Everly’s premonition didn’t seem to co true.
Amid overwhelming marketing campaigns and countless success stories from people who had lost weight, SSU fat-burning capsules spread across the United States at a speed far beyond imagination. Eventually, almost every overweight person with even a bit of money had taken this drug.
With so many people taking it, there were bound to be a few odd cases—so reluctant to spend money on the powder tablets, others with their own “interpretations” of how dicine works. In short, there were always a few “geniuses” who didn’t follow the instructions properly.
These people quickly tasted the consequences of their own decisions. Within just a few days of stopping the powder pills, so experienced extre weight loss, becoming little more than skin and bones, while others suffered varying degrees of organ failure and ended up in the ICU. Related news reports appeared from ti to ti, serving as a warning to others who didn’t follow the instructions.
Aside from these “geniuses,” anyone who strictly followed the directions could lose weight at a relatively reasonable pace, slimming down gradually step by step.
From this perspective, aside from being expensive, SSU didn’t seem to have any other problems.
Unfortunately, Everly hadn’t realized that for certain people in this country, “expensive” itself could be a huge problem.
…
By early May, SSU had been wildly popular for over a month, and its weight-loss effects had begun to show.
Those who had started taking the pills early on were noticeably slimr compared to just over a month ago. Walking around campus, the once common sight of overweight people had quietly decreased.
At the sa ti, more and more people could be seen during breaks holding cups of water and taking the powder pills. If you went to the student service center to pick up packages, you would notice that many of the boxes bore the logo of Rakucho Pharmaceuticals.
The number of people around taking SSU was increasing rapidly.
Everly couldn’t shake the feeling that it wasn’t a good drug. But just like when the lucky talismans had beco popular—when she couldn’t stop others from using them—now that SSU was trending, without concrete evidence, Everly had no way to stop the people around her from taking it.
The only thing she could do was make sure that neither she nor Misha would touch that kind of drug…
“Everly, Everly, sothing bad happened!”
That afternoon, with no classes scheduled, Everly had just returned to the dormitory. She was leaning against her bed, struggling through the remaining half of a Latin book, when Misha suddenly rushed in.
“What’s wrong?”
“Look at this…”
Everly put down her book, took the phone Misha handed over, and tapped the screen. A video started playing.
It seed to be a recording of the school cheerleading team during practice.
At the beginning, everything looked normal. The girls wore flexible training clothes and moved in sync with upbeat music, dancing while performing lifts, tosses, and jumps.
They must have practiced many tis—every movent was light and graceful. When they leapt into the air, they resembled deer in a forest, nimble and elegant.
However, after the first few team mbers completed their aerial flips, sothing went wrong when it was Gracie’s turn.
Like the others, Gracie stepped onto the interlocked hands of two teammates, used the lifting force to jump, spun lightly in the air, then landed with both feet, knees bending slightly to steady herself.
Next, she was supposed to continue dancing while quickly running to the back of the formation to make room for the next person.
But in the video, after landing, her slender body swayed from side to side. Suddenly, she hunched her back, leaned forward, and made a retching motion.
“Stop! Gracie, what’s wrong with you again? How many tis have you ssed this up? Can’t you learn your lesson?!”
A sowhat sharp, critical voice from off-cara rang out—it was the cheerleading captain. She seed to be the one filming. Everly heard the captain stop the music, and then the cara shook as she walked forward a few steps, stopping in front of Gracie, who was bent over as if about to vomit.
“Gracie, I’m talking to you. Did you hear …?”
The captain was clearly very angry. As she spoke, she reached out and pushed Gracie.
To be fair, her push wasn’t very strong—just a light shove. But sohow, that push beca the final straw that broke the cal’s back.
In the video, Gracie’s paper-thin body swayed. Suddenly, a strange upward bulge appeared along her exposed throat, as if sothing inside were being forced upward like a stretched rubber tube.
Gracie’s eyes widened, filled with pain and fear. Her fingers spread wide, trying to cover her mouth and suppress the urge to vomit.
But it was already too late. Food remnants from her stomach surged up and filled her mouth first. Her throat spasd violently under the force of stomach acid, and the overwhelming urge to retch took over. Gracie’s neck stretched forward, and her mouth opened uncontrollably to its widest—
“Ugh—!”
The next second, everything ca rushing out. She vomited violently, splattering the person in front of her.
Everly heard the cheer captain scream in panic. In her confusion, the phone was dropped. The cara shook violently, accompanied by crashing sounds, before finally settling on a scene of the floor covered in ss and Gracie collapsed on the ground, crying with her face in her hands.
