During my sophomore year of college, the webcomic I’d been serializing went viral. Internet sleuths quickly figured out that the male lead was based on Julian Vance, the undisputed heartthrob of our university. The online friend I had been chatting with for ten years sent me a message: “If the male lead is based on me, are you the female lead? Wait, are you a girl?” Julian stubbornly insisted we meet offline. So, I set the date for three weeks later—the exact day the final chapter of my comic was scheduled to drop. But the day before we were supposed to meet, my roommate, Chloe Sterling, confessed her feelings to Julian. The method she used for her confession was ripped straight from the ending of my comic. And they started dating. Chloe looked at me apologetically and said, “I’m sorry I borrowed the concept from your comic. Julian and I will treat you to dinner to make up for it.” I silently pulled out my phone and sent Julian a single text: “I’m not Chloe.” 1 When I hit send, Chloe was still staring at me. “Or if there’s something you really want but can’t afford, I can ask my boyfriend to buy it for you?” My other two roommates couldn’t stand it anymore. “We all know Mia has had a crush on Julian for years. How could you just steal her idea?” “Yeah, that’s not ‘borrowing.’ That’s plagiarism.” Chloe started to cry, but no one stepped up to comfort her. I had been drawing my webcomic, Sleepless in Time, since I graduated high school. After starting college, I often used my drawing tablet in the dorm. The three of them knew I was the author and had promised to keep it a secret. In return, I’d regularly use my earnings to buy them nice gifts. I just never expected the comic to blow up, or for people to figure out that Julian was the inspiration for the male lead. Back then, Chloe had asked me, “Mia, you don’t have a thing for Julian, do you?” I hadn’t answered. She just laughed. “He’s been the center of attention since freshman year. I heard he’s always in the top ten of the math department, and girls throw themselves at him.” “But you probably don’t understand guys like him. Good-looking, comes from money… Even though he claims to be single, he definitely has a bunch of side flings…” “He’s not like that,” I interrupted without thinking. That was when they figured out my secret. Chloe gasped. “Oh my god, I’m totally shipping you two now!” She relentlessly begged me to let her read the drafted ending early. I didn’t think much of it and let her, just reminding them all to keep it a secret. It wasn't until tonight, when one of my roommates called and told me to check the university Discord server, that I realized what had happened. The server was flooded with videos shot from multiple angles. Under the glowing sunset on the Campus Green, a bright, beautiful girl stopped the boy. She executed a grand, romantic, and breathtakingly public confession. Exactly like the female lead in my comic. At the end of the video, Chloe, with teary eyes, looked at Julian and asked, “I’ve never done this for anyone else. I’m giving all my courage and love to you. Will you be with me?” That line was also directly stolen from my final chapter. In my comic, the male lead pulls the girl into a tight embrace. Julian didn’t do that. He simply reached out and wiped Chloe’s tears. The crowd around them erupted into cheers. Everyone was chanting for them to get together. Through the grainy audio, I heard his response loud and clear. He said, “Okay.” May 20, 2026. They became a couple. 2 “My goddess had a crush on someone for two years! I’m heartbroken!” “Does anyone else think her confession was incredibly moving? Usually, guys are the ones putting their history out there like that.” “So sweet! They’re each other’s first loves!” “Is anyone else reading ‘Sleepless in Time’? Omg, it feels like the comic characters stepped into real life!” In a server with thousands of students, the notifications hit 99+ in seconds. At this moment, Chloe had wiped her tears, her voice defensive. “I just wanted to be brave for once. Is that a crime?” “Please don’t let this ruin our friendship, okay?” I held back my roommate, who was about to snap at her, and looked at Chloe with ice in my eyes. “You and I are no longer friends.” Chloe ran out of the room with red eyes and didn’t return until right before curfew. The moment lights-out hit, Julian finally replied. “Hm?” “Why would you think I got the wrong person?” I froze. His messages kept coming. “When Chloe said all those things that proved how well she knew me, I actually thought for a second that you had come to see me early.” “But as soon as she started talking about her past, I knew it wasn't you.” I stared at his texts. The anger and betrayal I had been feeling began to recede. What crawled up my spine instead was an overwhelming, suffocating sense of humiliation. But I refused to swallow the truth I had prepared to say. I typed quickly: “Chloe read the ending of my comic. The confession she planned was a direct copy of the final scene I drew.” Afraid he wouldn't believe me, I switched apps to send him the digital manuscript files. But a new message popped up on my screen. Julian: “I know.” “She ran out of her dorm to find me and confessed that her idea came from her roommate's comic.” 