Reborn to Watch My Best Friend Fall

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1: 1

My best friend and I took our college arts admissions auditions, and we placed first and second in the whole state.

We'd promised each other we'd go to the National Film Academy together.

But the very day applications closed, I came across a trending post.

My girlfriend placed second in the state arts exam. How do I talk her out of the National Film Academy so she'll drop out and go work with me?

Her mom's divorced and remarried, and her stepdad doesn't care about her. If she gets into a big-name school like that, there's no way her mom lets us stay together.

The comments were all ripping into him for wrecking her future, calling him scum.

Only one comment jumped out at me.

That's easy. If her arts scores are that good, she's definitely got a good body. Find a chance to take her to a club, knock her up first, and you can marry her sooner, can't you?

The original poster liked it and replied: Taking her to a club tonight and getting her blackout drunk. Thanks, man.

My fists clenched, and a cold went through my whole body.

Right then, my best friend messaged me.

"Going out clubbing with my boyfriend all night. Don't tell my mom, okay?"

I stared at the location she'd just dropped on her phone screen, and one word at a time, I deleted everything I'd been about to warn her about.

Because in my last life I stopped my best friend from going to that club, and I ended up crossing her punk boyfriend,

who beat me into a cripple and tore up my college acceptance letter.

My whole life was ruined. I fought the case for three years, and at the last moment I begged my best friend to testify.

But to shield the punk, she gave false testimony.

"You broke your own leg, and now you want to frame my boyfriend? Have some shame!"

In the end I was spat on, and I died carrying my rage and the injustice with me.

Thinking of all that, I sent my best friend a single line back.

"Don't worry. Have fun tonight."

The phone screen went dark, and my blank face stared back out of it.

In the living room the TV was still running the news, and the arts exam results looped on the local channel.

First in the state, Rowena Fox. My name.

Second in the state, Alice Gilbert. My best friend.

I'd thought we'd have the same bright, shining future.

But tonight, our paths began to split.

"Rowena, what do you think of this dress? Does the new bodycon look good on me?"

Alice's messages came one after another.

"We finally graduated high school. I want to try a whole new style."

"If I wear this to the bar tonight, do you think Henry Simmons won't be able to take his eyes off me?"

Even through the screen, I could almost feel Alice's excitement and her daydreaming.

And I narrowed my eyes, staring at that location she'd sent, and didn't answer.

That location was the biggest private bar in New York City.

In my last life, when I got there by cab,

Alice was already in a bodycon dress and sky-high heels, about to walk in.

Frantic, I stopped her, and I showed her the post on my phone.

"Don't go in! He's waiting there to set you up!"

"Look, isn't this poster your punk boyfriend, Henry?"

"His girlfriend placed second in the state arts exam, and even her family situation matches exactly. Isn't that you?"

"The second you walk in there, tonight becomes an ambush."

"He's got a whole group waiting for you. They're going to get you drunk, maybe even get you pregnant tonight"

Alice went pale with fear, shrinking back, not daring to go in.

"Rowena, thank God you came."

She hugged my arm tight.

"I'll go home with you. Let's go, quick."

After that, Alice stayed on her guard, and she refused to see the punk the whole summer.

But somehow he still found out that I was the one who stopped Alice that night.

The very day I got my college acceptance letter,

he came storming over with a whole crew and surrounded me.

"None of your damn business!"

"Rowena Fox, you little bitch, this is all your fault for butting in and ruining what I had going."

"Then you can pay me back with yourself!"

Henry meant to force himself on me, but I was fierce, and I fought with everything I had.

In the end they beat me into a cripple.

When the police arrived, I was lying in a dead-end alley, my whole body a bloody mess.

I didn't die. I kept my life.

Four steel pins in my leg, and even the doctor sighed and said, "Prepare yourselves. She may never leave a wheelchair for the rest of her life."

My mom cried until she nearly fainted, kneeling on the floor to beg the doctor.

"Please, you have to fix my daughter's leg! She just got her acceptance letter from the National Film Academy. She's a dancer. Her leg can't be broken like this."

And how could a cripple ever dance?

