Chapter 1

I saw a post on the university forum asking for help with an entrepreneurship assignment.

Using my old student account, I casually joined their group chat. My occupational habit kicked in, and I ended up fixing their financial models and marketing strategies.

The group went crazy. They showered me with praise, called me a genius senior, and constantly begged for more advice.

Two months later, the pitch deck was flawless, but the group chat suddenly went dead silent.

Curious, I checked the shared account logs, only to find they had created a brand-new group chat behind my back.

"She is not an official team member anyway. Let us keep the competition a secret from her."

"Exactly. The roster only has our names. Tomorrow is the final pitch, and she better not show up to steal our thunder."

"Without her, each of us walks away with an extra twenty grand in prize money!"

I stared at the screen and let out a soft laugh.

So this was never just an ordinary class assignment.

Too bad for them, because tomorrow at the finals, I would be sitting right in the center of the judging panel.

1

They made a new group, but completely forgot that one of their dummy accounts was shared with me.

The moment I logged in, messages were blowing up the chat.

"Senior mentor my ass. We were just buttering her up. What does she actually know?"

"Right? All she did was tweak a few numbers. We were the ones pulling all-nighters, writing the script, building the slides, and doing the grunt work. Why should she get a dime?"

"Yeah, let us stick to the story that this was just a class project. Nobody post in the old group. Ghost her for a few days, then delete it."

A class project?

They had lured me in under the guise of an assignment, and now they wanted to carry the lie all the way to the bank?

Annoyed, I opened the old group chat and typed a message from my personal account:

"After guiding you guys for so long, I must warn you. The core financial models and market projections in this report are based on deep commercial data."

"They are meant strictly for classroom coursework. Do not use them in a real business competition, or the judges will question where you got the data."

In the two months I had been in the group, I had rarely used such a formal and stern tone.

If they backed down now and gathered public data instead, I would look the other way and spare them tomorrow.

Instead, their secret group exploded with outrage.

The youngest member, Leah, dropped a panicked emoji.

"Does she know we entered the competition?!"

Our team leader, Mason, sneered.

"Why are you freaking out? Who does she think she is, acting all high and mighty?"

"She is just terrified of missing out on the cash. She is trying to bluff us."

Another teammate, Zach, quickly chimed in.

"Mason is right. She is just bitter that we are getting famous using her advice, making herself look important."

Sitting in my office, I rested my chin on my hand and smiled bitterly.

So they knew it was all my work after all.

When I first joined, their proposal was an absolute train wreck.

I had patiently explained the theory, but their drafts were still riddled with rookie mistakes, forcing me to rewrite almost everything.

In the end, every single slide and projection was hammered out during my precious sleeping hours.

Their so-called all-nighters were nothing more than downloading cheap templates and forwarding them to me, claiming they had conducted field research.

Now that my work had carried them straight into the finals, they wanted to erase me from the picture.

Ten minutes later, Mason replied in the old group:

"Fine, since you brought it up, I will be blunt. Your advice was just basic stuff anyone could look up online. We already knew it all."

"Now that we made the finals, you pop up trying to intimidate us just to get a cut of our prize money?"

Zach piled on.

"You did not have the skills to build your own team, so you sneaked into ours and now want free cash. How shameless can you get?"

Their words grew nastier by the second.

Frowning, I typed back:

"I joined because you begged for homework help on the forum. It had nothing to do with the competition, and I never cared about your prize money."

Zach instantly sent back a middle-finger emoji.

"Still lying? If not for the cash, why would you waste your time on us?"

"Or did you see our team photo, spot a handsome guy, and get horny?"

Chloe chimed in, "Isn't Mason the hottest guy on our team?"

Mason laughed even louder in voice notes.

"Senior, were you thirsting after me this whole time?"

"Hate to break it to you, but I have high standards. With a face like yours, I wouldn't touch you even if I were blind."

To my shock, he posted the only selfie from my profile right into the group.

We usually talked through the forum chat, and Mason was the only one who had my personal contact.

When they lacked startup funds, I had fronted five hundred dollars out of pocket directly to him.

Last month, when his mother was diagnosed with cancer and he begged for help, I had pulled strings to get her a top specialist and even covered a huge chunk of her hospital bills.

I had been a struggling college student once, and I genuinely sympathized with their grind.

Mason had sent me tearful voice messages thanking me, saying his mother was doing great with her chemotherapy.

Yet here he was, throwing my kindness back in my face, tearing down my appearance with disgusting, vulgar remarks.

A wave of regret washed over me.

This ungrateful pack of wolves was never worth two months of my hard work.

"Consider this my final warning. If you insist on pitching this project tomorrow, you will regret it."

Before the screen even refreshed, Mason kicked me out of the group.