cat getting its tail stepped on, she spun around in sheer terror. Flailing her arms, she lunged forward, trying to cover my mouth and push me out the door. But my legs were planted to the ground like lead weights. No matter how hard she shoved, I did not budge an inch. Ignoring her hysterical panic, I continued in the same dead, emotionless tone, delivering the fatal blow. “Also, our head chef found out that you have been using our restaurant’s meals to shoot your fifteen viral videos, gaining two hundred thousand followers in the process. To thank you for your incredibly dedicated free promotion, the chef specifically instructed that VIP clients like you will get a ten percent discount on all future orders.” As soon as the words left my mouth, I cleanly flipped open the lid of the black thermal bag right in front of hundreds of thousands of watching eyes. I respectfully pulled out that walnut wood bento box she knew so well. With a soft click, I popped open the brass latch. Resting quietly inside the box was a French butter-baked lobster. It was exactly identical to the half-finished mess sitting on the kitchen island behind me, but infinitely more perfect. The rich color of the sauce, the artistic plating, and the top-tier aroma radiating from the ingredients completely destroyed her pathetic, half-baked attempt. “Miss Lexi, your food has arrived. Please enjoy.” The live chat detonated like a nuclear bomb. “Holy shit! The biggest tea of the year! All her viral meals were bought with money!” “Ordering takeout twenty-three times a month? Girl, you don’t even turn on your stove once a year!” “Lmao she is so busted! One second she is preaching about cooking with love, and the next second the delivery guy drops off the original dish! The second-hand embarrassment is killing me!” Lexi let out a bloodcurdling scream. She scrambled toward the kitchen counter like a madwoman, trying to rip the power cord out of the broadcasting equipment. But it was way too late. 5 The five-minute screen recording of the live stream spread like a winged plague across all social platforms at an unbelievable speed. #LexiBitesFake #DeliveryChef #FakePersonaDestroyed These three explosive hashtags acted like sharp knives, pinning themselves firmly to the top three spots on the trending charts. The internet’s rage and thirst for gossip were fully ignited. Netizens turned into microscopic detectives, comparing every single frame of my dramatic entrance with all of Lexi’s past videos. Eventually, the entire internet reached one united, ironclad conclusion: Not a single stunning dish on the LexiBites account was actually cooked by her. Lexi’s follower count suffered an avalanche. She lost two hundred thousand followers overnight, and the red downward curve was still plunging at a terrifying speed. Terrified, she frantically disabled comments across all her platforms. But the fans who felt lied to and manipulated flooded her direct messages with vicious, vulgar insults. A much more lethal blow followed closely behind. Out of the five brands that had just signed massive contracts with her, three reacted with ruthless speed. They teamed up with PR firms to issue severe termination statements. They mercilessly accused Lexi of malicious false advertising and fraudulent behavior, stating she severely violated their brand values and committed a fundamental breach of contract. The statements clearly warned that if Lexi failed to clarify the truth and restore their brand reputation within twenty-four hours, they would not hesitate to take legal action. They would demand a full refund of the endorsement fees, plus a penalty three times that amount. The total damages demanded by the three brands reached a number that would bankrupt her completely: 2.8 million dollars. Meanwhile, the other mastermind behind this storm, my dear husband Henry, was currently standing in his boss’s spacious corner office, getting chewed out like a stray dog with its tail between its legs. How did I know the details so clearly? Because half a month ago, while he was taking a shower, I had planted an ultra-micro listening device inside the Montblanc pen he always carried with him. “Henry! Open your damn eyes and look at the massive mess you created! You were the one who pushed so hard to make Lexi our cash cow. Now she has caused this apocalyptic scandal, and the entire agency’s reputation is being dragged through the mud! I am giving you until the end of the day to bury this, no matter the cost! If you can’t, pack your bags and get the hell out!” “Boss, please let me explain… I am already contacting the crisis PR team. I will handle it immediately!” “Get out! I want a mitigation plan on my desk in five minutes!” Following a loud slam, the phone call was brutally disconnected. Through the bug, I heard Henry angrily kicking a trash can, followed by a vicious curse. A few seconds later, he dialed Lexi’s number. “Lexi, is your brain full of water?! Who the hell was that delivery driver? Who did you piss off to make them want to destroy you like this?!” Lexi’s mental breakdown immediately echoed through the phone, accompanied by violent sobbing. “How am I supposed to know who that lunatic is! Henry, I am completely finished. The brands’ lawyers already sent the letters to my email. 2.8 million dollars in damages! Even if you sold my organs, I couldn’t pay that! You have to help me, I am begging you, please help me!” “How am I supposed to help you? I can barely keep my own job right now!” There was not a single trace of pity in Henry’s voice, only the explosive irritability and disgust of a man backed into a corner. “I warned you from the very beginning to actually learn some basic knife skills so you could fake it properly for the camera! But you insisted it would ruin your manicure! Now you got caught red-handed. Are you happy now?!” “What is the point of saying all this in hindsight?! Henry, stop acting like the good guy! You were the one who personally suggested it! You said using the meals your ugly wife made for you would be free and foolproof! What, now that everything blew up, you want to throw me under the bus and make me take the fall?!” Oh? Sitting on the couch, I raised an eyebrow. So the root of all this evil, this utterly shameless scheme, was actually proposed by my gentle, sophisticated husband. I let out an incredibly delighted sneer. With a flick of my finger, I packed this brilliant audio recording, along with all the surveillance footage, bank statements, and photos I had gathered over the past month, into a hidden encrypted folder. Henry, since you love playing with fire so much, your time is finally up.

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I’ve always been the sensitive, suspicious type, so after finally getting together with the guy I grew up with, a knot of anxiety was always coiled in my stomach. One day, I happened to see his phone screen light up. A new message notification popped onto the screen: “I’m not trying to be the other woman. I just want to be your puppy.” Beneath the message was a photo. In it, a girl was wearing a very distinctive collar around her neck. Coincidentally, not long after, I found the exact same collar in the trash can of my rich, “it-girl” roommate. I immediately snapped a picture and found the contact info for her mega-wealthy fiancé. I sent him the photo with a simple message: “We’re both being played.” He replied almost instantly, with just one sentence: “Yeah, today’s definitely green.” He then sent a screenshot from a stock trading app. I looked closer and saw the total profit figure was followed by eight zeros. A comment scrolled across my vision, visible only to me: Look at this shady side character, thinking the main female lead wants to steal her boyfriend. Her fiancé is a freaking billionaire, okay? Another one popped up: The male lead is into that bad-girl vibe. The side character running to tattle is just embarrassing herself. Pathetic and poor, and it’ll never change! I completely lost it. I furiously typed back at him: “Are you blind?! I’m telling you your fiancée is cheating with my boyfriend! Why are you flexing your money at me?!” He was silent for a long moment before he replied: “…How about I offer myself as compensation?” The comments section in my head exploded with question marks. 1. My roommate, Julia, was a trust-fund princess. She once offered me a thousand dollars a month to be her personal gofer. I turned her down. But my childhood sweetheart, Liam, took the job. Julia sent me a text: [Hey babe, I’m going on a trip. Borrowing your bf to carry my bags for me.] [Don’t worry, I know your birthday is in three days. I’ll have him back before then, promise.] So disgusting. She called everyone “babe.” Including my boyfriend. On the first day of school, she asked me to carry her bags for fifty bucks. Then, under the pretense of paying me, she got Liam’s number instead. I turned to Liam and couldn’t stop myself from kicking his shin. “You’re my boyfriend now. Can you please stop being her errand boy?” I tried to keep my voice steady. “I’m making enough from my part-time jobs now.” Liam’s explanation was infuriatingly calm. “Julia has a fiancé. She’s not interested in me.” “Sienna, don’t be so selfish. The little money you make barely covers your mom’s medical bills each month. She can’t afford to wait.” He kissed my cheek, a placating gesture. “We’re going to get married and have kids one day. Julia will have her own life. Don’t make a scene.” A comment flickered to life: [Poor people are always so paranoid. Always imagining the rich girl wants to steal their boyfriend. So obsessed with romance.] [Poor Liam. He doesn’t even like the side character. He’s only with her out of a sense of obligation.] I stared coldly at the comments. Of course, I knew Liam didn’t love me. But I was born selfish, and just seeing his face made me happy. He was handsome, he’d always been good to me, and my mom had raised him like her own son. After his parents died young, our family was all he had. Therefore, he could only be with me. After our argument, I went back to my dorm. I opened up my social media and started stalking Julia’s account. She loved to show off. She’d just posted a new update: [So happy! Getting engaged to the love of my life soon! @AX] The comments were flooded with congratulations. At that moment, the darkness in my heart reached its peak. Why did she get to be so happy? She was such a fake. A comment appeared: [Ugh, stop lurking in the shadows, side character. No amount of stalking will make the male lead yours.] [The female lead has strong… appetites. She and the male lead are a perfect match. She doesn’t need to go looking for service from a side piece.] I latched onto two pieces of information. The female lead was cheating. And the male lead didn’t know yet. My eyes lit up. I casually followed the male lead’s account. Time to throw a wrench in the main characters’ perfect love story. [LMAO, did the dumb side character not realize his account is private? He has to approve follows.] [That’s why the female lead is so confident tagging her fiancé on social media. In this world, there are plenty of girls willing to be the other woman for money.] [Alexander Segel only follows the female lead. Give it up, side character.] 2. A private account? I stared at the screen. A wicked idea took root. I scrolled back to one of Julia’s earliest posts bragging about her relationship. Alexander Segel rarely replied to her. His one and only comment had been upvoted by their couple-shippers to the top spot. AX: [It’s a business arrangement.] He had posted a picture of the engagement rings. The comments said the woman’s ring cost over thirty thousand dollars. This male lead had never shown his face. Julia had never shown us a picture, either. For someone who loved to show off as much as she did, the lack of photos was suspicious. Maybe he looked like a toad! My dark speculation began. Julia had replied to a fan in the comments: [Guys, please don’t follow my fiancé. He made his account private because he’s afraid of girls trying to add him.] [He’s just so handsome, you know? A lot of girls in our circle were after him, but I was the one who won his heart.] [His grandfather even gave me an heirloom bracelet.] The comment section filled with envy: [That sounds like a serious family heirloom, probably worth enough to buy a house.] [She’s the officially approved daughter-in-law of the Segel family.] [A match made in heaven!] I scrolled to the bottom and gleefully started typing: [Hey cuckold, your fiancée’s running around on you, you know that?] [Get a leash on your girl. Stop her from calling other people’s boyfriends “babe”!] [A cuckold and a cheater. Perfect for each other!] [F***ing losers, both of you!] After my tirade, I immediately blocked Julia. That way, she wouldn’t see my replies to Alexander. My only regret was that my most creative insults were censored by the platform’s filter, so the male lead wouldn’t be able to see exactly what I’d called him. Alexander hadn’t paid much attention to the notification bubble that popped up. His account was usually dead quiet. Since he’d gone private, he might get a few follow requests a month, at most. So, when a rapid-fire series of notifications appeared, he was a little confused. After reading the messages, his face turned livid. In his entire life, he had never been insulted like this. 3. Alexander Segel approved my follow request. His upper-class upbringing prevented him from firing back with profanities. So, he simply asked: [I think you have the wrong person.] I replied instantly: [Nope. I’m talking to you, Alexander Segel. And about Julia.] The comments were merciless: [This side character has zero class! No manners at all!] [The male lead must have been furious to actually follow her back.] [The female lead has always maintained this prim and proper rich-girl image. Without proof, the male lead will never believe she’s a cheater.] [And even if he did know, so what? He’s rich and powerful. He likes a bad girl. He’ll just marry her and tame her.] Alexander sent me a message, demanding I send him proof of Julia’s cheating. He added that if I couldn’t produce it within a month, he’d sue me for slander. I shot back: [That’s not fair. What if I can prove you’re a cuckold? I can’t sue you.] Alexander: […] I scowled: [What’s with the ellipses? So pretentious.] Alexander stared at the ID: [CottonCandy]. A sweet name. Her profile was full of dance videos. She was a small-time streamer who never showed her face, but her replies to her fans were always polite. He clicked through the videos, one by one. From her clothes, he could tell her family wasn’t well-off. But she had a great figure and, based on one post, was a student at a good university, so she had a small but dedicated fanbase. Her pinned video was a screenshot of her university admission, followed by a long, profane rant against people who had doubted her. Alexander watched it, a strange expression on his face. In his world, he rarely encountered people with… such a split personality. The background of CottonCandy’s dance videos was a college dorm room. He paused the video. Julia had sent him pictures of her dorm before. This streamer’s bed curtains, and the cute cartoon cotton candy charm hanging from them, were identical to the ones in Julia’s photo. At the time, he’d assumed they were Julia’s and had casually complimented them. Julia had then launched into a long complaint about her roommate. She said one of her roommates was incredibly jealous of her. And that this roommate was always spreading rumors that Julia was trying to steal her boyfriend. It seemed Julia’s roommate was this “CottonCandy.” “CottonCandy” appeared to be desperate for money. Alexander didn’t want those insulting comments seen by anyone else, where they might spread and cause a PR problem. So he replied: [Delete the comments you just posted. If you can prove you’re right, I’ll give you fifteen thousand dollars.] I laughed out loud. [Nice try. Anyone can make empty promises.] [When school started, your fiancée asked me to carry her bags and said she’d pay me fifty bucks.] [And guess what? The money went straight to my boyfriend’s account!] [F***ing losers!] I immediately sent him a screenshot of the chat log. To make sure he didn’t think I’d faked it, I even took a screen recording and sent it again. Alexander watched in weary fascination as CottonCandy sent another string of furious, censored curses. A moment later, the text was replaced by a sixty-second voice memo. A comment drifted by, exasperated: [This girl is something else. When her curses get censored, she just sends a voice memo.] Alexander: [Send me your account number.] My tirade paused. My guard went up instantly. But when I saw the comments warning me not to give him my info… My rebellious streak took over. I sent him my bank account number. Ping! A transfer of $1,500. Whoa, he was a real-life money fountain! [Gold digger! You really lucked out!] Alexander: [Stop swearing. I’ll add another fifteen hundred.] Alexander stared at his phone. He just wanted the barrage of filth polluting his ears to stop. This was the easiest way to solve the problem. CottonCandy sent a new voice memo. He opened it. Unlike the sharp, grating insults from before, this time her voice was soft, with a hint of hesitation. [Really?] If he didn’t know her true nature, he might have thought “CottonCandy” was a shy, sweet girl. He replied with a single, concise word: [Yes.] CottonCandy: [Thank you.] This time, my thanks were genuine. The first-line treatment for my mother wasn’t working. The second-line treatment cost several thousand dollars a day. The three thousand from Alexander, combined with my savings, was just enough to cover the immediate need. I quickly transferred the money to my mom. [Mom, I’m coming home for the holiday weekend. Tell the doctors to start the second-line treatment. Don’t wait any longer.] [Money isn’t an issue!] If it weren’t for my and Liam’s tuition, our family’s finances wouldn’t be this tight. I ignored the hateful comments and Alexander’s messages. I had to get ready for my live stream to earn more money. [She’s just obsessed with money. She’d do anything for it.] [So high-and-mighty, yet so desperate for cash. Doing suggestive dances but too scared to show her face. No wonder people say she must be ugly.] Alexander saw that CottonCandy’s profile picture now indicated she was live. He clicked on it. And then, his brow furrowed. The chat was filled with vile comments. Most of them were from men. They would curse at her, then send a gift worth a few cents and demand she make a heart gesture with her hands. He expected “CottonCandy” to lash out. But he watched as the person on screen did exactly as they asked, even saying in a sweet voice, “Thank you for the gift, boss.” Was she really that desperate for money? She would debase herself for such a tiny amount? 4. DragonSlayer_Bro: [Shake that ass a little more. Put on the tail from yesterday and do it. I’ll send you ten hearts.] I stared at the shared screen on my stream, suppressing the nausea rising in my throat. I was about to put on my usual high-pitched voice to reply when I saw Alexander’s username pop up in the viewer list. My face fell. Damn it! I forgot to block him before I went live! There was nothing worse than your enemy seeing you at your most pathetic. Alexander hadn’t planned on getting involved. But the vulgar “DragonSlayer” and his own name, Alexander, both contained a “dragon” sound in their original language. He felt a strange sense of injustice. Why was he the only one getting insulted today? [AX: Tell him off.] [DragonSlayer_Bro: Who the hell are you? A private account with a level-one badge acting tough? sends 10x Hearts] [Anonymous_User: Dragon Bro is the best!] [AX: sends 10x Rockets] I stared at the gift animation taking over my screen, a bizarre expression on my face. For the first time in my life, a jackpot had fallen from the sky. Five thousand dollars, just like that. The male lead was so rich. I was so jealous. A comment cursed: [Is she trying to play the victim? Don’t let her find out the male lead has a bit of a white knight complex. He loves saving damsels in distress.] [Otherwise, he wouldn’t still feel sorry for the female lead later, even after finding out she’s messing around with someone else.] [On the surface, she’s a pampered princess, but deep down, the female lead is starved for love.] I blinked, processing the new information. No wonder the male lead could tolerate being cheated on. The guy had issues. I rolled my eyes. The female lead was “starved for love”? What about me, starved for both money and love? Julia had two loving, wealthy parents. She was always bragging to me about how amazing they were. How was she starved for love? Being around people like her for too long… I felt like my whole body was sprouting dark, envious mushrooms. Alexander watched the stream, satisfied as he listened to a new string of curses erupt from my end. DragonSlayer_Bro, thoroughly humiliated, left the stream. Thanks to the huge gifts, my stream’s popularity had skyrocketed. Before I signed off, I saw that Alexander was still there. Remembering his “white knight complex,” an idea sparked. I spoke into the mic, my voice deliberately soft. “Thank you all for the gifts tonight. I have to go to work now, bye-bye!” The comments: [??? Side character, what’s with the sob story? You’ve never mentioned working at night before.] Alexander glanced at the time. It was ten p.m. Alexander: [You’re that short on cash?] His question hit a nerve. I glared at the screen, my fingers flying across the keyboard: [Super short, you evil capitalist pig!] [Next time you want me to curse someone out, just transfer me the money directly. Don’t send gifts on the stream. The platform takes a huge cut.] [Someone reported my stream. It’s banned for seven days.] I then sent him a meme I had just made: [I’m very pitiful. Give me money.] He sent another transfer for a thousand dollars. With the note: [Damages.] I replied: [I will find proof of your fiancée’s cheating ASAP and end your cuckold career!] Alexander chuckled and didn’t reply. It was just a cheating fiancée; he didn’t really care. After all, his own parents had separate lovers after they married. He was only concerned about the potential negative impact on his family’s reputation, which was why he’d paid “CottonCandy” to delete the comments. Now, he was simply finding it amusing to tease her. She had a bad temper, but she was easily placated with money. As for his arranged marriage, it didn’t matter who the person was. He just needed to perform the role of a dutiful husband. Alexander saw that Julia had sent him another flurry of video links. He found it incredibly boring but replied to each one. Then, he called his secretary. “Look into Julia’s recent activities. I want to know who she’s been with.”

