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Chapter 5

Auteur: Mango
Beth's heart seized violently, her blood seeming to freeze in an instant.

He wanted her to take the blame. He wanted her to bury Summer’s lies with her own academic career.

"And the reason?" she asked, her voice trembling. "Rick, give me a reason."

"You're still young. You have time to start over." His justification sounded lofty, yet cut like ice. "But Summer doesn't. Behind her stands the entire Belden Medical Group. Our lab consumables and equipment all depend on their support. Beth, this is for the greater good."

"So my future—my reputation—is the price you're willing to sacrifice at any time, in your so-called greater good?"

"I told you I'll compensate you!" His patience finally wore thin, his face darkening. "Beth, you need to face reality! In this circle, without my protection, you are nothing. If this conference falls apart, do you really think you'll still have a place in this field?"

The logic was absurd, the emotion ice-cold. Like a fire, his words burned away the last trace of attachment in Beth's heart.

Tears streamed down her face, and she smiled.

"Rick, don't you love my talent?" She pointed to her chest and asked each word slowly. "Then why is everything you're doing now destroying it with your own hands?"

He was left speechless. In the end, he waved his hand impatiently.

"Don't be so emotional. This is final."

His gaze hardened as he delivered the cruelest verdict.

"At tomorrow's conference, you'll explain it the way I told you."

The way I told you.

Those words fell like a final sentence, declaring that in his heart she was no longer a partner whose brilliance deserved protection—but a tool that could be manipulated and sacrificed at will.

…

At the international conference the next day, under the glare of the spotlights, Beth was pushed onto the stage.

She looked out at the sea of faces below—faces that had once admired her, now filled with disdain and scrutiny.

She opened her mouth, but no words came.

She saw Rick sitting in the front row, watching her with a look of warning and impatience—not even offering a single reassuring gesture.

In that moment, the noise of the world seemed to fade away.

Her academic reputation, her dignity, her future—under his indifferent gaze—were being carved apart piece by piece.

The last shred of trust she had left was torn to dust by his own hands.

In the end, she did not "admit her mistake" according to his script. She simply picked up the microphone and said one calm sentence to everyone present.

"Regarding the authenticity of the data, I have nothing to say."

With that, she set the microphone down and, amid the stunned silence of the hall, turned and walked off the stage.

She left without hesitation, never once looking back at Rick's ashen face.

After the conference, what awaited her was not comfort, but Rick's cold "arrangement."

"For the time being, don't appear at the institute. I'll announce publicly that you've entered a period of medical leave for treatment."

"Treatment?" Beth laughed softly. "Treatment for what—for the value you haven't finished extracting from me yet?"

At that moment, her long-held belief—that if she only waited, he would one day give her justice—was completely, irrevocably shattered.

Calmly, she took a resignation letter from her bag and placed it in front of him.

"Thank you, Professor Allen, for your years of guidance. Our collaboration ends here."
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  • He Was But A Failed Detour   Chapter 11

    Beth pulled her suitcase and walked past him without a single pause, not a flicker of hesitation. "I created my own miracle. It has nothing to do with him anymore."…Rick never saw his "miracle."One late night, after exhausting the last of his strength, he closed his eyes forever.In his hand was still tightly clenched the pen Beth had left behind—the one etched with a tiny star, the one she hadn't taken.His funeral was quietly held. Few attended: mostly Allen family relatives and some business associates. Almost no one from the academic world showed up.It rained lightly that day, a soft drizzle that soaked the earth.Just as the ceremony was about to end, a woman in a black trench coat appeared at the cemetery gate, holding a black umbrella.It was Beth.Everyone froze.Rick's mother, eyes red with grief, rushed forward, almost as if to tear her apart."What are you doing here?! You curse! You killed my son! Get lost!"Beth did not respond.She walked straight to Rick

