Chapter 3

In reality, a ridiculous and disappointing person would never make just one foolish mistake. After the holiday ended, I advanced to the freshman year of high school without a hitch. I attended the same school as Oscar. It felt as if I were retracing his life. Right from the start, I went all out. My grades skyrocketed, and I even followed in Oscar's footsteps by winning several major youth competitions. In just one semester, I caught every teacher's attention and successfully became a candidate for Novaris University' Gifted Scholars Program. My path was so similar to Oscar's that people constantly compared us. Even our parents would often look at me and murmur thoughtfully, "If Oscar were like Shauna, he might already have been a university student in the Gifted Scholars Program by now." During moments like these, I didn't know what to say. I wanted to tell them to give up on Oscar, but naturally, I couldn't. No matter how kind they were to me, I never forgot that I was only their adopted daughter. Oscar, on the other hand, was their birth son. All I could do now was protect Hugh and Nadia as much as possible—and also protect myself. Fortunately, even though Oscar didn't become a university student as everyone had initially expected, he hadn't completely fallen apart. His grades still ranked among the best. But I knew very well that he was nothing like the outstanding person he had once been. Ever since he gave up on the exam for Tracy, she had agreed to be his girlfriend. The two of them indulged in their reckless teenage love. Oscar voluntarily left the honors class to make Tracy feel secure. He became her classmate and even sat next to her in class. They often joked around in the classroom, disrupting lessons and provoking teachers. Their favorite game was to deliberately distract other students during class. When the teacher called on them to answer questions, Oscar—the former academic prodigy—would utter the answers effortlessly. Watching the teachers fume with anger but remain helpless only made Oscar and Tracy laugh even harder. Because of these antics, a group of students who disliked paying attention in class quickly befriended and looked up to them. Whenever a teacher was too frustrated to speak, someone secretly snapped a picture and turned it into a meme. Occasionally, Oscar even started accepting requests for a price. Anyone who disliked a particular teacher had to pay Oscar to mess with them. Then, Tracy would take an embarrassing photo of the teacher, turn it into a meme, and share it around. By the end of that semester, nearly every teacher in the school had been humiliated by Oscar at least once. But because his grades were still excellent and the principal stood up for him, nothing ever came out of it, not even when our parents were called to school. Over time, more and more people compared me to Oscar. This irritated him to no end. So, during lunchtime one day, Oscar deliberately sought me out and dumped his leftover food onto my plate. I looked up at him angrily, but what shocked me more was how much he had changed. He used to wear his school uniform neatly and radiated an understated sense of confidence. He gave off the air of an academically accomplished and well-learned person. But now, his eyes and expression were filled with hostility. The earring dangling from his earlobe stood out so much that the tattoo on his neck seemed almost unremarkable in comparison.