3: 3

I opened his profile again and started from his very first video.

His tenth video was filmed at his graduation.

The full name of the school was right there in plain view.

The caption read 【Finally graduated~ officially a working adult now~】

Scrolling further down, one video showed a medical-test photo from the mask era.

His surname was printed on it.

Whitney, and two more characters blacked out.

Three characters in all.

So I opened my laptop.

I went to the homepage of his school, and pulled up every graduate from his year.

I searched for an hour.

Finally, going by the IP and the profile details, I narrowed it to two suspicious names.

One was Oscar Whitney. The other was Amos Whitney.

This Amos was clearly a girl.

But I couldn't be certain the person spreading the rumor was a man.

So I kept going through his videos.

The twentieth video was a rant.

【Girls these days are so materialistic. First thing out of their mouths is twenty grand in wedding gifts. Is this a marriage or are they selling off their daughters!】

From that alone, I was almost sure.

The person had to be a man.

Which ruled Amos out.

I glanced up at the time.

Two in the morning.

My eyelids were already fighting me, and I couldn't stop yawning.

I got up and went to the bathroom to splash water on my face.

Then I went out to pour myself a glass of water.

Passing the guest room, I heard faint snoring coming from inside.

Theodore was already asleep.

I was still hunting for the person who slandered me, and he was already asleep.

I stood outside the guest room door for three seconds.

And I started thinking about this marriage.

Theodore was my husband, the man meant to stand by me through the rest of my life.

Faced with a stranger spreading lies about me,

his first reaction was to interrogate me.

His second was to run.

He'd chosen to leave me to face someone else's slander alone.

He couldn't even hold his ground against his own mother's questions.

Could a man like this weather anything with me?

I was starting to doubt it.

I made myself a cup of instant coffee.

I carried it back to the room and kept digging.

The thirtieth video was two movie tickets.

So I opened a map and searched for local movie theaters.

Using the theater as the center, I searched for every school within a twelve-mile radius.

Then I checked the teacher listings one by one.

By four in the morning, I finally found it in one school's public roster.

The name Oscar Whitney.

To make sure my information was accurate,

I searched for that school's page on social media.

I scrolled for an hour.

Finally, in an April 7, 2025 post about outstanding teachers,

I found Oscar Whitney's name.

At the end there was a photo.

One glance was all it took to know which one was Oscar Whitney.

It was only a guess.

But I was certain.

Near enough dead-on.

I opened the ticketing app right then and booked the earliest train to Phoenix.

By the time I finished, the sky was just beginning to lighten.

I was still wearing my red toasting dress.

I hadn't even had the chance to take the pins out of my hair.

The train left at six.

I didn't even have time to sleep.

I pulled the ornaments out of my hair.

Washed my hair, showered, changed into clean clothes.

And I realized I wasn't the least bit tired.

If anything, I felt a little exhilarated.

4: 4

I was about to come face to face with the person who'd spread the lies about me.

I had to ask him myself: why had he slandered me under my wedding video?

What had I ever done to him?

I hardly ever posted videos. The wedding one was the only clip that had cracked ten thousand views.

Everything else barely scraped a few hundred.

When I picked up my things and stepped out, the door to the spare room was still shut.

Theodore hadn't woken up yet.

This time I didn't stop.

Downstairs, I hailed a cab and went straight to the train station.

I ate breakfast at the KFC in the station.

The ride was two hours. I let my eyes close for a little while.

When the announcement came on, I got up slowly and followed the crowd toward the doors.

It was almost nine by the time I reached Phoenix.

Theodore should have been awake by now, but there wasn't a single message on my phone.

He'd seen I wasn't home and hadn't even sent one line.

Gripping my phone, I got into a cab and went straight to Oscar Whitney's school.

The guard was an old man of about sixty. Seeing me at the gate, he asked who I was looking for.

I said, "Oscar Whitney. Teacher Whitney."

He looked me up and down. "What do you want with Teacher Whitney?"

I said, "I want to ask him why he's been spreading lies about me online."

The old man paused, then opened the gate.

I said, "Sir, how do I get to the principal's office?"

He raised a hand and pointed at the building right in front.

"Third floor, 302. But the principal might not be in. You can try the academic affairs office, 201 on the second floor."

"Okay, thank you."

Clutching the printouts, I headed straight for the principal's office.

The principal was in, and so was the dean of academic affairs.

I knocked, walked in, and set everything down in front of the principal.

"Teacher Oscar Whitney posted lies under my wedding video claiming I was Girl Number Nine at an escort service. Now my husband wants a divorce."

The principal's face went dark in an instant.

He picked up the papers and leafed through them.

Then he took out his phone and made a call.

Ten minutes later, there was a knock at the door.

A man in a black polo shirt and round-framed glasses pushed it open.

The moment he saw me, he froze where he stood.