Chapter 3

I braced myself against the wall with one hand and forced out a smile.

"I'm not making a scene. I just don't feel well."

Only then did Harvey's gaze settle on me. "The wound on your hand still hasn't healed?"

He lifted my hand, then flinched at the red veins spreading from the wound.

"What happened to this?"

I stared at the infected patch, dazed. So he'd known about my wound all along. He just didn't care anymore.

"It got infected by something in the tomb."

Silvia, standing beside him, snorted out a laugh and started snapping photos from every angle with her phone.

"Sabrina really is an art student. She paints so well. Mutation veins, right? I almost believed it."

She put her phone away, hooked her arm through Harvey's, and tilted her head up at him.

"You actually let her little prank scare you. She said the wound came from the tomb on purpose, to make us feel guilty and make you feel sorry for her."

Silvia leaned into him again. "All right, Harvey, standing this long has made my leg hurt worse. Come see the doctor with me first."

The relief on Harvey's face was obvious as he let go of my hand.

"I still have to take Silvie to the doctor. If you don't feel well, go home. Stop dwelling on things that aren't real all day."

He turned to help Silvia, and as they passed me, she looked back and smiled at me.

As if to say, See? He chose me.

My lower belly cramped again, and I couldn't stop myself from doubling over a little.

So when he said he had no time, he only meant he had no time for me.

After I got home from the hospital, I drifted through the days in a haze, sleeping and waking, waking and sleeping.

In my dreams, everything between Harvey and me flickered past like a spinning lantern, over and over.

I knelt on the ground, unwilling to accept it, aching with the unfairness of it all.

But the moment I saw the gods and buddhas fill the sky, all at once I understood everything.

Some things were never meant to be mine.

Why cling to them.

When I woke, the tear tracks were still on my face.

I wanted to send Harvey a goodbye message, but the moment I unlocked the screen, abuse came pouring in from everywhere.

Silvia had posted the photos of the wound on my hand.

【My bestie painted this herself, but she insists she got infected by something in the tomb and is going to mutate, hahaha. Any kind soul want to photoshop a picture for her and give her what she wants?】

At the end of the post, she'd tagged my account.

I stared at the phone screen, my fingertips gone cold.

The comments under Silvia's post had already exploded.

【This woman is such a drama queen. She's gone insane chasing attention. She'll even curse herself for it.】

【I heard she even lied to her boyfriend that she was pregnant. Disgusting.】

【If you ask me, she's jealous the blogger's getting close to her boyfriend and she's eaten up with resentment. A person like this is just wasting the air she breathes.】

Some went even further, actually posting photos of monsters with my face AI'd onto them.

Over three thousand comments, and not one of them spoke up for me.

The hand holding the phone shook.

It wasn't until I scrolled all the way to the bottom that I found one anonymous warning.

【There really is an ancient virus in that tomb. They say once you're infected you start to mutate, and if you don't get back into the tomb in time, the poison kills you.】

But the replies beneath it were all abuse. No one believed it.

With a few offhand sentences, Silvia had turned the whole internet's malice onto me.

My inbox was flooded with private messages. Someone had even dug up my home address and phone number.

Even friends I knew sent me messages, asking if the person in the pictures was me.

I drew a deep breath and called Harvey.

"The photos Silvia posted, the whole comment section is tearing me apart. Can you get her to delete them?"