“This book is my heart and soul, my labor of love. I poured countless hours into it and yet you, my so-called best friend, had the audacity to plagiarize it!”

Kimberly’s fans quickly uploaded comparison charts and color-coded analyses, flooding my account with hateful comments. They didn’t stop at me—my family became targets too.

Most of my fans were peaceful and non-confrontational, completely overwhelmed by the wave of abuse and unable to fight back.

Seizing the moment, Kimberly publicly revealed that I had been living in her home. The insults grew even louder.

“I can’t believe Ruth Norris shamelessly squatted in someone else’s house and still had the nerve to plagiarize!”

“No parents, no manners—no wonder she’s been exposed as a fraud!”

Although I had endured this storm of public outrage once before, seeing it all unfold again still struck a painful chord in my heart.

I bit down hard on my lower lip, the metallic taste of blood filling my senses as I forced myself to snap out of it and focus.

She might have stolen my drafts, but she couldn’t steal my inspiration or the soul of my writing.

Without responding to the chaos, I grabbed my keyboard and tablet and headed to a nearby café. There, I swiftly revised the story’s direction, reworking the plot and the intricate emotional entanglements between the protagonists.

The tone of the story took a sharp, dramatic turn.

After typing out 4,000 words, I closed my tablet with satisfaction. Logging into the site, I scheduled the updated chapter to go live at midnight the following day.

This time, I was determined to see how she planned to plagiarize.

When I returned home with my tablet, the living room lights were blazing. Kimberly was sitting there, her gaze sharp and her expression icy as she waited for me.

I was taken in by her family when I was nine years old. Since starting work, I had been contributing monthly to their household expenses as a way of repaying their kindness.

“I’ll transfer thirty thousand dollars to your mother, making it a total of two hundred twenty-five thousand dollars over the years. After that, I’ll leave this house for good.”

With those words, I turned, planning to leave as fast as I could. However, Kimberly grabbed my arm, blocking my path. She stood in front of me, her lips curling into a cold, dismissive smirk.

"You think you can just walk out like that? What do you take our home for—a hotel?"

"And what about the plagiarism? Don’t you owe us an explanation?"

She had the audacity to bring up plagiarism.

I swallowed my anger and said sternly, "I wrote that story myself. You stole my ideas and now you’re turning it around on me. How can a human like you exist?"

Unbothered, she sat arrogantly on the sofa, her eyes filled with disdain. She spat near my feet and sneered, “Where’s your proof? You’re just an orphan who plagiarized from the child of your benefactor. No manners, no family background—who’s going to believe you? You’re not much better than a stray cat or dog; do you actually think you’re important?”

Her words pierced through me like a dagger. I didn’t want to waste any more time arguing. Clutching my tablet, I turned to leave.

Kimberly’s pupils suddenly constricted and she lunged at me, trying to snatch the tablet.

In the scuffle, she lost her balance and fell.

"Ruth! How dare you bully my daughter—are you insane?!"

Kimberly’s mother furious voice boomed as she stormed in, rushing to shield Kimberly like a lioness protecting her cub.

No matter how much I tried to explain, she watched me with icy detachment.

"My daughter has had a deep love for literature since childhood. And what are you, exactly? How dare you try to ruin her reputation? Get back to your room this instant!"

The way she lovingly stroked Kimberly’s hair made my nose sting with unshed tears. The only reason these two had the guts to trample on me was because I had no one to back me up.

I packed my bags and left the house, taking only a few belongings with me. I found a cramped, run-down motel to stay in, lost in thought about what to do next.

As I scrolled through my phone, a sudden message from my editor popped up.

I stared at the screen, utterly speechless.

How could this be?!

Kimberly had updated again—and it was identical to my work!

Kimberly even went so far as to issue a statement, claiming it was her new, specially crafted storyline for the main characters, catering to both Happy Ending and Bad Ending for readers to choose from.

Her fans praised her as a god-tier writer, while at the same time, they turned on me, calling me a cowardly plagiarist.

[Wow, if this story ever gets adapted into a movie, it would be a total lost!]

[Some writers are probably crying in secret—she could never live up to our ‘sweet Kimberly’!]

[Plagiarism dogs should just die. Actually, forget it! You don’t even have a family to call your own!]

……

I closed the comment section with a heavy heart, feeling completely helpless for an answer.

This time, I swapped out my equipment and changed the location where I wrote.

But I couldn’t escape the plagiarism. Watching all my ideas and inspirations stolen right before my eyes, powerless to do anything about it, was unbearable.

Staring out at the moon, I carefully weighed my decision.

I decided to leave the web novel scene—put down my pen and stop updating.

If Kimberly was being hailed as the new star of the literary world, I was going to see what she could do once I stopped updating.

I deactivated my account and after several discussions with my editor, I officially announced a hiatus, vowing to focus on polishing other projects.

Those who had once supported me were now left in confusion. Some couldn’t discern the truth and followed along with the narrative, while others, like me, chose to step away from the drama.

I packed up my belongings late into the night, taking only a few writing essentials with me and finding a cheap motel to stay in. Fortunately, over the years, I had saved some money, so at least I wouldn’t starve.

But then the internet erupted. My phone was bombarded with calls all night long, flooded with thousands of harassing messages that nearly crashed my SIM card.