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When I walked out of that so-called home for the last time, I left the lab report on the table. The one with the leukemia diagnosis. It all started when my sister had a check-up at the hospital where I work. They found something, and as it turned out, my bone marrow was a perfect match. On a dark impulse, I twisted the truth. I told my family I was the one who was sick. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but their reaction was unanimous—and brutal. They were dead set against my sister donating her marrow to me. “Donating is risky. How could we let your sister take that chance?” they said. “This is your battle to fight,” another voice added. “Don’t drag your sister down with you. We all have our fate. You have to accept yours.” Even my sister, Cobie, refused without a second thought, saying she was trying to get pregnant. In that single, shattering moment, I saw it all with perfect clarity. The fragile bonds of our family, already stretched to their breaking point, were nothing but a sham. They had ripped away the last shred of decency with their own hands. And just like that, a strange sense of peace washed over me. There was nothing left to hold on to. 1 When I got the news about the perfect match, I had just found out I was pregnant. My supervising doctor, a mentor to me, pulled me aside, his face grim. If I wanted to donate bone marrow to my sister, Cobie Warren, I would almost certainly have to terminate the pregnancy. He urged me to think it through, to talk it over carefully with my husband. And I did hesitate. We had been trying for this baby for so long, enduring rounds of fertility treatments and endless holistic remedies. When I told my husband, Mark, he was so ecstatic he practically wanted to rent a billboard to announce to the world that he was going to be a dad. How could I possibly give that up? But Cobie was only twenty-nine. She wasn’t like me. She was the golden child, the apple of our parents’ eye, raised in the warmth of their constant affection. If anything happened to her, it would destroy them. So, after a long afternoon of wrestling with my conscience, I decided to go to their house after my shift. 2 When I arrived, they were all gathered around the dinner table, a perfect picture of family harmony. Cobie and her husband were there, along with my younger brother, Terrence, and his girlfriend. The wine was flowing, and laughter filled the room. They were clearly celebrating something. My arrival shattered the idyllic scene. The conversation died. Smiles faded from their faces, and they awkwardly lowered their glasses. Only my mother managed a brittle laugh, feigning warmth as she pulled me toward the table. “We thought you were busy, so we didn’t call. Look at you, just in time for a feast! Sit, sit.” But she couldn’t hide the stiff, distant way she touched my arm. The gesture was all politeness, no love. A sudden, wicked impulse sparked within me. I broke from my usual timid self and turned, gently taking the hand that was hovering over my arm. “Mom,” I said softly. “I’m sick.” Her hand went rigid in mine, but she forced a smile. “Oh. Well, then you should eat up. A good meal cures anything.” She was already pulling away, not even bothering to ask what was wrong. As she moved a chair for me, she deftly slipped her hand from my grasp. Terrence scowled from across the table. “Sophie, did you come here just to ruin the mood? Every time we have something to celebrate, you show up and cast a shadow over everything.” “Cobie just got selected for an international performance tour. Don’t tell me you didn’t know.” I ignored him, sinking into the chair my mother had pulled out. “…I have leukemia.” Terrence’s mouth snapped shut. My mother’s hand trembled as she passed me a pair of chopsticks, and they clattered to the floor. The silence in the dining room was so absolute you could hear a pin drop. Her eyes welled up, and she started dabbing at them with a napkin. From the head of the table, my father, Richard, who had been silent until now, finally spoke. “You need to let your in-laws know,” he said, his voice flat. “They can certainly afford the treatment.” He shot me a disapproving look. “You need to handle these things with a clear head, not storm in here like this. The last thing we need is you scaring your mother into a stroke after you’re cured.” My mother wiped her face and started piling food onto my plate. “Your father’s right. No matter how big the problem is, we can talk about it after you’ve had a good meal.” Cobie chimed in, adding a piece of chicken to my plate with a bright, girlish smile. “Exactly. You get sick because you worry too much. Just eat more, smile more, and everything will be fine.” I didn’t touch my food. My gaze swept over each of them, one by one. “I didn’t come here to borrow money.” “I just came to ask… if Cobie would be willing to donate her bone marrow to me.” The room fell silent again. After a long, tense moment, my father slammed his chopsticks down on the table. “Don’t be ridiculous!” His brow furrowed into a deep, angry line. “Do you have any idea how risky that procedure is?” A bitter laugh escaped my lips. “A small risk to save my life… isn’t that worth it?” He stubbornly turned his face away. “We will not let your sister take that risk. Even a one percent chance is a hundred percent if it happens to Cobie.” His answer didn’t surprise me. As the second child, the one who was sent away to be raised by relatives, I knew he’d never truly welcomed my birth, nor my return to the family years later. But my mother and sister… they had always been kinder. Or so I thought. I turned my hopeful gaze to my mother. She was already crying. I looked at her, clinging to a desperate hope that this crisis might finally break through the wall of formality between us. That she might, for once, pull me into an embrace like the ones she so freely gave Cobie. But the words that came from her, spoken through tears, were colder than any I had ever heard. “My child,” she whispered, her voice choked with a sorrow that felt utterly false. “We all have our fate. You have to accept it, no matter how unfair it seems.” She clutched at her chest, her voice thick with tragedy. “How can you be so selfish? Just because you’re sick, you want to drag your sister down with you? If I lose both of my daughters, how am I supposed to go on?” And in that moment, I understood. She wasn’t afraid of losing two daughters. She was only afraid of losing one. Cobie. My last flicker of hope died. I turned to Cobie herself. Ever since I had been brought back to this house, she had treated me with a certain detached kindness. Her words were often patronizing, but I’d always chalked it up to her sheltered, privileged upbringing. At least she would tell Terrence to back off when he was bullying me. So I held on to one final, foolish thread of expectation. But the Cobie I saw now was a stranger. Her usual gentle demeanor was gone, replaced by a face contorted with rage. “Sophie, you’re doing this on purpose!” She shot to her feet, her body trembling as if she had been holding back this venom for years. “I’ve wanted to say this for so long! You’ve always held it against Mom and Dad for sending you away. That’s why you’ve been this… this dark cloud ever since you came back, always finding a way to make everyone miserable.” “You walk around with that timid, wounded act, like you suffered so much. We all know what you’re doing! You’re just trying to make them feel guilty!” Her chest heaved with emotion, as if she were the one who had been deeply wronged. She took a shaky breath, forcing down a sob before she continued. “But there’s a limit to everything! We put up with your little dramas, but this? Asking for bone marrow like it’s nothing? You just want to put Mom and Dad in an impossible position!” “If they say no, you’ll paint them as heartless monsters. If they say yes, they risk losing both of us. How can you be so vicious? Why can’t you stand to see us happy?” As she spoke, she wrapped her arms around our mother, who finally broke down, weeping into Cobie’s shoulder. “Cobie, stop,” my mother cried. “It’s all your father’s fault… he was so obsessed with having a son and a daughter, otherwise we never would have…” She didn’t finish the sentence, but everyone knew what she meant. Otherwise we never would have had you. Terrence stood up too, flanking our mother’s other side. The three of them stood united, their eyes burning with the same shared resentment for me. Cobie lifted her chin, striking a pose of noble self-sacrifice. “Sophie, I won’t let you hurt them. I’m telling you right now, I will not donate my bone marrow.” She held our mother tighter, a proud protector. “This has nothing to do with them. So when the story gets out, don’t you dare say they’re cruel. It’s me. I’m the selfish one. I’m the one who’s afraid Mom will be heartbroken if she loses both of us.” “This is my decision. I refuse to donate. I’ll take all the blame!” She looked as if she were a martyr marching to her execution. My fingers tightened around the lab report in my pocket. I couldn’t help but let out a soft, humorless laugh. After a moment, I locked my eyes on her and asked, each word deliberate and sharp. “Are you sure? You won’t donate, no matter what?” Cobie gently wiped a tear from our mother’s cheek, her expression hardening with resolve. “Never,” she said. “If you want to blame someone, blame me. Don’t take it out on our parents. I’m trying to get pregnant. I can’t be expected to risk my baby’s life to save yours.” Tears of bitter amusement streamed down my face. I gave her a look filled with a strange kind of pity. “You’re right,” I said quietly. “You said it perfectly. You can’t kill your own child just to save someone else.” Cobie, oblivious, turned back to comfort our mother, who was now sobbing uncontrollably, gasping for breath as if she were the one with the death sentence. “It’s all your fault, Richard!” she wailed, collapsing against her children. “You and your obsession with having the perfect family!” My father, having had enough of her accusations, slammed his hand on the table and shot to his feet. He stalked over to me and pulled a thick, ornate envelope from his jacket pocket. He threw it on the table in front of me as if I were a beggar. “Whether you’re really sick or just faking it, take this money and get out.” “If you give your mother a heart attack, don’t blame me for what happens next!” The envelope was beautifully made, clearly prepared with care. I picked it up. On the front, in elegant handwriting, it read: To our dearest daughter, may your tour be a stunning success. Have a wonderful time. I let out a dry, self-mocking laugh and looked up at him. “Giving me this money to save my life… won’t that get in the way of your precious daughter’s little trip?” My father glared at me, his voice devoid of any warmth. “Don’t play games with me. You’re the one who can’t accept her place, always demanding fairness where there is none. Fine. If you want to burn this bridge, I’ll light the match.” “I never wanted another child, but you were born. I still paid to have you raised. You never went hungry, you always had clothes on your back. You should be grateful, not constantly showing up here looking for trouble.” He turned his face away, as if sealing his decision. “I’ve been patient with you for your mother’s sake, but you crossed a line tonight. Don’t be surprised when I no longer consider you my daughter.” The eviction notice had finally been served. The room fell silent once more. They parted, creating a path for me to leave. Every single one of them watched me, waiting for the filth to take the handout and disappear. In that instant, everything became clear. No matter how much I humbled myself, I would never be a part of this family. And frankly, I didn’t want to be. When I looked up again, the cautious, timid girl was gone. I casually tossed the envelope in my hand and slowly rose to my feet. In my heels, I was just as tall as him. I was no longer the little girl who waited anxiously all month for his brief visits. I met his eyes directly and asked quietly, “Since you keep saying you never wanted me, why was I born?” “…Did you lose control? Or am I some other man’s child?” My father’s pupils contracted. He was so stunned he couldn’t speak. His lips trembled for a moment before he raised his hand to strike me. I sidestepped, and he stumbled forward, off balance. I jutted my chin toward my mother. “And you.” “Stop with the crocodile tears. It’s a little late for regrets, isn’t it? If you didn’t want me, why weren’t you more determined back then?” “What, did my father force himself on you? Are you telling me your 180-pound self couldn’t fight him off?” Her sobbing stopped abruptly. The mask of the guilty, long-suffering mother finally cracked. Her finger trembled as she pointed at me, her face flushed with rage. “…You wretched creature! How could two children from the same womb be so different?” Seeing her beloved mother insulted, Cobie burst into dramatic sobs and threw herself into her arms. Terrence lunged at me, trying to grab my wrist. Their partners jumped in, trying to break up the chaos. The dining room erupted. In the scuffle, my father’s hand connected with my cheek. A sharp, stinging slap. My head snapped to the side, and I felt a warm trickle of blood from my nose. “Get out!” my father roared. “From this day on, we are done! The Warren family does not have a disgraceful child like you!” My hand flew instinctively to my stomach. The baby was safe. It was only then that I fully realized the profound, miraculous connection I already had with the tiny life inside me. This was what I wanted, and I would protect it at all costs. I lifted my head, my eyes locking onto his. “Fine,” I said, my voice steady. “You said it. I am no longer a Warren.” He shot me a look of pure disgust, his face a cold mask. “That’s right. I, Richard Warren, said it. My word is my bond.” I wiped my face with the back of my hand. “Good. From now on, we each face our own fate. Whoever comes begging to the other is a pathetic, spineless worm.” My father’s jaw tightened, but he said nothing. It was Cobie who screamed back, her voice laced with tears and hatred. “That’s right! Whoever comes begging is a goddamn son of a bitch, and I hope they rot in hell!” “Now get out! Are you trying to kill my mother?” A slow, satisfied smile spread across my face. I pulled the lab report from my pocket and tossed it onto the envelope on the table. “Excellent, Cobie. Remember what you said today.” “And I don’t need this money. You, on the other hand, might find it useful.” 3 Leaving the Warren house, I should have felt elated. The dilemma that had tormented me all afternoon was resolved. I could finally keep my baby without a shred of guilt. The family I had spent years trying to please was finally out of my life. But as I started to laugh, tears streamed down my face. I sat alone at a deserted bus stop. All around me, people were heading home. Only I had no home to return to. My phone buzzed with notifications from the family group chat, a group of over sixty relatives. I opened it to see a new announcement from my father. [Our disgraceful daughter, Sophie Warren, has verbally abused her parents and demonstrated a complete lack of moral character. We have officially severed all ties with her. From this day forward, any debts she incurs or donations she solicits in our family’s name are not our responsibility. Consider this a public notice!] Reading the message, I felt the blood turn to ice in my veins. I couldn’t imagine the sheer, soul-crushing despair I would feel if I were actually the one who was sick. Richard Warren was a ruthless man. But the person he was truly damning to a dead end was himself. The announcement ignited the usually quiet family chat. Everyone wanted to know the gossip. My aunt from my dad’s side probed, [A child not raised by your side is always hard to manage, huh? But the father is still responsible for the child’s failings. You can’t just wash your hands of it.] My other uncle tried to mediate, [Don’t be so rash, Richard. Blood is thicker than water. You’re family. This will all blow over once tempers cool.] Seeing that his announcement wasn’t being taken seriously, Terrence jumped in. [Sophie is sick, and she’s trying to drag Cobie down with her. She’s demanding that Cobie risk her life to donate bone marrow.] [She’s miserable, so she wants my sister to be miserable too. She’s trying to guilt-trip my parents into losing both of their children.] Terrence’s message threw the chat into an uproar. [I heard donating bone marrow isn’t that risky these days?] [If the risk is small, maybe she just wants to live? Maybe she’s not trying to hurt your sister or pressure your parents.] [The poor girl. If the risk really is minimal, maybe Cobie should just do it.] Seeing the tide of opinion turning, Cobie herself made an appearance. [To all my dear relatives, I know we shouldn’t air our dirty laundry in public, but my father posted that announcement because he’s worried you might be taken advantage of.] [Whether the risk of marrow donation is big or small is an unknown. But what is certain is that Sophie will be asking all of you to get tested.] [My father is just afraid that if one of you donates and something goes wrong, it will create a terrible situation. He’s just trying to give everyone a heads-up.] Terrence immediately added to her narrative. [If she comes to any of you, and something happens, our family takes absolutely no responsibility.] That did it. The few relatives who had spoken up for me went silent. No one wanted that kind of trouble at their doorstep. Cobie then added a few more lines, dripping with feigned wisdom and grace. [It’s only human to be afraid of risk. There’s no shame in not wanting to donate. We all have families to think of, parents and children to care for. Honestly, if it were me who was sick, I would never, ever ask this of my family.] To avoid being dragged into the mess, several people quickly chimed in to agree with Cobie. And just like that, my excommunication from the Warren family was sealed. I leaned back on the cold bench, a bitter laugh escaping my lips. Laughing and crying, I took screenshots of the entire conversation and then called Mark. “Honey,” I said, my voice thick with emotion. “I’m keeping the baby. Please, come take me home.” 4 I’m sure no one ever looked at the lab report I left on the envelope. Cobie’s social media continued to be a curated stream of perfection. On Mother’s Day, she posted a photo of her and our mother at a spiritual retreat. The caption read: [Our bodies are a gift from our parents. Mom says the best gift I can give her is to take care of myself.] A few days later, I received a good-luck charm, sent by my mother through a third party. That was it. Just a small, impersonal token. Three days before her international tour, she posted a photo of the entire family seeing her off. [A true family only wants to lift each other up. They would never choose to drag you down.] Terrence liked it immediately and commented: [Exactly.] Two days before her tour, she posted a bold declaration. [Goodbye to all the drama and toxic people. This girl is taking flight tomorrow!] The comments were filled with a chorus of support and loving goodbyes from the family. The day before her tour, Cobie’s social media went silent. I wasn’t surprised. That would have been the day she received her own medical report. 