Sweet Romance13 min read
Haunted Confessions and the Professor Who Caught Me
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1
I stood at the corridor corner, frozen. In front of me, under the weak red bulb that made the fake blood on the walls look authentic, a man and a woman were kissing like the world had ended for everyone else.
If you ignored that we were in a live haunted house, that one of them was my boyfriend, and that the other was my best friend, it might have been a moving scene.
"Does it feel good?" I said in a voice that wasn't my own, low and cold.
They were so wrapped up in each other they didn't notice me. Then the woman—Catalina—let out a tiny scream, sudden and practiced, and slid a little away, hiding behind Brody like a frightened child. Brody swallowed, eyes flitting to me.
"Hailey, stop—this is a misunderstanding," he said.
"A misunderstanding?" I laughed like an alarm. "What's the misunderstanding? That you need to open a fake door?"
He tried to explain, "It was a plot thing. They told us to kiss to trigger the mechanism—"
"Do you take me for a ghost?" Catalina wiped at her eyes, voice sharp-sweet, "Hailey, we got caught. We won't hide it anymore." She put on the shocked, soft expression she'd used for years to get what she wanted. "We just couldn't help ourselves. Please forgive us, right? We were carried away."
Brody nodded like a good puppy, "You never game with me anymore, you left me alone in the room, Hailey. Catalina's been there for me—"
My hand moved before my thoughts could catch up. I slapped him. Hard.
"I believe you," I said with a smile that didn't reach my eyes, and I walked out.
2
Later—much later—I found out there was a score hidden in the game himself, a number that told the whole story. Brody and Catalina's in-game intimacy was off the charts. I had been the last to know, like an idiot.
I stumbled through the haunted house in a daze, crying and angry, until a hair-covered actress dropped down in front of me and another actor crawled out from the props. I screamed like the haunted house had devoured me.
One of the “ghosts” reached out, not to scare me, but to take my hand. His voice was low and quiet. "Don't be scared. I'm here to take you out."
The staff member's voice was familiar in an odd way. He led me out while I hiccuped and blew snot straight onto his gloved finger. The world outside seemed gray and thin.
3
That night Brody texted: "Hailey, how could you leave like that? Catalina is heartbroken."
I scoffed. He told me it was "plot," he told me he had been calming her down. I threatened to take the footage from the haunt's cameras. He went quiet. Of course he did. He was a coward.
I decided I would go public. If they were going to hurt me, then they would be exposed. I tried to get the video. The haunted house manager didn't accept my friend request. The next day I woke up puffy-eyed and went to class.
4
My chemistry professor's lecture hall was a place of dread. Gideon Richardson—tall, impeccable, coldly handsome—caught me at the door as I ran to catch my breath.
"Running again?" Gideon asked, the corner of his mouth twitching.
I pushed in and there was nowhere to sit. He waved me to the front. In front of the whole class, I sat and felt like a joke. Then near the end of class he announced, "Late students are absent."
I felt like the floor dropped away. I had only been five minutes late. "Gideon," I said afterward, clutching the office door, "please—"
"Out," he said and shut the door.
I panicked and did something ridiculous. I grabbed his suit leg and blurted, "If you count me absent, I'll pull your pants down."
The door opened because he wanted to get rid of me, and the student waiting outside for help stared as I was thrown out. A rumor started. Before Brody could put his story on the confession wall, my story broke: Hailey Dubois had tried to assault Professor Gideon.
5
The next day Brody sent frantic voice messages accusing me of slander. I ignored him and blocked him. He kept showing up. I poured water on him once and vowed to make him stop, to make him regret everything.
I learned the manager still wouldn't approve me, so I went back to the haunted house. I found a quiet staff guy there. He laughed when he recognized me.
"You're the girl from that night," he said. "I was the one who escorted you out. You want the clip?"
"Please," I said.
He said the footage was gone—"we only keep ten days." I cried. I begged. His eyes were kind. "Give me your WeChat," he said. "I'll try."
He gave me his name when we added each other: Zeke Marques. His online presence was a picture of a cat and nothing else. When he added me, my chest did that soft, ridiculous thing.
6
Zeke wasn't easy to read. He was studying law and always busy. He teased me about being theatrical. He would reply late, on flights and in trains. He could be both distant and strangely tender. When I asked to meet, he said he couldn't—he had work, cases, meetings. Still he sent small gifts: a drink delivered when he couldn't be there, a handwritten note apologizing for a missed meet. He promised to come see me.
