Category: English

1 When my little sister Amanda got slapped by a classmate, Dad rushed to school, Mom tore up the parent chat, and Brother Tyler brought friends to trap the boy at the gates. But Amanda pouted that everyone now made fun of her. Mom baked forty-five cupcakes for distribution, while Dad and Brother sent five hundred dollars in apology. Amanda finally stopped crying. The next day, a cupcake appeared on my desk. I gathered courage. “Mom… someone is bullying me…” Mom simmered soup, brushing me off. “Kids make a big deal out of nothing. Maybe they’re just joking.” I turned to Tyler. “They took my allowance and tore my test papers.” Glued to his phone leveling Amanda’s gaming account, he didn’t answer. Dad called from the living room, “If you don’t provoke them, why would they bully you? Reflect on your own behavior.” I reflected all night but couldn’t figure out what I’d done wrong. Soon, bullies trapped me in a dark alley. They stripped me, took photos, and beat me until I coughed up blood. I dialed my family dozens of times from my shattered phone. No answer. As they left, one mentioned the last person they beat this way died of internal bleeding. Bruised and bleeding, I dragged myself home. Mom, Dad, and Tyler were gathered around Amanda, helping her try on a new princess dress. They’d forgotten it was my birthday. I said nothing. Using my last spare change, I took a bus to the local crematorium. Standing before the old security guard, I whispered, “Sir, I think I’m dying soon. Can you help me prepare a grave?” … The old security guard, Ben, took me inside his booth. He washed the dirt off my hands and gently sanitized my cuts with iodine. He pulled out his phone, dialing my family while trying to comfort me. “You had a fight with your parents and ran away, didn’t you? Your mom and dad must be worried sick right now.” “I’ll call them to pick you up and take you home, okay?” Worried sick. I caught that phrase in my head. Listening to the dial tone echoing from Ben’s speakerphone, my heart pounded wildly. A few months ago, Mom refused to buy Amanda a toy she wanted. Amanda threw a tantrum and ran away from home. The entire family went out of their minds. Dad called the police three times in less than twenty-four hours. Tyler and his friends searched almost every street and alley in the city. When Amanda was finally found, Mom held her in her arms, sobbing hysterically and agreeing to every single request Amanda had. Dad and Tyler both had bloodshot eyes from crying. Would they be worried sick for me, too? A faint spark of hope flickered in my chest, and my eyes brightened up for a second. Ben’s heart softened seeing my expression, and he gently patted my head. The call finally went through. Ben quickly explained the situation, but Tyler’s impatient voice came blasting through the speaker. “Why is she running around late at night anyway? Amanda is trying to sleep.” “Just let her stay outside for the night. She’s old enough to take care of herself.” I froze in place. Over the phone, Amanda’s spoiled voice echoed in the background. “Mom has to bathe me, Tyler has to brush my teeth, and Dad has to read me a bedtime story! None of you can leave!” Ben tried to say something more, but the call was promptly disconnected. I lowered my eyes. I should have known it would end like this, shouldn’t I? Ever since I was little, I was the most sensible, obedient child in the house. Everyone assumed I could take care of myself and didn’t need an ounce of concern. They naturally poured all their love onto Amanda. It didn’t matter… it really didn’t matter… A violent surge rose in my chest. I couldn’t hold it back and vomited another mouthful of blood onto the floor. “Oh my goodness! What’s wrong with you!” Ben gasped in terror. “Hold on, let me grab my coat and take you to the hospital!” Panicking, I quickly pulled out a napkin to wipe the blood off the tile. While Ben turned his back to grab more paper towels, I ran out of the guardhouse into the dark night. Going to the hospital meant spending money, time, and energy. The last time I had a high fever and went to the hospital, Mom, Dad, and Tyler had a massive argument over who had to stay behind to take care of me. I couldn’t be a burden to them again. Near the crematorium was a public cemetery on a quiet hillside. I picked a small, grassy spot for myself and lay down silently. My body was aching everywhere. The bullies said that coughing up blood meant internal organs were ruptured. Without immediate medical care, a person would die. But if I died, my family would have one less trouble to deal with. The cemetery was dead silent, save for the rustling of leaves in the night wind. Scared of the pitch-black darkness, I used the last one percent of my phone battery to call Mom. After a long wait, Mom finally answered. She let out an exasperated sigh. “You chose to run away yourself, Nora. You can’t blame anyone else. Just stay outside tonight and take the bus back tomorrow morning.” Before I could say anything, the call went dead. Mom misunderstood me. I didn’t want her to pick me up. I just wanted to hear her voice one last time. Today was the day I was going to die. It was also my birthday. “Happy birthday to me… happy birthday to me…” Staring up at the dark, starless sky, I sang the birthday song to myself in a whisper, quietly waiting for death to claim me. The next morning, I opened my eyes. A ray of golden sunlight hit my face. I realized I hadn’t died yet. My body, however, hurt ten times worse than the night before. “She’s over here!” Ben rushed over, accompanied by two police officers. I sat quietly on the stone bench, waiting for the officers to contact my family. Ben stood to the side, sighing heavily. “What kind of parents are they? Their kid goes missing all night, and they don’t even care!” Nearly three hours later, Mom, Dad, and Tyler finally showed up. Dad offered an apologetic smile to the officers. “Our youngest daughter insisted on getting her hair redone this morning, and we had to drop her off at school first. That’s why we’re late.” “Sorry for the trouble.” Mom was busy admiring photos of Amanda on her phone. Tyler was on a call, telling his friends at school to make sure Amanda was well looked after. Not a single one of them paid any attention to me. One of the officers felt sorry for me and slipped a piece of candy into my hand. Ben had to head back to work, but before leaving, he reminded my parents sternly: “This girl was throwing up blood last night. You must take her to the hospital immediately.” Another heavy silence fell over my family. Mom frowned in annoyance. “But I still have to pack a heart-shaped bento for Amanda! She told her classmates she’d show it off today!” Tyler sounded completely indifferent. “She’s so young, what serious illness could she possibly have? No need for a hospital. Just let her rest at home.” Suddenly, Dad’s phone rang. It was Amanda’s homeroom teacher. The moment Dad answered, his expression flipped completely. “Amanda fell down at school and scraped her knee!” Mom and Tyler immediately stood up, rushing toward the car. I was tossed into the backseat like a piece of unwanted luggage and dropped off at home on their way to Amanda’s school. My body was covered in deep scrapes and bruises. It hurt so much. Tyler unlocked the front door and prepared to leave to join Mom and Dad at school. I grabbed his sleeve desperately. Just as I opened my mouth to speak, another mouthful of blood spilled from my lips. “Tyler… it hurts so much…” He merely cast a brief, annoyed glance at the puddle of blood on the floor. “If it hurts, take some painkillers. It’s just a minor ailment, just bear with it.” Amanda was taken to the hospital to have her knee bandaged and brought home in a wheelchair. Mom, Dad, and Tyler took turns waiting on her hand and foot. No one even bothered to check if I was still in my room. The next morning, I had to go to school as usual. Keeping my head down, I walked into the classroom. My desk was a complete disaster once again. My notebooks were shredded, my pencil case was gone, and chalk dust had been dumped into my water bottle. I quietly cleaned up the mess and sat down in the corner. A few girls in the front row leaned together, whispering and shooting mocking glances at me with grins on their faces. Amanda’s seat was right in the middle of the front row. She wore a floral dress Mom had bought her, surrounded by a crowd of eager classmates. The wrappers from Mom’s mini cupcakes were spread across her desk, and several boys were hovering around her. “Your brother bought us milk tea yesterday,” one boy said. “The snacks at your house are awesome!” Amanda smiled sweetly. Amanda never admitted at school that we were related. Tyler also made a point to protect only her, never uttering my name to anyone. Everyone assumed I had no one behind me, that I was weak and timid, making me the easiest target in school. The homeroom teacher, Mrs. Gable, walked into the classroom as the bell rang, holding the monthly exam results. “The results for the monthly exams are in,” Mrs. Gable announced. “The top score in our class goes to Nora again. A perfect score.” I stood up and walked down the aisle to the front. I took the test paper, my fingertips turning pale. A perfect score. Just like last time. Just like every single time before. Yet no matter how many top scores I brought home, no one in my family cared. Whenever I brought a test paper home, Dad would give a faint groan, Mom would toss it onto the coffee table, and Tyler wouldn’t even look at it. Eventually, I stopped bringing them out. Why humiliate myself over something they didn’t care about? When Amanda scored dead last in her class, Mom would hug her and say Amanda was still young, and she’d do better next time. Tyler would buy her toys, and Dad would take her out for ice cream. Mrs. Gable looked at me with concern. “Nora, what’s wrong? You look terribly pale.” I opened my mouth to reply, but a metallic, coppery taste suddenly burst in my throat. I couldn’t hold it back, leaning over and vomiting a large puddle of blood onto the floor. This time was different. The blood was dark, almost black. The classroom fell dead silent. Mrs. Gable was terrified. She rushed over to support my shoulders. “Don’t move! I’m calling your parents right now!” She pulled out her phone and dialed quickly, her voice panicked. “Is this Nora’s parent? Your daughter just vomited black blood at school! It looks extremely serious! Please come…” I couldn’t hear what the person on the other end said, but Mrs. Gable’s eyebrows knitted tightly together. “She looks very sick, it’s best if you come to the school… Really? No need? Fine, I’ll let her walk home herself then.” Hanging up the phone, she looked at me with a complicated expression, hesitating before saying: “Your parents said you should walk home and rest by yourself.” I nodded, folded my test paper neatly into my pocket, and packed my backpack. The girls in the front row resumed whispering, while Amanda kept her head down, digging through her desk for snacks. I put on my backpack and walked toward the exit. Just as I pulled open the classroom door, I saw three familiar figures walking down the hallway. Mom was carrying Amanda’s tiny backpack, Dad held a camera, and Tyler carried a bag of treats. They paused for a split second when they saw me. Mom gave me a brief smile. “Nora, go home first. We’re taking Amanda to the amusement park to celebrate her birthday early today.” Swiping past my shoulder, she walked into the classroom, calling out joyfully: “Amanda! Dad and Mom came to give you a surprise!” The entire class let out envious gasps. I looked at Amanda helplessly as she threw herself into Mom’s arms. Walking down to the ground floor of the school building, I gently tugged at Mom’s sleeve. “Mom… I want to go to the amusement park too…” I was dying soon, and I had never been to an amusement park in my entire life. Mom frowned in annoyance. “Nora, you’re looking like this and you still want to go to an amusement park? What if the cold wind makes you worse?” “Exactly,” Tyler interrupted impatiently, looking up from his phone. “Amanda rarely gets a chance to go out and play. If you go and vomit all over the place, how bad is that going to look? How unlucky!” I opened my mouth, wanting to tell them that I would hold it in, that I wouldn’t cause any trouble, that I just wanted to see what it looked like once. Dad had already bypassed me, squatting down to tie Amanda’s shoelaces without looking up. “Nora, go home and rest by yourself. Take your medicine and sleep. In a few days, when it’s Amanda’s actual birthday, we’ll get you a make-up gift.” “I don’t want a gift…” “Alright, that’s enough,” Mom was already urging Amanda toward the gates, waving her hand back at me. “Be good and head home quickly. Don’t dawdle.” She took Dad’s arm and walked away. Amanda was riding on Tyler’s back. She turned her head, her bright eyes fixed on me as she stuck her tongue out playfully. I didn’t start walking until their car drove out of the school gates. Suffocating waves of pain surged in my chest. Every step I took felt like my bones were breaking. The walk from school to home usually took twenty minutes. I lasted only ten minutes before collapsing against a tree by the curb, gasping for air as my vision turned black. In the end, a street cleaner found me and called an ambulance. When I woke up, I was in a hospital room. A white ceiling, the sharp smell of disinfectant, and the steady beep-beep of an EKG monitor filled my senses. A nurse was adjusting my IV line. Seeing me open my eyes, she let out a sigh of relief. “You’re awake? You passed out by the roadside. You have severe internal bleeding, your condition is very critical. You need emergency surgery immediately.” She paused, looking at me with pity. “We couldn’t reach your family. We tried calling the numbers for your mom, dad, and brother stored in your phone, but no one picked up.” I reached under my pillow for my phone. The moment I unlocked the screen, a new social media update popped up. It was posted by Mom. A nine-photo grid: Amanda smiling on a carousel, Tyler holding cotton candy for her, and Dad making a funny face in front of the camera. The caption read: [Our little birthday girl is celebrating her birthday early today! Happiness is all that matters!] There were over twenty likes from relatives and Mom’s friends. I stared at that post for a very long time. Nurse Julie leaned over to take a look, froze for a moment, and quickly took the phone away, forcing a smile. “Your parents must be busy right now and didn’t hear the ring. Don’t worry, I’ll call them again. I’m sure they’ll pick up this time.” I smiled weakly and nodded. “Yeah. They must be busy.” Nurse Julie looked back at me, something glistening in her eyes. She quickly turned around and walked out, saying she would fetch me a glass of warm water. I leaned back against the pillow, staring at the ceiling light. The warm yellow glow bathed the entire ward in a soft light. Suddenly, I felt so tired. My eyelids felt impossibly heavy. The phone beside my hand lit up again. It was a post from Tyler. A photo of Amanda riding on Dad’s shoulders, holding an ice cream cone high in the air. The caption read: [This little princess insisted on having a second one. Guess we have to spoil her.] I let out a faint smile, flipping the phone over onto the pillow. A gentle breeze blew in from the window, making the curtains flutter like a hand waving goodbye. I remembered lying in the cemetery yesterday; the wind had felt just like this. Nurse Julie hadn’t come back yet. It probably takes a long time to get warm water. That was okay. I slowly closed my eyes, the faint smile still lingering on my lips. It didn’t hurt anymore. Early the next morning, Nurse Julie finally got through to my family. When they arrived at the hospital, Mom was still complaining to Dad. “Honestly, I don’t know what Nora is thinking, running to the hospital first thing in the morning.” Tyler looked down at his phone, asking the nurse casually: “What illness does she have anyway? Is it really worth being hospitalized?” Nurse Julie didn’t say a word. She turned around and led them deep into the hallway. Pushing open the heavy door to the morgue, a blast of freezing air hit them. Mom’s complaining stopped abruptly. Dad froze dead in his tracks. Tyler stared at the small, still outline beneath the white sheet, his lips trembling slightly. Nurse Julie spoke softly into the silence: “Before she passed away, she held my hand and asked to be buried somewhere far away so you wouldn’t have to bother visiting her.” “She said… one flower on her grave would be enough.”

