Chapter 2 — From Collapse to Brilliance: I Don't Need You

Diệu Kỳ sat on the stone steps in front of the training room building, her backpack on her knees, looking far into the schoolyard. She was not in a hurry to step inside. In her head, the memories of her past life continued to swirl, detailed down to every word, every look, as if they had only happened yesterday.

She remembers her second year of college, when she was first accepted into Professor Đoàn Khắc Tuấn's immunology laboratory — one of the most prestigious labs in the Faculty of Medicine, which only accepts students with the best achievements. At that time, the lab had only four people: Diệu Kỳ, Đặng Thảo My, Hồ Đình Vũ, and Phùng Nhật Lam. Four people with four different personalities, but bound together by a rare kind of friendship - a friendship forged through white nights analyzing data together, hastily shared meals in the corner of the lab, times encouraging each other to overcome harsh academic pressure.

Thảo My is the first to arrive every morning, always carrying a bag of hot dumplings bought at a familiar restaurant across the alley, divided equally among the group. She has a bright smile and a straightforward personality, straightforward to the point of sometimes being indifferent, but is the first person to recognize when someone in the group is having a sad time. Diệu Kỳ clearly remembers a time when she stayed up all night for three consecutive nights to complete an experiment report. Thảo My quietly brought a bowl of hot porridge, placed it on the table without saying a word, just patted her on the shoulder and then turned to do her work.

Đình Vũ is different - principled, careful to the point of dryness, always the one who double-checks every number in the report before submitting. He rarely spoke and showed little emotion, but Diệu Kỳ knew that under that rigid shell was a trustworthy friend, willing to stay in the lab until midnight just to help her recheck a statistical calculation that she suspected had an error.

Nhật Lam is the most sophisticated person in the group, always observing everything before speaking. It was Nhật Lam who first noticed the change in the atmosphere in the lab when Ý Nhi appeared, even though at that time no one, including Diệu Kỳ, listened to her vague warnings.

Ý Nhi moved in on an autumn morning, when the first almond leaves began to turn yellow. She brought along a set of transfer documents, saying that she had studied at another medical school but had to move back here for family reasons. Right from the first introductory meeting, Ý Nhi skillfully created the image of a weak, traumatized girl - she told, in a trembling voice, about being isolated, criticized, and even intentionally sabotaging her research results out of jealousy by her former lab roommate.

"I just want to start again," Ý Nhi said, her eyes red, her hands clasped together. "I don't dare expect everyone to believe me right away, I just hope to be given a chance."

Diệu Kỳ, in her previous life, was the first person to comfort her, the first person to tell the group that they should give Ý Nhi a chance, and should treat someone who had been hurt kindly. She spent hours guiding Ý Nhi to familiarize herself with lab procedures, shared with her own research notes, and brought her into the close circle that it took her a year to build with Thảo My, Đình Vũ, and Nhật Lam.

And that was the fatal mistake.

Diệu Kỳ closed her eyes, letting the memories continue to flow. She remembers the first weeks, Ý Nhi showed so much gratitude that it touched everyone. But gradually, little things started happening. One time, Thảo My complained softly to Ý Nhi that Diệu Kỳ was busy these days and had less time to eat with the group than before - just an idle statement, stemming from missing her friends. But a few days later, Diệu Kỳ accidentally overheard Đình Vũ insinuating that perhaps Diệu Kỳ "was looking down on the whole group because she was getting more attention from the professor".

At that time, Diệu Kỳ did not pay much attention, thinking that it was just a small misunderstanding that would soon pass. She did not know that Ý Nhi had cleverly turned Thảo My's harmless complaint into a completely different story when telling Đình Vũ, adding details to make it more malicious.

That was the first trick that Diệu Kỳ, in this life, realized after many months of contemplating the entire process of her downfall during the long nights waiting for the trial: Ý Nhi never directly spoke ill of anyone. She only acts as a bridge, transmitting information between group members, but each time she transmits, she adds a little bit of harsh spice, distorts a little bit of the meaning, until the original message is completely distorted.