5 Cobie’s dance troupe had come to our hospital for their pre-tour physicals. Thanks to my mentor, I knew her results ahead of time. And since he was a leading specialist in leukemia, and several of us in the department had recently joined the bone marrow registry, it was a very neat, very tidy coincidence that I was the first to know about the perfect match… Cobie found me just before the end of my shift. She and Terrence were waiting outside my mentor’s office. “Doctor, there must be a mistake with these results,” Cobie said, her voice tight with anxiety but still trying to sound reasonable and calm. “You see, my sister, Sophie, works in your department. We’ve had a bit of a falling out recently.” “She’s angry that I wouldn’t donate bone marrow to her, so I’m sure she tampered with my results.” At her words, everyone in the office turned to stare. This seemed to bolster her confidence. “So, Doctor, could you please just correct the report for me? My dance troupe needs the health certificate, and my flight leaves tonight.” My mentor pushed his glasses up his nose. “Well…” He chose his words carefully. “A hospital would never make a mistake on a test result this critical…” Before he could finish, Terrence exploded. “You’d never make a mistake? Then why did you let Sophie forge the results? You’d better give me a straight answer, or I’ll sue your entire department into the ground!” I walked in just in time to witness this scene. Terrence lunged at me, shoving me hard. My mentor shot up from his chair, his face like thunder. He grabbed Terrence by the arm and flung him aside. “Call security!” he roared. Cobie quickly plastered on a placating smile. “Doctor, please, my brother is just upset. If you could just change the results… we won’t even press charges against Sophie. I’m just in a hurry. My flight is at 11 p.m.” My mentor looked from her to me, his brow furrowed. “You didn’t tell her the results beforehand?” I crossed my arms. “I left the lab report for them. Apparently, they didn’t bother to look at it.” The smile on Cobie’s face froze. My colleagues quickly formed a protective circle around me, one of them gently touching my belly as they whispered. “I can’t believe you were even considering donating to them after how they treated you.” “You must be a saint. Why would you ever sacrifice your own baby for that ungrateful monster?” Cobie heard their words. She staggered back, collapsing into a nearby chair. Only Terrence was left, still raging blindly. “So, you’re all in on it together! Fine! You just wait, Sophie. Your department is finished! I’ll make sure every single one of you loses your job!” No one in the office paid him any attention. All eyes were on Cobie. A single drop of blood welled in her nostril. Then another. They fell, dark and stark, onto the pristine white fabric of her dress. Cobie’s composure shattered. Her eyes, wide with panic, filled with tears. She frantically pinched her nose shut and tried to cover the growing crimson stains on her dress. She looked up at me, her face a mask of terror and fury. “It was you! You did this!” No one responded. The faces around her were filled with a dawning, terrible pity. And then she broke completely, sobbing uncontrollably as security guards gently but firmly escorted her and her still-blustering brother out of the office. Cobie did not go on her international tour. The whole family scrambled, pulling strings to get her emergency appointments and second opinions all over the city. The results, of course, were all the same. And eventually, they found the lab report I had left behind. Only then did they begin to realize what they had done.

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I stumbled out of the Finance office, my head spinning, my face as white as a sheet. The woman in Finance said the year-end bonus for “Ava Ross” had already been claimed. The paperwork was signed half an hour ago. I tried to tell her that I was Ava Ross, but the look she gave me made it clear she thought I was a liar. I burst out of the office in a daze and ran straight into Mr. Henderson, the head of HR. He asked me what team I was on, then flatly stated that it was impossible for the company to have two employees named Ava Ross. I quickly explained that I was on Team 5, that I’d been with the company for six months, and that all of the team’s performance data was my work. But Henderson cut me off. He said the Ava Ross on Team 5 was the niece of Vice President Croft—a returning graduate with a master’s degree and a complete, verified file. He then warned me not to try and pull a fast one on the company, telling me to think carefully about the consequences. A fast one? I stood there, frozen, my mind a complete blank. Who was it? Who had stolen my name, my achievements, and my hundred-thousand-dollar bonus, and was now brazenly impersonating me? 1 The door to the Finance department clicked shut behind me. I stood in the hallway, clutching my employee ID badge. The plastic card was printed with my name—Ava Ross, Team 5, Operations Specialist. I took two steps back and pushed the door open again. “Brenda, could you please check one more time? Maybe there’s a system error?” Brenda didn’t even look up from her monitor. “Ava Ross, employee ID 20231017. Year-end bonus, one hundred and three thousand dollars, signed for at 10:12 AM this morning. It’s all here in black and white, the wire transfer is complete. What do you want me to check?” “But I was in the weekly meeting at 10:12! How could I have signed for it?” Brenda finally looked up, her eyes scanning me from head to toe. “Then go talk to your team lead. Talk to HR. Talk to anyone you want, just not me. The process on my end is finished. I can’t issue a duplicate payment.” I backed out of the room, my head buzzing. One hundred and three thousand dollars. I had spent six months building our account matrix from scratch, generating over one point two million in GMV. That bonus was mine. I had earned it. I pulled out my phone and checked my bank account. The balance was three hundred and forty dollars. No incoming transactions. So whose pocket did that money go into? I practically ran to the Human Resources department. Mr. Henderson was sipping tea. He set his cup down when he saw me. “Mr. Henderson, my bonus was picked up by someone else. Finance said someone forged my signature—” “Hold on.” Henderson held up a hand. “What’s your name?” “Ava Ross. From Team 5.” He swiveled his monitor around and clicked his mouse a few times. “Ava Ross, Operations Specialist, Team 5, ID 20231017, correct?” “Yes!” “That individual was already here this morning. She signed the bonus confirmation form and collected her payment.” Henderson stared at me. “You say you’re Ava Ross. Then who was she?” “How should I know who she is? I’m Ava Ross! My driver’s license, my bank cards, my—” Henderson pulled a folder from his drawer, opened it, and pushed it across the desk toward me. “See for yourself.” Inside was a complete employee file. The photo wasn’t me. It was a woman with glamorous waves in her hair, flawless makeup, and a designer suit. Name: Ava Ross. Education: University of Manchester, Master’s Degree. Emergency Contact: Jonathan Croft (Relationship: Uncle). Jonathan Croft. The company’s Vice President. “Mr. Henderson, this isn’t me. I was an internal referral from Mark. You guys simplified the onboarding process for me—” “A referral?” Henderson frowned. “There’s no record of a referral in our system. If you’re claiming to be Ava Ross, where are your hiring documents? Where’s your contract?” “I signed a contract! Two copies. One for me, one for the company—” “The only copy the company has is this one.” Henderson closed the folder. “It belongs to Mr. Croft’s niece.” My mouth fell open, but no sound came out. “Young lady, I don’t know what your situation is, but the company’s records are crystal clear. There is only one Ava Ross in Team 5. She has the degree, the connections, and Mr. Croft as her guarantor. If you have an issue with your identity, you can file a formal complaint. But if you’re planning to cause a scene here—” “I’m not causing a scene! I—” Henderson’s phone rang. He answered it. “Mr. Croft. Yes, someone just came in to complain… says her name is also Ava Ross… Yes, of course. I understand.” When he hung up, his face was a grim mask. “Mr. Croft says the company is cracking down on employment eligibility. If you can’t produce valid hiring documents, you should leave on your own. Don’t disrupt company operations.” My nails dug into my palms. “The presentation slides from this morning’s meeting are still on my computer. All the performance data, the dashboard screenshots—” “That’s enough. Go back to your desk for now. HR will investigate this.” Henderson looked down at his papers, dismissing me. I turned and almost walked into the doorframe. Two colleagues from the admin department walked by, shot me a look, whispered something to each other, and laughed. I hurried back to the Team 5 workspace and sat down at my desk, turning on my computer. A pop-up window appeared. “Your account permissions have been changed. Please contact the system administrator if you have any questions.” I tried to open the backend dashboard. My operator account, my data panels, my admin access—all of it was grayed out. I was locked out. I logged into the company’s internal messaging platform. My name was still on the Team 5 member list, but when I clicked on it, the profile picture had been changed. It was now a picture of the woman with the wavy hair. I stared at the screen, my fingers numb with cold. Three days ago, there had been a system-wide maintenance update. IT said they were reassigning backend permissions. It wasn’t an update. Someone had transferred my account, my achievements, all traces of my work, to another “Ava Ross.” My ID, my education, my employment file, my system access. On every possible level within this company, I had been replaced. And the person who replaced me was using my name to walk away with my money. 2 I sat motionless at my desk, replaying the events of the last three months in my head. Three months ago, the IT department sent out a company-wide email about a system data migration. I didn’t think much of it at the time, just reset my password and moved on. But now I remembered—after that “migration,” I’d had trouble logging into the dashboard a few times. Once, a notification popped up: “This account is already logged in on another device.” I reported it to IT. They said it was a system bug and told me to just log in again. I believed them. Even back then, someone was already using my employee ID to access my account. I opened the company directory and searched for “Ava Ross.” One result. The profile picture was the woman with the wavy hair. Department: Operations Team 5. Position: Operations Specialist. Direct Supervisor: David Chen. Start Date: Six months ago. Exactly the same as mine. I searched for my own name again. Nothing. There was only one Ava Ross in the directory. Her. I took a deep breath, stood up, and walked toward my team lead’s office. David was on the phone. He saw me and waved for me to wait. When he hung up, I spoke. “David, my backend access has been revoked, and my name is gone from the directory. Is there some kind of mistake?” David looked puzzled. “Revoked? When did this happen?” “I just found out. The system says my account permissions were changed, and all my data was transferred to someone else’s name.” “Someone else? Who?” “Someone who is also named Ava Ross. David, do you know this person?” He pushed his glasses up his nose and typed on his computer. “Oh… Mr. Croft assigned her here last month. Said she was on loan from the parent company and just needed a temporary placement on my team roster. I thought it was weird that her name was also Ava Ross, but it came from Croft, so I didn’t ask questions.” “A temporary placement? David, she’s using my placement. She’s using my employee ID.” The expression on his face changed. “What did you say?” “Check the system logs. The permission changes from three days ago. All of my performance data, my accounts, my backend access—it was all transferred to this person. She used my name and my work to claim the year-end bonus. One hundred and three thousand dollars.” David was silent for a full ten seconds. “Ava, this… have you spoken to Henderson in HR?” “I did. He said the system only has one Ava Ross, and she’s Mr. Croft’s niece. He told me to show him my employment contract.” “What about your contract?” “I was referred by Mark, so the process was simplified. The company should have my file—” “Let me check.” David picked up his phone and dialed HR. “Hey, Cindy? Can you look up the employee file for Ava Ross on Team 5 for me? Right, ID 20231017… yeah… what? There’s only one file? Okay, got it.” He hung up, his expression grim. “HR says there’s only one file for Ava Ross on Team 5. The one belonging to Mr. Croft’s niece. Yours… is gone.” “How is that possible? I signed a contract! Two copies, the day I started. The company stamped them—” “Ava, I believe you,” David said, lowering his voice. “But this involves Mr. Croft. I’m just a team lead… you understand, right?” I stood in front of his desk, speechless. “Don’t panic,” he added. “I’ll ask around quietly. But whatever you do, don’t confront Croft. He’s been here for years, he’s got deep roots. You won’t win.” I nodded and backed out of his office. When I got back to my desk, Greg—the resident old-timer from the team next to us—moseyed over with his mug. “Hey, Ava. Heard there was some trouble down in Finance? Didn’t get your bonus?” News traveled fast. “Yeah, there’s an issue.” A smirk played on his lips. “I knew it. A kid fresh out of college for less than two years pulling in over a million in sales? Sounded too good to be true. It’s good the company caught on.” “Greg, I did that work.” “Sure, sure. Whatever you say.” He took a sip of his tea and walked away. My hand tightened on my mouse, my knuckles turning white. At two o’clock, I received a message from Henderson’s assistant: “Mr. Croft wants to see you in the third-floor conference room at 3:00 PM sharp.” What did this mean? A confrontation? Or a resolution? I gathered what little proof I had: screenshots of conversations with clients, check-in posts on social media from the office, and a few screenshots from our team’s group chat. It wasn’t much, but it was something. It proved I had worked here. At 2:55, I arrived at the conference room. The door was open. Three people were sitting inside. Vice President Croft was at the head of the table, his hair perfectly combed. Henderson from HR sat beside him. The third person sat across from them. Wavy hair, a three-thousand-dollar coat, perfect makeup, and nails glittering with rhinestones. She turned her head and looked at me. This was the first time I had ever seen the “other Ava.”

