Rumor (1)

The campus website had been visited by the same anonymous user as before, this time accusing Aria of sleeping with the older man who runs Monocled Rabbit because all the younger boys who work their got tired of her.

The user had posted photos from a large period of time, showing Aria and Devin talking together countless times, Aria crying while hugging him, and many others taken from angles to look inappropriate. The final picture was a picture of the two hugging taken through the glass front door with the closed sign covering the middle of their bodies.

Initially, the other frequent customers of the cafe defended Devin and said that he would never do something like that, but they were quickly washed away in the waves of people insulting both, but especially Aria.

With the passing of time, the comments gradually escalated to the point of calling for Aria's expulsion for breaking school rules.

Maple-leaf Academy's rules were typically considered rather irrelevant and unnecessary, but in this situation, hateful users used the rule prohibiting students from dating each other and others for the duration of their time at the academy. The dean had specifically established this rule so that the students would focus on their studies rather than romantic interests.

At the point it ultimately escalated to, students were demanding some form of action to reinforce the school rules and punish the one who broke them.

When Aria woke up that morning, her phone had hundreds of notifications from the school messaging app. As she scrolled through them, she felt a tear drip down her cheek.

The messages ranged from telling her to just go sell herself already and stop playing around at school, to messages saying to just die, and not a single person said anything kind to her.

Every message she read made her hands gradually shake more and more until she could no longer hold her phone and it slipped from her hands.

She couldn't understand why someone hated her so much to do this to her multiple times. She never did anything to anyone.

Several moments later, she picked her phone back up and opened the school's website. Navigating her way to the forum, she typed out a response and was about to hit submit when she felt someone take her phone.

Looking up, she saw Aika standing next to her bed and scrolling through all the messages on her phone, her frown growing the more she read.

"Isn't this supposed to be a prestigious school?"

She ground her teeth and clenched her fist, furious at what she saw.

"They let shit like this happen?"

Aria looked up at the girl and spoke with a trembling voice.

"I didn't do any of that..."

Realizing the smaller girl had taken her words the wrong way, Aika sat down on her new friend's bed and pulled her into a hug.

"I know you didn't. Even if I didn't trust my new roommate over someone who won't even post this garbage with their real account, they claim to have seen you bring a man to your dorm room last night and say they have proof."

Aika tossed Aria's phone back to her on the bed and smirked.

"And for some reason, I'm pretty sure that didn't happen."

Before the two were able to finish talking, a stream of messages started pouring in through Aria's phone. Within just a single minute, nearly a hundred messages were received and more were coming through constantly.

Each ding her phone made reminded her how desperate the situation was.

After several more seconds, Aria jumped up and grabbed Aika's hands.

"Wait! You can just tell everyone they can't be true because you're my roommate and we were both here last night.

When she heard what Aria said, Aika sighed and shook her head. She wished that it was that simple for her to fix the girl's problem but she couldn't think of anything she could say to make it seem innocent.

"If I do that, people will just assume you paid me off or that just that single part of the rumor is untrue, it will just make it worse."

The relieved smile that had been growing on Aria's face before that gradually faded away and her brows furrowed.

"I guess I'll just make a post saying it's all lies. I already typed it."

As she was about to move to hit submit, her phone was grabbed from her hands again and turned off before getting tossed to the corner of the room. It made a loud thudding noise, but neither of the two people in the room paid attention to it.

"If we can't prove that you're innocent, we just need to prove that whoever this anonymous user is guilty. Even if people still believe them afterwards, their attention will all be on them."