Just like that, month after month, small misunderstandings piled up. Thảo My began to feel distant from Diệu Kỳ. Đình Vũ began to doubt her motives in every decision related to work assignment. Only Nhật Lam was still able to maintain her sanity, telling Diệu Kỳ privately many times that she felt there was something wrong with Ý Nhi, that the way she always appeared at the right time whenever a conflict arose between the members was suspicious.

But Diệu Kỳ, at that time, dismissed Nhật Lam's doubts, thinking that his friend was being too harsh on a newcomer, someone who had been hurt. She protected Ý Nhi from gossip and mediated every time there was a small conflict, not realizing that her protective action gave Ý Nhi even more support to continue manipulating others without suspicion.

The climax of the split came about half a year later, when the lab was assigned an important clinical trial project, collaborating with a pharmaceutical company to evaluate the safety of a new drug. This is the largest project the group has ever participated in, and Professor Đoàn Khắc Tuấn entrusted Diệu Kỳ with the main coordinating role, in charge of synthesizing and cross-checking data from volunteers.

That honor, instead of being congratulated by the whole group, became the trigger for the smoldering jealousy that Ý Nhi had been sowing for many months. Diệu Kỳ clearly remembers that just a few weeks after she took on the coordinator role, the atmosphere in the lab changed completely. Team meetings became tense, Đình Vũ constantly questioned the way she distributed work, claiming that she favored herself, assigning the light tasks to herself while pushing the difficult parts to others — something Diệu Kỳ had never done.

Thảo My became cold, rarely talked, and avoided eye contact every time the two met in the lab. Only later did Diệu Kỳ learn, through fragmentary pieces during her own investigation in this life, that Ý Nhi had repeatedly "accidentally" revealed edited messages to Thảo My, causing Thảo My to believe that Diệu Kỳ had talked bad about her behind her back, that Diệu Kỳ considered her a burden to the group.

Then came the problem — a volunteer in the trial group experienced a serious side effect due to an incorrect drug dose recorded in his monitoring records. The school's internal investigation discovered that the original data had been edited, and every trace of system access, every digital evidence, pointed to only one account: Tôn Diệu Kỳ's account.

She was completely stunned. She has never edited any data. But when she tried to explain, tried to prove her innocence, no one in the lab stood up to support her. Thảo My, with eyes full of hurt and disappointment, said only one short sentence to the disciplinary council: "I didn't expect you to do that." Đình Vũ recounted, with a cold expression, the times he "discovered" Diệu Kỳ's unusual behavior at work recently. Only Nhật Lam was silent, did not say anything more, but did not stand up to defend.

And Ý Nhi, during that hearing, just sat quietly in the corner of the room, her face full of pain and regret, as if she herself was a heartbroken victim of the "betrayal" of the person the group trusted the most.

Diệu Kỳ opened her eyes and felt tears rolling down her cheeks. She waved her hand away and tightened the strap of her backpack. That story, in her previous life, ended with her being expelled from school, being criminally prosecuted for falsifying research documents causing serious consequences, and finally, dying in absolute loneliness, without a single friend by her side.

But this life will be different. Diệu Kỳ stood up, brushed the dust off his pants, his eyes became determined. She saw through the nature of the psychological game that Ý Nhi operated: divide and conquer, sow suspicion little by little until the victim was completely isolated, then strike decisively when there was no one left to protect her.

This time, she will not give Ý Nhi the opportunity to build trust with her from the beginning. She won't give her any support. And most importantly, she would not put herself in a position where her entire future depended on the trust of a group of people who could be manipulated so easily.

She looked towards the training room building, where she was about to enter to apply to change majors — a decision that she knew would shock everyone, would disappoint the instructors, and make old friends incomprehensible. But she had no other better choice. Fighting Ý Nhi directly right now, when she hasn't shown any traces, was just a hopeless fight based on hunches and memories from a life that no one else believes was real.

Retreating to rebuild strength is the wise path.

Diệu Kỳ walked decisively up the stone steps and pushed open the heavy glass door of the training room building. Behind her, the morning sunlight still spread evenly across the schoolyard, illuminating the rows of phoenix trees rustling in the wind, like a quiet farewell to the old life she was about to leave behind.