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At twenty-eight, I walked into the gala with a partner from a prestigious law firm on my arm. My childhood friend, Alex, sauntered over with a glass of champagne, a smirk on his face. “Who would’ve thought,” he mused, “the two people who once argued until they were red in the face at the debate championships would be here now, fingers intertwined.” Later that night, long after I’d returned home, my phone screen lit up. The name displayed was Alexander Fryman. It had been months since our divorce. His voice, low and rough, came through the line. “That riverside penthouse you insisted on when we divorced,” he asked, “was it because you could see his law firm from the window?” The question threw me back ten years. I was eighteen, and I’d stumbled upon a scene: a teenage Alexander, fumbling to fasten a girl’s bra clasp. She was a scholarship student, and he was helping her. His expression was as serious as if he were performing a sacred rite, but his fingers were clumsy, awkward. Eight years later, I married Alexander, just as our families had always planned. Everyone in our city’s elite circles knew about the portrait he kept hidden in his study. It wasn’t of me. It was of her, the girl from all those years ago. In the third year of our marriage, I asked for a divorce. He was silent for a long time before finally signing the papers. His only words were a quiet promise that if I ever needed anything, he would be there to help. 1 A cold wind rattled the windows, but inside, the apartment was warm. The man sitting on the sofa across from me was dressed in an impeccable suit, his posture long and lean. His face was the same as it had been at eighteen—sharply defined, with deep-set eyes. The only difference was the fresh cut on his temple, a stark, angry line against his skin. An hour ago, I’d gotten a call from the police station. Alexander had been in a fight. When I arrived, a woman was cupping his face, gently dabbing at the wound. I recognized her. Emily, a classmate from high school. The moment she saw me, she recoiled like a startled deer. Alexander immediately moved to shield her, his voice sharp with annoyance as he spoke to me. “She’s easily frightened. Don’t scare her.” I said nothing, simply followed an officer to take care of the paperwork. By the time I returned, Emily was gone. The drive home was silent, at least between us. Alexander was on his phone the entire time, and even now, he was still cooing softly to the woman on the other end. I had never seen this side of him before. The tenderness in his eyes, the indulgent focus, all of it—all his patience was reserved for Emily. It was in that moment that the thought of divorce took root, firm and unshakeable. 2 If Alexander and I were childhood friends destined for an arranged marriage, then Emily was his great, unrequited love—the one that got away. We all met in high school. Unlike us, who came from wealth and privilege, Emily was the scholarship student. She was beautiful, smart, and had a relentlessly optimistic and driven personality. From the moment she transferred into our class, she had Alexander’s undivided attention. I used to think it was a passing infatuation, a novelty. That changed the day Emily was framed for stealing class funds. A few of the other girls cornered her in the girls’ restroom. By the time I got there, they were gone, leaving Emily alone, her shirt torn off. I took off my jacket, ready to go in and help, but then I saw Alexander step out from one of the stalls. He was holding her clothes. Emily’s back was to him, her voice thick with tears. “You should go. If someone sees us, we’ll never be able to explain this.” “Then we won’t explain,” Alexander said, his voice steady. “Just put your clothes on.” After a tense moment, Emily relented. But for some reason, she couldn’t manage the clasp of her bra. Without hesitation, Alexander stepped forward. “Here, let me.” His expression was solemn, his movements clumsy and uncertain. When the clasp finally clicked into place, I saw the tips of his ears burning a furious red. He turned his head, and his eyes met mine. A flash of panic crossed his face before he composed himself and walked toward me. “You’re just in time. Can you help her?” He started to leave, but then turned back. “And please,” he added, his voice low, “keep this between us.” I promised I would. But by that afternoon, a photo of Alexander helping Emily with her clothes had spread like wildfire across the entire campus. He was convinced I had betrayed him. That day, for the first time ever, he unleashed his anger on me. “Victoria, don’t think for a second that just because my parents have your back, I won’t do anything to you,” he seethed. “You might be the daughter-in-law they want, but you’re not my wife! No one gets to decide who I marry.” I bit my lip. “Believe it or not, I had nothing to do with this.” He laughed, a cold, bitter sound. “You were the only other person there. Who else could it have been?” “It wasn’t me!” I lifted my chin, my voice stubborn. “Besides, why would I spread a rumor like that about her?” “Because you’re jealous that she and I are together.” The world seemed to tilt. I stared at him, my mind reeling. “When… when did that happen?” He looked at me, his eyes filled with scorn. “I saw her. It’s my responsibility to take care of her now.” “But, we…” He cut me off, his patience gone. “Victoria, you didn’t actually think I liked you just because I looked out for you all these years, did you?” I felt like I’d been plunged into ice water, frozen to the spot. That night, the Fryman family found out about Alexander and Emily. His father dragged him to my house to apologize. Alexander stood there, defiant. “You love Victoria so much,” he sneered at his father, “why don’t you marry her yourself?” The words earned him a beating from both sets of parents. Back then, Alexander hadn’t yet grasped the full picture. He didn’t see that I had been raised from childhood to be the Fryman family’s daughter-in-law. As the sole heir, he had no say in the matter. So, in the end, he married me. Shortly after the photo scandal, Emily transferred to another school. After graduation, Alexander was sent to study abroad. He was gone for eight years. When he returned, he was a different person—the boyish arrogance replaced by a quiet, commanding presence. He came to me and proposed. “We’re both still single,” he said. “Let’s just get it over with.” I knew an arranged marriage was my fate. Marrying someone I had known my whole life seemed like a small mercy. It was only later that I learned the first thing he did upon returning to the country was seek out Emily. But she, with her unyielding pride, had turned him down. Marrying me was just his way of lashing out at her. 3 “I have to go out. You should get some sleep.” Alexander’s voice pulled me from my thoughts. He stood up, already heading for the door, his tone softening as he spoke into his phone. “Don’t be scared, I’m on my way. They won’t touch you… Yes, lock the door. Just wait for me.” I stood up too. “You’re going out this late?” He paused for a fraction of a second before continuing toward the door. “Something came up. I’ll be back very late.” Just as he reached the entryway, I called his name again. He turned, a flicker of annoyance on his face. “What is it now?” “Alexander,” I said, my voice even. “Let’s get a divorce.” Anger instantly flared in his eyes. He fought to control his temper. “What are you on about now? Emily was scared today. She doesn’t have anyone else here, so she called me for help.” I stared at him. “Is ‘helping’ her showing up at the club where she works every single night to run interference for her?” I shot back. “The great Alexander Fryman getting into a brawl over a cocktail waitress and ending up at a police station—is that what you call ‘helping’?” His lips thinned into a hard line, his dark eyes flashing with a dangerous warning. “I will get to the bottom of what happened tonight,” he said, his voice dangerously low. He paused, then added, “And it had better have nothing to do with you.” The words hit me like a bucket of ice water, sending a chill through my entire body. In the two years we’d been married, he had never lost his temper with me. For a while, I’d allowed myself to believe he had finally let go of Emily, that he was ready to build a life with me. Now I saw how foolish I’d been. I suddenly remembered something. A portrait of Emily used to hang in his study, one he had painted himself. He hadn’t hidden it from anyone, not even his family. His grandfather had thrown a monumental fit, and the incident ended with our wedding portrait being hung in its place. The painting of Emily was locked away in a cabinet. In that moment, I understood. He hadn’t compromised at all. He had just found a quieter way to defy his family. The wind howled outside. A gust swept through the open balcony door in the dining room, and I shivered. Just then, a piercing scream erupted from Alexander’s phone. In an instant, the cold fury in his eyes shattered, replaced by raw, undiluted fear. He bolted for the door. “Emily, don’t be afraid! I’ll be there in ten minutes! Don’t you dare open the door for anyone—” He was gone before he finished the sentence. The door clicked shut, sealing away all his tenderness, leaving me in the cold. He didn’t come back that night. I sat on the sofa alone until dawn. As the sun rose, two messages appeared on my phone. The first was a photo of Alexander and Emily walking into a hotel together. The second was a single line: 【Divorce him. Choose me.】 I scrolled up. There were three unread messages from the same number. 【Victoria, I’m back.】 【I’m here whenever you need me.】 【Do you really love him that much? Can’t you love me instead?】 I blinked, my eyes sore and dry, and quickly typed a reply. 【Okay.】 4 Alexander came home the next afternoon. He was wearing a brand-new suit from a designer he normally wouldn’t glance at twice. He was clean, with no trace of perfume on him. But the angry red mark on his throat was impossible to miss. It was clear he’d been with Emily in that hotel room until just a few hours ago. Perhaps out of guilt, he’d brought me a gift. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice clipped. “What I said last night was out of line.” He placed the box on the coffee table. I pulled the divorce papers I’d already prepared from a drawer and slid them across to him. “Take a look. If there are no issues, sign it.” His brow furrowed. “This is about my helping an old classmate? Are you serious? Victoria, when did you become so petty?” I ignored his questions. “Our prenuptial assets were notarized and remain separate. We’ll split the postnuptial cash fifty-fifty. As for property, I only want the riverside penthouse.” Alexander finally looked at me, truly looked at me, his deep-set eyes searching my face. After a moment, a cold smile touched his lips. “Is this your new strategy?” He didn’t believe me. He thought this was some new, manipulative ploy to win him back. And why would he? The Fryman family was a dynasty. Countless other families were desperate to marry their daughters into it. In his mind, I had no reason to ever give up the title of Mrs. Fryman. But the thought had crossed my mind long ago. It was on an ordinary day. Alexander had come home drunk from a business dinner, as he often did. As I moved to help him, he pointed a finger at me, his words slurring. “Victoria, your love… it disgusts me.” I froze, a sharp, acidic pain filling my chest. I could have sworn he used to love me, too. In our first year of high school, we weren’t in the same class. Our classrooms were directly across the hall from each other. One day, an earthquake in the next province sent strong tremors through our city. The first person out of his classroom wasn’t running for the exit. He burst into mine, threw his school jacket over my head, and half-dragged, half-carried me down the stairs. The earthquake caused no damage. The only injury I had was a dark bruise on my wrist from where his fingers had dug into my skin. His friends teased him mercilessly, calling me his “precious cargo” and telling us to just get married already. I expected him to get angry, but instead, he just said, “We will.” “Whoa, don’t be so sure,” one of them joked. “You’ve got a few years until you’re even legal.” Alexander didn’t miss a beat. “If I ever get married and it’s not to her, none of you are invited.” When we did get married, all his friends were there. But what good did it do? 5 Alexander was convinced I was playing a game of push-and-pull, using divorce as a threat. He sat across from me, his expression cold and detached. Every time we fought, I was always the first one to back down. He was waiting for me to crumble, to apologize, just like all the other times. But he didn’t know. This time, I was done. I pulled the agreement toward me and picked up the pen. Under his cool, watchful gaze, I flipped to the last page and signed my name with a steady hand. Then, I offered the pen to him. “If there are no issues, just sign.” In that instant, I saw the realization dawn in his eyes. This wasn’t a game. His expression hardened, and his voice was dangerously low. “You’re sure about this?” I glanced at the clock. “If we leave now, we can still make the last appointment at City Hall.” He said nothing, just stared at me, his dark eyes searching for a crack in my composure. After what felt like an eternity, he looked away. “Fine. Let’s do it.” He signed his name. The tip of his pen paused. “My grandfather’s birthday is next month. I’d like to wait until after the party to tell the family about this.” I had no objection. I stood and pulled a packed suitcase from the corner of the room. “Victoria,” he said, his voice losing some of its edge, “you can stay here.” “There’s no need.” Now that it was over, there was no reason to prolong the inevitable. “If you need anything in the future, just ask,” he added. I didn’t stop. As I reached the front door, he was suddenly behind me. “I’ll drive you.” “You don’t have to. Someone’s coming to get me.” Downstairs, a tall figure stood waiting under a streetlight. The moment he saw me, he strode forward and took the suitcase from my hand as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Once we were in the car, I looked at the handsome, confident man in the driver’s seat. “Nathaniel,” I said, “give me one month.” A soft laugh escaped him. He leaned over, his warmth enveloping me as he clicked my seatbelt into place. “A month is nothing,” he murmured. “I can wait.” 6 Nathaniel and I were classmates in law school. We were always at the top of our class—colleagues, but also rivals. We first properly met at a major debate tournament. The topic was: If you had the superpower to make the person you love fall in love with you, would you use it? We were on opposing sides. The debate was fierce. In the end, my team won. Afterward, he stopped me in the hallway. “If I had that power,” he said, his eyes intense, “I would use it without a second’s hesitation.” I was young and arrogant then, and I went for the kill. “That just means you’re not worthy of being loved.” He just looked at me, a deep, unreadable expression on his face. “I love her, but I also respect her. As long as I don’t give up, I know she’ll see me one day.” I smiled, a little smugly. “So, even the great Nathaniel has someone he can’t have.” He didn’t reply, just watched me in silence. We ended up spending more and more time together because of student government, our interactions a constant battle of wits. Over four years, we somehow became friends. On the day of our graduation, Nathaniel asked me out for a drink. I went. He asked me what my plans were for the future. “What else?” I joked. “For people from families like ours, it’s marry, have kids, and secure long-term partnerships for the family business.” He looked at me, his expression suddenly serious. “Could you wait for me, then? Five years, max. Can you just wait for me?” The bar was loud, and I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right. I drained my glass, and the moment I set it down, he kissed me. I fled. Not because he had crossed a line, but because I realized, with a terrifying jolt, that I was drawn to him. That I had kissed him back. I hated the feeling of losing control. I turned off my phone, cutting off all contact. A week later, when I finally reconnected with my classmates, I found out that Nathaniel had already left the country to study abroad. He was gone for four years. By the time he came back, I was already married.

