Theater: NovelMaster | Language: English | NEW
Synopsis
The day the project I spent five years on won the top national award, I didn't give a standard acceptance speech.
Instead, I told a story.
"Five years ago, my thesis advisor completely trashed the preliminary data of Project Zephyr."
"The very next day, that exact project won a prestigious award—under someone else's name."
"And the only person who had ever seen that manuscript was my professor."
"When I confronted him, he turned it around on me, accusing me of offering him sexual favors just to get my name on the paper. The online harassment that followed almost destroyed my life."
"And now..." I paused, turning my gaze directly to a familiar face sitting in the VIP section of the auditorium.
"Project Zephyr's final phase is finally complete. Professor Miller, wouldn't you like to come up here and say a few words?"
A barrage of blinding camera flashes immediately swung toward Arthur Miller.
"Professor Miller, is this true? Did you really steal your own student's research?"
"Did you resort to this because you hit a wall in your own career and couldn't advance any further?"
"Did you honestly think your lack of talent wouldn't catch up to you? That even after stealing the foundation, failing to finish the final project would keep your secret safe forever?"
The reporters shoved their microphones right into his face, forcing Arthur to stumble backward.
He shielded his eyes from the glare, barely able to keep them open. "This is absolute nonsense!"
"Elena Vance was my student! It was my duty to mentor her! I let her observe my core lab trials strictly for her education!"
"Even after she blatantly plagiarized my work back then, I tried to protect her career by keeping it quiet. I never imagined she’d stand up here today and bite the hand that fed her!"
A female journalist pressed harder.
"Then tell us, Professor Miller: how could Ms. Vance replicate the entire experiment just by watching, and then successfully optimize and complete the final phase on her own?"
"While you, on the other hand, made zero progress over the past five years and never touched this research again?"
A cold sweat broke out across Arthur's forehead. His lips twitched nervously.
Standing on the stage, I stared down at him with cold detachment.
Back then, I had excitedly brought my finished paper to Arthur's office. He took the manuscript, and for a split second, sheer shock crossed his face before he masked it.
After skimming through it, he sighed heavily and patted my shoulder. "Your core algorithm and test models are completely flawed. You need to scrap the data and start over."
When I reached out to take the folder back, he pulled his hand away with a fatherly smile.
"Leave it with me. I'll review the technical specs for you this week. Check back later."
The next time I saw Arthur was a month later.
The department head summoned me to his office, holding the exact proposal I had handed my mentor.
After glaring at me for several agonizing seconds, he slammed the folder straight into my face. "How dare you plagiarize a study already published in a peer-reviewed journal?! And from your own advisor, no less!"
Every faculty member in the open office turned to look at me.
Arthur was sitting nearby. He looked up with a stunned expression, calmly shut his laptop, and walked over to pick up the papers scattered on the floor.
Looking down at me with pure disappointment, he sighed. "Elena, I never thought you'd take such an unethical shortcut."
I was completely lost. "Dean? Professor Miller? What are you talking about?"
The dean’s fury erupted again. "This is the groundbreaking breakthrough your advisor presented and won an award for over a month ago! It's already in print!"
"You copied it word for word and claimed it as your thesis! And now you're playing dumb?!"
Back then, I was the one sweating bullets, frantically trying to prove my innocence to deaf ears.
Now, the one choking on his own words was him.
I lifted my microphone and raised my voice. "The stage is already set up with all the necessary hardware. Why don't you come up right now, Professor Miller, and replicate that original prototype live?"
"Clearing your name under the cameras is the most convincing proof, isn't it?"
Arthur violently shoved away the microphones crowding him, his jaw clenched tight.
"As the old saying goes, a student can eventually surpass the master! I admit you improved upon the concept!"
"But I gave you everything! To weaponize this finished work just to slander my original findings... you're being completely unreasonable and unhinged!"
Leaving those words behind, he shoved his way past the reporters and bolted for the exit.
I watched his pathetic retreating figure and offered a slight, chilling smile.
Everything was unfolding exactly as planned.