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1 At our graduation dinner, Aaron and his debate partner Judith traded insults through me, one chair apart. Judith was moving to Atlanta. Aaron sneered she wouldn’t last three months. She told him to mind his own business. He smirked, dropping a peeled shrimp in my bowl. “As if she’s ever won once.” As dinner ended, Aaron slid a manila envelope to me. “Give this to Judith tomorrow.” Inside was a complete Atlanta relocation guide I’d compiled for him: rental checklists, red-flag warnings, hospital addresses, transit routes. He frowned defensively. “Don’t overthink it. She’s idiotically naive. If she gets scammed, she’ll just cry to me.” Last month, when I told him I’d accepted a job in New York, he’d casually said I should take care of myself. Pinching my cheek, he’d said, “You’re different. Wherever you go, I never have to worry about you.” I used to think that was trust. Only later did I realize he never worried about me leaving because he never planned on following me. Meanwhile, for the girl he mocked as useless, he’d mapped out an entire city before she even boarded the plane. … Dinner wasn’t even over when Judith sent a text to our group chat: Tell a certain someone to take his trash guide back. I don’t need it. Aaron glanced at his phone, then pushed another freshly peeled shrimp toward me. “Tell her she can take it or leave it. But if some sketchy landlord rips her off, she better not call me crying in the middle of the night.” I didn’t pick up my fork. That guide was something he had asked me to make two weeks ago. He had dumped seven or eight apartment listings into my inbox, saying Judith was moving to Atlanta alone and lacked the brains to figure it out, so I should look into them for her. I spent hours checking subway lines, hospital proximity, building management reviews, and commute times. I even called the landlords to confirm which way the windows faced. Aaron had replied with a single kissing emoji. My Nora is the most reliable. A second later, another text followed: She has a terrible morning temper. Is a forty-minute commute too long for her? That night, my own defense thesis was still waiting to be revised. Now that Judith refused to take it, he wanted me to hand-deliver it to her. Aaron tapped his knuckles against the table. “What are you daydreaming about?” “Do you remember what time my train leaves the day after tomorrow?” I asked. He blinked, caught off guard. “The afternoon?” “Seven-forty in the morning.” “That early?” He frowned, his tone laced with subtle blame, as if I had failed to inform him. Yet a month ago, I had sent him a screenshot of my ticket. Three days ago, I asked him if he could walk me to the station. He had merely replied: We’ll see. Judith is leaving that day too. Just make sure your times don’t clash. He remembered Judith’s train to Atlanta was at ten-twenty, but he couldn’t remember that mine was more than two hours earlier. Across the table, Judith swirled her glass of wine. “Nora, tell him not to think a stupid spreadsheet is going to touch my heart. The first thing I’m doing when I hit Atlanta is blocking every single one of his contacts.” Aaron scoffed. “Tell her to hide her office address well, too. Otherwise, when she gets fired, she’ll still need me to ship her luggage back.” And just like that, they were off again. Back in our sophomore year before the state debate tournament, I was doubled over with crippling stomach pain, yet I still ran back and forth four times to manage their logistics. When they won, Aaron hung the gold medal around my neck, pulling me into a tight hug. “Our Nora is the real MVP. Without you, the two of us would have fallen apart ages ago.” I used to think being “important” meant being cherished. Looking back now, I was more like a wooden shim wedged under a wobbly table leg. Unnoticed when things were stable, but the moment I was pulled away, the whole table would collapse. Aaron peeled another shrimp and held it to my lips. “Still pouting?” I turned my face away. He didn’t get angry. Instead, he draped his arm casually over the back of my chair, leaning in close with a dropped voice. “Alright, my bad. How long do you want me to coax you today? Is half an hour enough? If not, I’ll extend the timer.” The others at the table chuckled, teasing that Aaron always knew how to handle me. His thumb brushed lightly over my earlobe. “It’s just New York. Once you get settled, I’ll come visit you.” For a fraction of a second, I almost let myself be swayed again. The next moment, he pushed the thick envelope back into my arms. “Give this to Judith before you leave. Just don’t let her know I was the one who forced it on her.” I placed the envelope firmly back in front of him. “Give it to her yourself.” He raised an eyebrow. “Jealous again?” “No.” “Then what’s with the attitude? She and I have known each other for four years. Busting each other’s strategist balls is just how we talk. If I actually had feelings for her, would you even be sitting here?” He spoke with such breezy confidence, making it seem as though I were the one with the filthy mind. I didn’t bother arguing. “Aaron, let’s break up.” The smile on his face froze for a fraction of a second before he leaned back into his chair with a lazy smirk. “Using a breakup to scare me on graduation night? You really know how to pick your timing.” “I’m not trying to scare you.” “Right, sure you’re not.” He picked up my water glass, took a sip, and set it down. “I’ll give you three days to cool off. Three days later, I’ll come to New York to pick you up. Just don’t end up crying that I didn’t come running.” Judith let out a dramatic gag from across the table. “Could you two flex your romance somewhere else?” Aaron casually crumpled a napkin and tossed it at her. When I stood up, he merely raised his eyes, covering the untouched shrimp in my bowl and sliding it aside. He looked completely certain that after taking a walk to cool my head, I would come crawling right back. I grabbed my bag and walked out of the restaurant. Behind me, the laughter didn’t miss a single beat. The following afternoon, the debate team assembled at the main auditorium for their final graduation yearbook photo shoot. The advisor had called me, reminding me that since I had organized every piece of debate material over the last three years, the final page of the book couldn’t be complete without me. When I arrived, Aaron and Judith were on stage recording a video segment titled “Partners Ten Years Later.” The host asked if they would ever stand on the same debate stage again after graduation. Judith rolled her eyes. “Only if the organizer pays me double my appearance fee.” Aaron leaned against the podium, chuckling. “If she doesn’t get fired after moving to Atlanta, I might generously grant her one chance.” Not a single kind word left his mouth, yet the commemorative album in his hands was crammed with dense handwriting. Atlanta. New York. Miami. Seattle. He had marked years next to five different cities, declaring they would meet once a year to see who had turned out more successful. Judith snatched the notebook away, complaining about his ugly handwriting, and added a line at the bottom: Whoever flakes first is a coward. The crowd cheered, calling them the ultimate power duo, destined to bicker for another decade even after college. Aaron turned, spotted me in the aisle, and gestured with his chin. “You came just in time. Take a picture for us.” Through the camera viewfinder, Judith held the trophy while Aaron stood close beside her. They pretended to look disgusted with each other, yet both instinctively leaned an inch closer toward one another. After the shot, he walked over and handed me the album. My message section was completely blank. “You didn’t write anything?” I asked softly. “We’re not breaking up, so why write a goodbye?” He adjusted my graduation cap, his smile warm and close. “You’re not like her. She’s the type to vanish into thin air. If I don’t keep her on a leash, she’ll pretend she doesn’t know me by next year. But you’re my girlfriend. We have all the time in the world.” “Do you remember what day my job orientation starts?” I asked. Aaron’s hand froze on my shoulder. “Next week?” “The day after tomorrow.” A flicker of awkwardness crossed his eyes, but he quickly smoothed it over with a light laugh. “What’s the difference between two days earlier or later? Just send me your address when you arrive, and I’ll ship your things to you.” “I’m leaving tomorrow.” “I know.” He glanced back toward Judith. “Her train is at ten-twenty. Once I see her off, I’ll head straight over to find you.” I didn’t bother reminding him that my train was at seven-forty. Three years ago, he had also told me that we had all the time in the world. So my birthday could always be celebrated another day. Our couple photos could be taken next time. The things I wanted to say could wait until he finished his work. Only Judith’s matches, Judith’s arguments, and Judith’s departures required his immediate, undivided attention. The photographer called out, urging everyone to line up. Just as I stepped in front of the backdrop, Judith shouted from the stage, “Aaron, we need to re-record the last line. You said New York instead of Atlanta just now.” The photographer checked his watch. “If we don’t shoot now, the hall lights are going off.” “Just five minutes!” Aaron called back. He squeezed my hand gently. “Wait for me.” He hurried back onto the stage. Judith complained that his voice sounded like he was reading a eulogy. He retorted that her pronunciation sounded like she was still learning English. They argued over lines, then over stage placement. By the time they finished recording, half the ceiling lights in the hall had already been turned off. The photographer packed up his camera, giving me an apologetic look. “Looks like the couple shots will have to wait for another day.” Only then did Aaron walk over. “We can just shoot at the train station tomorrow.” I looked at him. “Aren’t you seeing Judith off?” “Then the three of us will take it together,” he said, taking it for granted. It turned out that even our graduation photos needed to reserve a spot for her. Aaron reached out to wrap an arm around my waist, but I stepped back, dodging his touch. The smile faded from his face. “Still not over it?” “We broke up.” “Nora.” His voice dropped into a warning register. “I’m giving you an exit ramp, so take it. Don’t actually throw away three years of a relationship over a temper tantrums.” I gave no answer. I simply handed the camera back to the advisor. In the very last photo stored on the memory card, Aaron and Judith stood together beside the album filled with plans for the future. I was completely outside the frame. On the night before departure, the debate team hosted a farewell livestream. The advisor mentioned it was our final official activity and asked if I could manage the control desk one last time. I agreed, wanting to put a clean, proper end to my four years here. Less than ten minutes into the stream, Judith abruptly changed her core argument mid-debate. Sitting on stage, Aaron countered with a smirk, but under the table, his fingers tapped twice against the wood. That was his old signal for me to patch through to his earpiece and soften his harsh words before they hit the live audience. This time, I didn’t switch on the mic. He tapped three times, his gaze darting toward the control desk. Judith looked in my direction as well, mouthing the words, “What is he saying?” I pulled off one side of my headphones, keeping my eyes glued to the broadcast timer. Without me smoothing over their sharp edges, the two of them were forced to confront each other directly in front of the camera. “Why did you change the script without telling me?” “Because your third point is completely flawed.” “Then why didn’t you mention it earlier?” “I sent it to you three times last night. You were too busy texting goodnight to whoever you were talking to.” Suppressed laughter broke out from the crew in the studio. Aaron’s face stiffened, but he had no choice but to push through. They bickered back and forth for two full minutes, yet somehow, they managed to carry the debate to its finish. It turned out they were perfectly capable of communicating directly. They had simply gotten used to having someone else do the heavy lifting for them. The final segment was titled “A Note to Your Partner Five Years From Now.” Aaron received his card. He muttered that there was nothing special to write, yet his pen moved rapidly across the paper. When you get to Atlanta, try to argue less with people. Take medicine when your stomach hurts, and don’t take unlicensed cabs after ten at night. If you can’t make it, tell me in advance so I can set aside time to laugh at you. Judith rolled her eyes, but the rims of her eyes turned red. Her note to Aaron contained a single sentence: Don’t turn into a slick, arrogant corporate jerk in five years, or I’ll call you out every single time I see you. The host chuckled, calling it the unique romance of a champion debate duo. When it came to partner messages, the microphone was passed to me. “Nora, why don’t you leave a note for Aaron too?” Aaron sat under the bright studio lights, looking at me with an amused arch of his brow. He probably expected me to say what I always said, that I would forever stand right behind him. I stayed silent for a moment. “Happy graduation.” The studio fell dead silent for a second. Aaron quickly laughed it off, smoothing over the awkwardness. “She’s shy. She’ll tell me the rest when we get home.” After the stream ended, team members exchanged parting gifts. Aaron pulled out a refurbished fountain pen and tossed it to Judith. “The one you broke during the finals. Take it, so you don’t look like you’re borrowing a pen every time you sign a document at your new job.” Judith caught it, her mouth as stubborn as ever. “As if I care.” I recognized that pen. To find the rare replacement nib for that discontinued model, Aaron had scoured the old city district for days, skipping dinner with me for a week straight. His gift to me was a travel neck pillow bought from the train station convenience store. The price tag was still hanging from the side. “New York is far. Use it to sleep on the way.” He clipped the neck pillow around my neck, leaning down to gently smooth my hair. “Don’t go saying I don’t care about you.” His eyes were incredibly gentle. I recalled the very first time I gave a presentation on stage. He had sat in the very last row, silently mouthing the words Look at me to steady my nerves. Those moments of genuine warmth were real, which was why I had found it so hard to walk away, time after time. A second later, he pressed a blister pack of stomach medicine into my palm. “Give this to Judith on your way out. She definitely forgot to pack any.” I unclipped the neck pillow, placing it back into his hands along with the medication. “She’s right outside the door. Hand it to her yourself.” Aaron frowned. “Nora, if you’re jealous, I can comfort you. But don’t throw a fit over practical matters.” “I’m not throwing a fit.” “Then what exactly do you want lately?” “A breakup.” He stared at me, the last trace of warmth vanishing from his eyes. “Do you really have to ruin everyone’s mood right when we’re graduating?” Judith’s voice called out from the hallway, urging him to hurry. Aaron closed his eyes briefly, shoving the neck pillow back into my arms. “Go back home first. Tomorrow morning, after I see her off, I’ll come straight to your place.” His tone softened into a placating plea. “You can punish me however you want then, alright?” I didn’t tell him that my train was leaving two hours earlier than Judith’s. The next morning at dawn, I wheeled my suitcase into the train station. With twenty minutes left before boarding, I spotted Aaron kneeling on the floor, helping Judith repack a suitcase jammed full of books. “Carrying this much scrap paper to Atlanta? Planning to wallpaper your apartment?” Judith nudged him with her shoe. “What do you know?” He looked up and saw me, immediately waving me over. “You came just in time. Tell her to ship these books instead.” Neither of them asked why I was pulling a suitcase of my own. The station intercom chimed, announcing that boarding had begun for the train to New York. I walked straight past them toward the gate. Aaron reached out and grabbed the handle of my luggage rod. “You’re leaving today?” “I told you multiple times.” He glanced up at the departure board, his forehead finally creasing. A moment later, he let out a short sigh. “Fine, go ahead first. Send me your address when you arrive, and tonight we’ll settle this breakup nonsense properly.” I pried his fingers off my luggage rod, taking out the keys to our rented apartment and placing them on top of the printed Atlanta guide. “The lease expires today. Go pick up your remaining things this afternoon.” Behind him, Judith called out, “Aaron! The zipper is stuck again!” He turned his head to shout back an insult, then looked at me. “Go through the gate first. Once I handle this, I’ll call you.” Believing I had finally stopped making a scene, he turned back to press down on Judith’s suitcase lid. As the automatic turnstile snapped shut behind me, the last thing I saw was the bend of his back as he leaned over her luggage. Half an hour later, Judith flipped through the guide pages and asked, “Where did Nora go?” The overhead station broadcast chimed at that exact moment. The train bound for New York had officially departed the station. Aaron stared up at the giant LED screen, the remaining composure on his face draining away inch by inch. He finally remembered that the screenshot of my ticket had been sitting in our chat history all along. The apartment keys resting on the guide slipped off and hit the floor with a sharp metallic clink. He bent down to pick them up as Judith asked him another question. Aaron didn’t hear a single word.

