Chapter 4

Vanessa jabbed a finger at me, seething.

“You’re targeting me because I’m pretty and rich!

“A dull, lonely woman who does nothing but experiments all day—of course you’re jealous of someone young and full of life!”

I almost laughed. The other women on our team, who wore glasses and no makeup just like I did, frowned, too.

Naturally, Vanessa didn’t realize she’d insulted them along with me.

“On purpose?” I scoffed, pulled the thin Lab Safety Handbook from a nearby shelf, and tossed it against her chest.

“Every piece of data in this lab represents someone’s hard work! If all you care about is playing queen bee, and you can’t respect anyone else’s work, you can leave. If you want to stay, copy Section Three, Rule One a hundred times. Maybe then you’ll remember it.”

“If this happens again, don’t bother coming back.”

Her face turned dark red. She clutched the booklet so hard her fingers tightened, but she couldn’t come up with a single word in response.

After that, she actually behaved for a few days.

Then, following my advisor’s instructions, I reviewed everyone’s experimental reports.

One glance at Vanessa’s made me frown.

Several key decimal points were wildly misplaced. The figures made no logical sense. The whole thing was obviously fabricated, almost as though she’d had AI generate it.

I didn’t want another pointless argument, so I messaged her on WhatsApp, marked the errors, and asked her to revise them.

She never replied.

When I got to the lab, she was touching up her lipstick in a compact mirror. I walked over.

“Vanessa, there are problems with your report. I sent you a message yesterday. Did you read it?”

She snapped her mirror shut and turned toward me, radiating irritation.

“You’re not my advisor. What gives you the right to pick apart my report?”

“I always got excellent grades on my assignments. Do you really think I need you teaching me?”

She looked me up and down, her mouth twisting.

“All the attitude of a professor, none of the qualifications.”

I laughed.

Trying to reason with an idiot was a waste of my life.

I nodded with a short, mocking laugh. “Fine. You’re the expert.”

Then, right in front of her, I logged into the system and submitted her “excellent” report.

Sure enough, less than half an hour later, our advisor’s anger erupted in the project group chat.