I hated it. I couldn't accept it.

I fought to press charges, and the punk sent someone to take the fall for him.

I hired a lawyer and spent every cent of my family's savings.

I fought the case with everything I had for three years, and finally I was about to win, one step away, needing only a single eyewitness, Alice.

But she nailed me to the pillar of shame with one sentence.

She gave false testimony.

"My boyfriend never touched her. She got drunk and fell on her own."

"That day she was the one trying to seduce my boyfriend, which is why she asked him to meet her in that dead-end alley."

And she added "She's always been jealous of me. If she hadn't pulled something in the arts exam, I'd have placed first ages ago. How could I ever have come in second?"

In that instant I finally understood.

It turned out the most terrifying thing in this world isn't a villain being openly, brazenly evil,

it's the person you thought you'd trust with your life turning around and driving the knife into your heart.

At one in the morning, my phone rang.

Alice had sent a voice message, the background full of loud music and clinking glass.

"Rowena, I've had so much to drink. My head's spinning."

I didn't reply.

Two o'clock, another voice message.

Alice's voice carried a note of panic. "Rowena, Henry wants to take me upstairs to the hotel. I'm a little scared. Can you come be with me?"

I still didn't respond.

Half an hour later, Alice suddenly sent me a video.

"Bestie, is the woman in this video your mom?"

"I'm not seeing things! Your mom's here too."

"A man just took her into a hotel room. I'm scared something's going to happen to her. Hurry up and come check!"

2: 2

It scared me, and I shot up out of my seat.

At this hour my mother would already be asleep in her room.

I went downstairs and called out, testing it. "Mom?"

No answer.

I pushed her door open. The room was empty. Had she really gone out?

Panic crept in, and I was already changing my clothes to head for the club.

Just then the front door swung open. My mother was back.

"Mom?"

I looked at her standing there, then at the video on my phone.

In the video, a man had his arm around my mother, steering her toward a private room.

The exact same face as hers.

And here she was, just home from her night jog, still in her workout clothes.

"What are you staring at? The girl's gone dazed."

"Mom," I asked, "did you go to a bar or a club tonight?"

Her brows drew together. "What would I be doing at a place like that?"

"It's just, you never go out at this hour."

She rubbed her stomach. "I ate too much at dinner, felt bloated, so I went to walk it off."

"Came straight back to sleep. What's this about? Why are you asking?"

Meeting her puzzled look, I quickly shook my head. "It's nothing."

Back in my room I watched it a few more times before it clicked. The video was AI-generated.

Only then did I feel how wrong this was.

Alice had once traveled with my mother, so she had photos of my mother's face on her phone.

She'd used those photos to AI-splice a video like this. But to what end?

No matter how I turned it over, the unease wouldn't settle.

So I reached out to a friend in the computer science department, someone genuinely good, and asked if he could hack the club's security system.

I wanted to see what had happened in there.

He laughed. "Easy. But you're buying me dinner."

"Deal."

Before long a stretch of security footage landed on my phone.

I spotted Alice at once.

Hemmed in by a group of men, she was being pawed at.

The punk, Henry Simmons, had her pulled onto his lap, coaxing her to get a room.

Sensing the danger, Alice thought fast and told him, "I've got a friend who's even prettier. Just don't touch me, and I'll call her over for you all to play with."

Henry took a drag on his cigarette and grinned. "Then get her over here right now."

So she messaged me twice, telling me to come to the club and keep her company. I didn't reply.

So she AI-spliced the video on the spot.

"Best friend, your mom's here too. A man just took her into a hotel room. Get over here and see for yourself!"

Reading that, my palms went damp with cold sweat.

So this was how vicious her heart really was.

I switched off my phone, pulled the covers over my head, and slept well, not waking until daylight.

When I opened my phone the next morning, the messages had nearly blown it up.

Dozens of messages from Alice I hadn't gotten around to reading.

The first thing that popped up was a trending headline.

"Arts Applicant Tricked Into Club by Punk, Abused Until She Hemorrhaged, Rushed to Hospital in the Night"

The girl on the cover was pixelated, but I knew at a glance it was Alice.