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1 I was a corporate drone, completely burned out by the toxic culture of Big Tech, when I was unexpectedly dropped into what felt like a workplace power fantasy. The new director, a man named Cross, slammed a folder onto my desk. It was for a project that had been dead for three years. “You have 24 hours,” he sneered. “Bring it back to life. Or get the hell out.” My coworkers shot me pitying glances. The last person who’d handled this project had been driven to quit. I quietly opened the folder, my eyes scanning the tangled mess of legacy code and the completely blank requirements document. But inside, a fire ignited. No more arguing with moronic product managers. No more waiting on laid-back back-end developers to build an API. I, alone, held the power to decide a project’s fate. What would you alpha-grinders from the Big Tech trenches know about this kind of pure, unadulterated joy? A month later, the company’s reigning “King of the Grind,” Pierce, saw me single-handedly juggling five projects, still optimizing code at three in the morning. He lost it. “This is toxic productivity! You’re breaking the rules! I’m reporting you to the chairman!” I looked up from the report I had just finished typing—A Proposal for Triple Overtime Pay During Holidays in Exchange for Voluntary On-Site Server Maintenance—and blinked in confusion. I only had to work sixteen hours a day, and I even got to go home to sleep in a real bed. Compared to my old life at the tech giant, sleeping on a cot, going 72 hours without rest, and being perpetually ready to die for the servers, this wasn’t just good. This was damn paradise. … It only took me twenty hours to resurrect that three-year-old project. When I placed the polished project proposal and a working demo in front of Director Cross, he looked like he’d swallowed a fly. He must have assumed I’d turn in a pile of garbage, because he tossed the folder aside without a second glance. “Looks like you’ve got too much time on your hands.” A humorless smile stretched across his face as he stood and paced toward me, his eyes sizing me up like I was a piece of trash. “The server room in the basement hasn’t been touched in a decade. It’s a dump. Your new job is to clean it. You can come back to your desk when every last scrap is gone.” The office air thickened with sympathy. That server room was a forbidden zone. Rumor had it the place was a graveyard of obsolete machines, with cables so old and tangled they looked like monstrous spiderwebs. It was sweltering in the summer, freezing in the winter, and home to a thriving family of rats. The last person sent there as punishment ended up in the hospital with a severe skin rash after just half a day. This wasn’t a penalty; it was exile. “Understood, Director,” I said with a calm nod. “Get out!” I turned and walked out of his office, his suppressed snicker and the hushed whispers of my colleagues following me. “It’s over. June really screwed up this time.” “Cross is trying to break her.” I ignored them and headed straight for the basement. The heavy iron door groaned open, releasing a cloud of stale, musty air. I took a deep breath. Wait a second. Aside from dust, there was no formaldehyde, no secondhand smoke, no smog warnings. The air was as crisp and clean as a mountaintop in the Alps. I flipped on the lights. Before me was a mountain of discarded equipment and cables coiled like sleeping pythons. My eyes lit up. This wasn’t a junkyard. This was a treasure trove. That server rack gathering dust in the corner? It was a top-of-the-line beast from a decade ago. A little old, sure, but with a few new capacitors and an SSD upgrade, it would blow the ancient desktops we were using upstairs out of the water. And those dust-caked switches? Classic Cisco models, reliable enough to be family heirlooms. Like a starved mouse thrown into a cheese factory, I rubbed my hands together in glee. Cleaning up trash? No, this was a bonus package. I rolled up my sleeves and got to work, sorting, dismantling, testing, and reassembling. Two days later, the server room was pristine. Every cable was neatly tied, and the floor was clean enough to reflect my face. I had also used the “junk” to build myself a supercharged workstation and had taken the liberty of completely overhauling the company’s entire network architecture. When I handed the spotless key and a thirty-page report titled Recommendations for Corporate Network Architecture Optimization and Hardware Upgrades to Director Cross, he was in the middle of tearing Pierce a new one. “You can’t even handle one simple task! You can kiss this month’s bonus goodbye!” He paused when he saw me, taking the key and the report with a look of pure disbelief. “You’re done?” “Yes, Director. I also found some reusable equipment that could save the company a significant amount of money. The details are in the report.” I gestured to the document in his hand, my tone sincere. “And thank you for this opportunity. I’m glad I could contribute.” Cross’s mouth opened and closed, but no words came out. He looked like he wanted to scream at me, but the impossibly professional report in his hands left him speechless. Finally, he managed to force out a single word through gritted teeth. “Out.” 2 Cross clearly didn’t believe me about the server room, so he went to see it for himself. When he came back, he stared at me like I was an alien life form. The next morning, he called me into his office and threw a document on his desk. It was an Employee Daily Work Schedule. “From now on, you will follow this schedule to the letter. No more, and no less.” I picked it up and almost burst into tears of gratitude. 9:00 AM: Arrive at work. 9:30 AM: Morning meeting. 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM: Fix one (1) bug. 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM: Lunch break. 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM: Write fifty (50) lines of code. 5:00 PM: Clock out. Was this a schedule for a human being? No, this was the schedule of a god living in paradise. At my old company, our schedules were broken down by the minute. A lunch break? Getting ten minutes to shut your eyes was a gift from on high. Writing only five hundred lines of code in a day was considered slacking off. “Director,” I said, looking up with genuine tears welling in my eyes, “thank you. You are truly the most humane boss I have ever had.” My sudden display of emotion seemed to baffle him. He frowned and pointed to a corner of the ceiling above my desk. “Don’t try any funny business. I had a new camera installed there. It’s on you 24/7. If I catch you slacking, you’re fired.” I followed his finger and saw a brand-new dome camera pointed directly at my workstation, its little red light blinking patiently. My heart swelled with even more gratitude. This wasn’t surveillance. This was protection! At my old company, they installed cameras to catch you slacking off so they could dock your pay. But here, Director Cross was just trying to make sure I only wrote fifty lines of code, fixed a single bug, and then went home to enjoy my life. He was so worried I wouldn’t be able to control my urge to overwork that he installed a camera just to remind me to take it easy. The man was a saint. I could have wept. “You can count on me, Director!” I snapped to attention, giving him a clumsy salute. “I will complete my mission! I won’t let you down!” Cross just stared at me like I was a lunatic and waved his hand, dismissing me. I returned to my desk and followed the schedule with military precision. Ten minutes to fix the so-called bug. Twenty minutes to write the fifty lines of code. And then… I stared at my screen, lost in thought. What was I supposed to do for the next seven hours? I couldn’t betray Director Cross’s noble intentions. I couldn’t write another line of code or fix another bug. Ah, I knew. I could study. I could learn the company’s internal business logic and familiarize myself with the history of its legacy code. That wasn’t breaking the rules, was it? It was self-improvement, all in the name of becoming a better asset to the company. And so, under the watchful eye of the camera, I opened the company’s long-forgotten internal code repositories and began to absorb knowledge like a dry sponge in a rainstorm. 3 When the clock-out bell rang, I was still hungry for more. I stepped out of the office building, and the warm five o’clock sunlight hit my face. It was almost blinding. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d left work while the sun was still up. I took a deep breath of “freedom,” and instead of heading back to my cramped apartment, I went for a slow, three-lap jog around the park near the office. It felt like an impossible luxury. The next day, I finished my entire “workload” in under half an hour and continued my studies. By the third day, I had read through the source code of every project the company had ever launched. I even mapped out a detailed diagram of the system’s architectural evolution. By the fourth day, I was starting to feel empty. This life, working only thirty minutes a day, filled me with a crushing sense of guilt. I felt like a parasite, wasting the company’s resources and betraying Director Cross’s trust. No. I couldn’t let myself slide into this decadent lifestyle. I opened a blank document and typed out a title with grave seriousness: A Formal Request for the Voluntary Extension of Work Hours and Assumption of Increased Project Responsibilities. In the proposal, I detailed my current state of severe underutilization and listed at least ten new project initiatives that could be launched immediately to generate value. I pleaded with the company to allow me to work a minimum of twelve hours a day and to be assigned three to five projects simultaneously. After finishing the letter, I felt a sense of sublime purpose wash over me. This was the fire of youth. This was the meaning of life. Just as I was about to print it, a sharp voice pierced the air behind me. “June! You’ve gone too far! How could you bully Director Cross like this!” I spun around to see Pierce, his face contorted with rage. A few curious coworkers trailed behind him, eager for a show. Pierce was a company veteran and the former “King of the Grind.” Before I arrived, he was famous for being the last one to leave the office every night. Now that I’d stolen his crown, he seemed to have a personal vendetta against me. “Bully Director Cross?” I asked, completely lost. “Don’t play dumb!” Pierce jabbed a finger at my monitor. I hadn’t had time to close the window, and the title of my proposal was in plain sight. “Look at this garbage you’ve written! This is a mutiny! You’re mocking him for giving you such a light workload! You’re just trying to humiliate him!” He was practically vibrating with self-righteous anger, as if I were some kind of heinous criminal. I was more confused than ever. I just wanted to do more work. How did that translate to a mutiny and public humiliation? I still didn’t quite understand the logic of this place. 4 “Come on! We’re going to see the Director! I’m going to show him your true colors today!” Pierce grabbed my wrist, his grip surprisingly strong, and half-dragged me toward Director Cross’s office. The whispers started up again, my colleagues watching me with a mixture of pity and schadenfreude. “This is it. June is toast.” “Pierce finally has her cornered. The Director hates having his authority challenged.” He pulled so hard I stumbled, and the proposal fluttered from my hand to the floor. A pang of anxiety hit me. I wasn’t afraid of Cross, but I was terrified he might reject my request. A blessing like this was impossible to find anywhere else. “Director!” Pierce kicked the office door open like a husband who’d just caught his wife cheating and shoved me in front of the desk. Cross was on the phone. The sudden intrusion made him jump, and his face instantly turned to stone. “Pierce! What the hell do you think you’re doing!” “Director, look at her!” Pierce pointed a trembling finger at me. “You’ve been so good to her, giving her the easiest job in the company, and this is how she repays you? By mocking you behind your back!” The Director’s gaze, sharp as a razor, fell on me. “Is what he’s saying true?” I felt my chance slipping away. In a panic, I threw caution to the wind. I bent down, picked up the proposal, and presented it to him with both hands, my expression one of utmost sincerity. “Director, this is just a small token of my dedication. Please, have a look.” Pierce sneered from the side. “Keep up the act. Let’s see how long you can fake it.” Cross took the papers, his eyes narrowed with suspicion, and began to read. The office was dead silent. All I could hear was the frantic pounding of my own heart. Please, Director, you have to approve it! I can’t go back to being a slacker! One second passed, then two. Cross’s expression shifted from confusion to shock, then to utter disbelief. He looked up, adjusted his glasses, and read the entire thing again, as if it were written in some ancient, forgotten language. Finally, he slammed his hand on the desk with a thunderous crack. A triumphant grin spread across Pierce’s face. My heart sank. It was over. “BRILLIANT!” Cross’s voice boomed, filled with an ecstatic energy. “Absolutely brilliant!” He stood up, clutching my proposal, and walked around the desk to stand before me, his eyes shining with a newfound admiration. “June, oh, June, I have truly underestimated you! Look at this drive! This ambition! Voluntarily requesting more hours, begging for more responsibility! This is the kind of employee we need!” He whirled on the dumbfounded Pierce, his tone turning to ice. “And then there’s you! All you do is watch to see if your coworkers leave on time! You never think about creating value for the company! What is wrong with you?” Pierce was completely stunned. He pointed at me, incredulous. “Director, she… she’s making fun of you!” “Making fun of me?” Cross slapped the proposal against Pierce’s chest. “Open your eyes and read this! It’s ‘A Formal Request for the Voluntary Extension of Work Hours and Assumption of Increased Project Responsibilities’! June here has achieved a higher state of consciousness! What the hell would you know about that?” With a trembling hand, Pierce took the proposal. As he read the contents, his face went pale, as if he’d been struck by lightning. He just stood there, frozen.

