Mira Chen POV
"Miss Chen."
Professor Wells' voice cut through the classroom like a blade, and every head turned toward me at once.
I looked up from my desk. The essay I'd worked on for six days straight — the one I'd rewritten twice, the one I'd stayed up until two in the morning perfecting — was in his hand. He was holding it the way people hold things they don't want to touch.
"Can you explain this?" he asked.
"Explain what, sir?"
He set it face-down on my desk.
I flipped it over.
My name was at the top. My title. My formatting.
But the grade written in red at the top wasn't mine. And the comments scrawled in the margins weren't responding to anything I'd written — they were responding to something completely different.
"I don't understand," I said. "This isn't—"
"I received two copies of this essay," Professor Wells said, and his voice was careful in a way that made my stomach turn cold. "Yours, and another student's. Submitted two days apart. Same thesis. Same structure. Suspiciously similar phrasing in several key passages."
The room was completely silent.
I could feel thirty pairs of eyes on my back.
"I didn't copy anyone," I said.
"The other student submitted first," Professor Wells said quietly. "I'm sure you understand how this looks."
I turned around before I could stop myself — just a reflex, just one second — and found Sebastian Ashford watching me from three rows back. His face was completely still. Unreadable.
His pen was moving slowly in his hand. Like he was bored.
Like this was nothing.
That was when I understood.
It had started two weeks ago, the morning after Victoria's bathroom ambush.
At first I thought I was being careless — forgetting my homework, misplacing notes. It happens when you're stressed, when you're not sleeping. I told myself that.
Then my locker combination stopped working. I reported it to maintenance. By the time they fixed it, three days of homework had vanished, including an assignment due that afternoon. The teacher gave me a zero, first offense, non-negotiable.
I told myself it was a coincidence.
Then the rumors started. Whispers in hallways that cut off when I walked past. A second-year girl I'd never spoken to looking at me with pity and saying, "Is it true you forged your scholarship test scores?" A professor in Chemistry calling on me four times in one class to answer questions I hadn't been told we'd cover — questions I still answered correctly, which somehow made the atmosphere worse, not better.
I told myself they'd get bored eventually. Bullies always get bored.
But now I was sitting in English Lit being accused of plagiarism, looking at an essay Sebastian Ashford had stolen from my folder, retyped, added his name to, and submitted two days before mine.
Not random. Not careless.
Planned.
"I'd like to see the other submission," I said. My voice was steady. I was proud of that. "Side by side with mine."
Professor Wells hesitated.
"If they're identical," I said, "then the question is who wrote it first. Which can be proven. My draft history is on my laptop with timestamps. My handwritten notes are in my dorm. I can bring both here within twenty minutes."
Silence.
Sebastian's pen stopped moving.
Professor Wells looked at me for a long moment — and for just a second, I thought I saw something shift in his face. Doubt, maybe. Or conscience.
Then he looked toward the back of the room. Just a brief flicker of his eyes.
I followed his gaze.
Sebastian. Then — the window. Then — nothing. But I'd seen it.
Even Professor Wells was watching to see how Sebastian reacted.
They're all watching him, I realized. Every single person in this school. Whatever he permits, they permit. Whatever he decides, they decide.
"We'll discuss this after class," Professor Wells said finally.
He moved on.
I turned back to the front and wrote in the margin of my notebook, small and private:
This isn't bullying. This is organized.
After class, I didn't go to Professor Wells.
I went to the one place I could think clearly — the back corner of the library, tucked behind the reference section where nobody ever went because everything had been digitized years ago. Old shelves, old smell, good hiding spot.
I opened my notebook and started writing.
Every incident since I arrived. Date, time, what happened, who was there.
The coffee. The bathroom. The homework. The locker. The rumors. The plagiarism setup.
When I laid it all out in sequence, my hand slowed down.
There was a pattern.
Not just cruelty — coordination. Victoria handled the social attacks — the rumors, the video, the isolation, the restaurant reviews. Marcus handled the technology — the filming, the group chat, the hacking. And Sebastian? Sebastian handled the academic angle. The stolen essay. The plagiarism accusation.
Each one of them owned a different weapon. And they were using all three at the same time.
On me. Only me.
I stared at my list.
Why me? I'd asked myself that question a hundred times and always landed on the same answer: scholarship kid, wrong background, talked back in class. But something about that didn't feel complete anymore. You don't build a three-person coordinated campaign against someone you just find annoying.
This felt personal.
Why is this personal?
I was still staring at the page when someone sat down across from me.
I jerked back, already tensing—
It was a boy I didn't recognize. Quiet-faced, careful eyes, the kind of person who'd perfected the art of taking up as little space as possible. He set his bag down slowly, like he wanted to make sure I saw he wasn't a threat.
"You're Mira Chen," he said softly.
"Depends who's asking."
"Kai Morrison." He paused. "I'm also on scholarship."
I looked at him properly. He had the same careful posture I'd developed in two weeks — shoulders slightly in, eyes that checked exits. The posture of someone who'd learned to be invisible the hard way.
"I saw what happened in Wells' class," he said. "That was Sebastian's handwriting on the submitted copy. I recognize it — we're in three classes together. He did it deliberately."
I didn't answer.
"I know you have no reason to trust me," Kai said. "I'm not asking you to. I just—" He stopped. Looked at the table. "I should have said something to you earlier. When you arrived. I should have warned you."
"Warned me about what?"
He met my eyes. "That the Trinity doesn't just bully people they dislike. They eliminate them. Systematically. I've watched them do it twice before — two other scholarship students in the last three years. One left after a month. One lasted a semester." He hesitated. "Neither of them had someone tell them what they were actually facing."
My pen was still on my notebook. The list still open.
"Why are you telling me now?" I asked.
Kai opened his mouth—
And then his phone buzzed. He looked down at it. His face went white.
Not pale. White.
He turned the phone toward me, and my blood ran cold.
It was a message in the Ashford Insider chat. The same chat with three hundred and forty-seven members. The one I couldn't join.
The message was from an anonymous account. And it read:
"Tomorrow, 3pm. Science corridor bathroom. Scholarship girl needs another lesson. Attendance encouraged."
Underneath it, a reply from an account I recognized now — Marcus's clean, minimal profile picture.
"Bring popcorn."
Forty-two likes. Already.
I stared at it.
Tomorrow. Planned. Advertised. An audience invited.
Kai's voice was low and urgent: "Mira. You need to go to admin first thing tomorrow morning and report this before—"
"The Headmaster's name is Ashford," I said quietly.
Kai went silent.
And we both sat there, in the back corner of the library, staring at a phone screen, while somewhere in this school three hundred and forty-seven students liked, and watched, and waited.