2: 2

I washed my hands and quietly counted down in my head.

By the time I stepped out, Barret was hitting the floor, convulsing right on cue.

The moment Yvette saw me, her face went frantic. "Pauline! You've killed him!"

Horace shouted along with her. "He ate the cake and dropped like this. Somebody call the police, this looks like poisoning!"

"No need for that," I cut in.

Yvette's voice went shrill. "Are you trying to kill him?"

I ignored the crowd gathering around us in the hot-pot restaurant.

Step by step, I closed in on Yvette.

"I haven't done a single thing, and you keep saying I killed someone. What exactly are you steering everyone toward?"

Her face drained of color, and her words started to stumble.

"I'm just telling the truth. What... what would I be steering anyone toward?"

I looked her dead in the eye. "After all, if I get a black mark on my record, you're the one who gets the permanent slot."

Yvette's pupils shot wide.

Horace pulled her behind him.

When he turned to me, his face was full of rage.

"Pauline, why are you being so aggressive?"

"If you've got nothing to hide, why are you afraid of me calling the police?"

The onlookers turned suspicious eyes on me too.

I didn't panic.

I only asked Horace, "When something like this happens, a normal person thinks it's an allergy. You're the only one who jumped straight to poison."

"Unless you're the one who did the poisoning?"

His face went red, then white, then red again.

The crowd's eyes swept back and forth between us.

They'd punched three numbers into their phones, not sure whether to make the call or not.

Barret's classmates stepped up to back them.

"Quit making excuses. We can testify it was you who gave Barret the cake!"

"You're the one who called him a beggar. He snapped back at you, so you held a grudge and poisoned him to get even!"

Plenty of people had heard him demanding the cake earlier.

Now more than a few of them were murmuring.

"It was just a slice of cake. Should've just handed it over. What a cruel thing to do."

"Not even dressed poorly, and this stingy!"

In the middle of the uproar, I reached over and grabbed a toothpick off the next table.

While none of them were watching, I jabbed it into Barret's fingertip.

He yelped and shot upright.

"You old hag, what are you doing?"

"No wonder my sister says you're vicious. You stabbed me with a needle on purpose, didn't you?"

He pointed at me and yelled to the whole room.

"You all saw it, right? Hurry up and call the police, arrest her!"

But everyone there, along with the paramedics who'd just rushed in, was frozen.

Because the person who'd been convulsing on the floor a second ago was now bouncing around and cursing at full strength.

I seized the moment. "Who's your sister?"

He instinctively pointed at Yvette.

Yvette's face went bloodless in an instant.

Horace's throat bobbed a few times.

He stepped forward to put an arm around me, and I threw it off.

He rubbed his nose, embarrassed.

"Since he's fine, everybody go on home. It was all a misunderstanding!"

And with that he tried to lead Yvette away.

"Stay right there!" I called out.

"Nobody's calling the police for you now. I'm the one making the call!"

I grabbed my phone and quickly dialed 911.

"Hello, some people at a hot-pot restaurant are working together to frame me—"

Before I could finish, Horace snatched the phone and hung up.

"Pauline, don't push this too far!"

He said it in a voice only the two of us could hear.

"Barret's group is four people. Add me and Yvette, and do you really think you stand a chance?"

"You're a smart woman. Let's both back off and not go after each other, how about that?"

He was threatening me.

But if I'd dared to come alone, I wasn't about to fight a battle I hadn't prepared for.

The next second, the hot-pot restaurant's manager came rushing out.

"Customers, whatever private issues you have, right now we've got a poisoning incident in our restaurant."

"We've already called the police. Please cooperate and wait for their investigation."

At that, they all looked at each other, and no one said another word.

3: 3

Under the officers' questioning, all they could do was dig in and keep up the act.

Barret held to his story that his stomach hurt and demanded to be taken to the hospital for tests.

His classmates, Horace and Yvette, swore up and down that I was the one who'd given him the cake.

Right there, I asked the police to pull the restaurant's security footage.

"Officers, I never wanted to cut him a slice in the first place. Horace was the one who forced me into it."

"And I never handed it to anyone. I didn't touch that cake the entire time!"

The officer nodded.

"What's the relationship between everyone here?"

I jumped in first. "The three of us are friends. The one who got poisoned isn't supposed to know us at all."

"But he called my friend Yvette his sister."

"Right now I think the three of them set this whole thing up!"

"You're smearing me with lies!" Yvette shot back.

The officer they called Captain Sanders raised his voice.

"Enough. Stop the shouting. Get the suspected poisoning victim to the hospital for tests first."

"Send the cake to the lab for analysis."

"Everyone else comes down to the station and waits!"

In the mediation room, I sat on one side. Horace and Yvette sat on the other, holding tightly to each other's hands.

I wasn't hurt. I just felt like I'd been blind all this time.

I'd met Horace and Yvette back in college.

Yvette's family didn't have money, and yet she carried herself with so much pride that no one in the dorm wanted anything to do with her.

So I brought her along wherever I went.

Her interview résumé, I helped her write it, line by line.

Her spoken English was weak, so I practiced with her, day after day, night after night.

Even later, when the two of us became interns together.

Her proposals were polished by me too, one word at a time.

At first, Horace felt sorry for me.

"Are you raising a kid? You do every little thing for her yourself."

