Chapter 4

A few days later, Mark came home with a small, neatly wrapped box.

"Your glasses broke, right?" he said, a little too casually. "I got you a new pair. My treat."

My old glasses hadn't broken. He' d "accidentally" knocked them off my desk the day before, a tiny crack appearing on one lens. An incident I barely registered in my first life.

Now, holding the new, sleek frames, a chill went down my spine. These were the glasses I wore during the first exam.

Could Mark, my own brother, be involved in setting me up?

The thought was sickening. I tried to push it away. He was my brother. He cared about me.

But then I remembered Tiffany' s Instagram from my first life. After every study session, every time I jotted down an idea, she would post something uncannily similar. It was how she built her "case" against me, showing "prior work."

The exam board in my first life had seen her posts, her carefully curated "original thoughts," timestamped before the exam. It validated her claim that I was the one who copied.

How did she always know? The question that had haunted me was now screaming an answer.

These glasses.