Word was the police had already arrived.

And netizens had dug up the hospital's address.

I went to see for myself. I'd just reached the hospital entrance

when I saw Alice's mother in a rage, screaming at her.

"Look at you, dressed like a little tramp. You dare tell me you weren't at that club luring men in?"

"You worked so hard to place second in the arts exam. All you had to do was sit home and wait for your acceptance letter. But no, you had to run around and mess with people!"

"If you weren't out being loose and shameless, how would you end up in a hospital in the middle of the night?"

Alice just huddled under the covers and cried.

Then her eyes slid over to me, her chest heaving.

"Rowena Fox!"

"Why didn't you pick up last night?"

Her voice was raw as she screamed at me. "I sent you all those messages. Why wouldn't you answer"

I let her claw at me and blinked, all innocence.

"Alice, my phone was off while I slept last night. Why are you taking it out on me like this?"

Her eyes darted away.

"It's all because of you! You tricked me into going to the club, and that's why this happened to me!"

"And then look at you, I went, while you stayed home and slept."

Listening to Alice flip it around and sling her filth onto me, I nearly laughed from anger.

"Alice, you're the one who agreed to a date with that punk boyfriend of yours. What does any of that have to do with me?"

Her mother's head snapped up.

"What do you mean? She went on her own?"

Alice's shoulders shook. "No, Mom it was Rowena Fox!"

"She asked me out dancing yesterday, that's the only reason I went to the bar. Otherwise, why would I ever go out in the middle of the night?"

Seeing my face darken, Alice dropped her voice into my ear.

"Help a friend out, back me up and fool my mom with me, or she's going to scream me to death."

I gave a cold laugh. It was the same in my last life. No matter what she got herself into, she'd trot out one excuse and dump the filth on me to dodge her mother's scolding.

But this time, I had no interest in playing along.

I was about to speak when a teacher from school suddenly called.

"The National Film Academy saw the trending story too, and they've sent someone specifically to investigate."

"They're calling it a matter of personal conduct."

"They want to seriously reconsider her admission eligibility before deciding whether to issue the acceptance letter."

3: 3

But Alice suddenly panicked, her finger stabbing toward me.

"It was her!"

"Rowena's the one who told me to go to the club. If you're investigating anyone, you should be investigating her character."

For a second I just froze, turning to stare at her.

"What did you say?"

"What does any of this have to do with me?"

Her mother, Evelyn, went white in an instant, her eyes locked on me.

"Rowena Fox, what's that supposed to mean? My Alice says you're the one who sent her there, and you still won't admit it?"

I looked at Alice.

She dragged the blanket tighter and curled herself into a ball,

but I knew her too well.

In my last life, in that courtroom, this was the exact face she'd turned toward the judge.

And then, word by word, she'd delivered all those fabricated lies as testimony.

"Alice, look me in the eyes and say it again."

She didn't dare look at me. She turned her face away and hollered at her mother in a muffled voice.

"It was her she messaged me, said the place was fun, told me to go"

"Rowena's jealous of me! She got first in the arts exam herself, and she was scared I'd get into the National Film Academy too and steal her spotlight, so she set me up to make a fool of myself"

The words came out halting, full of holes.

But Evelyn believed her, and swung her palm at my face.

"Rowena Fox! My Alice treated you like a real sister. Is this how a decent human being behaves?"

"I'm calling your mother right now. I want to see just what kind of thing she raised!"

I dodged the slap easily, and Evelyn stumbled, nearly falling.

She still managed to pull out her phone and dial. "Grace Henson, get to the hospital right now and see the lovely thing your daughter Rowena has done!"

She piled it on thick, twisting the whole story.

My mother's calm voice came through the line.

"Your daughter has two hands and two feet. Did my girl tie her up and drag her to the club?"

"You can't keep your own daughter in line and now you come running to interrogate someone else's? Don't be ridiculous."

"And besides, I know my own daughter. She isn't that kind of person."

With that, my mother hung up.

Evelyn was so furious she called the police right there. "Fine, fine, fine, Rowena Fox, you really are the fine daughter Grace Henson raised."