3 I hit backspace on the files and returned to the chat. After that text, there was a long pause of “Julian is typing…” I started typing too: “The way she understands you, the words that moved you… she might have stolen all of it from my story…” I typed it out, then deleted it character by character. Because in that moment, I realized I sounded like the jealous, bitter antagonist trying to break up the main couple. Julian’s next massive text finally came through. “I don't care about the rest. All I’ve ever wanted was pure, unconditional devotion without any hidden motives. She told me…” It was a massive paragraph detailing exactly how Chloe had moved his heart. It was completely out of character for him. For the past ten years, our conversations were usually about complex math theorems, or briefly sharing updates about our days. Whether it was an exam question or a life crisis, he always preferred giving conclusions and skimming over the process. Yet here he was, sending me walls of text. “Two years ago, you thanked me for asking to use me as the inspiration for your male lead.” “Now, I want to thank you, because you brought the leading lady of my life to me.” My finger hovered over the screen. I couldn't move. I finally understood. He didn’t need me to say anything. When the comic was at its peak popularity, Julian had messaged me: “I saw the comic. If the guy is me, is the girl you? Wait, are you a girl?” My profile had always been set to the default genderless settings. I told him that aside from gender, the female lead was the exact opposite of who I was in real life. He replied: “Then I want to get to know you even more.” But now, through the cold glow of my screen, he was telling me: “I’m really lucky to have you as a friend. Honestly, I should at least buy you a meal.” “But I just got a girlfriend, and I can't let her feel insecure or jealous. I think it’s best if we don't meet up tomorrow.” “What do you think?” 4 Julian wasn’t actually asking for my opinion. He wasn’t asking to reschedule, either. He was just trying to let me down gently, preserving whatever dignity I had left. I thought to myself, Staring at a phone screen in the dark really makes your eyes hurt. Hot, acidic tears slipped from my eyes and hit the glass screen. I typed back: “Haha, for sure.” He sent a substantial amount of money via Apple Pay with the note: “Sorry.” I hit decline. “No need lol.” Then I quickly added: “It’s late. Get some sleep.” He replied: “Yeah.” By some unspoken agreement, neither of us said "Goodnight" like we used to. A word with that much intimacy no longer belonged to us. I stared at the chat log, then glanced at the timestamp at the top of my screen: May 21, 2026. 1:17 AM. The connection I had spent eleven years trying to build with him ended right here. It ended so easily. So absurdly. I lay in bed, tossing and turning in a hazy, sleepless fog. The next day, I dragged myself to my morning lectures. With no classes in the afternoon, I went back to the dorm to sleep. Loud chatter bleeding through my bed curtains woke me up. “I told you when I was filming it that it would go viral, and it totally did!” “Chloe, you’re amazing! You actually bagged the untouchable math god!” “By the way, you snuck out to see him again last night. Did you guys finally kiss?” It was Chloe’s friends from another dorm. Chloe giggled coyly. “Oh my god, not that fast…” They gossiped a bit more before leaving to grab dinner. Once the door clicked shut, the room fell silent again. I opened TikTok. The very first video on my For You Page was hers. It was the confession under the sunset. The caption read: Year two of having a crush on him. The secret is finally out. 5 Boosted by the algorithm of a top-tier university and their insane good looks, the video, posted just last night, had already hit a million likes. Chloe, who originally had barely two thousand followers, gained a hundred thousand overnight. As the video looped for the second time, I paused it and opened the comments. The top comment was showering them with blessings. The second top comment was a massive paragraph: “I’ve watched this like five times, and it is EXACTLY like the confession from the female lead in ‘Sleepless in Time’! The author literally uploaded the final chapter at 6 AM today, but the creator of this video did it yesterday in real life! I'm going out on a limb here—are you the author?! Are you finishing the comic’s story in real life?! I’m literally