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1 My parents catered to my every whim. They always told my older brother to let me have my way. Whenever relatives sneered, calling me a “walking blood bank,” my parents would shield me, point at the front door, and tell them to get out. They would hold me tightly and whisper in my ear. “You and your brother are equally important to us. Don’t listen to a word they say.” Until I was eight years old. I grew so tired of the agonizing pain of bone marrow extractions. I refused to cooperate. I refused to let them take anything else to treat my brother. My mother, who had never spoken to me with anything but a gentle voice, exploded for the first time in her life. “If your brother hadn’t gotten terminally ill, you wouldn’t even exist! You took half the love that was supposed to be his. Can’t you even give him this tiny bit of compensation?!” Without a word, my father pinned me down forcefully on the hospital bed. “Doctor, ignore her. Just extract it!” I screamed, cried, and thrashed in excruciating pain. My mother said I was being too loud. After the needle was finally pulled out, they dragged me home, locked me inside our basement sauna room, and took my brother back to the hospital. But they didn’t realize the sauna heater was still turned on. I shoved against the heavy wooden door with everything I had, but it wouldn’t budge. My mother had deadbolted it from the outside. Mommy, Daddy, I know I was wrong. I’m willing to treat my brother. Please, just don’t abandon me. … The temperature in the sauna room was steadily rising. Within minutes, my clothes were soaked in sweat. From upstairs, I heard the heavy thud of the front door closing. My parents had already left with my brother. I threw my entire body weight against the sauna door. Every time I pushed, a sharp, stabbing pain shot through my lower back where the needle had just pierced my bone. But the door didn’t move. It was locked tight. The wooden floorboards were getting so hot that blisters started forming on the soles of my feet. Tears streamed down my face from the sheer pain. The suffocating heat and the agonizing sting were torturing me to the point of collapse. Suddenly, I heard the front door open again. Hope ignited in my chest. Ignoring the searing heat of the floor, I ran to the door, standing on my tiptoes to reach the small glass window near the top. “Mommy! Daddy! Save me!” “It hurts so much! I know I was wrong!” I apologized over and over, slapping my small hands against the glass, praying they would notice me. Instead, I heard their muffled voices filtering down the stairs. “I can’t believe it. I was so angry I forgot his ID cards. Now we have to make an extra trip.” “The bone marrow has such a short preservation window, and she just had to throw a tantrum and delay everything!” My father sighed heavily. He was about to say something else when his eyes caught the glass window of the sauna door. “Honey, Mina looks like she’s crying. Maybe we should let her out.” My mother finally turned her head and looked down the stairs at me. I quickly forced the brightest smile I could muster. I was trying to apologize. I was trying to act sweet, just like I used to. Before today, whenever I did something wrong, all I had to do was act cute, smile, and say sorry. They always forgave me. But this time, my smile only made my mother angrier. She furrowed her brows, glaring at me with raw viciousness. Her voice echoed down the hall, sharp and furious. “What kind of look is that? Is that what you call crying?!” “Look at her! She has zero remorse. She actually has the nerve to smile at me!” I shook my head frantically. “No, Mommy, I didn’t mean it! I won’t do it again!” But the thick, insulated door swallowed my voice. All they heard were muffled squeaks. They couldn’t make out a single word I was saying. My mother started walking down the stairs toward the basement. My heart hammered against my ribs with pure joy. I thought she had finally forgiven me. I knew my mommy still loved me. She was just stressed earlier. I knew it! But she stopped when she was still ten feet away from the door. She pointed a finger at me and looked back up at my father. “This door is completely soundproof, and she’s still making this much noise. If we let her out and the neighbors hear her screaming, are we going to have to turn around again?” “What if she throws another fit while Leo is getting his treatment?” I saw my father hesitating. I could feel the air in the sauna turning into a furnace. Panic seized me. I reached up and grabbed the iron handle on the inside of the door, hoping to pull it down just a fraction of an inch so my voice could slip through the crack. The second my bare hand clamped around the metal, a layer of my skin instantly seared off. My vision went black from the agony, and I let out a blood-curdling, desperate scream. But from the outside, it probably just looked like I was throwing another wild tantrum, exactly as my mother had predicted. My father looked at me through the glass, then looked at the medical documents in my mother’s hand. “Forget it. Getting Leo treated is the priority right now. We’ll sit down and talk some sense into her when we get back.” With that, my father wrapped his arm around my mother’s shoulders, and they walked back upstairs. The slam of the front door shattered the last fragile sliver of hope I had. I stripped off my clothes, piling them on the scorching floor to create a barrier between the burning wood and my skin. I curled into a tight ball on top of the pile, hugging my knees to my chest. “If I stay like this, it won’t hurt. If it doesn’t hurt, I won’t scream.” “As long as I don’t cry or make noise, Mommy and Daddy will see how good I’m being when they get back, and they’ll let me out.” I whispered the words to myself over and over. Even as the blistering heat began to roast every single inch of my skin, I bit my lip hard, refusing to let out a single sound. I don’t know how much time passed before my consciousness finally faded to black. 2 I was woken up by the sound of my parents’ voices. When I opened my eyes, I saw my mother gently placing my brother into his bed. Her eyes were overflowing with heartbreak. “Look how pale his sweet little face is. When is this nightmare going to end?” She carefully tucked the blankets under his chin, softly patting his chest to soothe him. “If Mina were just a little more understanding… but now she doesn’t even want to give a simple marrow extraction to save Leo.” Her voice cracked, thick with choked-back tears. I ran to my mother’s side, throwing my arms around her legs, looking up at her face. “Don’t cry, Mommy! I’m willing to do it!” “I promise I won’t ever complain about the pain again.” But my small hands slipped right through her legs as if she were made of air. She didn’t react. She hadn’t heard a single word I said. My father gently patted her shoulder. “It’s going to be okay. He’ll get better.” “Honestly, Mina is usually a very good girl. Let’s go let her out, sit down, and really talk to her. Maybe she’ll finally understand the position we’re in.” “I hope so. She’s getting older. It’s time for her to grow up.” My father turned and headed toward the basement stairs. I ran ahead and stood directly in his path. He walked right through me, not even blinking. I stood there, frozen, staring down at my pale, translucent, glowing hands. It finally clicked in my mind. I think… I’m dead. My father peered through the small glass window of the sauna door. Because my body was curled up right at the base of the door, it was in his blind spot. He couldn’t see me. But I could effortlessly step right through the heavy wood. I looked down and saw it. A tiny, shriveled corpse curled into a ball on a pile of clothes, every single inch of its skin blistered and charred by the steam. My father turned around and called up the stairs. “Honey! Mina isn’t in the sauna!” My mother paused, then hurried down the stairs. “How is that possible? I deadbolted it! There’s no way she got out.” She jiggled the heavy iron handle from the outside. “It’s still locked. That brat is definitely hiding in one of the dark corners, trying to scare us.” She slammed her hand hard against the thick wood. “Mina! You come out right now and apologize to us. If you say you’re sorry, we’ll forgive you, and you can still be our good little girl.” “But if you want to keep throwing a tantrum, then you can stay in there all night! No dinner, no toys, nothing!” I practically screamed my apology. “Mommy! I really know I was wrong! I promise I’ll be good and help Leo get better!” She couldn’t hear me. She and my father just leaned closer to the door, waiting for an answer. They were met with dead silence. After a long minute, my mother sneered, her face darkening with fury. “Fine! You want to be stubborn? Let’s see how long you last!” “I don’t know where I went wrong raising you. You used to be such an obedient child!” “I wash my hands of you!” I stomped my transparent feet in absolute panic. Mommy, I already apologized! I want to be your good girl again! I want you to love me like you used to! I really do! Tears spilled from my eyes, hitting the basement carpet. But they didn’t leave wet spots like they used to. I watched my parents turn their backs and walk away, and I cried even louder. But this time, they weren’t going to turn around and comfort me. My mother always had a sharp tongue but a soft heart. That evening, she still cooked my favorite dish—steamed sea bass. My father scooped a bowl of rice, piled some fish on top, and carried it toward the basement to give it to me. My mother didn’t stop him. She just sat silently at the dining table, carefully picking the tiny bones out of Leo’s portion. My father unlocked the deadbolt and pushed the door open just a crack. “Mina, come out and eat. Mommy made your favorite steamed sea bass.” 3 The sauna heater was programmed to shut off automatically once it hit its maximum threshold. After sitting idle for the entire day, the flesh-melting steam had already dissipated. The air inside was just stiflingly hot and stale. My father assumed it was just because the room was sealed tight and the central AC couldn’t get in. He didn’t think twice about it. When he didn’t get an answer, he reached in and flicked on the light switch. “Mina, Mommy and Daddy need to talk to you about—” He stopped. The small, square room was entirely empty. My body was tucked tightly against the hinge side of the door, completely out of his line of sight. Panic flickered across his face. He ran back upstairs. “Honey! Mina really isn’t in there!” My mother followed him back down the stairs and pushed the door open, but just like my father, she only pushed it halfway. I floated frantically between them. “Mommy! Daddy! I’m right here! If you just push the door open a little wider, it will hit me!” “Or… or just look behind the door! I’m right here!” I pointed desperately at my own corpse. They didn’t react at all. My mother frowned and turned to my father. “Didn’t the contractor give us two keys to that deadbolt?” My father nodded slowly. “I think so. You have one, and I have the other.” “I used my key all day,” my mother said. “Where’s yours?” My father frantically patted down his pockets and checked his leather briefcase. Nothing. “That’s weird. Where did it go?” While my father was confused, my mother suddenly looked like she had figured out a grand conspiracy. “Where do you think it went? Your precious daughter obviously stole it!” “Remember when we used to play hide-and-seek? She always locked herself in a room. We spoiled her too much, so whenever we couldn’t open a door, we just skipped that room. She probably swiped your key back then.” “So all that begging we did through the door this afternoon was completely useless. She already unlocked it, walked right out, and locked it back from the inside to make us think she was still in there.” My mother’s voice grew louder and more furious. She pointed at the heavy door. “Look at how manipulative she is! I literally cannot control her anymore!” My father tried to rub her shoulders to calm her down, then walked down the hall to my bedroom and knocked hard on the wood. “Mina, Mommy and Daddy are getting really angry now!” He pushed the door open. The room was empty. My mother didn’t even bother looking inside. She just turned around and marched upstairs. “She’s running away from home at this age?! Fine! I hope she never comes back. I hope she dies out there in the streets!” “I am utterly disgusted by her!” I shook my head violently. I didn’t! I really didn’t! This time, even my father didn’t defend me. That night, my mother sat by Leo’s bed, reading him a story to help him sleep. Leo looked up at her with sleepy eyes. “Mommy, why are you reading to me so early? Don’t you need to go tuck Mina in?” Knowing my brother was still thinking about me made a tiny spark of warmth bloom in my chest. Leo was always so good to me. I promised myself I would do everything I could to save him. But before I could finish the thought, my mother’s words dumped ice water over my soul. “We don’t need to worry about her anymore. From now on, I’m pretending I don’t have a daughter.” She stayed by Leo’s side, patient and gentle, for a very long time. When his breathing finally grew slow and steady, she reached for the bedside lamp. I tried to stop her. I was terrified of the dark. I always felt like monsters were hiding in the pitch black. I never slept with the lights off. But my transparent hands passed right through the switch, and my mother couldn’t hear my pleas. Normally, she would leave the hallway light on for me. Tonight, she turned everything off. I had no choice but to curl into a tiny ball next to Leo’s bed, my eyes darting frantically into the shadows, terrified of every creak in the house. I didn’t sleep for a single second. The next morning, my parents dropped Leo off at school and drove to work. They had a silent agreement to completely ignore my existence. It was as if this house was exactly the same whether I was in it or not. 4 It wasn’t until nine o’clock that my homeroom teacher finally called my mother’s cell phone. “Mrs. Evans? Mina isn’t in class today. Is she feeling sick?” My mother slammed her designer pen onto her desk. She swallowed her rage and offered the teacher a tight, polite apology. “I’m so sorry, Ms. Davis. We had a little disagreement at home last night, and I didn’t realize she was throwing such a tantrum that she actually skipped school.” “I understand. I’ll find her and make sure she apologizes to you tomorrow.” The second she hung up, she called my father. “Your daughter is skipping school now! She thinks she’s untouchable!” “Hurry up. You check your parents’ house, I’ll check mine. We are dragging her home today and teaching her a serious lesson in discipline!” “She’s so selfish! Do you know how much money we burn through for Leo’s treatments? And for her clothes and food? If she makes us waste another day of work, I’m taking away her allowance for the entire year!” They split up and drove to both sets of grandparents’ houses. But nobody was there. They called the parents of every friend I had ever mentioned. Everyone said the exact same thing: they hadn’t seen me. The hours bled away, and a whole day passed. My parents found absolutely nothing. While my mother was driving to pick Leo up from school, my father called her again. “Honey, I even checked Chloe’s house. There’s literally nowhere else to look.” “Do you think… do you think someone grabbed her? Should we call the police?” My mother opened her mouth. From the shape of her lips, it looked like she was about to say “yes.” Right at that moment, Leo walked out of the school gates. My mother swallowed the word, waving her hand out the car window. “Leo! Over here!” Leo climbed into the backseat, looking at her with bright eyes. “Mommy, I told my friends at recess that our house is super cool. I told them we have a pool, a playroom, a movie theater, and a sauna!” “But none of them believed me! They said nobody has that many rooms in their house. Mommy, can I bring them over to show them?” He grabbed her arm, giving it a little shake. It was a trick I had taught him. My mother froze for a second. I don’t know if the gesture made her think of me. But Leo’s eager voice quickly pulled her back to reality. She nodded down at him with a warm smile, then spoke into the phone. “I got it. We’ll talk about it when we get home.” “It’s highly unlikely she was kidnapped. We’ve drilled stranger danger into her head since she was a toddler.” “Leo wants to bring some friends over right now. He misses so much school because of his treatments, it’s a miracle he even has friends. We can’t ruin this for him. Hurry up and tidy the living room. Cut up some fresh fruit. We need to be good hosts.” My father murmured an agreement and hung up. I tried to grab my mother’s arm. I was terrified the kids would get scared. But there was absolutely nothing I could do. Half an hour later, my mother pulled into the driveway with Leo and three of his classmates. They saw the pool. They played with the arcade machines. They sat in the plush theater seats. Finally, the group of kids stopped in front of the basement sauna door. One of the boys looked up. “I’ve never been in a real sauna before. Leo, can we try it?” The second he asked, the other kids started buzzing with excitement, begging to go in. Leo didn’t hesitate. He smiled proudly and hit the digital temperature dial on the wall panel. Upstairs, my father was arranging a fruit platter while my mother was busy calling the other kids’ parents. She was checking to make sure they were medically cleared for a sauna and letting them know they would be home a little late. Everyone was busy. Leo opened the heavy wooden door to check if the room was getting warm yet. The second he stepped inside, he let out a horrifying scream.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “443056”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