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1 Maria’s childhood friend Derek was a popular relationship guru. She believed love wasn’t about instinct, but his strict methodology. Derek said men were like stray cats: starve them to make them cling. So when I pulled an all-nighter, she locked me out in the hallway until sunrise. He claimed security bred complacency, so she vanished on our engagement day to test if I’d break down. Each time I sobbed, she sighed. “Derek said this is low-value emotional manipulation. I’m doing this for our future.” Then Dad had a massive stroke and landed in the ICU. I borrowed from everyone, still three thousand dollars short. Maria refused to send a dime, forwarding my desperate voice notes to Derek instead. That night, I went viral: Her boyfriend begged for money using his dying father. Romance scam? Dad’s blurred critical notice fueled the mockery. Comments hailed Maria as clear-headed, calling me a shameless leech. Bloodshot, I begged her to delete it. She gave a faint, mocking laugh. “Everyone’s helping me cut my losses. Reflect on why you sound like a con artist.” The urge to explain myself died. I didn’t want to argue anymore. I just wanted to drag myself out of this toxic relationship, clean and whole. … The hospital billing counter was closing in ten minutes. I swiped my debit card three times, but the machine kept displaying the same available balance: two thousand and forty dollars. The nurse pushed the receipt back toward me. “You’re still short three thousand dollars for the deposit,” she said coldly. “If it’s not paid by midnight, it will impact his ongoing medication.” I grabbed the slip and sprinted out of the lobby. Rain poured from the night sky. Across the street sat a small pawn shop. “The diamond is tiny, and the band has visible wear,” the jeweler said, squinting through his magnifying glass. “Best I can do is two thousand five hundred.” Maria had spent ten thousand dollars on this ring. The day we picked it out, she held my hand and spent the entire afternoon browsing. I had fallen in love with an eighteen-thousand-dollar band. She squeezed my fingers tightly. “Wait until our tenth anniversary. I’ll buy you a much bigger one.” On the way home, Derek sent her over a dozen voice messages. “Never feed a man until he’s full on the first try,” Derek’s voice had rattled through her phone speaker. “If you satisfy him right away, his demands will only grow bigger next time.” So Maria turned the car around, went back to the mall, and bought the cheaper option. Derek even bragged about her on his livestream later that night. “As long as you make the man choose himself, his sunk-cost fallacy will force him to rationalize your decision for you.” Back then, I really did rationalize it for her. I pushed the ring across the glass counter. “I’ll take it.” My phone buzzed. Maria was finally calling. “Where are you?” she asked. “The pawn shop across from the hospital.” There was a brief pause on the line. “Did you just sell the ring?” “My dad needs the money for his treatment.” “Jesse, why do you always have to take things to such extremes?” I gripped the receipt tightly. “Maria, my father is lying in the ICU!” “I know,” she sighed. “And didn’t I come over already?” She was standing across the street, holding a thermal bag from the porridge shop near the back entrance of the hospital. I ran over to her through the rain. She reached out and gently wiped the water from my forehead. “Why are you wearing so little in this weather?” Inside the bag was a warm container of black sesame porridge. Low sugar, no crushed peanuts, just the way I liked it. Looking at that familiar packaging, my eyes burned. Maria unscrewed the lid and handed me a spoon. “Eat a few bites first.” Just as I reached out, her phone chimed loudly. Derek’s voice filled the air through the speakerphone. “His emotions are running high right now. Don’t rush to comfort him.” “Make him record a clarification video first.” “Otherwise, he’ll think that the louder he throws a tantrum, the more he gets from you.” Maria’s hand froze mid-air. She glanced at me, then slowly put the lid back on the container. “I didn’t lie,” I said, my voice cracking. “You saw the notice with your own eyes.” Maria knitted her brows. “A stroke doesn’t mean he’s going to die instantly. Derek researched it, plenty of patients wake up the very next day.” “You came at me crying for money right off the bat. Anyone would be suspicious.” She held her phone up in front of my face. On the screen was a pre-written statement. [Due to extreme anxiety, I exaggerated my father’s medical condition. Miss Maria never refused to help me. I am deeply grateful to Mr. Derek for his timely reminder.] “Read it out loud,” Maria commanded softly. “Once you do, Derek deletes the post, and I transfer you the money.” I didn’t reach for the phone. Maria’s voice turned cold. “I am willing to give you the money. But you cannot use your family’s illness to cross my boundaries.” In the seven years we had been together, “boundaries” was her favorite word. I wasn’t allowed to check her phone. I wasn’t allowed to ask where she went with Derek. I wasn’t allowed to care when they had late-night heart-to-heart chats. Yet Derek was allowed to read all our private texts. He was allowed to reply to my messages on her behalf. He was allowed to decide when she should hold me, and when she should give me the cold shoulder. A bank notification popped up on my phone: the pawn shop funds had cleared. I turned around without a word and walked back to the billing window. Maria stood in the rain, her face growing pale and stern. “If you don’t record it right now, don’t ever say I didn’t give you a chance!” By the time I finished paying the deposit and made it back to the ICU doors, it was already one in the morning. My phone kept pushing notifications of Derek’s ongoing livestream highlights. He sat in front of a ring light, a sleek new watch gleaming on his wrist. “Special thanks to an anonymous old friend,” he smiled at the camera. “Knowing I just hit ten million followers, she insisted on sending me this surprise.” The camera panned briefly over the luxury box on his desk. The price tag read three thousand dollars. The time of purchase was seventeen minutes after I had begged Maria for help. It wasn’t that Maria didn’t have three thousand dollars. She just didn’t think my father’s life was worth it. The next morning, my boss called me into his office and suspended me indefinitely. “We received hundreds of complaint emails last night,” he sighed. “Upper management doesn’t want clients seeing your face right now.” Shortly after I left the building, the medical crowdfunding platform sent me a notification. My dad’s campaign page had been frozen due to mass reports. The twenty-five hundred dollars already raised was locked and could not be withdrawn. Then the hospital called. Strangers had been posing as relatives, calling the front desk to ask if my dad was a hired actor. Some demanded a livestream to verify his condition. After being harassed for half an hour, the nurses were forced to unplug the landline. When I hurried back to the ward, a funeral wreath was resting against the hallway wall. A bright red message was written across the white ribbon: [May the scammer father and son reunite in hell soon.] I grabbed the wooden frame to throw it away. A splinter pierced deep into my palm, and blood dripped down my fingers. Maria happened to step out of the elevator at that exact moment. Seeing the blood on my hand, she pulled a Band-Aid out of her purse. “Why are you still so clumsy?” she muttered softly. “Give me your hand.” I didn’t move. She reached out, grabbed my wrist, and skillfully wrapped the bandage around the cut. She knew I hated onions. She knew I was terrified of thunder. Yet when my father was lying in the ICU, she had to ask Derek first if my dad was worth three thousand dollars. Her phone vibrated in her palm. It was a text from Derek. [Now that you’ve comforted him enough, pull away. Don’t let him feel that throwing a fit earns him more attention.] The moment Maria finished applying the Band-Aid, she let go of my wrist like I was radioactive. I peeled the bandage off and tossed it straight into the trash can alongside the wreath. “Do you even need his permission to feel sorry for me?” I asked. Her face darkened. “Stop being so cynical. Derek is spending his valuable time analyzing your personality just to help us.” I looked into her eyes. “The wedding is off.” “From now on, he can guide your love life however he wants.” Maria froze for two seconds, then suddenly let out a bitter laugh. “Threatening to break up with me to force a concession again?” she sneered. “Derek called it last night. He said once you realized crying didn’t work, your next step would be bringing up a breakup.” “Jesse, every single reaction of yours is completely within his predictions.” She handed me a duffel bag filled with clothes and chargers. “You’ll be pulling all-nighters here for the next few days.” I pushed the bag back toward her. “I need to go back to the apartment to get my ID and documents.” Maria stepped in front of me. “I’ll have my assistant bring them over.” I looked up at her. “Or what? Do I need Derek’s permission to go back to my own home now?” She didn’t answer. Half an hour later, I used my spare key to open the door to our apartment. My house slippers were still sitting neatly by the entrance. Right next to them was a pair of men’s leather shoes. Derek was sitting casually on the living room sofa, wearing the handmade wool slippers my dad had crafted for me last winter. I stared at his feet. “Take those off.” Derek looked down casually. “They’re just slippers, Jesse. A truly independent man doesn’t project his baggage onto everyday objects.” I bent down to pull them off him. Right then, the study door was pushed open. Maria hurried out and grabbed my arm firmly. “That’s enough!” she snapped. “Derek is just wearing them for a little bit.” Looking at the woman standing in front of me, I suddenly remembered the day we moved in four years ago. She had placed the keys gently in my palm with a radiant smile. “This is our home from now on,” she had whispered. “You can come back whenever you want.” I yanked my arm out of her grip. My lower back slammed against the desk behind me, knocking one of the drawers open a crack. Inside lay a signed equity purchase agreement. Maria had purchased a fifteen percent stake in Derek’s new coaching company for forty thousand dollars. The date of the signature was the exact day my father was admitted to the ICU. Three years ago, Maria’s studio suffered a massive cash flow crisis. My father sold his only property in the old neighborhood and lent her all forty thousand dollars from the sale. The IOU stated the loan would be repaid within two years. But she kept delaying it. Every time my dad gently asked about it, she would hold his hands and smile. “Dad, give me just a little more time,” she would say. “Once Jesse and I get married, my money is your money anyway.” My father waited until a stroke nearly took his life, and she wouldn’t even give him three thousand dollars. Yet that forty thousand dollars had gone straight into Derek’s company without a second thought. “Why is my dad’s money here?” I demanded, picking up the document. Maria snatched it away and shut the drawer. “What do you mean, your dad’s money? That loan was injected into my business, making it a company asset. My company has the right to decide how to invest its capital.” I stared at her, stunned. “Giving it to Derek is an investment? But giving three thousand dollars to save my dad is what?” Derek leaned against the doorframe, crossing his arms. “It’s pouring money into a bottomless pit, Jesse.” “Three thousand today, rehab fees tomorrow, eldercare after that,” Derek continued smoothly. “If Maria doesn’t set hard boundaries now, your family will bleed her dry for the rest of her life.” I pulled the drawer back open. On the memo line of the contract, a single code was written: [Initial payment for Project LG-01.] Maria yanked the contract out of my hands. “These are internal corporate documents. You have no right to look at them!” “You took my dad’s money to fund a project named after him?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper. Her throat tightened slightly. “LG is just a project code.” Derek stepped up beside her. His new three-thousand-dollar watch caught the sunlight, flashing painfully in my eyes. Suddenly, this apartment I had lived in for four years felt terrifyingly alien. My clothes were hanging in the closet. My mug sat on the counter. My photos were on the wall. Yet standing here, I felt like a complete stranger. My father finally woke up on the afternoon of the third day. The doctor informed me that he had developed temporary aphasia, and the entire right side of his body was paralyzed. When I entered the room, he was struggling desperately with his left hand to grab his phone off the nightstand. The screen was inundated with vile text messages from strangers. [Just die already. Your death will prove your son is a scammer.] [Raising a scumbag son like that, you can’t be a good person either.] I snatched the phone away and shut it off. My father’s lips trembled uncontrollably. The nurse quickly brought over a notepad and a pen. He gripped the pen tightly with his clumsy left hand. Every single stroke was jagged and shaky. After a long struggle, three barely legible words appeared on the paper: [Is money enough?] I squatted down beside his bed. “It’s enough,” I lied softly, forcing a smile. “My company paid my salary early.” He stared into my eyes, clearly not believing me. “It really is enough, Dad.” Tears trickled down his weathered cheeks. Unable to move his right arm, he used his awkward left hand to gently stroke my hair. Just then, the ward door swung open. Maria walked in carrying a boutique bakery bag. “Uncle Hugh is awake?” she asked, her voice bright. She expertly raised the head of the bed and placed a box of chestnut cake on the bedside table. The moment my dad saw her, his eyes lit up. Maria knew he loved chestnuts, but didn’t like things too sweet. Four years ago, when my father was hospitalized for high blood pressure for the first time, I was stuck out of town on a business trip. Maria stayed by his bedside for two straight nights. When I rushed back the next morning, she was fast asleep, leaning against the edge of his mattress. From that day on, my father always said, “Maria is a thoughtful girl, Jesse. You can count on her.” She sat on the edge of the bed and took my father’s left hand into hers. “Uncle Hugh, I’m so sorry you had to go through this,” she said softly. “The people online don’t know the truth. Please don’t take their harsh words to heart.” My father looked at me anxiously. Maria followed his gaze, looking over at me before turning back to him. “Don’t worry,” she reassured him warmly. “I won’t leave Jesse over a little misunderstanding like this.” My father’s tense shoulders visibly relaxed. In that brief second, I felt a terrible pang of hesitation. It was as if she were still the same Maria who had cared for him four years ago. The very next second, however, she pulled an official document out of her briefcase. “The public backlash is too intense right now,” she explained gently to my father. “If you could just help clarify a small detail, Derek can get the trending topics taken down immediately.” Printed on the paper was a single statement: [I, Hugh, hereby confirm that I voluntarily gifted forty thousand dollars to Miss Maria. There is no loan agreement between us.] [My son, Jesse, recently lost emotional control and exaggerated my medical condition to demand funds.] I grabbed the paper and ripped it in half. “You’re shoving this garbage in front of a man who just woke up from a stroke?” I shouted. Maria frowned. “It’s just clarifying the facts!” “There is an IOU for that money!” “That IOU can be voided!” she hissed, lowering her voice. “We are getting married soon! Why are you drawing such a harsh line between your dad’s money and mine?” “Why didn’t you talk about being family when you took his money?” I spat back. “Now that it’s time to pay it back, you’re blaming me for keeping score?” Maria’s expression turned ugly. “Can you stop treating our relationship like a financial ledger?” “My dad was dying, and you still had to consult Derek to see if he was worth three thousand dollars!” Hearing the word married, my father frantically grabbed Maria’s sleeve. He pointed at the torn paper, then pointed at me, his eyes wide with worry. Maria patted his hand gently. “If you sign it, Uncle Hugh, I’ll have Derek take down the posts tonight.” “The wedding will go on as planned.” “I won’t abandon him.” My father stared at me intensely. I stepped in front of the bed, blocking her view. “Get out.” Maria’s face went cold. “Jesse, don’t be ungrateful. Your father knows what’s best for you.” “He just woke up! He can’t even speak!” I yelled, tears brimming in my eyes. “He’s just terrified that you’ll leave me!” My father panicked, trying to push himself up with his left arm. The heart monitor suddenly let out a shrill, piercing alarm. Nurses rushed into the room, shoving all of us out into the hallway. The doctor called me over to sign consent forms for additional emergency tests. When I returned to the floor, Maria was no longer in the corridor. The ward was dead silent. A red stamp pad sat open on the bedside table. The statement I had torn up had been reprinted and laid flat on the mattress. On the bottom right corner was a smudged, crooked red thumbprint. When my father saw me enter, he raised his left hand in a panic. On the notepad beside him were fresh, shaky words he had just managed to write: [She said… if I sign… she marries you.] I stood by the bed, completely frozen. At eight o’clock that evening, Derek posted a teaser for an upcoming emergency livestream. The thumbnail was a close-up photo of the thumbprinted statement. The caption read: [After seven years of being bled dry, she finally received a signed confession from the boyfriend’s father.] In the teaser video, Maria wore a crisp white blouse, offering the camera a tired, long-suffering