Chapter 4

I called Sylvia.

She answered after three rings, and she didn't say a word.

"Did you make that post?" I demanded.

Her voice was soft. "Yes, I did."

There was a brief silence on the other end of the line.

At long last, she cut straight to the point. "Since you've sponsored me for seven years, you should see it through. If you back out now, you're the one who broke your promise."

I chuckled. "I was totally wrong about you, Sylvia."

She paused for a moment before demanding, "Give me 50 grand, and I'll delete the post."

"I won't give you another dime." I hung up on her and set my phone on the table.

I sat down in front of my computer and logged into my mobile banking app.

I had lost track of how much money I'd sent to Sylvia in seven years. I initially thought it would be around 200 grand.

However, when I exported all my transaction records, the grand total threw me off for a long while—378,600 dollars.

That figure didn't even include the money I'd spent buying her phones, clothes, and mailing her school supplies. I stared at that number, and my finger rested on my mouse for a long, long time.

378,600 dollars. I could only make 200 dollars for a day's work hauling bricks at a construction site. In other words, I'd have to haul bricks for more than five years without eating or spending a single cent just to earn that money back.

I had never considered my financial support an investment, nor had I ever expected her to repay me in the future. However, I thought she was actually using that money to go to school and study.

I pulled up the transaction history and went through them one by one. I'd transferred her 500 dollars a month when she was in sixth grade, 800 dollars a month when she was in middle school, and 15 hundred dollars a month when she was in high school.

When she told me she needed money for room and board, I wired extra. When she told me her grandmother was sick, I sent more. When she told me the pressure of the college entrance exam was getting to her and she wanted a tablet to look up study materials, I sent her another three grand.

When her college acceptance letter arrived, I sent her five grand. During her first month at college, she said her dorm required her to pay for utilities, so I sent her 25 hundred dollars. The following month, she told me her professor had suddenly asked the students to pay for study materials, so I sent her another 15 hundred dollars.

…

Early the next morning, I contacted Charles Lewis. Charles was a former colleague of mine and also one of the few people who knew I had been supporting Sylvia financially.

I sent him the screenshots. After reading them, he called me.

Charles sighed on the other end of the line. "Shawn, your biggest flaw is that you always assume other people are as honest as you are."

I didn't argue with him because he was right. I'd grown up without a family, so I had always cherished the kindness others had shown me. Consequently, I had always assumed other people would cherish it too.

Charles told me to save all our chat history, transfer records, and screenshots of the post. He paused for a beat before adding, "One more thing—contact that charity platform as soon as possible and see if the information she submitted back then was actually legitimate."

After hanging up, I found the customer service number for that charity platform from seven years ago. After listening to my story, the representative asked me to provide the project number from back then.

I searched through my emails for a long time before locating that old email. Customer service checked for more than ten minutes and gave me an answer that caught me completely off guard—Sylvia had never been an officially verified beneficiary on their platform.

…

At 9:00 pm, Sylvia suddenly messaged me from a different number. "Shawn, if you don't want your reputation ruined, give me 50 grand!"

I sat in my dark apartment, reading the message over and over again. Then, I transferred her a single cent, with a single sentence in the remark.