Chapter 4

The page loaded. The next second, I froze as if I'd been struck by lightning.

Two words were clearly displayed in the first-choice field: Lintdon University.

The vocational college that had appeared there was gone.

"Miss." The two officers exchanged a glance, and their tone changed. "Look. Your first choice is Lintdon University. It hasn't been tampered with."

I shot to my feet. "That's impossible!"

The chair scraped across the floor with a piercing screech.

"I clearly saw the vocational college at home just now! I didn't change anything on the way to the police station. I came here specifically to preserve the evidence!"

I frantically refreshed the page.

Once. Twice. Ten times...

Lintdon University remained unchanged.

One of the officers sighed and softened his voice as if he were trying to calm a hysterical child. "Are you under too much pressure from your SAT exams? Could you be hallucinating? You did so well. Don't push yourself too hard."

"I wasn't hallucinating!" I was practically screaming. "It really was the vocational college just now! Someone changed it again in the ten or so minutes it took me to get here! This person can change my application whenever they want!"

I suddenly looked up and clutched at my last shred of hope. "Check the IP address! Officer, have someone from your technical department check the login IP! You'll know who changed my application as soon as you find it!"

The two officers exchanged another glance.

One of them picked up the phone and spoke quietly for a few moments.

About ten minutes later, the phone rang.

I watched the officer's expression intently.

When he hung up, the way he looked at me had changed.

The helplessness in his eyes had given way to something more complicated.

"The technical department checked it," he said after a pause. "The IP address used for the most recent change to your application... was your home."

His words hit me like a bucket of ice water.

"That's impossible!" I practically shouted. "I didn't change it!"

The officer's voice was already tinged with exhaustion. "Miss, are you sure you're remembering correctly? Or... have you been feeling unwell lately?"

"No, I haven't. I really haven't. Please check again. Someone has to be changing my application!"

I kept repeating the same words.

But they only looked at me with pity, as though I were someone who had been driven to a breakdown by academic pressure.

Then they began speaking quietly among themselves.

Not long after, the door to the interview room opened.

The moment my parents walked in, I hurried over and grabbed them. "Mom, Dad, you have to believe me. Someone really is changing my application. They've been watching me!

"We have to find them as soon as possible. Otherwise, I'll end up at a vocational college just like in my previous life, and you'll both die trying to get justice for me!"

I frantically told them everything that had happened in my previous life, hoping they'd believe me.

But their eyes immediately reddened.

My mother rushed over and wrapped her arms around me, sobbing uncontrollably. "What previous life? What vocational college? Naomi, what's happened to you?

"Don't scare me. Are you just too exhausted from studying? We don't have to rush. Let's go see a doctor, okay?"

"I'm not sick!" I pushed her away. I used too much force, and my forehead slammed hard against the corner of the table.

A dull pain shot through my head, followed by warm blood streaming from the wound.

But I acted as though I couldn't feel it and repeated the same words over and over. "Mom, Dad, you have to believe me...

"Someone really is changing my application. They've been watching me. They can erase everything before I even realize what's happening."

This wasn't an ordinary case of someone tampering with a college application.

They could monitor everything I did in real time. They could bypass every password at will. They could alter my application at the exact moment I made each move.

They were somewhere I couldn't see, watching me relentlessly.

Blood trickled from my forehead to the corner of my eye.

In that split second, I suddenly understood everything. "I know who's been changing my application..."