smile. “I truly cared for them as my own family,” she said softly. “But some people’s greed can never be satisfied.” My father’s phone vibrated on the nightstand. I rushed to silence it, but he had already seen the notification. He stared at me, his left hand still stained with red ink. His mouth opened, but no sound came out. He could only shake his head over and over again. The full stream was scheduled for seven o’clock the following evening. Derek released preview clips throughout the day. Footage played of Maria walking through a local market with my dad, carrying his groceries. Another clip showed my dad sitting outside her studio, wrapping homemade dumplings for her staff. There was even a quiet video of his back as he handed his house keys to the real estate agent the day he sold his home. These were videos taken from my personal family archives. Now, they had been edited together into a viral package titled: [The Complete Record of Raising a Leech Father and Son.] I dialed Maria’s number. She picked up almost instantly. “Have you come to your senses?” “Cancel the stream,” I said, my voice shaking. “It’s too late for that.” “My dad just woke up,” I begged. “He can’t handle this.” Maria glanced over at Derek, who was sitting next to her. Derek shook his head firmly. Her tone instantly hardened. “You’re using your dad to guilt-trip me again, Jesse. The stream is just a simple clarification.” “That money was a loan,” I said. “You tricked him into pressing his thumbprint!” “If you have a problem with it, take it to court,” she said coldly. The call went dead. At seven o’clock sharp, the livestream went live. I muted my father’s phone and hid it deep at the bottom of the bedside drawer, begging the nurses not to play any viral videos in the ward. But someone posing as a family member snuck into the floor and dropped the stream link into the patient group chat. While I was at the nurse’s station picking up his prescription, my father pulled open the bottom drawer with his good arm. He sent Maria a single voice message first. Then, he tapped the link. When I rushed back into the room, Maria’s voice was echoing through the phone speaker. “Uncle Hugh used to tell me that as long as I married Jesse, all his money would belong to me anyway,” she was saying to the camera. “I was young back then. I really believed he loved me like a daughter.” The screen displayed the statement bearing my dad’s red thumbprint. Derek sat beside her, leaning in. “So when Mr. Maher demanded three thousand dollars using his father’s medical emergency as an excuse, how did that make you feel?” Maria lowered her eyes sorrowfully. “Disappointed. It wasn’t about the three thousand dollars. It’s just that enabling someone without boundaries only feeds their entitlement.” Comments flooded the screen at lightspeed. My father sat upright in his hospital bed, his face deathly pale. I sprinted across the room and yanked the charging cable out, blacking out the screen. My father grabbed my forearm with incredible strength. Broken, desperate sounds spilled from his throat. “Lo… Loan…” He wanted to tell the world that the forty thousand dollars was a loan. On the screen before it died, Maria had pulled out the original IOU. A massive red ‘X’ had been drawn across the document. “Uncle Hugh personally explained that the IOU was just created for tax bookkeeping purposes,” Maria announced smoothly. “So I won’t be pressing charges for their past actions.” “However, effective today, I will be cutting off all financial support.” My father stared intently at the dark screen. His chest heaved violently. BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! The heart monitor suddenly screamed a continuous, deadly tone. Doctors and nurses burst through the door. “Possible secondary brain hemorrhage!” the doctor yelled. “Get him to the operating room now!” The bed was unlocked and wheeled out at breakneck speed. I tried to run alongside it, but my knees gave out, and I slammed hard into the hallway wall. Maria’s livestream was still going strong on my phone. Derek was excitedly announcing that sales for his relationship masterclass had just crossed one hundred thousand units. Applaud roared through his studio. I picked up my phone with trembling hands and dialed her number. Once. Twice. I called seventeen times in a row. She never picked up. The red light above the operating room burned for three agonizing hours. When the chief surgeon finally walked out, he looked at me and slowly shook his head. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “We did everything we could.” When my father was wheeled out, a white sheet covered his face. His left hand, still faint with red ink, hung limply over the side of the gurney. I knelt beside him, gently lifting his cold hand and placing it back beneath the sheet. My phone vibrated relentlessly in my pocket. Derek’s stream had officially hit the number one spot on the entire platform. On screen, Maria was answering the host’s final question. “If Jesse apologizes to you right now, will you still marry him?” She lowered her head, neatly adjusting her cuffs. The dark gray skirt suit she was wearing was the exact outfit I had bought her for our planned courthouse wedding. “That depends on whether he can truly recognize his mistakes,” she said calmly. “Marriage is not a charity program.” “I will not compromise my principles just because he cries pathetically.” Thunderous applause broke out in the studio. The stream transitioned to the celebration segment. An assistant holding a tablet hurried onto the stage. “Miss Maria, your personal phone has been ringing non-stop.” Maria glanced down. The screen was covered with seventeen missed calls from my number. Before she could process it, an incoming call from an unknown number flashed across the display. Derek reached out, placing his hand over hers. “The stream isn’t over yet.” The ringtone dragged on relentlessly. In the end, Maria pressed answer. “Hello?” The nurse’s voice echoed clearly through her lapel microphone, broadcasted live to hundreds of thousands of viewers. “Is this Miss Maria?” “This is the Central Hospital ICU.” “You are listed as the emergency secondary contact for Mr. Hugh Maher.” “Mr. Maher suffered a massive relapse. Despite emergency resuscitation, he passed away at ten twenty-seven tonight.”

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Reborn. I willingly gave up my coveted spot to accompany my diplomat-in-training wife on her overseas fellowship to Geneva. I packed my entire life into a single duffel bag and headed back to my rust-belt hometown, putting as much distance between us as humanly possible. Because in my previous life, she spent a drunken, blurry night with her junior colleague, and the coward refused to take responsibility. I stepped out of the crowd, took the blame, and married her to save her reputation. She put my ring on her finger, but she froze me out for the rest of my miserable life. I spent agonizing nights bleeding over foreign language textbooks just to keep up with her world, only for her to rip the pages right out of my hands. “You could study for a century and never have Preston’s natural talent.” Our mandated once-a-month time in bed was a masterclass in numb endurance. “Read a book for once. Preston would never be a slave to base biological urges.” Even when she was arranging her final affairs, she explicitly forbade me from sharing her cemetery plot. I stood in the freezing rain and looked at her headstone. It read: “Beloved Wife of Preston.” That was the moment the gut-punch landed. I finally realized I was nothing but a pathetic, disposable prop in her grand love story. Given a second chance at life, I opened my eyes on the exact morning after she and Preston shared their little night of passion. This time, I did not step up to be her knight in shining armor. I rode the wave of chaos and dumped her on the spot. 1 “Victoria, isn’t Jason your boyfriend? What the hell are you doing tangled up with Preston!” “Getting caught in the act like this is a damn disgrace. Get out of bed and march down to city hall before you ruin the company’s image!” A crowd of coworkers clustered outside the company housing units, their whispers buzzing like a hive of angry hornets. Victoria clutched a cheap polyester sheet to her chest. Her face was entirely flushed, her vocal cords paralyzed by sheer humiliation. Preston, on the other hand, looked like he wanted to scrub his own skin off just to avoid being linked to her. He frantically yanked up his slacks, shooting her a look of pure, unadulterated panic. “Victoria, you know I signed a five-year morality and non-compete clause with the firm! If corporate HR escalates this, my career is dead in the water!” In my past life, I had walked into this exact scene while bringing Victoria her morning coffee. My heart had shattered into a million jagged pieces. Like a fool, I had rushed into the room, covered up her dirty laundry, and offered her a wedding ring to kill the rumors. If getting blindly drunk was just an accident, then how could anyone explain the sickeningly sweet, flushed look Victoria was giving Preston as she silently begged him to claim her? I had braved the hurricane of office gossip to make her my wife, only to be rewarded with half a lifetime of glacial indifference. This time around, my feet stayed firmly planted in the hallway. I crossed my arms and watched the fire burn. The whispers grew into loud jeers. The crowd of spectators thickened by the second. Preston was pacing like a caged rat. The second his panicked eyes locked onto me in the doorway, he jutted a trembling finger in my direction. “I have perfect self-control! Someone must have slipped something in my drink!” “Yesterday, Jason brought Victoria a bottle of water. Right after we drank it, we completely lost our minds.” “Jason, you sick bastard! You wanted to trap Victoria into a shotgun wedding, but you ended up destroying both of our reputations instead!” In a heartbeat, the crowd’s judging, disgusted glares pivoted away from the bed and zeroed in on me. Victoria, fueled by shame and a desperate need for a scapegoat, unleashed her venom in my direction. “Why are you just standing there humiliating yourself!” “Get your ass to the director’s office right now and confess to what you did!” “Are you trying to get me and Preston fired because of your toxic jealousy?!” She knew damn well what really happened last night. But over the years, tossing Preston’s messes onto my shoulders had become her favorite reflex. When Preston lost classified client files on a bender, she filed an anonymous tip claiming I was the office thief. When Preston trashed an expensive piece of lab equipment, she screamed at me until my ears rang, forcing me to take the write-up. The endless river of false accusations had eroded my soul. But playing the sacrificial lamb for Preston was a script I was ripping to shreds today. I calmly pulled my stamped timecard from my jacket pocket and held it up to the light. “I was pulling an overnight shift at the manufacturing plant until six this morning. Tell me exactly when I managed to sneak in here and hand you a water bottle.” “The truth is, you two locked yourselves in a room together in the dead of night. Whatever happened is on you.” My words flipped the script. The crowd’s murmurs instantly changed their tune. “What kind of decent woman spends the whole night in a bachelor’s apartment? And this isn’t even Victoria’s first time!” “Honestly, Jason is the real victim here. These two have been playing him for an absolute fool.” Seeing the jury of public opinion swing my way, Preston immediately turned on the waterworks. “Jason, man, it is so messed up that you orchestrated this whole crowd just to frame my relationship with Victoria!” “Forget about my reputation, but Victoria is your girl! Don’t you even care about dragging your own lady through the mud?” What a toxic, silver-tongued snake. I had been standing there for less than three minutes, yet he was already painting me as the mastermind who rallied a mob to sabotage his golden career. They were caught sweating in the same bed, and he still had the audacity to say I was framing them. It was genuinely laughable. Victoria cared about his corporate ladder more than her own pulse. Terrified that this scandal would cost him his job, she went into full panic mode. She reached out, gripping his hand tightly to soothe him. “Preston! None of this is your fault. Don’t worry, the person truly responsible will face the consequences!” Then, her eyes turned to dead winter as she glared at me. She bared her teeth. “Are you happy now?! Get out of my sight and start scraping together a dowry to marry me!” “If this little stunt of yours leaves a single scratch on Preston’s career, you can kiss any chance of being my husband goodbye!” Just as I suspected. To her, I was nothing more than a pathetic backup plan. A safety net made of garbage. I let out a low, mocking laugh. “Preston won’t even touch you in the daylight. What makes you think I want his leftovers?” “We are done, Victoria. Have a nice life.” 2 The scandalous details of Victoria and Preston’s wild night spread through the corporate campus like wildfire. The executive directors dragged them both into a closed-door meeting. Word on the floor was that upper management gave them an ultimatum. One of them had to pack their desk and leave. I headed straight to the HR department, handed in my resignation, and walked back to my apartment. Victoria was already waiting in my living room. She shot me a venomous glare, her voice dripping with entitlement. “Preston is getting fired. I hope you are proud of yourself.” “If you had just been a man and admitted you spiked the drinks, none of this nightmare would be happening!” In the past, I had always shrunk myself down to make her feel huge. She was entirely used to looking down on me from her imaginary pedestal. The old Jason would have been on his knees begging for forgiveness by now. But today, the only thought echoing in my skull was, “Why the hell should I?” “I didn’t drug anyone, so why would I confess to a felony?” “Preston is getting fired because he lacks basic professional morals. That is not my problem. Besides, we are officially broken up. Get the hell out of my apartment.” Victoria froze. A flicker of genuine shock shattered her cold facade. But the moment her eyes caught the stamped resignation papers on my coffee table, her arrogant smirk returned. “Oh, I see. You quit your job to give your position to Preston just to win me back. You can drop the tough guy act now, it is getting pathetic.” Assuming Preston’s career was saved, her mood shifted. Her tone lost a fraction of its icy edge. “Fine. I will forgive you for publicly disrespecting me yesterday.” “Have five thousand dollars ready in cash, plus some decent jewelry, and I will let you marry me.” I let out a harsh laugh, picking up the paperwork and shoving it directly in her face. “Read the fine print, Victoria. I am quitting. I am not transferring my role to Preston.” “And I would rather drink glass than marry you.” She snatched the papers from my hand, her eyes going wide as she scanned the official stamps. She slammed the documents down on the table. “Jason! You are taking this way too far!” “Preston was right about you! You saw me hit a rough patch, and now you are abandoning the woman who stood by you to go chase some cheap thrill!” “Yesterday was just an accident! People make mistakes! What kind of blood sacrifice do you want from me before you let this go!” There it was again. Preston said this. Preston said that. In my previous life, I merely said a polite hello to a new female intern. Preston immediately whispered in Victoria’s ear, claiming I was flirting and sleeping around behind her back. She didn’t even give me a chance to speak. She swallowed his poison instantly. She stormed into the regional manager’s office, screaming that I was a serial cheater. She even filed a formal complaint with the ethics board. I was almost dragged out by security and blacklisted from the entire industry. I was supposed to be her partner, but my words held less weight than dirt. Now, she had literally hopped into bed with another man, and she expected me to brush it off as a minor clerical error. Whatever Preston spat out was the absolute gospel. Whatever I said was just white noise. “Save your breath. I already told you. We are done.” Victoria’s chest heaved violently. She let out a chilling sneer. “Okay, fine! We are done! But you are going to give back every single gift I have ever bought you over the years!” Watching her try to play the extortion game, I just scoffed. I walked over to a cardboard box in the corner, dug around, and tossed two pairs of plain cotton socks and a single, mismatched winter glove onto the table. She looked at the pathetic pile in absolute disbelief. “Where is the rest of it?! Don’t try to hide my things from me!” “That is all of it. You threw these two pairs of socks at me because they came free when you bought Preston’s winter coat. And this glove is the one Preston decided he didn’t like.” My eyes locked onto hers, filled with razor-sharp irony. “Six years, Victoria. Six years, and this is the grand total of your generosity.” Her face burned scarlet. The undeniable proof of her selfishness sat right there on the wood, stripping away her pride. Having absolutely zero evidence to fight back with, she puffed up her chest, trying to mask her burning guilt with sheer volume. “You are lying! I know there is more!” “What about that vintage heirloom bracelet your mother promised me! She said it was mine, which means I keep it even if we break up!” “That antique is worth a fortune. I am going to pawn it so I can fund Preston’s fellowship application for Geneva!” So that was it. The real reason she graced my apartment with her presence today was to squeeze me dry to save Preston’s overseas dreams. The talk about marriage, the dowry, the gifts. It was all a cheap manipulation tactic. A heavy, suffocating disappointment settled in my chest. I pointed a rigid finger at the front door and roared. “You are never touching my mother’s bracelet! Get the hell out of my house, right now!” “You will regret