Every month during my period, the cramps get so agonizing that I can barely get out of bed. I usually have to skip classes and rest in my dorm. My roommates were always the first to step up. They would bring me food from the dining hall and brew me hot herbal tea. I genuinely thought they cared about me. That was until a guy from another major stopped me on campus. He casually mentioned that my period was due in three days and told me to make sure I had painkillers ready. I stood there, completely frozen. He pulled out his phone and showed me an exclusive stealth app called “The IT Girl Tracker.” It didn’t just predict my menstrual cycle and ovulation for the next three months. It even tracked my “low mood” days. The app required a $4.99 monthly subscription. Over two hundred guys on campus were already subscribed. And the creators running the app were my three roommates. They weren’t just selling my biological data. They were selling the exact times I took a shower, my dressing habits, and even how many times I tossed and turned in my sleep. The very last line on their premium price list read: “Uncensored sleep cam (Infrared night vision) $29.99 per stream. Limited slots available.” … 1 Harper stared at that line of text, the blood turning to ice in her veins. The guy was still grinning. “Hey, could you ask them to upload the video of you throwing up from the cramps last month? I’d totally pay extra for that.” Harper remembered that specific day last month. She had been rolling on her bed in pure agony. She threw up three times and didn’t even have the strength to climb down the ladder. Serena had brought her a mug of hot herbal tea. Lexi had gently wiped the sweat off her forehead. Gemma had run to the campus clinic to beg for stronger painkillers. Now she knew the truth. When Serena stood by her bed holding that mug, her phone was resting on the pillow, recording the audio. When Lexi was wiping her sweat, her other hand was typing in her notes app: “Vomited three times. Episode lasted roughly two hours. Severe symptoms.” When Gemma ran out for pills, she posted a real-time update on the tracker app: “Our campus queen is having killer cramps today. Dorm is empty. Prime opportunity. Who wants the link to buy infrared goggles?” Harper walked back to her dorm in a complete daze. She pushed the door open. Serena smiled warmly and handed her a steaming mug. “Harper, feeling any better today?” Harper stared at the horrific app on her phone, then looked at the three smiling faces in front of her. Her stomach violently churned. Everything looked exactly like yesterday. Like the day before. Like the past three months. Without saying a single word, Harper forced down the nausea and took the mug. Then she opened her laptop and hit the screen record shortcut. 2 The night Harper finally gathered all the evidence, all three roommates were in the dorm. Serena was on a loud phone call. “Yeah, exactly, the campus IT girl. Guess her bra size? 36D! I saw it with my own eyes. Hahaha, she totally thought I was asleep.” Harper turned her phone around, letting the screen glow brightly in the dim room. “Serena. The IT Girl Tracker. That was you guys, wasn’t it?” The chatter in the dorm died instantly. It was like someone had hit the mute button on a remote. Serena was the first to recover. She leaned back in her desk chair, the corners of her mouth curling into a slow, vicious smirk. “So you found out.” “Do you have any idea that your period cramp tag has the highest click rate?” Serena’s voice dripped with arrogance. “Every single habit you have is raw data. What time you wake up, when you go to sleep, which day of your cycle you’re the moodiest, how many minutes it takes you to put clothes on after a shower. Even whether you grab your stomach or your face first when the cramps hit. It all sells. You think you’re just a person? No. You are a cash cow. You just didn’t know how to monetize yourself. We did it for you. You should be thanking us.” Harper opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Lexi chimed in from her bed. “You’re a computer science major, and you can’t even protect your own data? Whose fault is that? We didn’t hack your phone. You never close the bathroom door all the way after a shower. The crack is huge. We can literally see you from the common area. You never close your bed curtains when you change. You think we actually want to watch you? We’re just documenting your life. It’s called content creation.” Harper’s fingers began to tremble. Gemma tried to play the peacekeeper. “Harper, really, Serena and Lexi didn’t mean anything malicious. It’s just… you’re really pretty, and people want to see you. Rather than letting some random creep take secret photos of you, we figured we might as well control the market…” Serena burst out laughing. “Drop the innocent act, Gemma. Last time Harper got drunk and passed out on her desk, weren’t you the one who unbuttoned her shirt to take a picture? That photo sold for eighty-nine bucks, and you were the one who set the price.” Serena stood up and walked right up to Harper. She violently poked Harper in the shoulder. “Oh, right, I forgot to tell you. When you had those awful cramps last month, your mom called. You didn’t pick up, so I answered it for you. I told her you were ‘indisposed’. She was so panicked she almost bought a bus ticket to come down here. I hung up and uploaded the call recording. I titled it ‘Panicked Mom Checks on the Queen’. Priced it at nine-ninety-nine. Sold over forty copies. Your mom actually has a really sweet voice. Wanna hear it?” Serena pulled out her phone and hit speaker. Harper’s mother’s frantic voice echoed in the room. “Hello? Are you Harper’s roommate? What’s wrong with her? Is she okay? She’s had terrible cramps since she was a teenager. Please take good care of her for me. I mailed her some ginger tea, please make sure she drinks it…” The recording abruptly cut off. Harper’s eyes were bloodshot. The thought of her aging mother being manipulated and sold for pocket change felt like a knife twisting in her heart. Serena smiled right in her face. “The second half is even better. She literally starts crying. Wanna hear the rest?” Harper was shaking with absolute, unfiltered rage. She picked up the mug of hot herbal tea from her desk and poured it directly over Serena’s head. The dark liquid cascaded down Serena’s hair, running over her face and dripping onto her limited-edition designer hoodie. Serena completely froze. Lexi let out a high-pitched scream. Gemma clamped her hands over her mouth. The entire dorm went dead silent. And then, Serena laughed. She wiped the sticky tea off her face, smearing thick black mascara across her cheeks. She glared at Harper. “You’re dead,” Serena whispered. 3 When Harper returned to her dorm building later that night, the sight waiting for her made her stomach drop into an endless void. Her blankets, clothes, laptop, and textbooks were piled haphazardly in the hallway like a mound of garbage. Two guys were actively carrying the rest of her belongings out of the room. They didn’t even stop when they saw her. “Well, look who it is. The star of the show,” a guy with a buzzcut sneered. “Hey, your bras are actually pretty nice. I just copped a feel, great material.” He kicked the pile of clothes at his feet, exposing one of her bras. “Wanna sell this to me? I’ll pay double. You’re about to launch the naked sleep stream on the app anyway. Consider this a teaser sale.” Another guy with glasses walked out of her dorm holding her private diary. He was casually flipping through the pages. “Holy shit, she actually writes in a diary.” He started reading out loud. “Feeling really down today. I miss home. Oh, poor baby. Want a hug from daddy?” Harper stood frozen, her knuckles turning white as she gripped the handles of her tote bag. The guy with the buzzcut leaned in close, lowering his voice. “Honestly though, when is that sleep stream dropping? I pre-ordered it. Twenty-nine bucks, right? I’ll give you a hundred if you let me film it in person. I promise my camera is better than whatever infrared junk Serena is using.” The guy in glasses burst out laughing. “You are absolutely shameless, bro.” “What? She’s gonna get filmed anyway. What difference does it make who’s holding the camera? Right, Harper?” Serena and Lexi’s voices drifted through the crack in the dorm door. “Don’t let her take the diary. She wrote about her secret crush in there. Take a picture of that page and upload it. ‘The Queen’s Secret Crush Revealed’. It’ll break the server. And her laptop is definitely full of selfies. Tell those guys to dig through it. Find the good ones and we’ll sell them as singles.” Lexi chimed in. “Too bad she took her phone. The chat logs would have been a goldmine. Next time she showers, we go through her phone. She never takes it to the bathroom.” The guy in glasses suddenly remembered something. “Hey Harper, your body is insane. Did you know Serena took a screenshot of your silhouette through the steamy shower glass and turned it into a sticker pack? Our frat group chat uses it every single day. There’s one of you bending over to pick up soap. The guys named the chat ‘The Holy Grail’. People literally check in daily.” He pulled out his phone and shoved a picture in the buzzcut guy’s face. “Look at this one. Serena took it. Harper stepping out of the bathroom, towel slipping off her shoulder. This picture went viral in the underground servers. Guys are saying they’d lick the screen.” The buzzcut guy let out a low whistle. “Serena is holding out on us. Why wasn’t this on the app? That’s easily a forty-dollar premium shot.” “Serena said she’s keeping it as a magnet. Free gift for new registrations. Do you know how many new users joined last month? Over a hundred and twenty. All because of this one picture.” Both guys turned their phone cameras toward Harper. The flash went off. Once, then twice. Harper stood there, her fingernails digging so deeply into her palms they almost drew blood. She felt completely stripped bare, thrown naked into a crowd of vultures. The buzzcut guy spoke directly into his camera. “Look at this, boys. The campus queen herself, standing in the hallway. If you want the premium content, subscribe to the Tracker app. Serena says the uncensored sleep cam drops on Monday. Twenty-nine bucks. Limited slots, so get your wallets ready.” He lowered the phone and looked at Harper. “Look, I’ll give you some advice. Stop fighting it. It’s pointless. Serena has way worse stuff on you. Just play along and everyone gets paid. If you make a scene, she’s going to dump everything on the public web. Your life will literally be over.” The glasses guy nodded. “Serena said your dad runs a tiny hardware store back home, right? Mom works at an assembly plant? If you report her, she’ll send the files to everyone in your hometown. Your high school friends. Imagine your mom’s coworkers showing her a video on their phones and asking, ‘Hey, isn’t this your daughter?’ You think your mom would survive that?” Harper slowly crouched down. She picked up her belongings, one by one, and shoved them into her bags. The buzzcut guy kept recording. “Check it out, the queen is picking up trash. Hey, don’t bother, we already touched all of that. Isn’t it dirty now?” The glasses guy snickered. “Maybe she likes it. Stuff feels better after someone else breaks it in, right?” Laughter echoed down the hallway. When Harper’s fingers brushed against the bra the guys had touched, she paused for a fraction of a second. Her eyes were bloodshot. She forced the tears back down her throat with everything she had. She shoved the bra into the deepest corner of her bag and zipped it shut. She told herself she could not cry here. If she cried here, she lost. Her phone buzzed in her pocket. The app sent out a mass push notification. “Flash Sale! Exclusive Angry Audio File! Raw audio of Harper splashing hot tea in a roommate’s face! Tonight only!” The comment section was already exploding. “Holy shit, audio too? Buying it right now.” “Serena is a legend for catching this.” “Is there video? I wanna see the splash hahahaha.” “As expected of the queen. Even her rage is hot. Setting this as my alarm clock.” Harper clicked on the audio file. It was every single word she had spoken during the confrontation in the dorm just an hour ago. At the end of the hallway, Serena’s voice drifted out again. “Yeah, that’s her. Buy the VIP pass and you get her ovulation schedule and the sleep stream. Hahaha, don’t worry about her, she’s just a clueless idiot. Thinks she’s untouchable.” Harper picked up her heavy bags and walked down the stairs. 4 Harper returned to the dorm the next afternoon. She bought four iced lattes and knocked on the door. Serena smiled the moment she saw her. “Well, well. Back to apologize?” Harper handed her the tray of coffees. “Serena, I thought about it. Let’s make money together.” Serena didn’t take the coffee. She leaned against the doorframe, looking Harper up and down. “You were acting pretty tough yesterday,” Serena said. “Splashed water in my face, and now you’ve suddenly seen the light?” Harper offered a tight, polite smile. “Yesterday was yesterday. Yesterday I got kicked out and had nowhere to sleep. Today, I did some digging into your app’s revenue. Over two thousand dollars a month. That’s more than I make tutoring two kids. I’m a CS major too. Whatever you can do, I can do better. Why would I hold a grudge against money?” Serena finally took a cup, popped the straw in, and took a sip. “Now you’re talking. Come in.” Serena started laying out the business model for “The IT Girl Tracker”. She bragged that they had over four hundred active subscribers. Monthly revenue was stable around two thousand dollars, but if they launched the sleep stream during the upcoming Founders’ Day Gala, she conservatively estimated revenue would triple. Lexi leaned over, excitedly explaining their plan to franchise the model to other universities. “Every campus has an IT girl. We’re capturing highly vertical private traffic.” Harper smiled and nodded, showering them with fake praise. “Obviously,” Serena said, crossing her legs. “You think I just got lucky? I researched this market for three months. You know why I picked you? Because you’re gorgeous. And your cramps are severe, meaning you have to stay in your room every month. It’s a highly predictable pattern. Most importantly, you never close the bathroom door.” Lexi let out a sharp laugh. “Every time you shower, the glass door fogs up, but you leave a huge gap. It’s the perfect angle to slip a phone camera in. You think we naturally shower last? We were waiting for you to finish so we could capture your silhouette. Even without full nudity, that blurred, mysterious aesthetic sells for way more than raw nudes.” Harper’s hands were clenched into iron fists beneath the desk. But the polite smile on her face never wavered. “Wow, that makes total sense,” she said. “Why didn’t you just tell me? I could have posed for you. Better angles, better lighting.” Serena’s eyes lit up. “Seriously?” “Seriously. But I have a condition,” Harper said. “I want a cut of the profits. And I want read-access to the backend analytics.” Serena hesitated, glancing at Lexi. Lexi gave a subtle nod. “Fine. But you can’t alter any code. Read-only.” “Deal.” That night, Harper went back to the friend’s dorm where she was crashing and opened her laptop. Using a massive programming assignment as cover, she began reverse-engineering the app’s API. Through a known vulnerability in the campus network, Harper injected a silent payload into their backend. From that moment on, any device accessing the Tracker app would unknowingly have its browser history and payment records scraped. She pulled up the subscriber list. She saw Preston, the Student Body President. Jackson, the basketball captain. Carter, the pre-law guy who had asked her out twice. And Mr. Davis, an academic advisor. There were even two young assistant professors on the list. Every single name and payment receipt was neatly organized on her screen. Harper read through every line, taking high-resolution screenshots. The next day, Lexi noticed something odd. “Weird, backend traffic spiked, but user registration didn’t go up.” Serena brushed it off. “Don’t worry about it. Probably just bots scraping. The Founders’ Day Gala is on Monday. We drop the sleep stream and the server is going to explode. I already bought the hardware from a supplier. High-end infrared cams, perfect night vision. Just keep an eye on Harper. Don’t let her pull any stunts.” Lexi smirked. “Relax, she’s completely clueless. She genuinely thinks we’re going to split the money with her. The second the naked video drops, we kick her out. Even if she tries to call the cops, she won’t have a shred of evidence.” Standing just outside the dorm door, Harper heard every word. The last remaining shred of empathy she held for her former roommates died in that exact moment. “You’re right.” “I am completely clueless.” “But you forgot one thing. When you back a clueless animal into a corner, it bites.” 5 The night before the Gala, Harper ran a final diagnostic on her code. She noticed that the backdoor she had injected had been modified with a brand-new feature. It was automatically silently capturing photos using the subscribers’ front-facing cameras. She didn’t write that code. She stared at the monitor, a cold sweat breaking out across her back. Her phone buzzed. It was a text from Carter: “Harper. We need to meet. Library steps, right now.” She hesitated for a second, turned on her phone’s voice recorder, slipped it into her pocket, and walked out into the night. Carter was already waiting by the steps. He was wearing a dark gray hoodie. In his hand was a silver USB drive. Harper stopped a few feet away. Carter held out the drive. “This contains every single server log from the day the app was launched,” he said quietly. “Including the deleted ones. I study cyber law. This flash drive is enough to put them behind bars.” Harper didn’t take it. “You’re on the subscriber list.” “I am.” Carter didn’t look away. “At first, it was just morbid curiosity. You know guys share links like that. I thought it was just some softcore generic site. But when I clicked it, I realized it wasn’t generic. It was highly illegal tracking of your personal life. It made me sick, but I didn’t say anything. I thought it was just some weird drama between you and your roommates, and that maybe you were in on it.” He took a slow breath. “Until I saw they were prepping an infrared sleep stream. That’s when I knew this crossed from a moral gray area into a felony. So I started mirroring their server logs. Every single day. I’ve been waiting for you to find out. I was waiting for you to come to me.” “Why wait for me? You could have gone to the police yourself.” “Because I’m a subscriber,” Carter said bitterly. “If I go to the cops, the first thing they do is arrest me as an accessory. I need you to be the whistleblower. Your testimony is the only thing that holds weight.” Harper finally reached out and took the USB drive. “Aren’t you afraid I’ll turn you in with the rest of them?” Carter let out a hollow laugh. “Terrified. But I’m more terrified of doing nothing while those three build an empire that will eventually ruin someone’s life permanently.” Harper slipped the drive into her bag. “At the Founders’ Day Gala, I’m going to make every single one of them pay,” she said.

