The comment section was a sewer.

"This guy has no shame. Zero. Negative shame."

"Using Sophie AND Maya? At the same time? Who does he think he is?"

"Someone needs to report this predator to the administration."

"I hope Vivian Reeves actually follows through and gets him expelled."

"His entire family tree should be embarrassed."

The insults were creative, relentless, and increasingly unhinged. By dinnertime, the thread had accumulated over three thousand comments, the vast majority of which were various formulations of the same basic sentiment: Stan Harrison was a monster, a fraud, and a disgrace to the institution.

Somewhere across campus, in a quiet dorm room lit by the blue glow of a phone screen, Zack Howard cracked his knuckles, opened the comment section, and began typing.

The war continued.

The news reached Sophie’s apartment before sunset.

Claire had been scrolling through the forum on the living room sofa, a habit she’d developed over the past week, partly out of genuine concern for Sophie’s wellbeing and partly out of the morbid fascination that comes from watching a campus scandal unfold in real time. When the new post appeared at the top of the feed, she sat bolt upright and read it twice before she was certain she wasn’t hallucinating.

She found Sophie in the kitchen, washing dishes from the previous evening’s dinner, Stan’s dinner, Claire noted with a small internal sigh, and thrust her phone toward her without preamble.

"Sophie. You need to see this."

Sophie glanced at the screen, then back at the sink.

"What is it now?"

"Stan Harrison. Two timing. It’s all over the forum." Claire tapped the screen for emphasis. "He’s been seen with Maya Zimmerman, Maya Zimmerman, Sophie. They were together on the playground today. She was defending him in front of Vivian Reeves. And apparently he’s taking her to dinner tonight at the Wanhai Hotel."

She set the phone down on the counter and folded her arms.

"He’s playing you, Sophie. He’s flirting with you, sleeping at your apartment, accepting your cooking, and the whole time, he’s got something going on with Maya too. You cannot keep associating with this person."

Sophie dried her hands slowly on the dish towel. She picked up Claire’s phone, skimmed the post with the unhurried attention of someone reading a weather report for a city they don’t live in, and set it back down.

"It’s fake."

"Sophie —"

"It’s not credible. I’ve seen these posts before. They said he was exploiting Sarah, and that turned out to be completely fabricated. They said he was a predator, and that was a lie too. Every single thing the forum has published about Stan Harrison has been wrong."

"This might be different," Claire pressed. "There are photos this time. People saw them together. Maya literally stood up for him in public —"

"Having a friend defend you doesn’t make you a womanizer, Claire." Sophie’s voice was patient but firm. "It makes you someone worth defending."

Claire let out a frustrated breath.

"You think you can judge a person’s character after one dinner and a few shopping trips? You’ve known him for days, Sophie. Not months. Not years. Weeks. And you’re already so convinced he’s a good person that nothing, no evidence, no rumor, no public sighting, can change your mind?"

She wasn’t being cruel. She was being worried. The distinction was important, and Sophie could hear it beneath the sharpness.

"That’s exactly what I’m saying," Sophie said quietly.

She leaned against the kitchen counter and met Claire’s eyes.

"I’m not judging his character based on one dinner. I’m judging it based on everything I’ve seen him do since the moment I met him." She paused, choosing her words with care. "He walked up to me in front of a crowd of people who all thought he was beneath me, and he asked for my Snapchat without flinching. When I gave him an impossible condition, he didn’t argue, he just went and did it. He bought me an entire building and sent the deeds in a plain envelope without even signing his name. He spent a whole day being mocked by Felix Lawn and never once lost his composure. He bought me a three-million-dollar necklace because I said I liked it, and he didn’t ask for anything in return."

She looked down at her hands.

"And when he comes to my apartment, he doesn’t talk about himself. He doesn’t brag about his money. He eats the food I cook and tells me it’s good, and I can tell he means it. He’s kind, Claire. In a way that has nothing to do with how much he spends."

Claire was quiet for a moment.

"And the Maya thing?"

"Maya is his friend. I know that. He’s never hidden it." Sophie shrugged. "If he’s also taking her to dinner, that doesn’t make him a womanizer. It makes him a man who has more than one friend."

"And if it’s more than friendship?"

Sophie considered this. Her expression didn’t change, no flash of jealousy, no flicker of insecurity. Just the steady, composed thoughtfulness of a woman who had already asked herself this question and arrived at an answer she was comfortable with.

"Then I’ll deal with that when it happens. But I’m not going to throw away something real because an anonymous forum post told me to be afraid."

Claire stared at her for a long moment.

She wanted to argue. She wanted to pull up the comment section, read the worst of it aloud, shake Sophie by the shoulders and make her see what three thousand angry strangers saw when they looked at Stan Harrison.

But the look in Sophie’s eyes stopped her.

It wasn’t naivety. It wasn’t the blind, starry eyed devotion of a girl who’d been dazzled by expensive gifts and smooth words. It was something quieter and more grounded than that, the settled certainty of a woman who had weighed the evidence, considered the risks, and made her choice with open eyes.

’What did he do to her?’ Claire thought, not for the first time. ’What did he actually do?’