Chapter 3 — The Watch of Retribution

The dull, heavy thud of knees slamming against the hard earth traveled straight from my bones into my ears. At that exact moment, the academic advisor pulled out his phone.

"Hello? Is this the parent of Cloud? Have you arrived yet?"

"Click... click..."

With every ring of the waiting tone, my heart skipped a beat. Don't come. Please don't come. I screamed frantically in the silence of my heart. But I remained utterly paralyzed. My arms were wrenched backward. My mouth was forcibly gagged by a cloth reeking of industrial solvent. I could not utter a single word. Abruptly, I jerked my head up, staring fixedly at the gigantic LED screen towering over the main podium. The cloud folder I had scheduled earlier. There were only five minutes left. It would automatically upload and broadcast. I drew in a ragged breath.

"Coach Yen."

I heard my own voice, sounding impossibly calm.

"Do you dare to accompany me to the broadcasting room for just a moment?"

"It will only take five minutes."

"If I fail to produce the undeniable evidence, I will accept whatever punishment you hand down."

Yen narrowed his eyes, scrutinizing me carefully. He remained silent for several agonizing seconds.

"Very well."

A cold, mocking laugh escaped his lips.

"I would love to see what kind of pathetic tricks you still have left to play now that you are cornered."

With a flick of his wrist, the two male students released their grip on me. I scrambled to my feet, rubbing my aching, bruised wrists. Without looking back, I marched straight toward the broadcasting booth situated beside the main stage. Thousands of pairs of eyes from the entire school stared daggers at my back. Lily, Anna, and Maya trailed close behind Yen, stepping into the booth as well. Inside sat a computer directly wired to the massive outdoor screens. I strode forward, ruthlessly shoving the wide-eyed, slack-jawed student announcer out of the way. I opened the browser and typed in an encrypted URL. Lily watched my movements, her complexion rapidly draining of all color.

"Coach... please don't let her touch the computer."

"What if... what if she is trying to delete something incriminating..."

Her voice trembled visibly. Yen ignored her entirely, his gaze locked unblinkingly onto the monitor. I swiftly entered my password and struck the enter key. The cloud storage directory popped up. Without hesitation, I dragged the cursor, pulling the progress bar right toward the middle. I pressed play. The footage synchronized instantly onto the massive LED screen out on the training grounds. It was night-vision footage, strictly black and white, yet crystal clear in its detail. It was two o'clock in the morning, and a female student wearing a floral nightgown was seen creeping stealthily up the rungs of my loft bed. Lily let out a piercing shriek.

"Fake! This is completely fake!"

"Cloud, you manipulated this video just to frame me!"

"Coach, this is AI face-swapping technology! I would never do something like this!"

She wailed with righteous indignation, fat tears streaming down her face. A wave of murmurs rippled across the training ground. Some muttered that the video indeed looked fabricated. Others chimed in that AI tools were terrifyingly powerful these days. Yen knitted his brows into a deep, heavy frown. I hit pause.

"You claim this is a fake?"

"Fine then. Let us continue watching."

I dragged the progress bar backward, initiating playback from an earlier timestamp. On screen, Lily was standing right in front of my study desk, glancing left and right with furtive movements. Then, she picked up my personal notebook and walked over to the washbasin. She shoved the notebook straight into the water. Splashes flew everywhere. She pressed down on it with all her might until the pages were thoroughly drenched and ruined. Afterward, she fished it out, placed it meticulously back onto my desk, and deliberately knocked over a cup of water to cover her tracks. Every single action, every subtle micro-expression on her face, was captured in razor-sharp detail under the pale moonlight. The training grounds fell utterly dead silent.

"Is this AI face-swapping too?"

I stared down at her.

"Is this fabricated as well?"

Lily's face turned as white as a sheet of blank paper. Her lips began to quiver uncontrollably.

"I... I was just momentarily possessed by a momentary impulse..."

"I only soaked a stupid notebook, it is hardly a crime of the century..."

"Very well."

I dragged the progress bar all the way to the end.

"What about this segment?"

In the video, she peeled back the privacy curtains of my bed. Clutched in her hand was a watch emitting a faint, eerie glow. With extreme care, she tucked it deep into the blankets beneath my pillow. Once finished, she stepped backward, and guided by the moonlight, her face turned directly toward the hidden lens. Her expression was one of triumphant glee. A look of ecstatic malice, the expression of a predator finally swallowing its prey whole. That exact expression. I hit pause once more. The image froze permanently on her twisted, grinning face. Several thousand people across the entire campus saw it with blinding clarity. Lily's entire body began to convulse violently.

"Impossible..."

"This is impossible..."

Her legs gave way completely, and she collapsed hard onto the floor. Anna and Maya were left utterly stunned, their faces drained of color as they frantically stepped backward, as if retreating from a plague. Yen stared fixedly at the giant screen. The arrogant indifference on his stern face shattered piece by piece. He did not speak immediately; instead, he maintained a chilling, prolonged silence—so heavy that the air inside the small broadcasting booth seemed to freeze solid. Then, with a sudden, violent motion, his head snapped around to glare down at Lily.

*Is this what you meant when you claimed you saw her steal with your own eyes?*