this, Jason. Just wait!” 3 The factory director told me that as soon as I returned the five thousand dollars in corporate petty cash, my resignation would be finalized. It was leftover money from a mechanical parts order, and I had kept it locked securely in my apartment for safekeeping. But when I pried open the floorboard and unlocked the heavy wooden lockbox… It was empty. The thick stack of hundred-dollar bills, and the velvet box holding my mother’s heirloom bracelet. My entire life savings. Vanished. There were only two people on earth who knew where that key was hidden. I felt the blood roaring in my ears. I tore out of the apartment and went hunting for Victoria. After asking around the neighborhood, I found out she had rented out a private lounge to celebrate Preston’s birthday. I kicked the double doors open. Preston was standing in the center of the room, dripping in luxury. A tailored designer suit, a ridiculously expensive imported watch on his wrist, and leather shoes polished to a mirror shine. He smirked as I walked in. “Jason, buddy! Glad you could make it. Victoria is throwing me a little bash.” “Thanks for sponsoring the event, by the way.” Victoria had bought him a mountain of high-end garments. Fabrics that cost a month’s salary per yard. A massive, multi-tiered gourmet cake dominated the center of a table groaning under the weight of expensive champagne and imported steaks. Victoria’s pathetic entry-level salary couldn’t even cover the appetizer menu in a place like this. She had bled my lockbox dry to fund this circus. My vision swam with red. I marched up to the table and screamed at the top of my lungs. “Did you break into my box, steal the company cash, and pawn my mother’s bracelet?!” Victoria didn’t even flinch. She sipped her champagne, completely unfazed by my boiling rage. “Preston lost his job because of your little temper tantrum. He has been so depressed he hasn’t eaten for days.” “I took some initiative and used your funds to compensate him. You shouldn’t have a problem with that.” Six years together. I had never once tasted a birthday cake. I hadn’t bought a new suit in a decade. She stole my money to play sugar mama to Preston, and she said it with the casual arrogance of someone ordering a coffee. The volcano inside my chest finally erupted. I grabbed the edge of the heavy banquet table and violently flipped it over. Shattered glass, ruined cake, and expensive champagne exploded across the polished hardwood. “Victoria! That was corporate petty cash! If I don’t hand that money back to the director by tomorrow, I am going to federal prison!” “Whatever is left, you are giving it back to me right now!” The table crashed to the floor. Preston let out a high-pitched shriek and threw himself dramatically in the direction the table was falling. “Jason! I was just about to put in a good word for you! Why would you intentionally smash my hand!” “I need these fingers to type up summit reports at the Geneva headquarters! If my nerves are damaged, my career is over!” It was a blatant, pathetic lie. His hand had barely grazed the edge of the wood, leaving a faint pink mark at best. But Victoria’s face twisted into a mask of demonic fury. She lunged forward, grabbed two fistfuls of my jacket collar, and violently slammed my forehead into the jagged edge of a nearby counter. She smashed my head down over and over. By the time she let go, warm blood was pouring down into my eyes. “Get on your knees and apologize to Preston!” Agony radiated through my skull, but the physical pain was nothing compared to the burning hatred in my chest. I clutched my bleeding forehead and glared at her. “Why the hell should I?! I didn’t touch him! He threw himself at the table!” Caught in his terrible acting, Preston started wailing louder. “Victoria, he is lying! How was I supposed to know he was going to turn into a violent psycho?” “My special day is ruined, my job is gone, I can’t take this anymore!” Victoria rushed over and wrapped her arms around him, cooing soft words into his ear. When she turned her gaze back to me, her eyes were bottomless pits of ice. “I am giving you three seconds to get on your knees and beg for his forgiveness.” “If you don’t, I will personally draft an email to the executive board right now. I will tell them you embezzled the five thousand dollars to fund a gambling habit. Have fun rotting in a concrete cell!” My pupils dilated in sheer terror. My fists clenched so hard my knuckles popped. She had spent the money, yes. But my name was on the ledger. I was the one responsible for that cash. If corporate pressed charges for high-level embezzlement, I would be looking at fifteen years behind bars. My entire life would be turned to ash. Hot, bitter tears of utter defeat burned my eyes. The adrenaline drained from my legs, and my knees hit the hardwood floor with a heavy thud. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have lost my temper.” “Please… just give me the money back!” Victoria let out a victorious sneer. She reached into her designer purse, pulled out a single copper penny, and threw it directly at my bleeding face. “There. That is all that is left. Every other cent went into securing Preston’s VIP spot for the Geneva fellowship.” “To me, you are not even worth the dirt on my shoes.” My hands shook violently as I picked up the cold penny from the floor. My throat felt like it was lined with sandpaper. “Five thousand dollars… plus a vintage heirloom bracelet. And you are telling me this is all you have left?” “Exactly. That is all there is.” Preston looked down at me with a sickening, triumphant grin. Then, he intentionally let his tongue slip. “Oh, wait, Victoria. Don’t you still have about eight grand sitting in your savings account? Why don’t you float him a loan so he doesn’t go to jail?” “Ah, my mistake! I forgot, you told me yesterday that money is strictly reserved for our luxury shopping trips in Europe. Untouchable!” Blood dripped from my chin onto my shirt. I stared at the two of them with dead, hollow eyes. “So this is how it ends? You really are going to leave me to take the fall?” Victoria’s emotionless silence gave me all the answers I needed. The very next morning, the corporate bulletin board proudly displayed the approved names for the Geneva Summit: Victoria and Preston. Preston was walking through the lobby shaking hands, soaking up the praise, and rolling his designer luggage toward the airport shuttle. I kicked the glass doors of the lobby open, holding my ID badge high in the air, and screamed. “Victoria and Preston are guilty of grand larceny and corporate embezzlement exceeding five thousand dollars! Their ethical violations completely disqualify them from any overseas company representation!” “The local authorities are on their way right now! I am officially whistleblowing on their fraudulent fellowship applications! I demand that HR revoke their travel clearances immediately!”

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1 Born in the slums, I accidentally unlocked the strange ability to understand cockroaches. When I was little, my alcoholic foster father tried to sell me to an old man to settle his gambling debts. The roaches whispered in my ear, warning me to hide in the crawlspace beforehand. When I grew older and shady drunks lurked near my doorstep, the roaches scurried over to tell me to deadbolt the doors and call the police. Relying on this bizarre gift, I studied like crazy and got accepted into Grand Capital University. Around the same time, my biological parents, the ultra-wealthy Brendons, finally tracked me down and welcomed me back into high society. Yet on the very first night of freshman year, I kidnapped the campus heartthrob and dragged him to the dorm roof, preparing to jump. Why? Because my roach friends informed me that Emily, the fake heiress assigned to my dorm, was setting a trap to frame me for arson. “The old roach living under your bunk sent me to pass the message,” a little beetle-like buddy had squeaked to me earlier. “That fake heiress is hell-bent on framing you and putting you behind bars!” I had fallen into deep thought upon hearing that. Emily didn’t just want me in prison; she wanted to alienate me from my biological parents forever. I needed an absolute, unbreakable alibi. So, I did the only logical thing. I snatched the passing campus heartthrob, Nate, dragged him up to the roof, and started a live stream. “Hey everyone, call the cops!” I yelled at my phone screen. “I just kidnapped Nate!” … The roof wind blew violently, stinging my skin. I kept an iron grip on Nate, dragging him all the way to the very edge of the concrete ledge. “Why are you so insanely strong?!” Nate struggled against my grip, his eyes wide. “Let go of me!” No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t break free. I grew up in the slums doing heavy manual labor, building up brute strength that no privileged college boy could match. He forced down his panic, trying to reason with me politely. “Willow, are you going through something terrible? Tell me, I can help you solve it. We don’t need to take such extreme measures.” I tilted my head, letting out an unhinged smile. “Sorry, Nate, but my problem can only be solved by live-streaming a rooftop jump!” Once my innocence was proven, I would apologize to Nate and accept whatever punishment he saw fit. Just then, the squeaky chatter of several roaches reached my ears again. “Boss! Emily is making her move! She conspirated with your other two roommates!” “Yeah, she even managed to lift your fingerprints and installed a hidden camera beforehand! She’s setting up an airtight frame-job!” “I heard they hired a hacker to forge footage of you lighting the fire in the dorm!” My heart sank, a wave of coldness spreading down my spine. I should have guessed it. Ever since the Brendons brought me back, Emily had been suspiciously sweet to me. She showered me with warm concern and insisted on rooming with me in the university dorms. That fake kindness was merely a tactic to lower my guard. After all, she was just an impostor occupying a spot that wasn’t hers. She was terrified I would reclaim everything that belonged to me. So she decided to strike first, using an arson setup to destroy me completely. Emily understood human nature all too well. I was an unrefined kid from the slums. Most members of the Brendon family already assumed I possessed terrible moral character. Once the dorm caught fire, a girl like me would be unable to defend herself, disgraced, and thrown out of the family forever. I exhaled a heavy breath. With the help of my roach friends, I had managed to pull myself out of the gutter and survive against all odds. I was not about to go down without a fight. I looked at my phone screen. The live stream’s local viewer count was exploding. The chat box flooded with furious comments. Holy crap! Is she actually holding him hostage? Is this chick crazy? If she can’t have the golden boy, she wants to destroy him?! I know her! Her name is Willow! Word is she grew up in the urban slums! No wonder she’s so unhinged and extreme! Nate, don’t be scared! We called the cops! They’re on their way! Is she trying to get famous? Streaming a fake kidnapping to gain followers is beyond disgusting! If you want to jump, jump by yourself! Don’t drag an innocent guy down with you and waste public resources! I feel so bad for Nate! He’s still trying to talk her down! A tsunami of insults slammed into me through the screen, but I felt no hurt whatsoever. In fact, I felt immensely relieved. The harsher they cursed, the higher the stream metrics climbed, and the more witnesses I gained. I was constructing the most rock-solid alibi imaginable. My smile grew wilder as I yelled into the phone camera, “That’s right! My name is Willow, student ID zero-two-one-four-six-two! I’m completely nuts!” “Everyone listen carefully! The time is currently nine-seventeen PM!” 2 “I have been on this rooftop the whole time, holding Nate hostage and preparing to jump!” At my brazen declaration, the chat box went eerily still for a second. The viewers were genuinely spooked by my mental state. Nate’s dark eyes narrowed, staring intensely at my face. “Willow… do you have a hidden motive for doing this?” He was sharp. Extremely sharp. I leaned closer, my warm breath brushing against his ear. “Nate, just be a good boy and play along with me tonight.” Before he could reply, the heavy iron roof door burst open. Nate’s die-hard fan girls rushed onto the roof. “Willow, are you insane?! Let go of Nate right now!” The leader of the group, Hannah, screamed in terror, her entire body shaking. The other girls joined in, shouting curses at the top of their lungs. “You shameless bitch! Are you doing this just to get Nate’s attention?! You don’t deserve him!” “I knew trash like her shouldn’t have been admitted to Grand Capital University! slum-born garbage will always be trash at heart!” “Nate, don’t be afraid! We called the police! This lunatic isn’t getting away tonight!” Their insults grew nastier by the second. Seeing me completely unbothered, Hannah gritted her teeth and took a step forward. “Willow, I’m warning you one last time…” I didn’t even bother replying. I simply dragged Nate back half a step toward the ledge. Nate instinctively glanced down at the dizzying drop behind him, his fingers tightening in panic. I glanced sideways at him. Ah, the campus golden boy is afraid of heights. His throat bobbed as he swallowed hard, forcing his voice to stay steady. “Everyone… stay back! She’s emotional right now, don’t provoke her!” Unfortunately, Hannah was too riled up to listen. Tears of rage spilled down her cheeks. “Willow, are you satisfied now?! Look at how terrified you’re making him!” The other girls grew hysterical, pointing fingers at my face. “She was just brought back by the Brendon family, but she’s still a low-class street rat using cheap tricks to clout-chase!” “Ahhh, go die! If you want to die, jump alone! Don’t drag Nate down with you!” Some of them even pulled rotten eggs out of their bags and threw them at me. I didn’t even blink. Growing up, I had beer bottles smashed over my head, cigarette butts snuffed on my skin, and leftover food thrown in my face. A few rotten eggs were nothing to me. “Take another step forward, and I’ll take Nate over the edge right now,” I warned coldly. I pulled Nate back another half step. This time, half of his feet hung in midair above the drop. Everyone froze in absolute horror. She’s insane! She’s an actual psychopath! You can’t reason with her! Where are the cops?! Nate is so unfortunate! Getting wrapped up with a crazy woman for no reason! Please, lady, stop provoking her! What if she actually jumps?! During the standoff, police officers and firefighters finally arrived at the scene. They quickly dispersed the crowd, shoving Hannah and the fan girls back behind the roof door to avoid triggering me further. The lead negotiator, a friendly senior officer, put on a gentle smile and spoke in a soothing tone, “Young lady, standing up here in the freezing cold night wind, what are you trying to accomplish?” “Getting into Grand Capital University isn’t easy. Millions of kids envy your position. Your parents worked hard to raise you. If something happens to you in a moment of impulse, think of how heartbroken they’ll be.” “Be a good girl. Release the young man first, and we can sit down and talk things through.” As he spoke, he took a subtle, barely noticeable step forward. Noticing his movement, I immediately made a gesture to lean back with Nate. The officer froze instantly, a layer of cold sweat breaking out across his forehead. 3 “Don’t, don’t, don’t! Don’t step back! I’m staying right here!” He wiped his forehead nervously. “Look at you, kid, why are you so stubborn?!” “Fine, fine, I won’t move! You don’t move either! Let’s just talk from right here, okay?” Down below, the fire department had already inflated a massive air cushion. The officer exhaled in relief, then said with deep concern, “Young lady, did someone mistreat you at school? Is someone bullying you? Tell me, and I’ll make sure justice is served!” I tilted my head, flashing him a wide, mischievous grin. “Nobody bullied me! I just wanted to catch some fresh air, and brought Nate along for the ride.” The officer choked on his words, completely speechless. A younger cop behind him lost his temper, shouting sternly, “Willow! Stop being ungrateful! Your actions right now constitute a serious crime! Release the hostage immediately, or face the consequences!” The senior officer turned around and glared at the younger cop. “How are you speaking to a student?!” He turned back to me with another soft smile. “Young lady, how about this? Let the young man step over first, okay? I’ll stay here and talk with you for as long as you want.” Behind the iron door, the fan girls caused another commotion. “Officers, can you hurry up?! Nate clearly can’t hold on much longer!” “Just tackle her! Why are you afraid of a crazy woman?!” Nate was indeed in terrible shape. He was terrified of heights to begin with, and standing on the absolute edge for so long made his legs tremble uncontrollably. Yet he clamped his jaw shut, refusing to make a sound. “Boss! Your biological parents just got a call from the police and are rushing over!” My roach informants crept back to give me an update. “You have to hold out! Emily is ready! She’s about to light the fire to frame you!” I lowered my eyes, calculating the situation in my mind. The live stream heat had completely exploded. With so many witnesses on site and online, I no longer needed Nate as a hostage to maintain the spotlight. The wind was getting stronger, and if Nate had a genuine panic attack or slipped, the collateral damage wouldn’t be worth it. I released my grip on Nate, pushing him gently toward the safe zone near the officers. “Sure thing, officer! Let’s chat!” I smiled warmly at the senior negotiator, agreeing to his proposal. Nate regained his footing on solid ground, but he didn’t run away. He stood there, staring intently at my face. I tilted my head and winked at him. “What? Miss me already?” Nate remained silent, hastily averting his gaze. I didn’t bother with him anymore, turning around and hopping onto the concrete guardrail, letting my legs dangle freely over the edge. The crowd watching below let out a collective gasp of horror. The senior officer broke into a cold sweat again. “Willow, why are you sitting up there?! That’s dangerous, get down right now!” I closed my eyes, the cold wind whipping through my hair. The officer had asked if anyone had bullied me. When I was little, countless people bullied me. Luckily, my roach buddies had my back, constantly tipping me off. Otherwise, I would never have survived to adulthood. Later, I was brought back to the wealthy Brendon family. I thought I would no longer need roaches to protect myself. Yet the moment my high-society relatives saw me, their eyes were filled with unhidden disgust. “Is this the wild girl who grew up in the urban slums? She doesn’t look like a high-society heiress at all!” “I heard her foster father was a drunkard, and her foster mother ran off with another man!” “A child raised in that trash environment must be vulgar and unethical at heart!” “Emily is so much better, polite and elegant, truly a child raised by the Brendon family!” 