The overhead lights buzzed like trapped wasps. His pulse thundered in his ears, drowning out Chen's next question. Lin's gaze pinned him to his seat—clinical, dissecting—as if she could see the foreign soul stitching itself into this borrowed body. The male lead's stare burned hotter, though. Jealousy, confusion, the first crack in his protagonist's armor. None of this was supposed to happen.
A bead of sweat rolled down his temple. He reached for his pen, but his fingers knocked it to the floor. The sound echoed like a starting pistol.
Lin's foot hooked around the rolling pen, stopping it mid-spin. She nudged it back toward him without looking away from Chen. "The poison pill would trigger a clause in their debt covenants," she continued, as if never interrupted. "Defaulting would cost them more than the acquisition." Her words were textbook-perfect—except the novel had established this revelation as the male lead's breakthrough moment in Chapter Forty-One.
The classroom exhaled in collective awe. Chen's lips parted, then pressed into a thin line. He clicked to the next slide—a flowchart that didn't match any edition of the textbook. "And how," he said slowly, "would *you* structure the deal?"
Lin leaned forward, elbows braced on her desk. Her sleeve rode up, revealing a scar along her wrist—a thin white line never mentioned in the novel. "You don't," she said. "You let them collapse." Her eyes flicked to him. "Right?"
Thirty-one heads swiveled his direction. The male lead's pencil snapped.
He swallowed dryly. This was a trap. The original story had the male lead swooping in with a last-minute bailout, earning the heiress's admiration. But Lin wasn't asking the protagonist. She was asking *him*.
"Depends on the collateral," he heard himself say. His voice sounded alien, steadier than he felt. "If their patents are solid, you let them bleed out just enough to drop the asking price. Then you buy the pieces through a third party."
Lin's smile didn't reach her eyes. "Exactly."
Chen's laser pointer trembled slightly. The slide changed again—this time to a news headline dated three weeks from now: *Biotech Startup Files for Bankruptcy*. Murmurs erupted. The male lead's chair scraped back as he stood, but Chen waved him down without looking. "Class dismissed," the professor muttered, gathering his papers with uncharacteristic haste.
The students burst into chatter, casting glances at Lin—and now, at *him*. He grabbed his bag, desperate to escape before the male lead could intercept him. But Lin materialized at his elbow, her breath cool against his ear. "You knew about the shell companies," she whispered. "Just like you knew I'd be at the café."
His throat tightened. "Lucky guess."
Her fingers brushed his wrist, light as a spider's thread. "There's no luck in game theory." She pressed a folded slip of paper into his palm—coordinates, not an address. "Midnight. Bring your brokerage statements."
Then she was gone, swallowed by the crowd.
Outside, the quadrangle blurred under a sudden downpour. He unfolded the note under his jacket: *47.6062° N, 122.3321° W*. The rooftop of the abandoned physics building, where the novel's protagonist would later share a pivotal kiss with the heiress.
His phone buzzed again. The biotech fund had already gained 8%. Impossible—the surge wasn't due until Thursday.
Across the rain-slicked courtyard, the male lead watched him from under a shared umbrella with a doe-eyed sophomore—another character out of place, another thread unraveling. The protagonist's expression darkened as their eyes met.
He pocketed the note. The story was rewriting itself.
And for the first time, he wondered if Lin Yuhan had always been the real genius—or if she, too, was something far stranger than the novel had ever described.