Chapter 4

For the next three days, my life was a living nightmare. Someone photoshopped my pictures to make me look like a thief, tagged me, and called me trash on social media. The posts spread like wildfire, with thousands of people sharing them.

Someone even put up a big poster outside my dorm and wrote in red ink. "You thief! Get off campus!"

The mouse jerked. "This is nothing compared to what you went through in your past life. At least you can still fight back this time."

I took a deep breath.

The mouse told me to check the hospitals.

I crouched in the stairwell leading to the rooftop and called the information line at the city's general hospital. After I gave them Adam's mom's name and the last four digits of her ID number, the person on the other end said, "There are no records of this patient being admitted in the past month."

I called a second, then a third, checking with every major hospital in the city to no avail.

There was no record of Adam's mom ever being hospitalized.

It had all been a lie.

I gripped my phone tightly.

The mouse buzzed. "Calm down. Tomorrow, go to the notary office and have the recording officially documented as evidence. Then go to the school's IT department and request the server-side upload logs for your cloud storage. No one can change those timestamps.

"Then when the investigation starts the day after tomorrow, let him finish telling all his lies first."

I did exactly what the mouse told me and got everything ready.

The night before the investigation, I laid all the evidence across my desk, from the group call recording and cloud login logs to the server timestamps and hospital records.

Each piece was a devastating blow.

The next day, the investigation began. The conference room was packed, with the associate dean, a representative from the university's academic committee, and a representative from the legal department present.

Adam sat across from me, his face haggard. His fingers trembled as he held his documents, and his eyes were red and swollen.

Vera sat beside him, her lips pursed, her face solemn.

The associate dean, James Pecker, spoke. "Adam, you start first."

Adam took a deep breath and began his most convincing performance yet, talking about the timeline, the screenshots of the files, Vera's statement, me threatening him, and also how I refused to help save his mom.

Every detail added up, making his story more heartbreaking and harder to find fault with.

By the end of it, he looked at me, tears dripping onto the table. "I just want to get back what belongs to me so my mom can get the treatment she needs… Felix, we used to be best friends. I really don't know why you're doing this to me…"

Adam lowered his head, his shoulders shaking as he sobbed.

Kent looked moved, while James frowned, his eyes full of sympathy. Everyone glared at me with contempt, as if expecting me to admit my guilt.

Adam slowly raised his head, unable to hide the smug look in his eyes, while Vera kept her head lowered, her fingers tightly intertwined, as if she were in deep pain.

Everyone thought I had nothing left to say.

Mr. Pecker looked at me. "Felix, Adam has finished speaking. Is there anything else you'd like to say? So far, you haven't submitted any evidence. If you have nothing else to add, we'll have to make a preliminary decision based on what we've seen so far."

The conference room was deathly quiet. My heart beat slowly.

The mouse buzzed again in my pocket. "Now!"

I stood up, bracing my hands against the table. "I have evidence." My voice was steady as I pulled the USB drive from my bag and walked over to the computer connected to the projector.

Only one video file was on it.

I pressed play.

The smugness in Adam's eyes froze, and his face became pale as a sheet.

Vera shot to her feet, knocking her chair back with a loud crash.