sobbing T_T” The replies beneath it were full of things like “Omg you're so right” and “Protect the author’s identity!” That comment was posted eight hours ago. Chloe hadn’t clarified a thing. The trending search bar at the top of the comments literally read: Sleepless in Time Author Confesses. I opened my comic’s dashboard. The top reader comments were spiraling. “Author!! The girl in the viral TikTok is you, right?! You guys are so cute!” “Begging on my knees for a slice-of-life sequel of you two dating ORZ” I picked one of the comments and replied: “The author has never been in a relationship. There will be no sequel.” I put my phone face down. The world went quiet again. The female lead I wrote was named Elara. She was a little ball of sunshine, had loving parents, and came from a wealthy family. She wasn’t the best at school, but everyone adored her. She was eternally optimistic and grew up happily alongside her childhood best friend. I realized my mistake. I shouldn't have blurred the lines between fiction and reality. I tried to force my brain to focus on my advanced calculus homework. I stared at one proof for ages but couldn’t find an angle. Normally, I would snap a picture of it and text it to Julian to debate it with him. But now… Frustrated, I slammed my notebook shut and picked up my phone again, mindlessly scrolling through dopamine-hit videos. The next video had a location tag for our university. It was filmed from a candid, paparazzi-style angle. A guy and a girl were walking side by side down the tree-lined campus path. I recognized Julian’s broad shoulders instantly. Even though we had been in the same department for two years, I rarely actually ran into him. My luck was terrible; even for massive general ed lectures, our schedules never aligned. The only exception was a Differential Equations class one semester. Julian’s roommate always saved him a seat in the second-to-last row by the window. Because of that, it was the only class where I deliberately sat in the very back row. For three hours a week, all I had to do was look up to see the back of his head. Right now, in the video, his back was to the camera. The girl next to him, who barely reached his shoulder, sneakily reached out to brush his hand. He quickly pulled his hand away, but his ears turned bright red. 6 The video zoomed in aggressively on his red ears. Bold text flashed on the screen: MY SHIP IS SO PURE! The caption read: Bumped into campus's newest power couple on my way to the dining hall! I clicked on the creator’s profile. I recognized her as one of the girls in Chloe’s major who often hung out in our dorm. I deleted the app entirely. For the next few days, I threw myself into studying, eating, and sleeping, just like I always did. Nothing really changed. Except occasionally, I’d catch snippets of excited gossip between classes. “I saw Julian bring his girlfriend to class this morning! She’s even prettier in person.” “Power couple fr! They’re so sweet!” “I heard he bought all of her best friends matching Cartier necklaces. Can you please find a boyfriend like that for us?!” “First you have to find another Julian Vance.” I kept my head down, still wrestling with the math proof I hadn’t solved. I wasn't in a rush. I knew there was always a solution eventually. The lecture flew by. I was stuffing my books into my tote bag as I walked toward the exit. “Hurry, I’m starving!” Someone ran up from behind and clipped my shoulder. It wasn’t a hard hit, but a few sheets of scratch paper slipped out of my notebook and fluttered to the floor. The guy quickly apologized. The friend waiting for him at the door rushed over to help pick them up. “Sorry about that, my roommate is clumsy.” My heart skipped a beat. As I reached down, my hand brushed against the other person’s. I yanked it back like I’d been burned. He was holding my scratch paper, looking at it in surprise. “You’re working on this proof too?” I slowly, painfully looked up at Julian Vance. In the scenarios I used to daydream about, our official first meeting was supposed to be under the sunset on the Campus Green. Grand, romantic, and bathed in light. Not fumbling over dropped papers in a crowded hallway. But Julian’s eyes lit up the second he saw me. “Mia Winters. It’s you.” “Did you solve this proof?” 