Chapter 2

There was the sound of a chair scraping inside.

Casey seemed to move closer, her voice tinged with a smile. "Don't mess up tomorrow. I really don't want anything going wrong during the state scholarship presentation."

Benjamin replied, "I won't. I'll head over to her place tonight and grab the final version. I can get into her computer and the lab's shared drive, and my buddy in the lab will help wipe the server logs. Just nail your presentation. Leave everything else to me."

"And what about her?" Casey asked.

Benjamin replied, "Just make sure something happens so she can't make it tomorrow."

"What do you mean?" Casey pressed.

Benjamin said with a faint smile, "Maybe she loses her files, her laptop dies, or she has a meltdown. She's been under a lot of pressure lately. Everyone would buy it."

In that instant, it felt like my blood had turned to ice.

I finally realized. This wasn't some spur-of-the-moment thing. This wasn't just some casual betrayal on his part.

He'd planned it all along, plotting to bury my project, my chance, and my future all at once.

The sensor light at the end of the hallway went out, plunging everything into darkness.

The shadows pressed in on me. I stood completely still, barely letting myself breathe.

Inside the room, I caught the faint sound of kissing. It was so quiet, but it made my stomach twist in disgust.

I turned and left.

My heels barely made a sound against the tiles as I forced myself to walk as quietly as possible, afraid they'd notice. But the quieter I tried to be, the more I felt like a total joke.

As I rounded the corner by the stairs, my phone buzzed.

It was a message from Benjamin.

Benjamin: [Leyla, I'm still helping you polish your presentation. I might be back late tonight. Get some rest, don't stress about tomorrow. I've got your back.]

I stared at the message for a full three seconds.

Then I raised my hand and took a screenshot.

My fingers kept shaking. It wasn't because I was heartbroken. It was because I felt frozen to the core.

It was like someone had poured a bucket of ice water over me, drowning all the closeness and trust I'd built up over the years, leaving nothing but ruins behind.

I didn't reply.

As I made my way back to the dorm, the campus lights were still glowing. Outside the building for the state scholarship defense, red banners rippled and rattled in the wind.

Down below, some students were practicing their speeches, couples laughed beneath the trees, and others hurried toward the lab, clutching their laptops.

The world kept turning, just like always.

But only I knew that outside a half-open door, I'd overheard my own future being bargained away.

It wasn't until I closed the dorm door that I noticed my palm was smeared with blood.

Earlier, when I'd pressed my nails into the wall, I'd broken the skin.

My roommate still wasn't back, and the room was so quiet it was unsettling.

I sat down in my chair, staring at the scholarship paperwork on my desk, the process sheet covered in notes, and the cup sleeve from the latte Benjamin got me last week.

"This is our future together," he'd said.

He actually said that to me. Just three days ago.

Out of nowhere, I let out a laugh.

My eyes burned, but not a single tear came out.

It turned out the most brutal stab in the back wasn't just about someone falling out of love.

It was when they knew full well what it meant to you, and still decided to take it away from you with their own hands.

And right before they did it, they were still pretending to be the person who understood you better than anyone else.

My phone buzzed again. It was Benjamin.

[Hey, are you still up? Don't stay up too late tweaking your slides. Just do your thing tomorrow, and the state scholarship's yours.]

I looked at his message, and suddenly, a cold calm settled over me.

No. I couldn't cry. I couldn't rush in and call him out. I couldn't let them know I overheard everything.

If they were gutsy enough to set this up, they had definitely got a backup plan. If I confronted them, all I would do was spook them. I wouldn't get anything useful.

I didn't want an apology.

I wanted a complete chain of evidence.

I wanted them to lay it all out, piece by piece, in front of everyone, like how they stole, how they lied, how they plotted together.

I wanted them to stand on that stage with my work, and for every judge, every professor, every classmate to watch them crash and burn right in front of their eyes.

I took a deep breath, opened the drawer, and grabbed my external hard drive.

I powered up my laptop.

First thing, I disconnected from the internet.

Next, I started backing everything up.

Project source code, raw data, every version, experiment videos, server logs, local edit history, draft papers, screenshots of chat conversations... I saved all of them, organizing everything by timestamp.

The cold glow of the screen cast a pale light on my face, and the last bit of warmth in my eyes slowly faded away.

Next, I logged into the lab server's admin console.

Benjamin thought I was just there to run experiments. He never imagined I'd know how to check the access logs.

But I was the one who wrote the deployment scripts at the very foundation of this project. I knew exactly who logged in, what files they copied, and which line of the configuration they changed. I knew it better than anyone.

When the log page loaded, I stared at those familiar usernames, my fingers curling tighter.

As expected, over the past week, Benjamin had accessed my shared permissions.

Casey's lab account also made a suspicious access to the project directory this afternoon.