Chapter 2

2

I put down my phone and got back to my research.

When I finally finished my work, I discovered that Mason had posted a massive thread on the campus forum, tagging my student handle.

"I can no longer stay silent. I am posting this to warn everyone against this scammer."

"This so-called senior pretended to mentor our startup team, but her advice was vague and she plagiarized models from real companies."

"Out of respect, we did not expose her and fought our way to the finals with our own sweat. Now, she is demanding a two-thousand-dollar mentoring fee and ninety percent of our prize money, threatening to ruin us if we refuse!"

A chill ran down my spine.

In just forty minutes, the thread had racked up hundreds of comments.

The comment section was filled with pure outrage from students.

"Stealing other people's work and passing it off as mentorship? That is straight-up academic theft!"

"How evil. Plagiarizing and demanding two grand? The university guidelines clearly forbid hiring outside mentors, let alone paying them."

"She is just an upperclassman pretending to be a big shot. What a loser."

One user asked:

"Wait, do we have proof? I saw Dr. Joanna's posts helping other students, and her advice was always solid."

Zach jumped into the comments instantly.

"Proof? Here come the receipts! By the way, she even hit on our team captain. When he rejected her, she started stalking and harassing him non-stop. Absolutely disgusting."

My vision blurred with rage.

They had taken our harmless conversations from the past two months, spliced them out of context, and slapped malicious captions over the screenshots.

Over a dozen doctored images framed me as a serial plagiarist demanding bribes and extortion fees.

They even fabricated explicit messages, making it look like I was begging Mason to sleep with me.

Worse, they had Photoshopped our payment records.

The five hundred dollars I had sent him to help their project was twisted into "hush money" he paid to get rid of my harassment!

Fuming, I tried to reply and debunk the lies.

A pop-up informed me that my account had been restricted by forum moderators, stripping away my posting privileges.

Then I remembered Mason boasting that his roommate ran the forum.

My phone buzzed with laughing emojis from Mason.

"Saw the thread, senior? Honestly, you brought this on yourself."

"Ever since you joined, you kept telling us this was bad and that was messy, forcing us to redo the financial sheets. You made Leah cry multiple times."

"Zach wanted to project a fifty percent growth rate, but you stubbornly insisted on a realistic fifteen percent. He broke his mouse in anger because of you."

"You are just a student like us. Calling you senior was just being polite, but you actually thought you were our boss?"

"Truth is, we were sick of your micromanagement. Without you holding us back, our project would be legendary!"

Before I could type a reply, he rapidly unsent every single message.

He made the public thread to strike first and prevent me from reporting them.

Now he was wiping his DMs to destroy evidence.

I had truly underestimated their malice. They had planned this smear campaign from the very start.

"Mason, aren't you afraid of what might happen at tomorrow's finals?" I typed back.

"Still trying to scare me?"

After deleting his reply, another message popped up:

"Thanks for the reminder, Joanna. You better not show your face at the auditorium tomorrow, or we will drop the real nuclear dirt on you."

"As a girl, you wouldn't want your reputation completely trashed across the entire state, would you?"

My reputation?

I saved the screen recordings of our entire chat history and glanced over their viral forum post once more.

Mason and the other five teammates had all commented, crying victim.

They painted me as a tyrannical bully who harassed them for money and threw tantrums when rejected.

And now, they were threatening to ruin my life?

Tomorrow at the finals, I was seated as a keynote judge.

Why on earth would I hide?