4 Whenever those insults flew, Emily would gently wrap her arm around mine and say sweetly, “Willow just got back, she needs time to adapt. I believe she’ll make you all proud eventually.” Back then, I actually thought she was a sweet, kind sister. Little did I know, Emily was a snake under her sheep’s skin. Once again, my roach brothers had saved my life. Suddenly, another wave of commotion sounded near the roof door. “Willow! What on earth do you think you’re doing?!” I turned my head toward the voice. My biological mother, Elizabeth Brendon, stepped onto the roof in high heels and immaculate makeup, her face flushed with fury. “Willow, get down here this instant! Turn off that stream! Otherwise… I will disown you as my daughter!” Beside her stood my biological father, Addison Brendon, dressed in a sharp suit, his face dark as thunder. Oh my god, so Willow really is a Brendon heiress! Are the rumors true?! The Brendons are so unlucky! Such a prestigious family ruined by one bad apple! Don’t say that, what if she has a genuine reason? After all… Get out of here with that bleeding-heart nonsense! Who defends a kidnapper?! I sat on the guardrail, looking at them with a relaxed grin. “Oh, you guys finally made it?” “What kind of attitude is that?!” Elizabeth’s voice shook with rage, her chest heaving violently. “Look at yourself! What do you look like right now?!” “Sitting up there playing the victim, running a live stream for the whole city to see!” “Do you know what people online are saying right now?! They’re saying the daughter brought back by the Brendon family is a lunatic!” “Where am I supposed to hide my face?!” Hearing her tirade, I nodded thoughtfully. “They’re completely right. So why don’t you just pretend you never gave birth to me?” “Do you think I don’t want to?!” Elizabeth hissed under her breath, glaring at me. “I should have never brought you back! Emily is a thousand times better than you!” “If I knew you were this unhinged, I would have preferred to leave you in the gutter…” Listening to her cruel words, my heart felt strangely numb. Not a single ripple of sadness touched me. I suppose I was used to it. When I first returned to the Brendons, I tried really hard. I memorized complex etiquette rules and practiced how to smile politely. Yet when Elizabeth saw me practicing, she remarked with disgust, “You don’t need to fake it. Class is in your blood, and you can’t fake what you don’t have.” That was when I realized the Brendons didn’t just dislike my unrefined habits; they hated my very existence. They couldn’t accept that a child carrying Brendon blood had lived a dirty, wretched life in the slums. Addison looked up at me, his voice cold as ice. “Willow, I’ll give you three minutes to get down yourself. Otherwise, bear the consequences.” I burst out laughing, tilting my head at him. “What consequences? Throwing me out of the family?” “That would be fantastic. I’m begging you to do it.” Suddenly, an urgent roach squeak exploded in my ear. “Boss! It’s done! Emily set the fire! The dorm room is ablaze!” “The fire is spreading fast! The whole room is catching!” I exhaled softly. The curtain was finally rising. I slowly raised my eyes, looking at my furious biological parents, the anxious police officers, and finally… at Nate, who was still standing nearby. I offered Nate a gentle smile. Then, under everyone’s horrified gaze, I opened my arms and let my body fall backward off the ledge. “Willow… NO!” The wind roared in my ears like a deafening storm. As I plunged into the night air, I saw Nate and the firefighters rushing toward the guardrail. Nobody caught me. My body crashed heavily onto the inflated air cushion below, my mind going completely blank from the impact. Instantly, paramedics swarmed around me, lifting me onto a stretcher. “Vital signs are stable! Transport her to the hospital immediately!” “Girl, why do this to yourself?! What could be so terrible?!” The noisy voices faded into the distance. When I woke up again, I was lying in a hospital bed. Before I could process anything, two police officers walked into the room. “Willow, you are suspected of malicious arson in dorm room six-one-four at Grand Capital University. We are taking you into custody for investigation.”

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Alex walked in as I finished my diary entry: He wants pork chops. Remember to buy some tomorrow. At the door, he knelt to place slippers at his lab assistant Vivian’s feet. They nodded at me, passing by to discuss data I couldn’t follow. Feeling like a stranger in my own home, I retreated to the kitchen, slicing fruit. When I returned, Vivian was flipping through my journal. “Isla, I had no idea you were such a devoted housewife. You actually kept a daily journal just for Alex.” Mock pity dripped from her tone as she ripped it in half. “Let me help you find your independence.” Panic seized me. I lunged, but Alex shoved between us, batting my hands away. “What is wrong with you? It is just a stupid notebook!” He scoffed. “Vivian is right. Why waste time on useless garbage?” Vivian giggled. “It says here you actually sobbed and begged a doctor when she got sick.” Alex’s face flushed crimson. “Why record every private detail? Scribbling nonsense all day, no wonder you haven’t found a job!” Terrified she’d dig up more, he snatched the remaining half, tore it to shreds, and tossed it in the trash. I watched him usher her out, tears streaming. He had no idea. Without that journal, by tomorrow, I would completely forget who he was. 1 I do not know when the illness began. At first, it was just a random morning. I woke up, looked at Alex heating up a mug of milk, and asked in confusion, “Alex, aren’t we going to that popular brunch spot we booked weeks ago? Why are you making breakfast?” Alex paused and glanced at me, amusement dancing in his eyes. “Isla, are you still half-asleep? We went to that bistro yesterday. You complained that the eggs were overcooked and swore you would never go back.” It was only when he saw the sheer blankness in my eyes that panic set in. He wrapped a coat around my shoulders and dragged me straight to the emergency room. When the doctor asked questions and realized my entire memory of the previous day was completely gone, Alex lost his mind. Terrified that I was dying of some incurable disease, he grabbed the doctor’s hand, tears spilling over. “Please, doctor, you have to save her. I will give my own life if I have to!” But after a battery of scans and blood tests, the hospital found absolutely nothing. They eventually chalked it up to stress, calling it a case of temporary, psychogenic amnesia. Alex was terrified. For a week, he refused to leave my side, taking a leave of absence from his university lab just to monitor me. It was only after seven incident-free days that I finally managed to coax him back to his research. But the peace didn’t last. Shortly after he returned to school, the strange fog rolled back into my brain. This time, a whole week of my life was completely erased. I could not bring myself to tell him. Instead, I went back to the clinic alone. Again, the tests came up clear. Dr. Bennett was baffled, only able to prescribe some mild sedatives and advise regular checkups. Back at the apartment, I stared at the front door, paralyzed. I knew Alex. If he found out I was getting worse, he would drop his thesis and spend every waking hour hovering over me. But I could not let my broken mind derail his dreams. I could not let my fading memories ruin his future. To protect him and save myself, I started keeping a journal. Starting from the day we met, I meticulously transcribed every detail of our life together, anchoring my soul to those pages. But my condition only accelerated. At first, the gaps were small and random. Then, the blackouts became more frequent, swallowing larger chunks of my past. Eventually, I woke up one morning to find my mind frozen at eighteen, before I had ever met Alex. It was only through that battered journal that I was able to piece myself back together. Job hunting became impossible. I claimed I was freelancing, hiding in the safety of our apartment, caught in an endless loop of forgetting and relearning my own life. I tried to reason with myself. Our fight was just a misunderstanding. Alex didn’t know about my disease, so he thought I was just acting crazy. Once I told him the truth, he would understand why the journal mattered, and we would make up. I ran out of the bedroom, catching him at the front door. He was holding their coats, murmuring gentle reassurances to Vivian. Seeing them about to leave, I called out, “Wait! Alex, please, I need to tell you something. I kept that journal because… because I am sick.” 2 Hearing my words, Alex froze. When he turned back to look at me, his eyes were instantly flooded with worry. “Isla, when did you get sick? Why didn’t you tell me? Is it serious? What did the doctor say?” Seeing his panic, a small weight lifted from my chest. I knew it. He had only snapped because his pride was wounded in front of his junior colleague. But before I could speak, Vivian rolled her eyes, her sigh dripping with irritation. “Isla, please don’t tell me you are going to claim you have depression. I stopped using that excuse back in high school. True clinical depression is agonizing. People fight for their lives every day against their own minds. They don’t just use it as a convenient excuse whenever things don’t go their way.” Hearing her words, Alex’s expression hardened again. He scanned me from head to toe, his brow furrowing. “Isla, if you are actually sick, show me your medical records. I will go to the clinic with you.” But there were no medical records. The doctors couldn’t find a cause, so they had never given me an official diagnosis. Seeing me freeze, Alex assumed Vivian had caught me in a lie. Anger flared in his eyes. “Isla, you are seriously fabricating an illness just to make me feel guilty? You sit at home all day doing absolutely nothing, how could you possibly be depressed? I only told you to get a job so you would stop wasting your life, and this is how you manipulate me?” “No, Alex, listen to me…” I reached out, desperate to explain. But his mind was made up. He saw me as a liar playing the victim. Casting one last disappointed look at me, he opened the door and walked out with Vivian. I stood there staring at the closed door, my legs trembling. Finally, I dragged myself back to the bedroom and fell to my knees by the trash can, picking out the shredded scraps of my journal. I smoothed them out, trying to piece the puzzle of my life back together, but many fragments were torn too finely to salvage. Clutching the salvaged pages, I sat on the living room sofa to wait. I knew he would come home. No matter how vicious our arguments had been over the years, he never stayed out overnight because he knew I would worry. Once he returned and we were alone, he would listen to me. It was past midnight when the key finally turned in the lock. Alex walked in, exhaustion written across his face. He didn’t even glance at me sitting on the sofa, walking straight toward the guest bedroom. I sprang up and grabbed his wrist. “Alex, please. I wasn’t lying. I am really sick.” He paused, but when he realized I was still clinging to the same excuse instead of apologizing, his frustration boiled over. He whipped around to glare at me. “Fine, Isla. You want to play this game? Tomorrow we are going to the hospital, and we will let the doctors run every test until we find out exactly what is wrong with you!” He violently shook off my grip. “I am exhausted. I am going to bed.” Panic surged through me as I watched him walk away. Tomorrow would be too late. But Alex had already shut the door of the guest room, and a sharp click told me he had locked it from the inside to keep me out. I knew I should let him rest. He was tired, and arguing would solve nothing. But I had no time. The remaining scraps of my journal weren’t enough. Without them, I wouldn’t be able to piece together the twenty-four-year-old woman who loved Alex. The realization that I might wake up tomorrow with no memory of him brought a sharp, physical pain to my chest. Clutching my heart, I slumped against the locked door, tears blurring my vision. “Alex, please, just talk to me. I know you are angry, but I swear I am not lying to you.” Silence greeted me from the other side. No shouts, no complaints, just a heavy, suffocating quietness that seemed to press down on my shoulders. I sobbed silently, the tears choking my throat. Finally, the door swung open. But Alex’s face held no warmth, only a cold irritation that made him look like a total stranger. “Isla, when is this going to end? I have told you a thousand times that I am tired. I have to be in the lab early tomorrow. Can’t you show a single shred of consideration for my work? Whatever it is, it can wait until tomorrow!” He practically roared the last sentence in my face. I stared at the man standing before me, my heart aching. This wasn’t the Alex from my journal. The man I knew would never treat me with such hostility. Recalling how he had shielded Vivian earlier, the question slipped out of my mouth before I could stop it. “Alex, do you still love me?” 3 Alex’s brow furrowed so deeply a vein began to throb at his temple. “If I didn’t love you, would I still be standing here listening to this nonsense? Would I tolerate you humiliating me in front of my colleague? I don’t get you, Isla. When did you become so exhausting?” His cold, critical gaze forced me back a step. Exhausting? He blamed me for changing, but what about him? “Alex, you once promised that you would always believe me, no matter what. Was that a lie? Did you forget the vow you made three years ago when we almost broke up? You swore we would always sit down, listen to each other, and never let misunderstandings tear us apart.” He had even recorded those words on his phone, calling it the foundation of our relationship. I clung to those memories from my journal, but Alex merely scoffed. “Isla, you kept me awake just to bring up some ancient history? I have been working seventy hours a week at the lab. I deleted those useless files ages ago.” I looked up, meeting his impatient eyes, and a shudder ran through my body. Useless. Our promises were useless to him now. What was the point of me clinging to these memories, reviewing them night after night like a desperate student? “Then what actually matters to you, Alex? If our promises don’t matter, does Vivian?” Alex answered without a second thought. “Vivian is brilliant, hard-working, and ambitious. Look at yourself, Isla. You sit around all day doing nothing. How can you even compare yourself to her?” The moment the words left his mouth, a flash of regret crossed his eyes. Seeing me stand there in silence, he sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Isla, I didn’t mean to snap. I am just under a lot of pressure at the lab. If you are done, go to bed.” Without waiting for a response, he quietly closed the door. His muffled voice came through the thick wood. “Goodnight, Isla. We will talk tomorrow.” I turned away, my vision blurring. Alex, there is no tomorrow for us. Clutching the half-assembled journal, a bitter doubt took root in my mind. Was this diary just a collection of lies I told myself? Was his love for me merely a delusion I had fabricated? Why did the real Alex feel so entirely different from the man in these pages? On my way to the bedroom, I noticed a sticky note affixed to the refrigerator door. Vivian often skips breakfast and gets dizzy. Remember to bring her some food. I stared at it. My journal used to contain notes just like that, written in his precise handwriting, but every single one of them had been addressed to Isla. Alex had deleted our voice recordings, discarded our history, and now, even his sweet gestures belonged to someone else. I no longer had a place in his life. Maybe it was time to stop lying to myself with this journal. I took the reconstructed journal back to my desk, ripped it into tiny shreds, and tossed them back into the wastebasket. If Alex no longer loved me, then I had no reason to force myself to become the twenty-four-year-old woman who adored him. I lay down on the bed and closed my eyes, letting sleep pull me under. I stood back and let the memories drift away, watching the image of Alex fade until he vanished entirely from my life. When the morning sun filtered through my eyelids, I stirred awake. My hand instinctively reached toward the nightstand, feeling as if something important should be there, but finding only empty wood. Shaking off the brief moment of confusion, I stretched, threw open my bedroom door, and called out, “Mom! Dad! What is for breakfast?” But there was only a strange man sitting on the living room sofa. At the sound of my voice, his expression darkened. “Isla, are you seriously acting like a child? We had a small fight, and now you are calling your parents?” Terror seized me. I took several steps back toward my bedroom, screaming at the top of my lungs. “Who are you? What are you doing in my apartment?”

