Chapter2

I shoved the dorm room door open.

The mattress had been flipped onto the floor, and my Oxford statement of intent was torn to shreds. Across my computer monitor, someone had scrawled a message in red lipstick: Whore & Thief.

I held up my phone and recorded the entire scene.

In my past life, I cleaned it up. I went crying to Provost Hastings to report it, but he just sneered, "Who knows if it isn't your own prank?"

My phone suddenly buzzed. The caller ID flashed: Auntie. She usually spent her days at the nursing home taking care of my grandmother. I stared at the screen for two seconds before answering, flipping the camera to face me.

"Chloe! The Oxford list is out! Your grandmother saw it on her phone, and she's so thrilled—"

The frame shifted, and my grandmother’s face pressed close to the screen. She raised her right hand, offering a shaky thumbs-up.

I forced a smile. "Grandma, I'll come see you as soon as the break starts."

I ended the call and closed my eyes for a fraction of a second.

She was still alive. In this life, she hadn't been killed by the shock of that package yet.

Then I immediately dialed my aunt back, dropping my voice to an urgent whisper. "Auntie, listen to me. Today, an expedited package claiming to be from the university might arrive for Grandma. No matter what is inside, you absolutely cannot let her see it. Intercept it, and mail it to me."

My aunt fell silent for a beat. "Is something wrong?"

"I can handle it. Just remember, do not open that envelope."

Right as I cut the call, footsteps echoed from the hallway. Liam stepped into the trashed room, crunching over the debris, his arm wrapped tightly around Mia's shoulders. Mia looked deathly pale. She shrank into his embrace, trembling violently, refusing even to lift her head as she buried her face into his chest.

Liam swept his gaze across the room. "Why haven't you signed the withdrawal papers yet? Are you really going to drag the police into this and make yourself a laughingstock before you give up?"

I looked at him. I had looked at that face for two years. I used to think he was righteous and accountable. Now, he just made me nauseous.

"This is my room." I pointed at the lipstick on the monitor. "You trespassed in my dorm and let my roommate, Mia, ransack my personal property. Is this how the Student Body President operates, Liam?"

Mia let out a sudden sob. "Liam... I'm scared. I didn't mean to mess up her things. It's just that whenever I think about how she stole my spot using those disgusting methods, I can't stop shaking... Where are my pills? I want my medication..."

Liam took a sharp step forward. "Chloe, that's enough."

"Do you know she has to swallow two antidepressants every night just to fall asleep because of you? Do you know that when you screamed at her in the lab, she came back to the dorm and cried until 3 AM? I always thought you were just highly motivated. But I never imagined you'd throw away all your morals just to climb the ladder. You went to the department chair for the test papers. You let yourself become his plaything—"

"You are my boyfriend."

For two years, he had called me "babe," yet right now he stood here, using the most venomous words to hand down my sentence.

Liam froze for a second, but in the next moment, his tone became even more resolute: "It's exactly because I'm your boyfriend that I can't enable you. Someone who truly loves you wouldn't just stand by and watch you fall from grace without doing anything."

Ridiculous. He even had to package his betrayal as profound devotion.

He took a deep breath. "I stepped up to expose you today not because I hate you. It's because I have to save her. And I have to stop you from doing any more evil."

I didn't say a word. I bent down and picked up the shredded pieces of my acceptance letter from the floor.

Liam frowned. "Don't waste your breath. Oxford will absolutely revoke an offer built on leaked tests and sleeping around—"

I tossed the torn scraps into the trash can.

"Save her?" I stared dead into his eyes. "Liam, you don't care about justice at all. You just love playing the 'white knight.' You love useless trash like her who pretends she can't survive without you, because surrounding yourself with the weak is the only way to stroke your pathetic ego. You're both stupid and hypocritical."

Liam's face drained of color. "This unrepentant attitude of yours—"

"Is going to cost me dearly?" I finished the sentence for him. "You already said that."

He ground his jaw. "Tomorrow morning, I will officially submit the petition for your expulsion to the Board of Trustees on behalf of the Student Council. Watch your back."

With that, he shielded Mia and turned for the door. The second they stepped over the threshold, Mia peeked out from behind Liam's shoulder and mouthed a silent phrase at me:

You lose.

Then she buried her face back into his chest.

The hallway fell quiet again.

I walked over to my desk. My phone lit up with a text from my aunt: "The thing you mentioned just arrived. It's an envelope, and it feels like a stack of photos. I didn't open it. Mailing it to you now."

I stared at that text message. Mia thought this was all it took to drive me to my death.

She forgot that the forged envelope was also covered in her fingerprints.