At the Academic Conference, I Publicly Executed My Fiancé and His Student

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At a major academic conference, I exposed the lab's surveillance footage of my fiancé and his female student.

The intimate scenes sent the entire hall into an uproar.

A week ago, I was lurking on an obscure international academic forum when I came across a post asking for help:

[Is it normal for my professor to always hold me while we're doing experiments?]

Someone replied below: [What kind of experiments?]

She answered: [He guides my hand to teach me how to use the pipette gun, hugging me from behind. His body gets so hot that I can't even aim the tip into the well plate...]

Someone immediately replied: [That's a bit beyond the scope of conventional teaching.]

She immediately defended him: [But he said I'm the most special student he's ever had. Not like that unromantic block of wood who only knows how to bury her head in books.]

[His fiancée is also in research. All she cares about day in and day out are data and papers, with absolutely no sense of fun. He's been fed up with her for a long time. He said that only when he's with me does he feel truly alive.]

The post included a blurry photo of a man in profile.

A silver watch was visible at the cuff of the man's white lab coat. There was a tiny scratch on the edge of the watch face.

Exactly the same as the one I gave Julian Forrester.

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He'd scratched it while personally moving equipment to set up our lab.

He had smiled and ruffled my hair, saying that even with a mark, it was still his favorite watch—our own special memento.

What stung even more was the chromatograph in the background of the picture.

The side of its body was even engraved with the initials of our names.

I had traveled to nine countries just to secure that model. It was the only one in the country, my engagement gift to him, which I personally carried to his designated lab bench.

The blood froze in my veins, and I could barely breathe.

Julian Forrester had really betrayed me.

And yet, I had once been his student, too.

My fingers trembled as I refreshed the post.

Many users posted questions: [Are you actually asking for help or just showing off your affair with your advisor?]

She immediately retorted: [What affair? The professor and I are kindred spirits. He got me a position in the lab, right under his fiancée's nose. He even gave me the Chief Science Officer's primary research project to publish under my name, paving the way for my career.]

Someone cursed in the replies: [I hate people who abuse their power for personal gain more than anything. And that's not 'giving,' that's stealing! How can you two face that Chief Officer?]

She replied: [What is there to be sorry about? The professor just loves me more. He needs an understanding woman like me, not a cold research machine.]

Every word was like a poison-dipped needle stabbing straight into my heart.

Just ten days ago, I had received instructions from Julian Forrester: "Your project proposal and experimental approach have already been published by someone else. You'll need to find a new one."

It was the same excuse all over again.

He had fooled me time and time again.

I never imagined he was taking the project I'd poured my blood, sweat, and tears into and using it as a stepping stone for that third party.

He used to be so by-the-book, with such a cool and ascetic air.

Everyone in our field said he was as pure as the deionized water in the lab.

Back when I was his student, he would intentionally keep half an arm's length between us when we discussed experimental data.

When he taught me how to use the pipette gun, his ears turned bright red just from steadying my wrist.

He had also said that I was his most special and outstanding student.

After we secretly developed feelings for each other, he was terrified of me being the subject of gossip. So he waited until I graduated, waited until I could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with him, before he dared to hold my hand in the open.

That restrained tenderness and his innate integrity once made me fall completely for him.

On the day he proposed, he said that researchers valued sincerity and perseverance above all, and that his sincerity and perseverance were for me alone.

Now, looking at the diamond ring on my finger, then glancing at the two bodies pressed tightly together in the post's photo, a vile chill shot up my spine.

The words and vows he'd spoken to me had been twisted into cheap, cliché pickup lines to seduce a student.

The very passion and dedication to research that he once cherished in me had now become the "unromantic block of wood" he spoke of.

Then the photo in the post refreshed, and the image of Julian Forrester lowering his head to nibble on her earlobe suddenly slammed into my vision.

I couldn't take it anymore. My stomach churned violently, and I threw up until every organ felt like it was twisting in pain.