Vivienne’s POV
I stared at my phone screen, refreshing the inbox over and over.
No new messages.
Nothing.
How was this possible?
I closed the email and reopened it.
Signed out and signed back in.
Restarted my phone.
Opened the app again.
I went through the entire process three times.
The inbox stayed empty.
Not even a spam email, let alone the competition notification.
My design had been reviewed by Mooncrest Jewelry Group’s in-house design team.They’d said my skills were already strong enough for me to join the company’s design department directly.
Marcus had been full of praise.
Seraphina had said, “The championship is yours.” I’d revised it forty-seven times, refining every detail until even the way light reflected off the facets was calculated with absolute precision.
A classmate next to me muttered that she hadn’t gotten anything either.
I exhaled—just barely.
Maybe the organizers hadn’t finished sending out the notifications yet.
Or maybe the system had glitched.
It was a massive competition with tens of thousands of entries to evaluate.
Delays were bound to happen.
I was about to raise the question with the instructor when he spoke.
“Did anyone in this class receive the notification?”
A calm voice came from behind me, cutting through the silence like a blade.
“I did.”
I whipped around.
Mira had her hand up, her phone screen glowing.
Even from three rows away, I could see the subject line: “Silvercrest Moon Jewelry Design Competition.”
Every pair of eyes in the room was on her.
The instructor stepped over to verify it.
Under my desk, I dug my nails into my palm.
Mira had advanced.
The only person in the entire class to advance was Mira.
The instructor walked back to the podium and looked at me expectantly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
“Vivienne, you got yours too, right?”
His tone was casual, like he was asking a question with a foregone answer.
My throat tightened.
The smile on my face was stretched so tight it was about to crack, but my voice held steady.
“Sorry, something’s wrong with my phone. My connection is unstable and I can’t access my email. I’ll check when I get home.”
”Good.” The instructor relaxed, not giving it a second thought.
But the whispers had already started.
Mira had advanced.
The top student in the class, the one who won scholarships every year—Vivienne—hadn’t gotten anything.
Every word felt like a needle digging into my back.
Then that idiot Chloe shoved her phone in my face.
“Vivienne, use mine to check.”
I shot her a venomous glare.
Did she have a single functioning brain cell?
Handing me her phone right now was no different from stripping me naked in public.
“It’s fine,” I heard my own voice come out sweet, sickeningly sweet.
“I’ll check at home. Let’s just focus on class. I don’t want something this trivial to distract me from the lecture.”
I shoved my phone into my desk, and that hand didn’t come back out for the rest of the period.
The whole class, my hand was in the desk cavity refreshing my inbox, over and over, until the screen flashed “Login attempts too frequent. Please try again later.” I’d close it and open it again, close it and open it, like I was possessed.
That red unread badge stayed at zero.
Always zero.
Mira was sitting in the back row, meeting my gaze head-on.
She smiled at me, a smile that held something I couldn’t quite name.
It looked like mockery.
Or maybe pity.
I wrenched my head back around and dug my nails into my thigh.
All afternoon, the hallways buzzed.
I heard Chloe loudly spouting theories, Mira had copied someone’s work, hired a ghost designer, the judges had fallen asleep.
She was trying to defend me, but the way she went about it was unbearably stupid.
Mira walked past and fired back, “Chloe, you spend every day orbiting the class genius. Funny how none of that genius rubbed off on you. But somehow it rubbed off on me. I stumbled into the next round without even trying. Maybe you should try copying someone too.”
Everyone knew exactly who “the class genius” was.
She was talking about me.
Slapping me across the face in front of everyone.
I stood at the hallway corner, gripping my bag strap so hard my knuckles went white.
After school, I caught up with her.
She wasn’t walking fast, her bag slung loosely over her shoulder, and there was even a hint of a smile on her face.
I couldn’t let her have this.
I had to make sure everyone knew I was bigger than her.
Kinder.
More deserving of being liked.
“Sister,” I said, pouring on my sweetest tone, “congratulations. What incredible luck, making it into the next round.”
Mira turned her head and looked at me.
Those amber eyes were perfectly clear, but her words slid in like a small, sharp knife, carving right into my sorest spot.
“What’s the matter, didn’t you have the same luck?”