Chapter 5

Less than five minutes later.

My phone chimed.

Eight hundred dollars. Received.

Right after, I sent another message.

"Late fee is sixteen dollars. Transfer that too."

"Otherwise, the balance isn't settled."

That did it. Sophie snapped.

She called again.

This time, she didn't even bother pretending.

"Are you insane?"

"You're going to nickel-and-dime me over sixteen dollars?"

"I already paid the rent! What more do you want?"

Her voice was shrill, like nails on a chalkboard.

I spoke without hurry.

"Lease, Clause 4. One-percent daily late fee for overdue payments."

"Can you not read, or do you just not honor what you signed?"

"Sophie, don't act like sixteen dollars is nothing."

"You were just haggling with me over the same amount, weren't you?"

On the other end, she was gasping for air, clearly seething.

"You... people like you deserve to have nobody rent from you!"

"Just you wait!"

Click.

She killed the call.

Shortly after.

I received a transfer from Sophie.

Sixteen dollars.

Every last cent.

Followed by an ice-cold text:

"There's your money. Happy now?"

"Someone as vicious as you will get what's coming."

A person who tried to mooch for free and failed. Of course she wouldn't let it go.

What she did best was post sob-story videos.

Edited footage, carefully crafted to make herself the victim.

People like me, thrown to the wolves of public opinion.

In my last life, that's exactly what got me.

She'd posted the video, and I didn't react until it was too late.

This time, I saw it all coming.

I took out my phone and pulled up the local landlord group chat.

In the message box, I typed:

"Hey everyone, has anyone recently had a tenant show up claiming to be a fresh grad? Crying poor, bargaining, playing the victim."

Replies came quickly.

Frank: "Oh, don't even get me started. Three months ago, one of my tenants pulled the same thing. Cried about money, got me to lower the rent. Then she stopped paying and went online accusing me of keeping her deposit. Cost me thousands!"

Lisa: "Same here. Mine stayed a month and bolted. I refunded the full deposit, and she still accused me of having mold in the apartment! Another one of those online mob types. Cost me hundreds to deal with."

"..."

More and more landlords chimed in, one after another.

Most of them had just paid up to make it go away. After all, escalating things only hurt themselves.

So nearly all of them settled out of pocket.

My fingers hovered over the screen.

So that's how it was.

Young and unwilling to put in the work, she'd found a scheme that let her freeload and profit at the same time, fueling her vanity.

Her playbook: move into a nice place, post sob-story videos, extort the landlord for payouts, then move on to the next target.

I read through the testimonies, one after another.

A chill crept up from the pit of my stomach.

I couldn't understand what the point of her education had been.

Was it so she could look down on everyone else?

Treating us like ATMs, or stepping stones for clicks?

When I pulled up Sophie's TikTok account again.

Sure enough, she'd posted a new update.

No video this time. Just an audio clip.

The audio was from the phone call earlier.

But it had been "cleverly" edited.

She'd kept the parts where I demanded rent and chased down the late fee, my voice cold and harsh.

But her own crying and begging had been trimmed to make her sound even more helpless and pitiable.

The caption was sharp and punchy:

"Heartless landlord won't even let sixteen dollars go. Is this what life is like for a girl fresh out of college?"

Comments flooded in instantly.

"Oh my God, that landlord is awful!"

"Sixteen dollars and she won't let it slide? What, is she broke?"

"Where is this? I'll go bang on her door for her!"

This "out of context" trick. I'd seen it all before.

This time, I was ready.

I didn't report the video and didn't go to the comments to explain.

Because I knew that explaining was just admitting guilt.

In the court of public opinion, the more you said, the worse you looked.

The best move was to wait.