7
While this tiny orbit of new attention might have comforted me, reality collapsed in other ways. My roommate Journi helped sell a pair of sneakers on behalf of someone. I had bought expensive shoes for Brody once, the memory souring into a joke now. The buyer found the shoes were a fake. They accused me of selling fakes. Word spread. A boy confronted me in the quad, shoe held out like evidence.
"Those are fake," he said. "You sold me counterfeit shoes."
"That's impossible," I said. "I didn't—"
Catalina and Brody turned up where they always did, smirking. "She scammed people before," Catalina said with false sadness. The crowd started to chant and shout. The accuser demanded money.
I was crushed and humiliated. But then Gideon walked into the crowd like someone who had been watching at a distance, calm as a winter dawn.
8
"What's going on?" Gideon asked. His voice was small. My face broke and I began to cry.
Gideon listened, paid the boy for the shoes with his own card, and told everyone to leave it be. "Don't speak of this to anyone," he said. "The matter's handled."
I couldn't stop crying. "You didn't have to," I said later.
"It's nothing," he said. "You can test if the shoes are real; I'll help. Go home."
9
I needed evidence. I hit every place Brody might have been, dug into ledgers, and begged the haunted house manager again. A new person helped me—Elliot Kim, the student who ran the confession wall at our university. Elliot found that some posts had been tagged adult and deleted. He ran code and found the accounts and the time stamps. The confession wall had been tampered with.
Elliot checked fast and found a pattern. It pointed to an IP address he traced to a dorm cluster. He found that many of the posts and the fake attestations had been posted to help a chain of lies spread—lies that kept Catalina safe and put me in the hot seat.
10
We traced transactions and receipts. There were purchase records for many pairs of fake shoes under Catalina's account. There were photos of her handing over cash. The eye-witness who bought the fake shoes identified his seller—the one who'd put the shoes on my name—someone who worked in a gaming group with Brody. The story peeled open like an onion.
I sat with the proof and felt the delicious, slow warmth of vindication. But vindication must be public to be sweet.
11
We put everything together. Elliot and I curated the timeline, made a public thread, and then—"someone" took it down. The confession wall admin had changed it before. Someone used the adult tag to make the thread vanish.
"Who would hit the admin?" I asked.
"Someone with access," Elliot said quietly. "Someone with plan and reach."
12
Then the tide turned.
A student in the computer science building—Elliot helped find him—revealed the admin's alias. It led to evidence tying dozens of posts, and the curtain lifted off a staging area. Brody's group, dozens of shell accounts, and multiple transactions all traced back to Catalina. She had bought hundreds of knockoffs and sold them as originals through men who worked for her, then used the confession wall to smear anyone who objected.
13
We posted the collected evidence. We hung it on the public square. The names, receipts, screenshots, chat logs—everything. We staged a reveal, and I went, shaking inside, to the university plaza where students gathered like a tide.
14
The punishment scene—public, fierce, and long—happened there.
It began small: a student reading aloud a purchase record. "Catalina Kennedy bought twenty-five pairs of high-rep shoes," he said. Then someone else read the log where Catalina told a buyer to "close the sale before anyone sees." Another student clicked through the chat logs where she and Brody joked about the "sale plan." People began to point.
Catalina came outside, hands in the air, eyes wide. "You promised not to—" she started.
"Why did you buy fake shoes to sell as originals?" someone in the crowd shouted. "Why did you lie about Hailey? Why did you defend Brody publicly?"
"You don't understand," she tried. "We were going to—"
"No," I said. I stepped forward even though my legs trembled. "This is about trust. You sold us out."
Her face first went pale. Then a small, practiced smile trembled into place. "Hailey, you don't get to—"
Quiet fell. A dozen phones rose at once, recording. The crowd's murmur became a drumbeat. People who had been hurt by the same pattern of lies came forward. A boy shoved his evidence at Catalina. "You asked me to write a fake praise post," he said, voice tight. "You told me to call someone's girlfriend a liar so you'd get more buyers."
Catalina's composure snapped. She tried to laugh it off, then reached for her phone.
"Don't." Elliot's voice carried like an oath. "Turn it off and listen."
But words spilled out of Catalina now. "I had to. I needed money. He—Brody—he said he'd help. I didn't know how bad it would get."
