The Ingrate's Punishment

"This semester's tuition is ten thousand dollars, and dorm fees are five thousand, so the total is fifteen thousand dollars. Make sure you pay it sometime this week."

The familiar words sent a chill through me. One look at the familiar classroom was enough to tell me I had regressed.

My classmates pulled out their phones and were getting ready to pay.

Then, a young woman in front of me suddenly stood up. "Sir, can I cover the tuition for the whole class?"

The room went still. Even the professor looked stunned as he asked, "Are you serious, Wendy? Just tuition for fifty students is around 750,000 dollars."

A smile appeared on Wendy Lopez's face as she deliberately showed off the diamond watch on her wrist.

"It is only one week's allowance for me."

The whole class exploded.

"I saw that watch at an auction. It's worth more than a million dollars!"

"Wendy, are you secretly rich? You've been way too discreet."

"Ma'am, please accept my sincere worship."

I stood up and pushed through the crowd. Then, I scanned the QR code on the podium. "Sir, I've already paid my tuition."

Wendy came over and grabbed my arm. "Nancy, do you dislike me? I already said I'd pay for the whole class, but you still paid for yourself. Are you trying to embarrass me?"

In my last life, Wendy was the poor student I had secretly sponsored. To make it easier for her to cover her daily expenses, I had my assistant give her one of my spare cards.

At first, she had only spent a few hundred at a time, maybe a few thousand a month, and I did not mind. Later, it turned into tens of thousands a month, and I still said nothing. Even when she wanted to cover the entire class's tuition, I did not stop her since it was a good thing, and I figured there was no harm since my family was donating hundreds of millions every year anyway.

That tuition payment had made Wendy the class favorite. Not long after, the whole university was calling her a beautiful, kind-hearted heiress.

It was not until we entered a creative writing competition together and her submission turned out to be exactly the same as mine that the entire class took her side and accused me of copying her.

"Wendy even paid her tuition earlier, yet she still stole Wendy's work. How could she be so ungrateful?" they had said.

I was stripped of my eligibility for the competition, and the university management immediately stepped in and expelled me on the spot. Wendy used my work to secure a graduate recommendation to Kingsbridge University, then she blew up online as the rich and talented heroine of a power fantasy story.

As the competition had been livestreamed, the entire internet turned on me immediately and harassed me. People condemned me everywhere I looked.

I tried desperately to explain, but I was thrown out of the competition venue. Then, while I wandered the streets in a daze, one of Wendy's fans waiting outside the venue ran me down and crushed me to death.

The memory of that horrible death made me clench my fists. I shook off Wendy's hand and looked at her coldly. "I don't take things that I haven't earned. I'm not brave enough to take your money."