During the mandatory freshman orientation camp, my skin had flared up with a severe allergic reaction, so I didn't use the plastic washbasin the school handed out.

Instead, I opened my suitcase and took out the custom silver basin I had brought from home.

My roommate, Louisa Carter, immediately made a snide remark, drawling, "You're really something, huh? Kids from broke families like us are lucky to have any basin at all."

I didn't bother responding. I simply pulled out my facial essence to do a cold compress, but she immediately rushed over, slapped the bottle out of my hand, and jabbed a finger at my face.

"Bet you get tens of thousands a month for living expenses. You have a sugar daddy, don't you? Don't you feel guilty making your folks work their fingers to the bone back on the farm? People like you don't deserve to be at our school. I'm reporting you to the student counselor."

I laughed in disbelief and slapped her.

…

The next morning, the family photo I'd left on my desk had been slashed to ribbons. Across the back, carved in ink, were the words: 'Daughter of a homewrecker. Go to hell.'

I went straight to the police.

While officers pulled the dorm security footage, our student counselor and the university president rushed in. The moment the president saw the man whose face had been cut apart in my photo, his legs nearly buckled.

He almost dropped to his knees.

When Mercy Is Mistaken

The university president, Wilhelm Weber, waved his hands shakily, ushering the police officers and the student counselor out of the room.

"Mallory, the school will make this right for you." He pointed at the family photo in my hand, his voice pleading. "Could you… not escalate this for now?"

I thought back to what my father had told me when he dropped me off. He had asked me to keep a low profile and not make trouble.

But keeping my head down didn't mean I had to let people walk all over me. And it certainly didn't mean letting anyone slash my father's face and call me a homewrecker's daughter.

The corner of my mouth twitched.

I slipped the photo back into its frame and nodded without expression.

Wilhelm exhaled in visible relief, his shoulders sagging.

…

The hallway surveillance footage was quickly pulled up.

At three in the morning, Louisa's sneaky silhouette appeared on screen.

She slipped out of our dorm, disappeared into the storage room at the end of the hall, and returned moments later, jittery, one hand hidden stiffly behind her back.

When the police questioned her, she sat in the chair and burst into tears on cue. "She hit me first. My face is still swollen. I just accidentally knocked over her photo frame. It's not my fault that it was so flimsy—it fell apart the moment it touched the floor."

The officers turned to me, asking for my statement.

Remembering my promise to the university president not to make things bigger for now, I simply said, "It was just a misunderstanding."

Since even I downplayed it, the police treated it as nothing more than a minor student conflict, offered a half-hearted warning, and wrapped it up.

Louisa looked straight at me afterward, her eyes full of mockery and contempt. "See? Even the cops don't care about you. Do you think being rich makes you special? You still have to sit there and take it."

I didn't answer. I just watched her.

"What, nothing to say? Guilty? Or scared?" she pressed, raising her voice. "This is a university, Mallory Leighton. Not your family's backyard. A little money doesn't give you the right to do whatever you want."

I snorted inwardly and looked away. 'Typical clown behavior. Go ahead. Enjoy your tiny victory while it lasts.'

…

That afternoon, the moment I pushed open the dorm door, a familiar scent hit me. It was the soothing-face-cream blend I'd asked one of my father's friends at a Helvetia lab to formulate for me—only one jar existed in the world.

My stomach dropped.

I rushed straight to my cabinet. The silver jar was sitting exactly where I'd left it, but it felt far too light in my hand.

I twisted the lid open.

A full jar now had a deep gouge carved through the center, as if someone had scooped out a handful with bare fingers.

I spun around. Louisa and another roommate were sprawled on their beds, their faces gleaming with oil. The familiar scent I'd noticed earlier was coming off their skin.

Seeing my expression, Louisa sat up and wiped her cheek with the back of her hand, bragging loudly, "Oh, you're back? Mallory, your stuff isn't even that good. Greasy as hell. My cream works better."

The roommate beside her chimed in, "Seriously. It smells weird, costs a fortune, and for what? I'll never understand rich people's taste."

Three Seconds

I stared at the jar of face cream with a chunk gouged out of it, then dropped it straight into the trash.

Louisa shrieked instantly. “Mallory, are you insane, you spoiled brat?”

She jumped off the bed and nearly dove into the trash can. "I just looked it up online. The jar alone costs thousands, and you’re just throwing it away? Give it to me. I can at least use it on my feet!”

“Anything your filthy hands touched disgusts me,” I said coldly, and walked out without sparing her another glance.

Behind me, her voice blended with the other roommate’s snide laughter. “Unbelievable… Rich people don’t even treat money like money.”

…

Early the next morning, just as I was heading to the field for orientation camp assembly, the student counselor stopped me with a grim expression. "Mallory, come to my office."

The moment I stepped inside, I saw Louisa sitting there with her eyes puffy from crying. The second she saw me, her shoulders started trembling pathetically, as if I had done something terrible to her.

The student counselor cleared his throat. "Ms. Leighton, Louisa already told me everything."

His tone carried a hint of reproach. "As fellow students, you should try to understand each other. Even if it was your own item, throwing it away right in front of her was too hurtful.

"Do you have any idea how difficult her family situation is? Doing something like that is no different from shaming her outright."

I almost laughed. “So, I’m not allowed to throw away my own belongings?”