By the next morning, the headline was already trending on X and blowing up on TikTok: [Prestigious University Professor Arthur Miller Accused of Academic Fraud].The scandal kept trending, refusing to die down. Worried about donor backlash, the board placed Arthur on mandatory leave to ride out the storm.
Three days later, the moment I walked out of my lab, my phone lit up with over ninety-nine missed calls and texts.
I calmly dialed Arthur back. He picked up on the first ring, his voice trembling with rage. "Elena Vance! What the hell are you trying to pull?!"
"Do you have any idea what you've done?! The university suspended my lectures because of your ridiculous lies!"
Thinking my silence meant I was intimidated, his arrogance flared right back up.
"Listen to me: I still have the original raw datasets and every single preliminary draft from back then! Do you really think your smear campaign scares me?"
"Once the board finishes their investigation, the narrative will flip entirely. You'll end up right back where you started—a disgraced rat that everyone despises!"
I let out a quiet chuckle, remaining silent.
A smear campaign? Coming from him, that word was pure comedy.
He ranted on, grasping at straws, but when I refused to take the bait, he slammed down the phone in frustration. "Just you wait, Elena! If those sponsored trending tags don't disappear by tonight, I will sue you for every penny you have for defamation!"
He actually thought I paid for those trending topics. It was almost laughable.
The internet already despised academic vultures who stole credit from junior researchers. Once a scandal like this broke, social media carried it for free. Who needed to pay for PR?
I saved the three-minute call recording and immediately backed it up to my encrypted cloud drive.
This was the second lesson he had taught me: everything requires hard evidence.
Five years ago, after the plagiarism rumors ruined me, I tracked Arthur down in the hallway to demand answers.
He merely frowned, looking down on me with pity. "Elena, you stole my research. I personally convinced the dean not to expel you—I did you a massive favor."
"Why do you keep digging your own grave by claiming I stole from you? I'm a tenured, world-renowned professor. Why would I steal from an undergrad who barely passed Advanced Calculus?"
"You need evidence to make claims like that, Elena."
Desperate, I grabbed his sleeve to keep him from walking away, but the fabric gave way, and I accidentally ripped his blazer right off his shoulder.
The very next morning, photos of that moment were plastered all over the campus anonymous forum.
The posts claimed that after my plagiarism was exposed, I threw myself at my professor, begging to trade my body just to get co-author credit.
Arthur even posted a comment under the thread: [Let's keep discussions civil to protect the university's reputation. Please hold yourselves to higher moral standards and do not compromise academic integrity.]
His hypocritical comment acted like gasoline on an open flame. The thread exploded, spilling out into public social media.
[Just curious, how many nights does it take to get a second-author credit? Must be quite the performer.]
[She always walks around in fancy clothes. Guess we all know how she pays for them now. Thank god Professor Miller has morals, or our whole department would be trash.]
[Can someone kick her out of the dorms already? Every time she walks past our floor, it smells cheap and disgusting. Why isn't the administration doing anything?!]
The dean suspended my classes. I desperately tried to stay on campus to gather proof of my work.
Instead, vile rumors swallowed me whole. No matter how many times I tried to explain myself, I was met with nothing but disgusted scowls.
Until one afternoon in the campus dining hall. Someone bumped into me in line, and I stumbled, almost falling into a guy standing behind me.
He shoved me away violently, stumbling backward in genuine panic. "Don't touch me! I don't buy escorts!"
A girl at the next counter scowled, marched straight up to me, and dumped her entire bowl of greasy pasta right over my head.
"Can't survive without throwing yourself at men, huh?! Your professor turned you down, so now you're preying on random students? What's next? You gonna rub yourself against the campus janitor?!"
Scalding hot broth dripped from my hair, searing red streaks across my face as my clothes clung heavily to my skin.
All I could do was desperately plead, "I didn't do it! The research was really mine!"
Someone eyed my collar and clicked their tongue. "No wonder she had the nerve to seduce the professor. She’s definitely got the assets for it."
"Please, it's what she does behind closed doors that gets the job done. How else could she wrap him around her finger looking like pure trash?"