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1 My name is Helen. In my past life, by the time I was twenty-six, I had given birth to three children for Manhattan’s top billionaire, a man desperate for a bloodline. I secured a billion-dollar trust fund and catapulted myself into the absolute elite. All of it happened because my best friend was terrified of the pain of childbirth. She had forced the Billionaire Baby System to bind to me instead of her. But after hemorrhaging during the birth of my third child and slipping into a coma, I opened my eyes to find myself right back on the exact day the System first appeared. Translucent text was scrolling through the air right in front of my face. [Here we go! The side character finally woke up!] [Sonia was a complete idiot in her past life. Imagine handing over a one-way ticket to a billionaire’s bed just because you’re scared of a little pain!] [This time she’s definitely going to bind the System herself. She’ll pop out a whole soccer team and have Tristan Blackwood wrapped around her little finger!] [LMAO look at Helen’s dumbfounded face. She’s probably bleeding internally from jealousy! Without the System, she’s going to spend the rest of her life rotting in a cubicle as a corporate slave!] [Exactly. A broke orphan like her only got a taste of high society because she picked up Sonia’s scraps.] I stared at the malicious floating comments. My heart didn’t even skip a beat. An hour ago, I was lying in an ICU bed, bleeding out from a brutal third delivery. Yes, the billion-dollar payout was real. The private jets and the penthouse were real. But the physical ruin of my body, the endless surgeries, and the exhausting, paranoid nights spent fending off Tristan’s mistresses and secret illegitimate children were also very, very real. I raised an eyebrow, looking at the woman sitting across from me. Sonia was fiercely clutching her chest, guarding a glowing pink orb that only the two of us could see. It was the physical manifestation of the Billionaire Baby System. In my past life, she had shoved that orb into my hands, disgusted by the thought of stretch marks and ruined proportions. Now, her face was twisted with suppressed, greedy joy. “Helen, I’m keeping this System. Don’t even think about freeloading off me again!” “Are you absolutely sure you want to bind it?” I asked. Sonia glared at me like I was a thief. “What? Are you trying to steal it back?” “Don’t think I don’t know exactly what’s going on in your head, Helen. You’re just jealous that I’m prettier than you, and you want to steal my golden ticket!” “Let me make this crystal clear. In this life, Tristan Blackwood is mine. The billion-dollar empire is mine. You can sit at that broken desk and type on your little keyboard until you die!” The floating chat exploded with excitement. [So satisfying! Put her in her place! Sonia is a boss!] [What’s wrong with taking back what rightfully belongs to her? Helen is such a manipulative bitch!] [Look at her face. Helen is probably grinding her teeth to dust.] Honestly, all I felt was a crushing wave of relief. For ten years in my past life, I drove myself to the brink of insanity trying to be worthy of Tristan Blackwood. Even while heavily pregnant, I stayed up studying high society etiquette, fine art, and global finance. I handled countless PR disasters for his company. I stayed up until dawn revising hundreds of merger proposals to save his ass. But to everyone in that world, including Tristan himself, I was nothing more than a high-priced breeding mare. They always said Helen only got to where she was because her uterus did its job. They completely erased my talent, my late nights, and my brilliant mind. If Sonia wanted to claim that “blessing” in this life, I was more than happy to hand it over on a silver platter. “Sure,” I smiled calmly. “I hope you get exactly what you wish for.” Suspicion flickered in Sonia’s eyes, but a mechanical voice quickly drowned it out. [Ding. Detecting strong host desire. Billionaire Baby System binding successful!] [Starter Pack Distributed: Peerless Beauty plus Alluring Pheromones. Good luck capturing your target!] Right before my eyes, Sonia’s dull, uneven complexion instantly became radiant and flawless. She yanked a compact mirror out of her purse, practically vibrating with excitement as she checked her reflection. When she finally looked back at me, her eyes were dripping with condescending pity. “Helen, since we used to be friends, I’ll make sure to throw you a bone. When I become Mrs. Blackwood, I’ll hire you to scrub my toilets.” She turned on her designer heels and strutted out of the office like she owned the building. The other analysts in the bullpen exchanged confused glances, wondering what kind of manic episode she was having. I just sat back down at my desk and pulled up the Southside Waterfront Project file. Blackwood Industries was going to open the bidding in exactly two weeks. In my past life, I had stayed up for three days straight during my third trimester to win this exact project for Tristan. In this life, this project was going to be my battering ram. I was going to use it to smash through a completely different door. The chat was still mocking me endlessly. [Look at her pretending to be calm. She’s probably screaming inside.] [Without the System, she doesn’t even have the right to breathe the same air as Tristan.] [Can’t wait to watch Sonia absolutely dominate!] I paused my typing and let a cold smirk touch my lips. Since they were all so excited, I was looking forward to seeing how a brainless vessel armed with nothing but a pretty face and a fertility app would survive the venomous snake pit of the Blackwood family. I gave her three episodes, tops. … “Who the hell does she think she is? One word and Sonia just parachutes in as our new department head?” My cubicle neighbor, Sarah, slammed a stack of manila folders onto her desk in absolute disgust. “Keep your voice down!” another coworker hissed, leaning in with wide eyes. “I heard the promotion came straight from the top. Tristan Blackwood signed off on it himself.” “Someone saw her coming out of the CEO’s private elevator yesterday morning. And she was wearing a completely different dress than the night before.” A collective, knowing gasp echoed through the office. The floating text above my screen was glowing with toxic pride. [Did you see that?! The power of the System is unmatched!] [Sonia just used one ‘Pitiful Tears’ skill and had Tristan absolutely begging for it.] [Alpha CEOs love a soft girl! What does a boring, lifeless workaholic like Helen know about being a woman?] [LMAO Helen is still grinding away on her spreadsheets, while Sonia is literally her boss now.] [Sonia is definitely going to teach her a lesson today. Time to break her ego!] Right on cue, the office doors swung open. Sonia glided in, her hips swaying with a practiced rhythm. She scanned the room, her gaze locking onto me like a heat-seeking missile. “Helen, what kind of garbage is this?” She didn’t even glance at my screen. She just reached down and yanked my computer’s power cord straight out of the wall. The monitors went pitch black. The final data models I hadn’t saved yet vanished into the void. “Director Sonia, that was the core financial modeling for the Southside Project required for the executive meeting this afternoon.” I forced down the spike of adrenaline in my chest and stared at her with dead eyes. “If that data is unrecoverable, are you prepared to take responsibility for the loss?” Sonia covered her mouth and let out a tinkling, obnoxious laugh. “Responsibility? In this building, Tristan’s word is law. And I am Tristan’s woman.” She leaned over my desk, dropping her voice to a venomous whisper. “You are a nobody. You don’t get to talk to me about responsibility.” She straightened up, casually picking up a steaming mug of black coffee from a nearby desk. She feigned a slip of her wrist. “Oops.” The scalding liquid splashed directly onto my blouse and arms. A few coworkers gasped in shock, but not a single person stepped forward to help me. The chat went wild. [Beautiful! Humiliate her! Put her in the dirt!] [Sonia’s manipulation skills are top-tier. 10/10 execution.] [Helen must want to die from the embarrassment right now. That’s what you get for messing with the main character!] [Oh snap, Tristan is coming! Quick Sonia, play the victim!] Tristan strode into the bullpen, flanked by a nervous entourage of executive assistants. His cold, predatory eyes swept between me and Sonia. “What is going on here?” Sonia’s eyes immediately welled up with perfectly timed tears. She stumbled forward, burying her face against Tristan’s expensive suit. “Tristan, I was just checking on Helen’s progress. I don’t know why, but she started screaming at me, and then she threw her own coffee at me…” Tristan’s gaze snapped to me, filled with absolute disgust. “Helen. Is this how you treat your superiors?” “Mr. Blackwood, there is a security camera right above us.” I pointed at the black dome on the ceiling, keeping my voice perfectly level. “She unplugged my workstation, and she poured the coffee on herself.” Tristan waved his hand, completely dismissing my words. “Sonia has a pure and gentle heart. She wouldn’t even step on an ant. Why would she do something like that?” “You are clearly jealous of her promotion and trying to sabotage her.” “You will apologize to Sonia. Right now.” The chat was practically foaming at the mouth with joy. [Hahaha! The CEO defending his wife! So sweet!] [Helen really tried to pull the security camera card. Hilarious. Does she really think the truth matters to a billionaire?] [Tristan doesn’t care about facts, he only cares about Sonia!] [Kneel and apologize, or pack your trash and get out!] I stood perfectly still, looking at Tristan. It was the same handsome face from my past life, but right now, he looked like a pathetic stranger. “Tristan, please, let it go…” Sonia tugged gently at his sleeve, playing the role of the merciful angel to perfection. “Helen had a really hard life growing up in the orphanage. It’s normal for her to be a little aggressive and unstable. I don’t blame her.” “As long as she hands over the Southside Project files to me, we can just pretend this never happened.” There it was. The fox finally showing its tail. “I built the Southside proposal from the ground up,” I said, letting a cold laugh escape my lips. I didn’t back down an inch. “Director Sonia doesn’t even know how to read a basic quarterly earnings report. How exactly is she going to lead this project?” Sonia’s face stiffened. Tristan’s patience completely evaporated. “Helen, you are a massive disappointment.” “Sonia is being incredibly generous by not firing you on the spot, and you have the nerve to stand there and insult her?” “Since you think you’re so brilliant, you are officially off the project.” “Transfer every single piece of data you have to Sonia immediately.” He paused, his voice dropping into a lethal warning. “If the bidding war this afternoon goes sideways because of you, I will personally make sure you never find work in this city again.” The chat was throwing a virtual parade. [Yes! Take her only achievement away!] [Helen burned the midnight oil for two weeks just to hand the credit over to Sonia. Poetic justice.] [This is what we call destiny. A side character is a side character. All that hard work for absolutely nothing.] [Can’t wait to see Sonia dominate the boardroom this afternoon and crush Helen’s spirit forever.] I watched Tristan wrap a protective arm around Sonia’s waist as they walked away. I dug my fingernails so hard into my palms that they nearly drew blood. Was I humiliated? Absolutely. But I wasn’t stupid. I knew perfectly well that right now, I didn’t have the capital to fight a billionaire head-on. I quietly gathered the ruined papers on my desk. I pulled up the corrupted, incomplete draft of the proposal that had survived the hard reset, packaged it into a zip file, and emailed it to Sonia. The real data, the actual core numbers, were locked securely inside my head. At two o’clock, the Southside land auction commenced in the penthouse conference room. I was relegated to the back corner, tasked with taking meeting minutes like a glorified intern. Sonia stood at the head of the mahogany table. She held the incomplete draft I had sent her, reading off the pages with the stiff, robotic cadence of a middle schooler giving a book report. But because she had the System’s “Magnetic Charm” buff radiating off her, the ancient, conservative board members were actually nodding along, completely entranced. Tristan looked at her with pure, unfiltered admiration. “This proposal is exceptional. Your cost-control modeling is absolutely bulletproof.” Sonia shot me a smug, triumphant look before lowering her head in a display of perfect modesty. “It’s all thanks to your guidance, Tristan. I only did a little bit of the groundwork.” Just then, the representative from Montgomery Holdings, who had been sitting in stone-cold silence the entire time, finally spoke up. “Mr. Blackwood. The presentation is certainly pretty.” “However, your team seems to have completely overlooked the abandoned coal mine shafts running directly beneath the Southside property.” “If you proceed with your current cost estimates, the moment you break ground, the foundation will collapse. The structural stabilization alone will cost three times your entire budget.” The room erupted into chaos. Tristan’s head whipped around to stare at Sonia. “Director Sonia, what the hell is he talking about?” Sonia panicked. She had absolutely no idea what an abandoned mine shaft was. The Billionaire Baby System only gave her glowing skin and super-fertility. It didn’t download a degree in civil engineering into her empty brain. “I… I don’t know! Helen gave me this file!” “It was her! She deliberately hid the critical information to set me up!” Every single pair of eyes in the room instantly locked onto me. I saw shock, disgust, and the cold apathy of corporate sharks smelling blood in the water. The chat exploded. [Holy shit! Helen is pure evil! She planted a landmine in the files!] [Throw her in jail! Sabotaging a multi-billion dollar corporate deal just because she’s petty?] [Poor Sonia, getting stabbed in the back by her best friend.] Tristan crossed the room in three massive strides, grabbing my arm and practically dragging me out of my chair. “Are you out of your fucking mind, Helen?” “You played a game with a billion-dollar acquisition just to get back at Sonia?” I met his furious, bloodshot eyes, and the corner of my mouth curled into a vicious smirk. “Mr. Blackwood. Director Sonia demanded the files.” “I hadn’t even written the core risk assessment yet, but she was so desperate to steal the credit that she took the incomplete draft and ran with it.” Tristan froze. He slowly turned his head back to Sonia, a sliver of dark suspicion finally cracking through his blind affection. Sonia’s tears immediately flooded her cheeks. “Tristan, how could you believe the word of an outsider over mine?” Inside her mind, she was screaming. [System! Activate Maximum Pity Aura! Now!] In a fraction of a second, the floral pheromones radiating off her intensified. Every single tear she shed seemed to strike directly at Tristan’s heart. The suspicion vanished. Tristan shoved me hard, sending me crashing to the carpet. “Enough! Helen, not only are you grossly incompetent, but you are a pathological liar!” “You are fired. Effective immediately.” “And because your malicious negligence nearly cost this company billions, I am stripping your entire project bonus for the last six months.” I scrambled to my knees, my voice turning to ice. “Tristan, you know damn well my mother is in the hospital waiting for that money for her heart bypass surgery!” It was thirty thousand dollars. Money I had earned by trading my sleep, my health, and my sanity for half a year. It was blood money. Tristan coldly adjusted his platinum cufflinks. “Your personal tragedies are not my problem. They have nothing to do with this company.” Sonia walked over to me, looking down at me on the floor. She dropped her voice so only I could hear. “This is what happens when you go against me, Helen.” “But, since we used to be friends… if you get on your knees right now and beg for my forgiveness in front of the entire board.” “I might just show some mercy and lend you enough cash to buy your dead mother a decent coffin.” The chat was a waterfall of text demanding my submission. [Kneel! It’s just a little pride. Do it for your mom!] [Stop acting tough. A poor person’s pride is absolutely worthless.] [Sonia is literally an angel for even offering her a loan after all this.] I closed my eyes and took one long, deep breath. When I opened them, I pulled my phone out of my pocket. Right in front of the entire board of directors, I dialed a number. “Miss Helen?” The voice on the other end was deep, rich, and held the undeniable weight of true power. It was Silas Montgomery. The real apex predator of New York’s elite. “Mr. Montgomery. I have the actual, verified bottom-line bid for Blackwood’s Southside Project. I also have the names, addresses, and birth certificates of the three illegitimate children Tristan Blackwood has hidden across Europe.” “I was wondering if those chips are enough to buy my mother’s life.” The second those words left my mouth, all the oxygen was sucked out of the room. Tristan’s pupils shrank to pinpricks. His face went dead white. “Helen! What the fuck are you talking about?!”

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