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1 At the university showcase, my mother forced me onto a sixteen-foot platform to “build endurance.” Born with a severe heart defect, I was terrified, clutching a ten-pound prop. Sharp agony stabbed my chest. “Your heart is weak because you never exercise!” she’d barked backstage. “Stop acting like a cowardly loser!” When my arms trembled, my adopted sister Kristin hissed, “Don’t slack off! It’s only been minutes!” Mom’s icy voice buzzed in my earpiece: “University trustees are watching. Hold that prop three more hours after the show!” I rasped into the mic, “Mom, it hurts so bad…” She cut the audio. “Endure it! My position doesn’t mean special treatment!” Kristin stomped my ankle, spinning back to dance. For three endless hours, not one person noticed I’d stopped breathing and fallen. Crimson soaked my white dress. My soul floated above. Mom, you’ll never be embarrassed by your cowardly daughter again. … The moment my heart ceased beating, the agony was so intense that my throat had paralyzed. Every bone in my body felt shattered beyond repair. Kristin finished her grand finale, surrounded by admiring classmates. She strutted off stage like a proud white swan, only to frown deeply when she spotted me lying motionless on the floor. “Hey, Wendy! What are you playing dead for?” She walked over and slammed her heel directly onto my hand, grinding her weight into my fingers. I didn’t flinch, because I was truly dead. “Unbelievable!” Kristin snapped, grinding her shoe harder. “You play the helpless victim at home, and now you want everyone at school to think I bully you? You malicious, useless freak!” Furious that I offered no reaction, Kristin kicked my shins repeatedly with ruthless force. Deep purple bruises rapidly bloomed across my sickly pale skin. Several students gathered around, whispering among themselves. “Kristin is so brilliant and beautiful, how does she have such a pathetic, sickly sister?” My soul let out a bitter smile in the air. We weren’t even related by blood. A few classmates started to look genuinely concerned. “Kristin, Wendy has a serious heart condition. Is she actually hurt?” “Yeah, that wooden prop weighed ten pounds. A healthy person would struggle to hold it that long, let alone someone with heart disease.” Kristin scoffed, her eyes instantly brimming with fake tears. “You’ve all been fooled by her! Ever since we were kids, whenever Mom asks her to do chores, she fakes a medical emergency.” “She just envies me. She envies my healthy body, and she hates that I can live a normal life while she can’t!” Floating above, I reached out helplessly, wanting to explain to everyone that I never envied her. I only admired her, like an ugly duckling admiring a swan. Before I could process her lies, my mother marched out from backstage. She wrapped her arms around Kristin, comforting her affectionately, before turning to spit on my limp body. “Wendy, you are a disgrace to this family!” my mother yelled. “Kristin danced for hours without a single complaint, yet you make a scene over nothing!” “I am an administrative director at this university, and I gave birth to a lazy, deceitful parasite like you!” “Do you have any idea that if tonight’s event is ruined, every performing student will receive a disciplinary mark on their record? How can you be so selfish?!” She delivered several heavy slaps directly across the back of my head. My lifeless head jolted back and forth with the force, swaying like a broken ragdoll. Her public condemnation silenced the crowd. The lingering sympathy in the students’ eyes vanished, replaced by anger and disgust, believing I was trying to ruin their grades. Over the years, to ensure I received proper care, my mother had worked her way up from an elementary school administrator to a university director. I had seen every sacrifice she made for me. “Wendy, get up right now!” My mother’s face turned livid as she stared at my unmoving body. “Have you no shame?!” “You’ve been timid and stubborn since you were little. How are you ever going to survive in the real world? Everything I do is for your own good!” The surrounding students murmured with admiration for my mother’s dedication. “Director Ross is such an amazing mother. Wendy doesn’t appreciate how lucky she is!” “Yeah, she doesn’t learn anything good, she just knows how to slack off and drag everyone else down!” Kristin snuggled deeper into my mother’s arms, urging impatiently, “Stop acting, Wendy! Get up! When the university board members come out, how is Mom supposed to explain this?” I hovered above them, panicked and desperate, terrified of causing trouble for my mother. But a corpse cannot move. Enraged by my silence, my mother reached down, grabbing my hair, yanking my head back so hard it nearly tore my scalp. “What did I do to deserve a child like you?” my mother wept with frustration. “Your father died young, and you were born sick! I raised you all by myself, and now that your wings are grown, this is how you repay me?!” “I just wanted you to perform on stage to build your confidence, and you hold a grudge and embarrass me on purpose!” Her words pierced my soul like daggers. Because I knew how much she suffered after Dad passed away, I tried so hard to stay alive. I had seen her cry into her pillow in the dead of night, bearing an unimaginable burden. I obeyed every single order she gave me. When I was seven, she said I needed to overcome my fears, so she left me alone in a dark haunted house attraction, forcing me to find my way out through my own sobs. In middle school, she said I needed to build my heart’s endurance, so she forced me to stay awake for three consecutive days, which landed me in the intensive care unit for two months. And tonight, she forced me to hold a ten-pound prop on a sixteen-foot platform, inflicting both mental and physical torture upon my fragile body. I never complained once. I just couldn’t handle it anymore, Mom… Determined to break my act, Kristin stepped forward to expose my private humiliations. “Wendy, if you don’t get up right now, I’ll tell everyone your dirty little secrets!” My mother encouraged her, “Tell them, Kristin! Give her a taste of her own medicine, or she’ll think she can walk all over us!” Fear ran cold through my spiritual form. Please, no! Don’t do this! Does my dignity mean nothing to you? Kristin crossed her arms, smirking triumphantly. “Wendy is such a coward that she sleeps with the lights on every night. If the lights go out, she wets her bed from fear!” “Our balcony is constantly filled with her washed bedsheets. She smells like urine all the time, and no amount of perfume can hide it!” The surrounding students immediately covered their noses, taking several steps back from my body. “That’s disgusting! No wonder the handmade gifts she gave us during orientation smelled weird!” My face flushed pale with shame. I had stayed up for nights making those orientation gifts for my classmates, ensuring every single item was washed and spotless. Kristin wasn’t done. “And to make matters worse, she actually had the nerve to crush on the campus golden boy! She wrote him over twenty love letters!” She pulled a thick stack of envelopes from her tote bag and tossed them onto the floor. A handsome guy standing nearby looked as if he had swallowed a fly. “Gross! Who would ever like a crippled girl with a diseased heart?” He turned on his heel and walked away. The crowd burst into loud laughter. I covered my face in the air, sobbing silently, unable to look. My private teenage feelings were laid bare, served as a joke for everyone to mock. Seeing that I still didn’t move, my mother’s eyes turned entirely cold. “Still playing dead, are we, Wendy?” She turned to the stage crew. “Fine! Hook her up to the aerial rigging wires! Suspend her near the ceiling and leave her there! Let’s see how long she can hold out!” The auditorium’s wire rigging system was rarely used because untrained individuals could suffer severe rope burns or injuries. Suspending someone that high without harness training was extremely dangerous. The crowd grew quiet, sensing things were going too far. Kristin, however, cheered in approval. “Mom, you really know how to discipline her! She won’t be able to fake it up there!” My mother called over two security guards, who wrapped the wire harness around my waist and chest. As they pulled the straps tight, bright red blood seeped through my dress, drawing shocked gasps from the audience. “Oh my god, look! Wendy is bleeding! Is she actually hurt?!” My mother let out a cold sneer, grabbing the hoist rope to raise my body slowly into the air. “Don’t be ridiculous! It’s just a little blood, it won’t kill her!” Kristin leaned down, pretending to sniff the blood on the floor, her expression filled with disdain. “Mom, this is just cherry syrup! Wendy is definitely acting!” I opened my mouth in silent agony, unable to comprehend why she would invent such a lie to smear me. For years, I had treated her like my own flesh and blood sister. Slowly, my body rose higher and higher into the rafters. The tight harness cut deep into my pale skin. My limbs dangled at unnatural, twisted angles, a posture impossible for a living human being to hold. If my mother had taken just one careful look, she would have noticed. At that moment, several visiting university executives walked backstage. Among them was my late father’s former colleague, Uncle Marcus. Uncle Marcus froze in horror, shouting frantically, “Evelyn! Wendy is sick! What are you doing? You’re going to kill her!” Kristin quickly stepped in front of him. “Uncle Marcus, you misunderstand! Mom is just disciplining my sister!” “Disciplining her?” My mother nodded, her face full of resentment. “Marcus, you have no idea how twisted this girl’s mind is! I wanted her to gain some courage on stage, and she fakes a faint to humiliate me! If I don’t discipline her now, how can I face her late father?” Uncle Marcus fell silent. It was difficult to interfere in another family’s domestic discipline, especially when spoken with such authority. As my body reached the highest point of the ceiling, my mother turned away, heading toward the administration conference room for the event debriefing. Before leaving, she instructed Kristin softly, “Keep an eye on your sister. If she starts showing genuine signs of heart distress, lower her down and give her medicine.” Kristin nodded obediently. After my mother left, the performing students were ordered to remain in the auditorium while the administration discussed the showcase’s outcome. “It’s all Wendy’s fault! Because she slacked off, we’re all stuck waiting in this heat!” “I just want to go back to my dorm, this is unbearable!” Uncle Marcus, still standing near the stage, suddenly pointed up at my suspended body and yelled, “Lower Wendy down right now! Her condition is completely wrong, and she’s dripping blood!” Kristin rolled her eyes. “Uncle Marcus, she tricked you. That’s just cherry syrup! Smear some on your fingers and smell it yourself!” She wiped her hand on the floor and held it out. Uncle Marcus sniffed it and frowned. “It really is syrup… I can’t believe such a sweet child turned so rebellious.” I clenched my ghostly fists, unable to utter a single word of defense. Kristin smiled, commanding the guards, “Hoist her higher! Make her admit her mistake faster!” The strain on my ballet dress caused the fabric to tear loudly, exposing my heavily bruised torso. Meanwhile, in the conference room, my mother was apologizing profusely to the board members. “I am so sorry, everyone. My daughter Wendy messed up on stage due to her poor stamina. She’s been shy and timid since childhood, complaining about heart pain even when walking fast. I’ve disciplined her, and I assure you it won’t happen again.” My mother, who held her head high everywhere she went, bent her spine repeatedly for my sake. The board members concluded that since the live stream didn’t capture my fall, the incident was manageable. A senior female director sitting near my mother remarked gently, “Director Ross, given Wendy’s heart condition, she doesn’t really need to perform on stage.” My mother waved her hand defensively. “How can I let her off so easily? It’s for her own good! If I don’t push her to build courage, she’ll end up a complete burden to society!” I felt a surge of overwhelming guilt. I’m so sorry, Mom… Simultaneously, photos of my body suspended in the auditorium rafters spread rapidly across campus group chats, making me the laughingstock of the entire university. A few board members felt the punishment was getting out of hand. “Director Ross, maybe that’s enough for tonight. She’s still young, moderation is key.” My mother remained resolute. “Thank you for your concern, but I cannot back down. If I don’t teach her a lesson tonight, she will rely on me for the rest of her life!” Suddenly, a terrified scream echoed from the hallway outside. “Oh my god! The rigging wire snapped!”

