Vivian didn’t reply but the glare she gave Wade made his mouth snap shut mid-syllable.

After that, She simply dismissed him, the way one dismisses a notification on a phone screen, and turned back to Stan.

"I’m free the day after tomorrow," she said. Her voice had recovered its professional composure, but the faint color in her cheeks hadn’t fully faded. "I’ll make myself useful. To you and to Star Entertainment Company. Whatever you need."

"Good," Stan said, and nodded once.

[Vivian Reeves: Favorability 20]

From negative fifteen to twenty in the span of forty-eight hours. Not bad for a woman who had been trying to get on his nerves for days now.

Vivian gave a final, small bow, turned on her heel, and walked out of the cafeteria with the composed stride of a woman who had just survived the most humiliating and confusing morning of her life and was determined to look dignified doing it.

The cafeteria remained in a state of suspended disbelief for several seconds after she’d gone.

Then everyone started talking at once.

Wade Hollis stood alone at the edge of the chaos, fists clenched, face ashen, jaw grinding so hard the sound was almost audible.

Every single time he crossed paths with Stan Harrison, the encounter ended the same way, with Wade on the losing side of reality, watching the man he despised accumulate power and women with the effortless inevitability of water flowing downhill.

He wanted to scream. He wanted to break something. He wanted to understand how a man he’d once dismissed as a broke nobody was now casually rejecting million-dollar watches and scheduling dates with campus beauties who had tried to expel him twenty-four hours earlier.

He didn’t understand.

He would never understand.

And that, perhaps, was the most painful part of all.

After Vivian’s departure, Zack turned to Stan with the slow, careful movements of a man handling something fragile.

"Stan."

"Yeah?"

"What just happened?"

"She apologized obviously."

"I saw that. But how? How?"

Stan picked up his chopsticks and resumed eating.

"I told you she would."

Zack stared at him for a long, searching moment. Then he shook his head, picked up his own chopsticks, and let out a long, bewildered sigh.

"You know what? I give up. I give up trying to understand your life. I’m just going to sit here, eat my lunch, and accept that I’m friends with a man who makes the impossible happen on a daily basis."

Stan smiled.

"That’s probably healthy."

"It’s the only healthy response," Zack muttered, and went back to his food.

Wade Hollis lingered at the table like a man who couldn’t accept that the show was over.

"What did you do to her?" His voice was raw, almost pleading. "Why did her whole attitude just flip? What happened between last night and this morning?" 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

Stan ignored him and kept eating.

"Who you are?" Wade let out a short, incredulous bark. "You don’t have an identity. You’re nobody. You’re a college kid who rides a bicycle and eats cafeteria food. What identity could you possibly have that would make Vivian Reeves bow to you?"

He was yet to know Stan had a Lamborghini and even brought it here, the people around and even Zack couldn’t help but look at Wade as if they’re looking at an idiot.

Meanwhile, Stan shrugged and took another bite.

"Who the fuck are you?!"

"Shut up, Wade." Zack’s voice was sharp enough to cut glass. "You came here to watch Stan get humiliated, and instead you watched Vivian Reeves bow to him in front of the entire cafeteria. How does that feel? Good? Are you having fun?"

Wade’s face went the color of old concrete.

"You never imagined this would happen, did you?" Zack continued, leaning forward. "Not in a million years. And now you’re standing there with that stupid look on your face, trying to convince yourself it wasn’t real."

He pointed at the door.

"Get lost. Before I help you leave."

Wade gritted his teeth. His fists clenched. For a moment, he looked like he might say something, something sharp, something cutting, something that would salvage whatever scraps of dignity he had left.

But nothing came. The words simply weren’t there. Every comeback he could think of had been pre-emptively demolished by the sight of Vivian Reeves bowing to the man he’d just called a dead man walking.

He turned and walked out, stiff-shouldered and silent, already composing the bitter internal monologue he’d be nursing for the rest of the week.

"Hey." Zack slung an arm around Stan’s shoulder as they left the cafeteria. "That was the single most satisfying thing I’ve ever witnessed with my own eyes. You’ve earned a drink. My treat."

They ended up at a familiar roadside stall near the campus gate, plastic stools, charcoal grill, cold beer in glass bottles. The kind of place where two friends could sit without pretension and talk about nothing important.

Zack was in high spirits. Stan’s mood was quieter, not bad, just settled.

The Vivian situation had resolved itself exactly as he’d predicted, which was gratifying but unsurprising. The system’s mechanics were reliable. Money talked. Power talked louder.

And people who had spent their lives being obeyed were remarkably quick to recalibrate when they discovered they were standing in front of someone who outranked them.

Zack was scrolling through his phone between bites when his expression darkened.

"These people are unbelievable."

He tilted the screen toward Stan. The campus forum was still running hot, Quinn Carter’s original post had spawned a dozen derivative threads, each more inflammatory than the last.

The narrative had hardened into gospel: Stan Harrison was a predator who exploited Sarah through debt manipulation, and anyone who associated with him was either complicit or naive.

"Quinn Carter’s been posting again," Zack growled. "New thread. More lies. He’s even tagging the student council now, trying to get them involved."

Stan glanced at the screen, then went back to his skewers.

"This guy, he’s starting to get to my nerves."