  • He Was But A Failed Detour   Chapter 10

    Rick could no longer produce a single piece of meaningful research. Because his inspiration, his talent, and every ounce of his academic passion had been completely drained away the moment Beth left his life.He became nothing more than an empty shell, hollowed out of its soul.Three years later, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was announced.The laureate: Beth.The award was in recognition of her revolutionary breakthroughs in neural regeneration.When the news reached him, Rick was sitting alone in an empty laboratory, staring blankly at a pile of experimental data that had made no progress at all.On the television, a live broadcast was playing.Beth stood beneath the brightest spotlight in the world, dressed in a white gown. From the hands of the King of Sweden, she accepted the golden medal that represented the highest honor in science.She delivered her acceptance speech fluently, thanking her mentors, her team, and her family.She did not mention him. Not once

  • He Was But A Failed Detour   Chapter 9

    "Professor Allen."Beth finally spoke, her voice cold as ice."First, let go of me. Your behavior constitutes harassment."She paused, then raised her other hand and pried his fingers off her wrist—one by one.The movement was slow, yet carried an undeniable force."Second, Summer's outcome is entirely of her own making. It has nothing to do with me. I have no interest in watching the fate of a fraud.""Finally"—she freed herself completely, stepped back, and put an absolutely safe distance between them—"the institute is yours. You are you. And I am me. There has long been nothing between us."With that, she turned to leave.But Rick snapped, lunging forward again and wrapping his arms around her from behind."No! There is!" He buried his face against her neck, his voice breaking with desperate sobs. "Beth, I love you! I did everything wrong, but my love for you is real! Give me one more chance—just once…"His tears fell onto her skin.In the past, she would have been heartb

  • He Was But A Failed Detour   Chapter 8

    Beth took the "contaminated" data model from back then and, using an entirely new algorithm, corrected it, refined it, and pushed it forward—deriving a research paradigm powerful enough to reshape the entire field of neuroscience.She made no accusations. She did not mention the past.She simply used irrefutable, overwhelming brilliance to prove who the true owner of that research had always been.It was the most brutal slap in the face and the most decisive farewell.When the presentation ended and the Q&A session began, a reporter stood up and asked sharply in English, "Dr. Chalke, we all know that the early results of this research sparked significant academic controversy. How would you evaluate your former collaborator, Professor Rick Allen?"Every gaze in the hall snapped toward her.Rick's heart leapt into his throat.A part of him even hoped—hoped she would accuse him, rage at him, break down in tears.Because at least that would mean she still cared.But Beth only smil

  • He Was But A Failed Detour   Chapter 7

    Summer's true ability didn't even measure up to that of an outstanding undergraduate.In that moment, Rick felt his entire world collapse.He had always believed that sacrificing Beth was a reluctant but necessary act of academic politics—an unfortunate compromise to protect a partner who, though flawed, still possessed talent.He thought he was the strategist, the one moving the pieces on the board.Instead, he was nothing more than the most foolish tool, played in the palm of an academic fraud.And what he had sacrificed for it was the most precious treasure of his life—the most gifted mind he had ever known, the woman he had once sworn to protect with his entire existence.His views on scholarship, on values, on love—along with his ridiculous arrogance—were all smashed to pieces by reality in that instant.He sat in the conference room like a petrified statue, his ears filled with the investigators' verdict on Summer and the deafening roar of his own world collapsing.…Sum

  • He Was But A Failed Detour   Chapter 6

    Rick believed Beth's resignation was nothing more than a burst of anger—a young woman venting under overwhelming pressure.With a touch of arrogance, he even thought that once she had calmed down, she would naturally come back. After all, in this world, aside from him, no one else could offer her such top-tier resources or a platform of that caliber.Lost in the fantasy that once he smoothed things over with the board, he and Beth would soon reconcile, he wrapped up the mess left by the conference and returned to the institute.He expected to see a Beth who was crying, regretful, waiting for his forgiveness.Instead, what he found was an office desk stripped of every personal belonging—utterly empty.On the ergonomic chair he had personally chosen for her, there was no longer a figure bent over papers and data.The lab's silence and emptiness formed a violent contrast with the anticipation pounding in his chest.For the first time, he felt a loss of control and panic.He called

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