Chapter 54

Natalie had been afraid that Josie would regain people’s trust and stay in Aloville to find a good job, so she'd designed a plan to ruin her.

Now, Josie had left the team and cut ties with the senior students, but Vincent and the others kept coming to her, asking her to come back.

With Natalie’s personality, she might use the video from the internet to set her up and smear her reputation once more, fearing that Josie would come back.

But in her previous life, Kyle had helped Natalie–this time, though, Josie didn’t know if Kyle was involved.

“What kind of posts were they? Let me see.” Josie turned to her computer and opened the forum.

The others quickly pulled out their phones and began scrolling. “Weird, I can’t find anything.”

“Yeah, not a single post left. It’s all been deleted.” Allison handed over his phone.

“But I took some screenshots. I didn’t have time to respond to them back then, but I was planning to deal with them later. Didn’t expect them to be gone. Anyway, check this out—the usernames of the original posters are still there.”

Josie glanced at the screenshots and immediately recognized the names. “Hold on, let me show you a few of my own screenshots.”

She opened her phone and scrolled through her photo album.

“These are the posts from not long ago where people were attacking Natalie. Are these the same users?” Adeline asked, surprised.

“Could it be that these people are just a bunch of your senior students‘ admirers, picking on the female members of the team?”

Zoey nodded in agreement. “That makes sense. Your senior students are pretty popular on campus, and with all the awards they win, I’m sure a lot of female classmates admire them.”

“It’s not that,” Josie said, clearly understanding what was going on. “The last time, during the plagiarism incident, those people slandering her were actually hired by Natalie herself. Last time, Natalie orchestrated it herself. She paid those people to attack her.”

If it was the same group of people this time, it would be clear as day that the rumors were also Natalie’s doing.

But she wondered, ‘Why have the posts been deleted so suddenly? Does Natalie not want to smear me anymore? Or is it because this involves Vincent, and David doesn’t want things to get blown out of proportion?’

David was very protective of his reputation, and he wouldn’t want anything damaging to affect it. Given his guilt over the Reedshaw family, and the fact that she was now one of Delilah’s students, it made sense he would want to distance himself from the situation.

At Leo’s funeral, Sean had stepped in to defend her. With David’s personality, he probably just wanted to keep his distance from her now and wouldn’t bother with her anymore.

It was more likely the latter. After all, Natalie wasn’t the type to let things go so easily.

Zoey suddenly got it.

“Oh, I see. You must have tracked down those usernames last time, which is how you got the screenshots. But since you already figured out it was Natalie behind it, why didn’t you expose her?”

“David cares too much about his reputation,” Josie replied with a sarcastic smile. “If I expose this, it’ll prove Natalie’s plagiarism, and having one of David’s students involved in something like that would be embarrassing for him. So even though Natalie would be exposed, it would also lead to David completely distancing himself from me. And that’s not something I want.”

Besides, after being brought to life again, she’d already decided to sever ties with David and the others. She had no reason to clear Natalie’s name for them–she was actually glad they were stuck with the mess.

Furthermore, she hadn’t personally investigated this matter, as Zoey thought. Everything she knew was based on the events of her previous life.

The screenshots she had were just a precaution–if something like this happened again, she’d be prepared.

Plus, she still hadn’t figured out the full extent of the plagiarism incident. She needed to find out who else might be behind Natalie’s schemes.

The others gasped in realization. “So what are you going to do now? Are you planning to get back at Natalie?”