"Since your mother won't deal with this, I don't believe there's no one who will!"

When the police arrived at the hospital, I was still perfectly calm.

Only then did I finally produce the original video, along with the chat logs.

In them, every single time, I'd urged Alice to focus on her studies and stop running around with that punk, because we still had a bright future ahead of us.

But she'd never once listened.

The last time, she'd answered me coldly.

"Henry isn't some punk. He's my boyfriend."

"Rowena Fox, if you keep trying to stop me from being with him, I won't consider you my best friend anymore!"

After that I'd stopped replying.

The moment those chat logs were laid out for everyone to see,

every onlooker in the hospital was stunned.

"Rowena here seems perfectly decent to me. She never told you to go to a place like that club."

"A best friend this good, and you don't know to treasure her? You turn around and bite her like this?"

"If you ask me, you're the one with no self-respect, and now that something's gone wrong you want to find someone to take the fall for you!"

"Anyone who calls you their best friend must have the worst luck of eight lifetimes!"

The officer, taking all of it in, turned to Alice with a flat expression.

"The evidence here is complete. Do you admit it?"

Alice hadn't made a sound through any of it. Only at the last moment did she suddenly scream.

"Officer, don't believe her!"

"These chat logs are all forged, because Henry is actually Rowena's boyfriend!"

4: 4

"What?!"

The whole room reeled, and the place erupted.

But Alice held her ground.

"Officer, everything I'm telling you is true."

"Rowena isn't just the top-ranked applicant in the state. She likes messing around with AI, and every one of those chat logs was generated by her using AI!"

"I warned her more than once to stay away from Henry, and she wouldn't listen. Then, just to please that punk boyfriend of hers, she tricked me into going to the club."

"Please, stand up for me and make sure Rowena gets the punishment she deserves!"

The moment she finished, Alice handed over a video to the investigators.

In the clip, Henry, the punk, had his arm around my waist, calling me babe.

My head spun with rage. "You're the one fooling people with a fake AI video, Alice. Do you really think everyone here is an idiot?"

"If I were his girlfriend, then why is it you lying in a hospital bed?"

Alice's eyes went red with tears, wronged.

"I was the one who suffered in your place."

"Henry wanted to see you. You didn't come, so they beat me instead!"

Evelyn latched onto that like she'd found her proof, glaring at me as if she wanted to tear me apart alive.

"Rowena, you little slut!"

"I always knew my daughter was sweet and well-behaved. It was you who led her astray."

"It's because of you that she got hurt by that punk. Don't think you're getting off easy today. Either you go to jail, or you pay up!"

"And you'll apologize to my daughter in front of the reporters, then go to the National Film Academy and set it straight. If anyone's admission gets canceled, let it be yours. Don't you dare drag my Alice down with you!"

I didn't explain. All I wanted was for the National Film Academy's investigation team to get here.

"I have proof."

"But I want to wait for the investigation team to arrive before I show it to everyone."

After that, no matter how the officer pressed, I kept my mouth shut.

I just let it drag on.

Alice was rattled, but she didn't know what this so-called proof of mine was, and figured I was only bluffing.

While the others were talking out in the hallway, she leaned in close and dropped her voice.

"Rowena, you're my best friend. Please help me one more time. Just this once."

"I don't even know who blew this thing up. Somehow it's all over the internet, and now it's putting our admission to the National Film Academy at risk!"

"Please, just play along with me. Say you're Henry's girlfriend. You've got nothing to hide, so you're not afraid of any investigation, right?"

"Once this dies down, I'll treat you to dinner, okay? A little thing like this, you'd definitely help me out."

I stared at Alice, cold. "Up to now, do you really still think this is a little thing?"

Alice pressed her lips together, still ready to sweet-talk me into it.

Just then, footsteps sounded outside.

A teacher from the school said gravely, "The National Film Academy's investigation team is here."

"Rowena, what exactly is going on here?"

The moment had come.

I curled my lips and lifted my eyes, cold.

"Alice, do you really think everyone's going to believe your lies?"

"Then everyone, take a look at this"