Chapter 3

Unsurprisingly, my remark caught everyone’s attention.

Everyone flooded the chat with messages asking if it was really me. The streamer even sent me a request to go live together.

I ignored them and left the livestream.

That afternoon, the police came to my house, accompanied by a psychologist.

Soon after, the psychologist finished evaluating me and told everyone that I was mentally healthy.

In other words, I would not commit suicide for no reason.

My parents finally felt at ease.

The police officer said solemnly, “Just to be on the safe side, we’ll be staying here tonight to watch over Sophia. You don’t mind, do you?”

My parents were terrified that something might happen to me, so they were more than happy to have the police stay.

The police officer and I sat on the sofa. We stared at each other in silence.

The officer cleared his throat and said to me, “Sophia, you can go about your business as long as you stay within my line of sight.”

I nodded and took out my phone. Just as I opened TikTok, I saw that my message in the live stream had made it to the trending list.

At the same time, countless people were asking if I was alive or dead. They were urging me to let them know I was okay if I was still alive.

Just as I was about to swipe away, a message suddenly popped up at the top of the screen.

It was an unknown number. I thought it was spam and was about to delete it when I realized it was an image.

As if possessed, I tapped on it. What met my eyes was a photo with red text on a black background.

It read: Top scoring valedictorians on the SATs deserve to die!

The exclamation mark was formed by a knife and a drop of blood.

I was startled and instinctively let out a scream, flinging my phone across the room.

A police officer rushed over. “Sophia, are you okay?”

Terrified, I pointed at my phone on the floor. “Someone sent me a threatening text message.”

The police officer picked up the phone. He looked it over and asked me with a puzzled expression.

“Did you misread it? Where are these threatening text messages?”

I started to grow frantic. “It’s right here.”

I snatched the phone from him and scrolled back to the text message I had just seen.

But no matter how hard I looked, the message seemed to have vanished into thin air. I just could not find it.

I could not believe it. “I clearly saw it just now.”

The police officer tried to reassure me. “You must have been too nervous. You probably misread it.”

Though he said this, the look in his eyes grew wary.

I did not need to ask to know that he thought I was crazy.

A moment later, the officer asked me, “Should I call the psychiatrist back to give you another evaluation?”

I held my breath and snapped irritably, “I’m fine. No need.”

As soon as the words left my mouth, I looked down at my phone to figure out what had just happened.

I was certain I had not been seeing things, and I certainly was not hallucinating.

How could that text message have vanished for no reason?

More importantly, what did that text message mean?

Could it be that the valedictorians for the past SATs scorers had not committed suicide? Instead, they were murdered?

Was it really the curse of the valedictorian?

Would I die tonight, too?

At that thought, a chill ran down my spine.

After informing the police, I started a livestream.

With the words “The Valedictorian Herself” in the title, tens of thousands of people flooded into the livestream in an instant. The number kept growing steadily. I quickly reached one million concurrent viewers.

The comments in the livestream were refreshing at lightning speed.

[It’s this year’s valedictorian, Sophia Watson. Are you livestreaming to broadcast your death to the whole internet?]

[Miss Watson, don’t be impulsive. Life is still beautiful.]

[Why do I feel like Sophia looks perfectly fine? She doesn’t seem suicidal.]

Comment after comment scrolled by. Some were trying to talk me out of it. Others were criticizing me. There were even more who were just looking for a spectacle. They told me to go ahead and die.

I cleared my throat and spoke. “I’m going live today to ask all of you to be my witnesses. I will never commit suicide!”