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1 When I caught my detective husband with his first love, I didn’t cry. I dragged his partner Marcus into my car and made the chassis rock till dawn. My husband kicked the door open, punched Marcus, and dragged me out by my hair. “She’s my wife! You’re my brother’s girl!” Marcus laughed wildly. “I like taking what’s yours.” They brawled across the precinct courtyard, blood painting the concrete. Their brotherhood shattered. One went south, the other north. I divorced my husband and married Marcus. For three years, he spoiled me rotten, guarding me like a rabid dog. Until I found out I was pregnant. Rushing to surprise him at the precinct, I caught his voice drifting from the stairwell. “Marc, ten months and you haven’t filed for divorce. Don’t tell me you actually fell for her?” Through the fire door crack, I saw Marcus leaning against the wall. “A piece of used, dirty laundry? Fall for that? Alice’s pregnant. She can’t take drama right now.” Detectives laughed. “Lillian has no clue. You played the doting husband for two years because Alice wanted her ex back and Lillian wouldn’t sign. You put on a whole show just to trick her into a divorce!” “All that jealous acting was just to keep her from crawling back to her ex and making Alice uncomfortable!” Marcus flicked his ash through the smoke, voice low and calm. “I already had a fake paternity test drawn up. Once her belly shows, I’ll shove it in her face, call it a bastard, and kick her straight to the curb.” … The rest of their words faded into a high-pitched ring. By the time my mind cleared, I was already standing outside the precinct gates, shivered by the biting wind. The pregnancy report that should have brought me tears of joy felt like a death warrant. My hands shook so violently the paper fluttered in the breeze. My phone screen lit up with a notification from him. Hey babe, the briefing wrapped up early. What do you want for dinner? I will cook. A hollow laugh escaped my lips, but my tears splattered hot against the glass screen. My chest felt as if a rusted blade had been driven straight through my heart and twisted. I squeezed my eyes shut. When I opened them again, the warmth was gone, replaced by cold ash. I opened my contacts and sent a message to the State Bureau. Captain Garrett, is that transfer slot to the State Homicide Division still open? I want to apply. Then, I dialed the city hospital. “I need to schedule an abortion. The earliest slot you have.” Looking down, my lips curled into a faint, humorless smile. This time, I was going to vanish without leaving a single trace. 2 I do not even remember how I walked back to the precinct quarters. When I pushed the door open, Marcus was sitting on the living room sofa. The moment he saw me, he stood up, his face softening into that familiar, bone-deep tenderness. “You are back? I made pork rib soup. Have some while it is hot.” I didn’t refuse. I sat down and forced down a couple of spoonfuls. Suddenly, his phone screen lit up. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the preview, and the blood in my veins turned to ice. Marc, that soup is too greasy. I don’t want it. Take it back and feed it to your wife. It had been sent twenty-one minutes ago. The soup in my bowl instantly tasted like slop. I dropped the spoon, bolted to the bathroom, and collapsed over the toilet, dry-heaving violently. Marcus hurried in after me, gently rubbing my back. “What is wrong, babe? Feeling sick?” I slapped his hand away. “Don’t touch me. You are sleeping on the couch tonight.” By the time the sun came up the next morning, Marcus was already gone. I walked to the hospital alone for my scheduled appointment. The doctor looked over my file, checking twice. “Lillian, your uterine lining is extremely thin. If you go through with this, conceiving again will be nearly impossible. Are you absolutely sure?” I nodded, my voice completely flat. “I am sure. Do it.” The procedure was quick. Clutching my prescription, I turned to leave the ward when I collided with someone. The impact wasn’t hard, but my body was weak and hollow from the surgery. My knees gave out, and I slammed hard onto the floor. My forehead struck the sharp edge of a marble step, sending flashes of black across my vision. I forced myself to look up and saw the woman standing in front of me: Alice. She was clutching her stomach, sinking to the floor, her face as pale as a sheet. “Alice!” Two figures charged forward at almost the exact same second. Dominic reached her first, throwing his arms around her shoulders, his voice tight with panic. Close behind him was Marcus. He held a prenatal checkup file in one hand and a bag of fresh fruit in the other, filled with Alice’s favorites. “Dominic… my stomach hurts so much…” Alice sobbed, burying her face in Dominic’s chest. Without a word, Dominic scooped her up in his arms and sprinted toward the ER. Marcus stood half a step behind them, his outstretched hand freezing in midair. A sharp, stabbing cramp ripped through my lower abdomen, breaking me out in a cold sweat. As I tried to push myself up off the floor, a heavy black canvas bag was slammed down over my head, plunging me into absolute darkness. Before I could even scream, a brutal kick caught me square in the stomach. The agonizing pain choked the sound right back down my throat. I curled into a tight ball, catching Marcus’s voice drifting through the heavy fabric. It was cold enough to freeze blood. “Drag this blind bitch to the back alley. Teach her some manners. She needs to learn who she is allowed to bump into.” A few rookie officers grabbed the bag and dragged me down the damp concrete alleyway. Because I was wearing a hood and a surgical mask post-surgery, he hadn’t recognized me. I thrashed wildly, but a heavy boot pinned my back to the ground, and the hard thud of tactical batons began raining down on my ribs. The officers chatted casually as they swung. “Man, Chief Marcus really has a thing for Alice. She gets bumped, and he loses his mind. I don’t think his actual wife ever got this kind of treatment.” “No kidding. Did you know that when Lillian took those fifty disciplinary lashes years ago, it was Chief Marcus who personally requested them from Internal Affairs?” “He even specifically told them to use the rubber-wrapped steel batons. Said it was a little punishment for dragging her feet on the divorce and upsetting Alice.” A violent ringing erupted in my head, like a flashbang exploding in my skull. Those fifty blows that had nearly ended my life years ago, the ones that made me view him as my savior, had been ordered by Marcus himself? The very last spark of light in my soul died right there in the dirt. 3 When I opened my eyes, I was lying in a sterile hospital room. Through the glass panel of the door, a row of officers was lined up, heads bowed. “A bunch of useless idiots! You couldn’t even recognize your chief’s wife?” The door pushed open. Marcus walked in, the residual fury still lingering in his eyes. Seeing me awake, he hurried to my bedside, his voice dropping into that soft, gentle tone. “Lily, you are awake? I have already suspended those idiots. Are you still in pain?” He reached out to brush the stray hair from my forehead, but I jerked my head away. His hand froze in the air. He let out a soft sigh. “It is my fault. Everything was a mess, and I didn’t recognize you. I am so sorry you had to go through that. Hey, didn’t you always want to recuperate in Savannah? I cleared my schedule for the next two weeks. I will go with you, okay?” I stared at him, my throat raw and dry. “No need. If you are so worried about Alice, why aren’t you with her?” Marcus stiffened. “I know you don’t like her, Lily. But her father is the State Deputy Director, and our joint task force is in the middle of a massive operation. If anything happens to her, the whole case falls apart. Besides, she is pregnant now. What happened in the past is ancient history. You are not still keeping score over her and Dominic, are you? You have to look at the bigger picture.” A wave of fury burned in my chest, but before I could speak, my phone buzzed on the nightstand. It was the State Bureau’s personnel department. “Lillian, your transfer to the State Homicide Division has been approved. You report for duty next week.” Marcus’s sharp ears caught the word “transfer.” His brow furrowed instantly. “What transfer?” “Nothing,” I muttered into the receiver, telling the caller I understood before hanging up. “Just some staff scheduling.” After a few days in the ward, I was discharged. The day of the City Homicide Conference finally arrived, and I had stayed up all night polishing my case analysis report. The auditorium was packed with detectives from various precincts, with cameras lined up in the front row. I took a deep breath, preparing to step up to the podium. Suddenly, the double doors of the conference room were kicked open. Marcus marched in, his face masked in a terrifying blend of cold anger. Striding onto the stage, he grabbed my wrist in a vice grip. “Lillian, how many times do I have to tell you to let the past go? You married me. Why the hell are you still stalking Dominic?” “Let go of me!” Wincing at the pain, I struggled. “Stalking? I don’t have a clue what you are talking about!” Before I could finish, a stinging slap landed across my face. Alice appeared on the stage out of nowhere, her beautiful face twisted in a mixture of disgust and triumph. “Still playing innocent? Fine! Let us show everyone what a desperate, pathetic bitch you really are!” A few technicians hurried to the control panel. Within seconds, my case report was wiped from the projector screen, replaced by screenshots of intimate messages. Dominic, I still love you. I don’t care about Marcus. Please take me back. What does that bitch Alice have that I don’t? She is just a homewrecker. Once you are bored of her, you will realize I am the only one who belongs with you. The texts were vulgar and humiliating. Scattered between them were several explicit, face-cropped photos of a woman whose body looked identical to mine. The entire room erupted into whispers and gasps. I yanked my hand out of Marcus’s grip. “This isn’t me! I am calling Internal Affairs right now!” As I pulled out my phone, Alice suddenly gasped, clutching her stomach as her face drained of color, her body listing backward. Marcus caught her before she hit the floor. Leaning weakly against him, Alice gasped for air, then suddenly pointed a trembling finger at the screen. “Wait. Look at the photo. That woman has a crescent-shaped scar on her chest. Lillian, if you claim it is not you, strip. Let us see.” A couple of junior officers stepped forward, forcing me down to my knees on the stage. I looked up, my eyes burning red as I stared directly at Marcus. “You are my husband, Marcus. Do I have a scar like that on my chest?” Marcus frowned, his voice cold and logical. “Lily, Alice is pregnant. She cannot handle this kind of stress. What is the harm in letting her check? Besides, if rumors spread that you are stalking your ex, your reputation is ruined anyway. Checking right now settles it for everyone.” He gave a slight nod to the officers. The officers pinned me, tearing open my shirt. I fought with everything I had, but my weak, post-op body was no match for them. When they ripped the fabric away, my chest was exposed to the entire room. My skin was smooth, pale, and entirely devoid of any crescent scar. Camera shutters clicked like rapid gunfire, the flashing lights blinding me. Every gaze in the room sliced into me like a knife. What was supposed to be my professional triumph had been turned into a public execution. Alice whimpered and collapsed into a feigned faint. Marcus didn’t spare me another look. He scooped her up in his arms, threw a cold command to the officers to escort me back, and sprinted out of the auditorium without looking back. 4 I was dragged back to the quarters. The official notice arrived shortly after: immediate suspension pending investigation. Overnight, my reputation was in tatters. I had nothing left. Shaking, I dragged myself to the nightstand, grabbed the bottle of prescription sleeping pills, and dumped a handful into my palm. I was raising them to my mouth when the door flew open. Marcus stormed in, ripping the bottle from my hand. “Are you out of your mind? You trying to kill yourself?” I let out a jagged laugh, tears streaming down my face. “Isn’t this exactly what you wanted?” During my years with Dominic, insomnia had nearly driven me mad, and these pills had been my only escape. It was Marcus who had pulled me out of that dark hole, staying up with me night after night until I was finally clean. And now, he was the one shoving me back down, deeper than before. Marcus scoffed, tossing the bottle onto the table. “Cut the drama, Lily. The misunderstanding was cleared up, wasn’t it? Save these cheap suicide threats for Dominic. They don’t work on me.” Unable to hold back, I swung my arm and slapped him across the face. The sharp crack echoed through the quiet room. His head jetted back, a dark red mark rising on his cheek. Anger flared in his eyes, but looking at my tear-stained face, he suppressed it. Just then, his phone rang. He listened for a brief moment, and his expression turned grim. “Get in here! Pin her down!” Two officers burst through the door, pinning my arms and forcing me onto the sofa. A cold dread crept up my spine. Marcus’s face was pale. “Alice collapsed again. She is unconscious, and the baby is in critical condition. The doctor says she has severe anemia.” He glared at me. “You are going to give her a transfusion.” “No!” I screamed, thrashing wildly, but the officers held me down like a vice. I was dragged to the clinic. My arm was bound with a rubber tourniquet, and a thick needle was jammed roughly into my vein. Dark red blood surged through the clear plastic tubing, filling bag after bag. My vision began to blur. Cold sweat coated my skin, and my lips turned a ghostly white. “Please… stop… I cannot take any more,” I whimpered. The nurse on duty frowned, looking at Marcus. “Chief, we have exceeded the safe limit. Any more and she will go into shock.” Marcus didn’t even blink. His voice was as cold as a scalpel. “Keep drawing.” My movements grew sluggish, and the darkness closed in. By the time they finally pulled the needle out, they had taken five bags of my blood. I collapsed onto the cold tile floor, my breathing shallow and weak. Marcus stood over me, looking down at my broken form. After a long silence, he sighed. “Lily, Alice is carrying a child. Just bear with it. I will arrange for you to stay at a retreat in Savannah for a while. Once she delivers, I will bring you back. You always wanted a family, right? When this is over, we will have our own.” He paused, adjusting his collar. “Rest up. I am going to check on her.” He turned and walked away toward Alice’s room without a single backward glance. As the door clicked shut, the very last trace of warmth in my heart died. Like a discarded doll, I let the nurse lift me into a wheelchair and wheel me out of the clinic. Suddenly, my phone buzzed with a message from the State Bureau. Lillian, I heard about what happened today. Don’t worry, I have got your back. Get ready to move out. Tears dripped onto the screen, blurring the text. With trembling fingers, I typed out a single word: Yes. An hour later, I stood in the airport departure lounge. My face was pale as death, a cotton ball taped over the fresh puncture wound in the crook of my elbow. My phone rang. It was Marcus’s partner. “Lillian, the ticket to Savannah is booked. Should I have a cruiser pick you up?” “No need,” I said softly, looking out at the overcast sky. “Do me a favor and give the small metal box in my dresser to Marcus. And please… don’t call me that anymore.” I hung up and walked toward security. It was finally over. The curtain had fallen on Marcus’s grand play, and I was going to reclaim my life.

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

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

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