"Try pulling that cheap crap again, and I'll make sure you wash your hair in boiling grease every single day."
With that, the girl shoved her boot right into my stomach, grabbed her boyfriend's hand, and strutted off.
I collapsed onto the linoleum, kicked and shoved by the moving crowd until violent nausea forced me to vomit bile.
Only then, repulsed by the sight, did the onlookers finally turn away.
When I dragged myself back to my dorm, a sign was taped across the door: [No Whres Allowed. Elena Vance Keep Out.]
Locked outside all night without a chance to clean myself up, I went to the dean the next morning, begging for a hearing.
He pinched his nose and slammed the door in my face. "Countless reports say you slept your way through every single lab credit, and you still dare to come make excuses?!"
"As of today, you are permanently expelled. Don't you ever set foot on this campus again—you've disgraced this entire institution!"
From that moment on, my life was plunged into absolute darkness.
Snapping back to the present, I released the next wave of evidence, posting high-resolution scans of my original research logs and notes online.
[These are supposedly Professor Arthur Miller’s original project drafts. Can anyone explain why he went out of his way to copy my exact handwriting?]
The internet erupted once again. I looked at the comments with a cold smile.
This was the first lesson I taught myself: an eye for an eye.Within hours, students unearthed multiple verified samples of Arthur’s actual handwriting. It didn't match the project manuscripts at all.
Social media relentlessly hammered him: [So professors deliberately switch their entire handwriting style just to write technical formulas? Wow, learning something new every day.]
[Can Professor Miller just replicate the damn experiment on a live stream? Or did he completely lose his memory?]
[He was so quick to throw stones on the campus board five years ago, and now he's hiding under a rock? Can't even run his own test to clear his name?]
Crushed under the mounting public outrage, the university issued an official statement placing him on unpaid leave pending an ethics committee review.
Panicked that I possessed the original drafts, Arthur scrambled to upload photos of other lab records.
[My original files and notes are safe with me. The truth speaks for itself. I will pursue full legal action against those defaming my character!]
That very night, he tracked me down at an off-campus diner. "Fifty thousand dollars. Take the cash, and I won't press charges for your slander."
I clutched my stomach, laughing until I could barely breathe. "What's this, Professor? Weren't you going to take me to court?"
"A lawsuit wastes time. You just want a payout, don't you? I'll wire the funds right now—just take it and disappear."
I sneered inwardly. To this man, academia wasn't just something to steal; it was something to buy and sell.
After decades as an educator, he had zero respect for truth or science.
"I don't want your filthy money."
Arthur slammed his coffee mug onto the table. "Then what the hell do you want?! You were expelled five years ago! How do you even have the nerve to show your face back here?"
I took a slow, deliberate sip of my iced coffee. "Do you really not know what I want, Professor?"
Arthur frowned, glaring at me with deep suspicion.
"Back then, you manufactured all those vile rumors just to ensure I could never step foot in a university again, right?"
"It's quite simple. I want the exact same thing for you: to ensure you never step foot on a campus again. And by that, I mean—"
"Every single institution in this country."
Arthur's eyes widened with fury. "You're insane, Elena! You think you can strip me of my professorship?! Keep dreaming!"
"I'm not asking you to quit. I'm making sure you are permanently blacklisted from ever teaching again. Those are two very different things," I murmured with a cruel smirk.
Arthur's face turned completely livid. "You really don't know what's good for you."
"Then we have nothing left to discuss. It seems getting kicked out didn't teach you your place. I guess I'll have to teach you how the real world works all over again."
As he got up to storm off, I raised an eyebrow.
"Not going to finish your meal, Professor? I'm afraid you won't have much of an appetite later."
He paused for half a second, then quickened his stride. "Begging won't save you now, Elena. Just wait."
"This is an elite institution. Any stray dog off the street thinks they can just walk in and spread lies? Not on my watch."
I scrolled through the files on my phone and casually sent a short text.
[The bait is taken. Drop the net.]
The moment Arthur got home, the real show would be waiting for him.
Chapters (3)
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Watch & Promotions
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