"That's not what I meant," he said sharply. “She only used a little of your cream. You hit her. Why escalate it?”

Louisa squeezed out fresh tears. “It’s my fault, sir. I just saw she had so much… I thought I’d help her use a little…”

"Help me?" I interrupted with a cold laugh. "She steals from me, and you call that helping. I throw away my property, and that’s humiliation. She slashed my family photo and pointed at my father’s face while calling my mother a homewrecker, but the slap is what matters? Don’t tell me this is the result of your investigation.”

The student counselor instantly turned furious. He slammed the desk and barked, "Enough! This ends here. Go to orientation camp and stop causing trouble."

I walked out with anger burning in my chest.

…

That afternoon's orientation camp drill took place under a scorching sun. The field felt like a giant steamer. My skin reacted badly to prolonged exposure, so I wore the sun-protection jacket my father had prepared for me.

Its fabric was engineered with a special coating and blocked UV rays dozens of times better than anything sold on the market—and its price matched.

During the break, everyone else was flushed red and sweating buckets. I was the only one who still looked relatively fresh, aside from a light sheen on my forehead.

Louisa's gaze landed on me. Suddenly, she shot to her feet, pointed at my jacket, and yelled loud enough to rattle the whole field. "Everyone, look at what Mallory's wearing!"

People turned toward me instinctively.

Her voice dripped with poison. “That jacket costs tens of thousands. Know where she got the money? Sleeping with old men. She acts innocent, but who knows how dirty she really is behind the scenes?”

Whispers rippled outward. Eyes turned sharp and suspicious. The air around me went cold.

I stood and walked right up to her. "Louisa, you have three seconds to apologize."

A Villain Named

She looked at me with a triumphant smile. "Apologize? Why should I? Tell me, what part of what I said wasn't true?"

As she spoke, she casually picked up a bottle of cold cola beside her.

"Oops! It's so hot, my hand slipped." She gave an exaggerated gasp and tipped the bottle in a deliberate arc. Cola drenched my white jacket from shoulder to hem, staining it instantly.

"Oh no, Mallory, I'm so sorry," she said, stepping closer with fake concern. "I didn't mean it. Look how dirty it is. Let me help you take it off and wash it."

Seeing her fingernails about to brush the neckline of my jacket, I refused to tolerate it further. I lifted my foot and drove it into her stomach.

Louisa let out a shriek, doubling over as she crashed to the ground. She clutched her stomach and wailed, "Help! Mallory hit me! "

A roar came from not far away. "What's going on over there?"

The drill instructor ran over.

He saw Louisa writhing on the ground, glanced at me once, and pointed without asking a single question. "Mallory Leighton! Assaulting a classmate and disrupting formation? Twenty laps. Now!"

I didn't move.

He was seconds from exploding when the student counselor rushed over and whispered into his ear.

The instructor's face shifted through several emotions before settling into reluctant restraint. He shot me a hard glare and waved me back into line, but that was only the beginning.

…

Two days later, the entire department held a general assembly. I was ordered onstage to make a public apology for "unprovoked assault".

I stood there without saying a word while thousands of eyes bore into me from below. Louisa, as the "victim," stepped up beside me and took the microphone. She bowed deeply before tears started rolling down her cheeks.

"Good afternoon, everyone. I come from a small mountain village, and I'm the first in my family to attend college. My parents always told me to be kind and get along with my classmates… but I don't know what I did wrong."

Her voice cracked. "My roommate, Mallory Leighton… everything she uses is incredibly expensive. A washbasin, a bottle of skincare—each one could be a year of my family's savings. I was curious and wanted to take a look, but she slapped me.

"She threw a face cream worth tens of thousands into the trash, and when I told her not to waste it, she accused me of humiliating her. During orientation camp, I accidentally spilled some soda on her jacket that cost tens of thousands, and she kicked me in the stomach."

A wave of shocked gasps spread across the hall.

"Oh my God, that's insane."

"She thinks money makes her invincible."

"How did someone like her even get into our school?"

"Poor Louisa… getting out of the mountains is hard enough without being bullied."

…

By the time she finished, I had officially become the campus villain.

That night, a pinned and trending post shot to the top of the school forum—'Expose Finance Freshman Mallory Leighton and Her Bald Middle-Aged Sugar Daddy.'

The anonymous thread claimed I was being kept by a fifty-year-old man. My silver basin was labeled a fetish prop. My skincare was "payment". The jacket was a "bonus after exercise".

It even included a blurry photo of me outside the dorm, taken secretly. And the tone—there was only one person who would write something like that: Louisa.

When I returned to the dorm, Louisa looked up with a mocking grin. "Well, look who's here. Our celebrity."

I shoved my phone screen in front of her. "You did this. Delete the post. Delete the messages. Apologize."

She burst into shrill laughter. "So what if I did? Got proof? What's wrong? Afraid your sugar daddy will find out? Go call him. Let him deal with me. Oh wait… you won't. All you can do is bully a poor student like me."

Then, she cranked her phone volume to maximum and blasted a playlist of gold-digger anthems.

"Oh, she's a gold digger, way over town that digs on me…"

She sang along, eyes glittering with provocation. Our other roommate put on headphones and pretended to disappear.

I didn't respond. I simply opened the recording app.