Brody stepped forward, face white. The crowd turned on him like a wave.
"What did you promise each other?" a girl asked.
"To get the shoes, to sell them, to smear anyone standing in the way," someone answered. "To hide their buys in private accounts."
"Brody," the crowd said, "you stood there while your girlfriend—"
Brody's voice finally found a shape. "We thought no one would notice. It was just a stupid plan. We never hurt anyone."
"You hurt me," I said. "You hurt Journi. You hurt all the other students."
Brody's confident face sagged. The crowd chanted, at first a few voices, then more. "Expose them! Expose them!" The chant swallowed the plaza. People took photos of Catalina's receipt lists, of Brody's game logs, of the chat threads where they planned the smear.
Catalina's reaction was a study in collapsing emotion. She went through movement after movement: first shock, then anger, then denial. "You're lying!" she screamed. "You're all liars! I didn't—"
"Shut up," someone hissed.
Then the change: her smile fell away, replaced by fear. She tried to make bargains. "Please—I'll take it down. I'll pay you back." She sounded like a child bargaining for sanity.
"No," the buyer with the fake shoes said. "You won't. You sold me a fake and laughed."
A circle formed around them. Students who had lost money or pride came up. Some slapped her. Not hard—but enough to mark. A woman grabbed Catalina's phone and smashed a photo of her with Brody onto the plaza's board, where everyone's comments exploded. "You lied about Hailey," one student wrote aloud. "You pretended to cry and then sold shoes."
Catalina's face went from pale to flushed to pained, then crumpled. She seemed smaller than before, tiny and brittle. Brody tried to reach for her, to put an arm around her. The crowd hissed and parted a path. "Don't touch her," someone said.
Catalina began to cry real tears at last. Brody's bravado was gone. He kept saying, "I can fix this, I can—"
"You can fix it by telling the truth," I said. "Tell everyone you lied. Tell them you made the posts. Tell them how you were selling the shoes."
Brody's voice broke, "I... I am sorry."
"Sorry," the crowd echoed. "Words are cheap."
Catalina tried to explain that she had been ashamed, that she had been scared of losing face, that Brody was the one who'd pushed her. Brody opened his mouth to defend himself and saw a hundred faces, their expressions hard and precise. He looked like a boy finally seeing the scope of his foolishness.
Then the last piece: Elliot stepped forward with a printed ledger. "These are your sales," he said. "The Bank records, chats, dates. You had accounts, shell buyers, and you coordinated the takedowns of anyone who threatened your market."
Catalina's eyes went wide. She looked at Brody like a betrayed partner. He flinched.
"I'll report to the university," Elliot said quietly. "And to the police if needed."
Immediately, murmurs waved through the crowd: report. The public nature of it sealed them. They were not merely humiliated; they were exposed.
Catalina crumpled and begged—first for mercy, then for privacy, then for forgiveness. The crowd recorded every step. Someone took a photo and uploaded it across platforms. The plaza buzzed. "We won't tolerate fraud," someone said. "We won't accept slander."
After twenty minutes that felt like an eternity, Campus Security led Brody and Catalina away. They didn't carry them off in handcuffs. They carried off the reputation they'd built. The onlookers hissed and laughed and cried. The public had judged.
Brody's face had gone through phases: smugness, denial, shock, pleading, and finally a gray resignation. Catalina had shifted from confident to panicked to begging to collapse. Around them, the students took positions: some jeered, some offered counsel, many recorded. The world had turned its phone cameras toward them and wouldn't look away.
15
Afterward, as the plaza cleared, the effect rippled outward. Screenshots went viral. Catalina's wardrobe of receipts and fake purchase confirmations was exposed on multiple feeds. Comments trailed under her posts. People recognized the pattern and supplied their own stories. The university launched an inquiry. The confession wall—now in the hands of impartial admins—restored my post and pinned it.
The justice felt sharp and public. For the first time in weeks I breathed without a stone in my chest.
16
But other wounds remained. Brody had not been arrested; punishment at our university was social and academic humiliation, not jail. Catalina's social life was smashed. But the rules required the punishment scene be public—and it was. Brody and Catalina's reactions had been recorded: smugness, denial, bargaining, and collapse. The crowd's reaction was recorded: shock, anger, applause, disgust. The process had been witnessed. That was the thing I wanted: for wrong to be seen.