7 I froze. “You know who I am?” Julian smiled. The pale afternoon sun caught in his eyes. It was devastatingly handsome. “Freshman year, first day of advanced calc. The TA put a ridiculously hard 'hazing' question on the board, and you were the only one in the room who solved it on the spot. I think half the department knows who you are.” I had never, in my wildest dreams, imagined that his eyes had ever been on me. “We… we were in the same calc class?” Julian looked a bit embarrassed and pointed at the guy next to him. “We’re roommates. He couldn’t wake up for morning classes, and my calc lecture was in the afternoon, so… you know.” The roommate scratched his head sheepishly. “I only got away with it until week three when the professor caught on.” “I see.” “So, Mia, did you figure out the proof? I’ve been staring at it for days and I can’t seem to—” His sentence was cut off by a shrill voice. “What are you doing?!” I didn’t look back. Julian gave me an apologetic look and handed me my scratch paper. “Sorry, my girlfriend is here. I think she misunderstood.” I took the paper. Chloe jogged over like a hurricane. The roommate quickly jumped in. “Whoa, whoa, I swear on my life, Julian wasn’t talking to other girls. He was just helping me pick up some papers I dropped.” Chloe shot me a look of pure paranoia, then grabbed Julian’s arm. “Let’s go eat, come on, come on.” Julian let himself be dragged away, but he looked over his shoulder and gave me a polite nod. Then he reached into his pocket, pulled out a piece of chocolate, and handed it to Chloe. “Eat this first, or your blood sugar will drop again.” His roommate lingered just long enough to whisper, “Don’t mind her. He just spoils her too much.” Then he jogged after them. The wind carried Julian’s indulgent voice back to me. “You get jealous so easily. If you weren’t dating me, what would you do…” I walked down the opposite stairwell. I remembered chatting with Julian back in high school. He told me he hated chocolate, but it was the number one thing girls gifted him. I told him I’d actually never tried chocolate before. A long time later, Julian sent me a photo. It was a picture of dozens of unwrapped chocolates. Next to each one, he had written down its flavor profile and texture. He wrote: “I taste-tested them all for you for now. When you get the chance, you should try them yourself. You might actually like it.” So, was chocolate actually good? By the time I reached the ground floor, my phone buzzed. It was a text from Chloe. “I am begging you, have some self-respect. Stay away from him, okay?” The harsh midday sun beat down on me. I squeezed my eyes shut. Block. Delete. Then, I stepped out into the sunlight. Julian. If “love me, love my dog” is a thing, then if I hate your girlfriend, does it mean I have to stop loving you? 8 June rolled around. The college students who missed being kids were celebrating Children’s Day. The student council handed out lollipops to everyone walking out of the main academic building. When a girl handed me mine, she hesitated. I recognized her from some of my massive lectures. I had walked quite a distance when she came jogging after me. “Um, hey, you’re the math god, right? Is Chloe Sterling your roommate?” I stopped and nodded. She struggled to find the right words. “Her newest video… I think it’s about you. I mean, you’re the only girl in the top five of our major. But I wasn’t totally sure… I just thought what she said was way over the line, and you should probably see it…” Her friend ran up and grabbed her arm. “Dude, why are you talking to someone like her? Gross! Just because she gets good grades doesn’t mean—” Before she could finish, the first girl slapped a hand over her mouth. I frowned at her. “Apologize.” The second girl looked annoyed but puffed up defensively. “Excuse me? Do you have no shame? Being a delusional pick-me over someone else’s boyfriend? And playing into that toxic competitive crap? Now everyone’s saying our math department girls are a joke—” The first girl frantically covered her mouth again. “I am so sorry! She has no filter, I’m so sorry!” My two roommates had caught up to me and flanked me on both sides. We weren’t going to just let this go. We dragged them into an empty classroom to get the full story. My comment clarifying that I wasn't the girl in the video had sparked a war. Someone took my comment to Chloe's TikTok and demanded answers. Chloe clarified that she wasn’t the author of the comic. Then someone dropped the ultimate question: Wait, so the author copied a real-life event? Damn, she draws fast. A hardcore fan of mine refused to believe it. They made a massive deep-dive video proving that an artist on a strict publishing schedule would have drawn the ending weeks in advance. They concluded that my draft must have been leaked and Chloe copied it. The two sides went to war in the comments, pushing the drama to peak virality. So, four days after the confession video, Chloe posted a second one. In the video, Chloe stared into the camera with red, teary eyes and said: “My roommate is the author of ‘Sleepless in Time.’ She’s in the top five of our math department. She’s someone I always looked up to.” “I always saw her as a role model and a best friend.” “I just never expected that one day, she would throw away our friendship just because she realized she had a crush on my boyfriend.”
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