I secretly loved Austin Coleman for six years, and on the day I got accepted into a top university, he told me he liked me, too.
On the first day after school started, he invited me to a hotel close to the campus.
I went there happily, but I was given drugs and passed out.
He locked me inside a room with three strange men for the whole night.
The next morning, short videos filmed from many angles spread everywhere on the school network.
Everyone insulted me, calling me cheap, dirty, and shameless.
After I was expelled from school, my father became so angry that he had a heart attack.
My mother wanted to call the police, but she was pushed by a group of online attackers until she jumped off a building and committed suicide.
Four years later, I met Austin on the street.
He sat in a sports car, holding a young woman, and laughed at me.
“Belle Crawford, weren’t you once the lucky girl everyone admired? Why do you look like a beggar now?!”
He laughed again and threw out a stack of cash. “As long as you kneel and bow three times, all this money is yours!”
Without thinking, I knelt down and bowed my head.
Austin, who had been laughing proudly, suddenly changed his expression.
——
“Belle, you’re putting on a show!”
When I bowed down for the second time, Austin got out of the car in anger and caught hold of me.
His face was darkened, his eyes full of anger.
“Are you doing this on purpose to look weak in front of me? Blaming me for getting revenge on you before?”
“Who doesn’t know your family lives well? Your mom works as a teacher, and your dad works as a doctor. Your life has always been much better than most people’s.”
“You dress like this now, so who are you trying to trick?”
“And where is your pride? Were you not once called a smart girl who never lowered her head to anyone? Why do you not even care about your dignity anymore?”
Austin didn’t understand why he felt so angry. He shook my shoulders wildly, while I stayed still like a wooden doll.
I bent down and picked up the cash from the ground, one bill at a time.
“You were the one who said it, three bows, and the money belongs to me. Thank you.”
Austin froze, his brows pulled together as he studied my face closely.
“Talk! Say something!”
Austin’s voice was very loud, pulling the eyes of people walking nearby toward us.
I stared at him blankly and showed a sad, bitter smile.
“What do you want me to say?”
Four years had passed without seeing him. Those classmates had simply gone off to college, but my family had gone through huge changes.
From being “the perfect child everyone talked about,” a “smart girl” chosen for a top university, I had fallen into a slut everyone looked down on.
Now, four years later, when I think about what happened that night, it still feels unreal.
I had only gone out late with my boyfriend and booked a hotel room. I did not even know how I fell asleep.
When I woke up, my life fell apart.
Those disgusting videos spread everywhere online.
Even my friends, scared of getting dragged into it, blocked me and deleted me that same day, and told reporters they had never known me at all.
I went crazy to find Austin, but he had been sitting in my living room, speaking the truth coldly to my mother.
“If you hadn’t been so harsh back then, leaving Katniss Evergreen no way out at all, how could she have gone home and committed suicide?”
“If that day you had simply looked the other way, Katniss would have passed the test, and she could have believed she had the strength to fight her sickness!”
“But you canceled her result and cut off her last bit of hope to stay alive!”
“Now your daughter has turned into someone everyone curses and looks down on. Now you know what hopelessness feels like, don’t you?”
Hearing Austin say those words himself had felt like lightning striking my head.
So his choice to chase after me had never been because he cared about me. Being with me had only been a carefully planned act of revenge.
All of it had been because my mother had once worked as an examiner and caught a girl cheating during an exam, canceling her qualification.
That girl’s name was Katniss Evergreen.
She was his first love.