Checking my social media, all I saw were people condemning me.

[Ruth Norris is absolutely disgusting. She actually stole gold and jewelry from her foster family. A person like her is just wasting air by being alive.]

Even the fans who once stood up for me had turned against me.

[She even assaulted Kimberly! I must’ve been blind to have ever liked her!]

With trembling hands, I clicked on the video. The footage showed me in a scuffle with Kimberly, followed by clips of me stealing gold and a public statement from Kimberly’s mother.

She looked frail and aged, her eyes sunken and pitiful. “I always treated Ruth like my own,” she said tearfully, “but I never thought she’d steal from us and even hurt my daughter. It’s my fault for raising a poisonous snake in my home, for inviting a wolf into our family!”

The comment section was filled with words comforting Kimberly while urging me to die immediately.

I dug my nails into my skin, forcing myself to stay calm. In my past life, I had gotten caught up in proving myself, forgetting all about reporting the incident.

This time, I was determined to fight back.

I saved the video, went to the police station to file a report and uploaded the receipt along with the official police record online.

At the same time, I publicly released all of Kimberly’s threatening voice messages.

That day when I returned home, I was prepared. I secretly started recording, hoping to capture some evidence for a decisive blow.

I wasn’t the same person I was in my past life. Even though there wasn’t any key evidence for the plagiarism, I wanted Kimberly to know that I wasn’t going to let her push me around!

After I released the recording online, her fans went into a frenzy—some questioned the authenticity of the recording, while others pressured Kimberly to provide an explanation.

The police also arrived at my place immediately to gather evidence and issued an official statement.

On the day the gold was stolen, I was at a café and there’s store surveillance footage to prove it. As for who the person in the video was, that still needs to be investigated.

This evidence would completely clear my name.

My more laid-back fans couldn’t stand idly by anymore. They collectively formed a rights protection group, bombarding Kimberly’s account daily with questions and demands for an explanation.

Some even conducted video comparisons, pointing out that the person’s shape clearly resembled Kimberly’s—accusing her of framing me deliberately.

“Such a load of bull! She’s clearly the plagiarist! If you disagree, come and prove me wrong!”

“Typical Ruth, that shameless orphan, stealing someone else’s work! Plagiarist fans, stay out of this!”

The feud between our fan bases escalated beyond just plagiarism accusations; it turned into outright defamation. The drama reached a fever pitch, with my phone almost exploding from Kimberly’s barrage of messages and her mother’s harassment.

Meanwhile, I had already run miles away to a neighboring town, living a carefree, easygoing life.

Wasn’t Kimberly hailed as a rising star in the literary world? Well, I wanted to see for myself how she’d manage once I stopped updating.

After arriving in Riverdale, I upgraded my equipment, replacing my tablet and keyboard with the latest models and quietly resumed updating my chapters.

I kept a close eye on Kimberly’s updates.

She continued posting regularly, but her content was vastly different from mine—her writing quality had dropped as well. Readers even suspected she was using AI to edit her work, leaving numerous negative reviews.

The two fanbases clashed and her book quickly fell from the top spot across the entire website.

As a staunch non-believer, I found myself even more convinced that there was something wrong with the equipment I was using for writing.

I scheduled a top-notch computer technician to check everything out for me. His expression was grave as he scanned my tablet with a sophisticated device and then took apart my keyboard piece by piece.

In an instant, the heavy mechanical keyboard was reduced to a pile of parts. He held out a tiny component the size of a grain of rice in front of me and quietly said, “Do you know what this is?”

My heart pounded like a drum and I just stared at him, shaking my head.

“This is the latest tracking device. It can detect your general location and, when linked to the keyboard’s wiring, it allows the other party to use an encrypted network to real-time transmit everything to her device, making an exact replica.”

I was stunned, my mouth hanging open—never in a million years did I think such high-tech tools existed!

She must have slipped the tracking device into the keyboard while I was away.

I had always been tight on cash and never waste money—if it’s not broken, I wouldn’t replace it. Kimberly knew this and took full advantage.

Looking at the keyboard in front of me, an idea suddenly struck. I casually put the sensor back in place and continued to use the new keyboard to store my manuscripts, just as usual.

The online drama only escalated from there. Sure enough, just a few days later, as soon as I opened the door to my Airbnb, there they were—two figures standing right in front of me.

Kimberly’s face flashed with anger when she saw me. She raised her hand to hit me, but her mother quickly pulled her back.

“Ruth, your book is a bestseller, yet you’re not updating it? How can you be irresponsible of your own work!”

Kimberly stood beside her, chiming in, “Yeah, you’re such an idiot for not making money when you can!”

I ignored them and tried to close the door, but Kimberly’s mother was quick to seize the opportunity, forcing her way in.

“Everyone online is attacking Kimberly,” she said, “just issue a statement and admit that you plagiarized. This whole thing will soon be over. Once Kimberly’s book is published, she can pay you some money. How’s that?”

She must be dreaming!

I could still vividly remember the video from my past life, where she falsely accused me of stealing her work. I begged her to give me the original video—if I had that, I could prove it was all a lie.

But instead, she slapped me hard and shouted, “You’re so shameless! Stealing my work and not even owning up to it! I can’t believe my family ever adopted someone like you!”