Then, somewhere along the way, it became him taking Yvette along no matter what he was doing.

"She's got no friends. It's kind of sad, being alone like that."

"We're driving anyway. What difference does one more person make?"

It bothered me, at the time.

He dragged Yvette over to smooth it over.

"I chewed him out for it! I know he's trying to win points with his little future mother-in-law, but he shouldn't be shortchanging his girlfriend for it!"

"From now on, when you two want your alone time, leave me out of it! I don't feel like watching you two be all lovey-dovey anyway!"

And after that, she really did stop coming.

But Horace only got busier and busier.

I thought he was working hard for the permanent slot.

It wasn't until I had someone look into it that I found out the two of them had gone off for that alone time of their own.

Seeing me watching them.

Horace let go of Yvette's hand.

He came over and sat down beside me.

"Pauline, you've really gone too far this time. You scared Yvette."

Ha.

His heart had drifted clear across the Pacific.

I asked, "Horace, who exactly is your girlfriend?"

He pinched the bridge of his nose, impatient.

"Here we go again. That's the only thing in your head, isn't it?"

"There's nothing going on between me and Yvette. Stop with the paranoid suspicions."

Nothing going on?

I opened my bag, pulled out a stack of paper, and threw it in his face.

Photos of them kissing at the top of the Ferris wheel.

Their backs as they walked hand in hand into a hotel.

Tens of thousands of chat messages, the two of them pouring their hearts out to each other.

I slapped him across the face and asked, "Is this your fucking nothing going on?"

"Horace, I told you. If you fell for someone else, all you had to do was say one word to me, and I'd never have made trouble over it."

"Too bad you didn't have the guts."

The words he wanted to say to explain had just reached his lips.

The next second, the officer who'd taken the sample to the lab pushed the door open.

"Captain, the results are in!"

"There really was poison in the cake sample, and Barret really was poisoned!"

4: 4

I looked up at Yvette and caught the flicker of triumph at the corner of her mouth.

The next second she was crying like a broken flower in the rain.

"Officers, please, stop asking questions. I confess."

In an instant, every head turned toward her.

Her voice cracked, and even that little quiver of fear was pitched just right.

"Pauline drugged Barret to stand up for me! If you have to blame someone, blame me!"

This time it wasn't just me. Even Horace froze.

The tears kept coming.

"Barret is my dad's kid with his mistress. My mom and I both hate him, and I always complained about him to Pauline."

"Pauline's so loyal. She said if she ever got the chance, she'd make him pay for me."

I frowned.

"Yvette, what are you talking about? All I knew was that your parents were divorced. I didn't even know you had a brother!"

"How could you not know? Horace can testify. I told all of you!"

Every eye lifted to Horace.

He clearly hesitated.

But after a long moment, he clenched his fist.

"Yvette isn't lying. She did tell us."

I let out a cold laugh and shot him a look of pure contempt.

He rubbed his nose and dodged my eyes.

Yvette cried harder.

"This time I heard my brother was celebrating the start of his freshman year at the hot-pot place we always went to, and I lost it. I said I wanted to teach him a lesson."

"I didn't know the cake she bought was poisoned! He's still my own brother, no matter what. I'd never hurt him!"

I never knew Yvette could act this well.

The little white flower I'd raised all this time had turned into a snake, and it had sunk its fangs into me.

Horace glanced at me, then turned and said something low into Captain Sanders's ear.

The captain's face changed at once.

He waved a hand, sending his men out.

Horace whispered close to my ear, "Pauline, don't hold this against me. Once it's over, I'll cut her off and make it up to you properly."

"Over? You mean once you've put me away?"

His teeth clenched.

"Can't you just back down? I'll have Barret write you a letter of forgiveness, you'll be out in a few days. Do you really have to dig in like this?"

"I'm someone who digs in. Is this the first day you've known me?"

Now he was acting like he was so worried about me.

But I'd already seen the way he stood there holding Yvette, unmoved, while I was sent to prison.

So all I felt was disgust.

An hour later, Captain Sanders came back.

"Pauline, this is the pill bottle we found at your home. It matches what was in the cake."

"And this is the footage we pulled from the bakery of you buying it."

"Care to explain?"

Yvette's eyes shone with the satisfaction of a plan about to close in.

Horace's face was more complicated, even touched with a flicker of reluctance.

I found it funny.

I denied it flatly. "I didn't buy the drug, and I didn't buy the cake."

Yvette panicked at once.

"Pauline, there's video proof. What's the point of denying it?"

"Don't worry, even if you confess, Barret and I will write the letter of forgiveness. We won't let you go to prison."

Horace chimed in too.

"It's just a permanent-hire slot. With your skills, you'll pass just as easily somewhere else."

"Do you really have to push this to the point of no return?"

They spoke with such certainty.

As if I were already being dragged onto the execution ground.

Begging them to toss me one thread of a chance to live.

"Don't trouble yourselves."

I slowly lifted a pinhole camera off my bag.

"Captain, this recorded exactly how Horace, Yvette, and Barret plotted against me together."

Then I held out a USB drive.

"This is twenty-four hours of high-definition footage from my home, every angle covered. It proves someone planted the drug on purpose."

The words had barely left my mouth.

Every drop of color drained from their faces.