After College Starts, Calling Kills Me

Chapter 6

After the assignment incident, the attacks in the group chat went on for three full days. People said I lacked any sense of teamwork.

I didn't defend myself. I had learned from the first three lives that it never helped.

On the fourth night, I posted a single message in the class group chat: [The complete chat log of our assignment division has been uploaded. Link below, help yourself.]

Then I turned off my phone and went to sleep.

When I woke up the next morning, the chat was quiet. Sloane hadn't posted anything. Celeste hadn't reposted anything.

But I knew this was only the calm before the storm. They weren't going to let it go. Because from the very beginning, what they wanted was never about assignment credits or fairness. What they wanted was for me to bend.

November came and the weather turned cold.

I bought a thermos and started drinking only water I filled myself from the boiler room in the academic building. I never touched the dorm water dispenser again. I only ate food in sealed packaging, and I checked every seal before opening it.

Sloane noticed and said, in an unreadable tone, "Vivienne, why have you been acting like a spy lately?"

I took a calm sip of water. "Better safe than sorry."

"Safe from what? You think we're going to hurt you?"

Her voice was light, almost playful, like she was joking.

I smiled back. "I never said you were."

But I kept my eyes on hers the whole time.

She looked away first.

That night, I made a decision. I opened my phone and began keeping a diary, recording everything that happened in the dorm. Who said what. Who did what. No interpretation, no judgment, just facts.

For example:

November 7th, 9:34 p.m. Sloane said, "You think we're going to hurt you?"

November 12th, 10:15 p.m. Celeste leaned over the edge of the upper bunk and looked at me.

Each entry on its own might prove nothing. But taken together, they formed a web.

Still, recording wasn't enough. There was something else I needed to understand.

Why did they want to kill me?

I went back through the previous lives. In the first life, I said Sloane's name, and Celeste killed me. In the second life, I said Celeste's name, and Sloane killed me. In the third life, I said Iris's name, and all three of them conspired against me.

On the surface, it looked like a pattern: whoever I named first was satisfied, and the others turned on me out of jealousy.

But that logic didn't hold up under any real scrutiny.

Even the pettiest person alive would not arrange to have someone killed simply because a stranger had called a roommate's name before theirs.

Unless saying someone's name meant something else to them entirely.