…
The video ended there, but the sense of discomfort lingered like sothing stuck in the throat—sothing you couldn’t cough up or swallow down, making your whole body feel uneasy.
Especially the final scene: the mixture of yellow and green vomit, semi-solid and liquid, with tiny white grain-like bits mixed in, left a deep imprint on the viewer’s mind, making it hard to look at anything like salad dressing—or similar foods—for a while.
It was truly, unbearably disgusting…
Everly frowned. “What is this video about?”
“This is a training video from the school cheerleading team yesterday. Gracie wasn’t feeling well and suddenly threw up halfway through practice. It wasn’t originally a big deal—the team mbers took her to the infirmary, and the school doctor prescribed so dicine. She rested for a few days and would have been fine. But today, for so reason, this video was leaked. It was quickly spread everywhere by bored people, and now there are even people in group chats giving Gracie a nickna—‘the Vomit Girl’… Seriously, it’s too much. How can they do sothing like that!”
Ever since their previous investigation into Gracie, when Misha learned that the girl suffered from bulimia nervosa, she had felt a lot of sympathy for her. She would occasionally chat with Gracie on Chatter and listen to her vent. Over ti, the two had grown much closer.
Misha was also a very justice-driven girl, so seeing her friend being b*llied like this made her genuinely furious.
Not only Misha—Everly also disliked such low and cruel b*llying tactics. So she suggested, “Orff is a hacker, right? If you want to find out who leaked the video, you could ask him to check.”
“But he’s helping you with the poetry case. He must be busy, right?”
Everly smiled. “If I were the one asking him, then yes, he’d be busy. But if it’s you… well, sothing this small, I don’t think he’d refuse.”
Rather than that, if Misha asked Orff for help, he’d probably be so happy he’d jump in place.
Misha thought about it and nodded, then pulled out her phone and started typing rapidly.
Not long after, her angry expression suddenly turned into a smile.
“It really worked, Everly! He agreed, and said he can get the result in ten minutes!”
“Wow, that’s pretty fast.”
Everly nodded, pulling her attention back to her book while keeping Misha company as they waited.
About ten minutes later, Orff indeed sent back a reply.
Unexpectedly, the person who leaked the video was not the sowhat sharp-tongued cheerleading captain—in fact, shortly after the vomiting incident occurred, the captain had already deleted the video, left the training phone on the table, and accompanied Gracie to the infirmary.
The one who later recovered the deleted video and copied it was the cheerleading vice captain, Daisy. She posted it in a large group using a burner account, allowing group mbers to spread it elsewhere. She even encouraged so low-character male mbers in the group to give Gracie various insulting nicknas.
No one knew why she did this. But without a doubt, such vile behavior was enough to get Daisy removed from the cheerleading team.
Misha angrily forwarded Orff’s evidence to the cheerleading coach, and also asked Orff to help remove the video that had been spread across various school group chats. Although this couldn’t guarantee that all copies would be erased, it would at least reduce the chances of Gracie seeing it online and being further hurt.
After finishing these errands, she rushed out, her energy unstoppable, and got a few flowers from a gardening club friend. She decorated them with ribbons, then called to confirm where Gracie was, and went straight to her dorm with the bouquet to visit her.
Everly and Gracie didn’t really know each other, and she didn’t want to get in the way, so she sensibly stayed in the dorm.
About ten minutes later, her phone on the side buzzed. Everly checked it and found that Misha was asking to borrow money.
[Everly, can you transfer 1,800 USD? Urgent!]
Everly: [Password?]
Misha: [cockroach]
[Your friend “Misha” has retracted a ssage]
“Cockroach” ans cockroach. It was a codeword Everly and Misha had agreed upon long ago. Whenever they needed to handle money transfers or discuss sothing relatively sensitive that couldn’t be said face-to-face, they would first verify the codeword, delete the chat afterward, and only then proceed.
After confirming that the person asking to borrow money was indeed Misha, Everly waved her hand generously and transferred 2,000 USD over. In return, she received a flying-kiss emoji from Misha.
After that, about ten minutes later, Misha finished her visit and returned to the dorm, her mood not particularly good.
“What’s wrong? Why did you suddenly ask to borrow money?” Everly closed her book and patted the empty seat beside her, signaling Misha to sit down.
Misha followed her and sat next to her, letting out a sigh.
“It’s Gracie again! That silly girl—you know why she threw up yesterday?”
“Why?”
“Because she didn’t have enough money to buy the powder pills. She stopped taking the dication halfway through!”
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