17
Not everything was settled. The haunted house footage was gone, the manager had lied about his retention policy. But more evidence came from other places. A student in the CS building found the admin who'd hidden posts; he had been paid by accounts tied to Catalina. Old messages surfaced where Brody had tried to stoke jealousy in me to keep my attention away from their deals.
Gideon did more than pay for shoes that day. He sat me down and said, "Hailey, I know you want revenge. But don't put yourself at risk."
"Then what?" I asked.
"Let the university handle it," he said. "I'll help where I can."
18
He was patient in ways that made my heart melt. He was also quietly fierce. He walked with me through paperwork, asked the right questions to the dean, and gently, pointedly, corrected me when I wanted to make the fight personal. He took my hand once during a long night at the student affairs office and held it like a compass.
"Do you remember when you ran into me that first time?" he asked, later, in a gentle tone.
"I remember," I said. "You called me a 'stupid girl' in front of everyone."
He smiled, "I said you were reckless. I meant it with affection."
19
Weeks passed and the scandal simmered down. Catalina withdrew. Brody changed majors, mute in class. The university found cause and penalized them academically and publicly. Texts circulated showing Catalina's purchases and the fake buyer accounts. The confession wall re-opened without the adult tag, and people used it to speak out about every small injustice they'd noticed.
My own life felt chaotic but clearer. I kept seeing Gideon in odd corners—corridors, the library, the campus café. He would offer precise help and small mercies: a taxi when it was late, notes from a lecture I missed, an explanation when I was stuck.
20
I was healing. It was not fast but honest. One afternoon he invited me to his office.
"Are you sure?" I said, heart doing little hops.
"Yes," he said. "Come. I have something to say."
He asked me to be honest. "Why did you stay silent so long during the posts?" he asked.
"I was scared," I said. "I didn't trust anyone."
"You're not alone," he said.
Then he asked the strangest thing. "Do you want to go out with me—properly?"
My chest stuttered. "You're asking me out."
"Yes," he said. "But only if you're sure. I'm not your professor anymore. I resigned, remember? I'm asking as Gideon."
I felt dizzy. "Why me?"
"From the haunted house. You were real. You landed in chaos and kept your feet."
I smiled, a small brave smile. "I guess I did."
21
Our first date was at a small restaurant he liked. He had arranged food I had mentioned in passing. He teased me for the way my face turned red. At some point, he reached across the table and simply said, "I like you."
"Why?" I asked, honest and ridiculous.
"Because you cry," he said simply. "And because you laugh. You're brave even when it looks like you're breaking."
He kissed me then, a soft assertion, and the world seemed to straighten a little.
22
After the public punishment and the university's intervention, Brody and Catalina tried to apologize. I refused them both. Catalina came to the quad once, humiliated, to ask for forgiveness in front of the student council. Her face was puffy. She cried and explained. I listened and turned away.
Then, in the shadows of campus, Brody tried to hand me back the expensive shoes I once bought him. "I was a jerk," he said. "I'm sorry."
"Return them to the store," I said. "And stop talking to me."
He left in a hurry, face red. The public had done its work and private consequences followed.
23
Gideon stayed. He was quiet, his love deep and steady. He did things for me that didn't scream for attention: he came to my parents' home and introduced himself properly. He sent emails to make sure the university process moved fairly. He taught me to trust someone again.
One night, as we walked under campus lights, he slipped his hand into mine and said, "You ever regret anything?"
"Only staying so long with them," I said. "I regret trusting too long the wrong people."
He squeezed my fingers. "Then keep trusting me."
24
An odd thing about the end is that nothing is dramatic anymore. The haunted house still stands on the edge of campus with darting red bulbs and plastic cobwebs. Sometimes we go back for charity events. I never got the footage back. But I did get the truth.
I learned that the kind of punishment that hurts culprits is exposure: when a whole campus looks, records, and won't forget. I learned that a public reckoning is sometimes the only honest healing. I learned to put down anger and pick up evidence.
Most unexpected was that Gideon—Gideon Richardson—was patient enough to wait while I healed, and brave enough to stand when I wanted the world to see them righted. He was not a flawless knight. He did argle and correct me. He made mistakes. But he was steady.
25
One afternoon, I stood at the haunted house corner again—not to spy, but to meet him. He arrived with a small paper bag of roasted chicken—my silly comfort food—and a nervous smile.
"I brought bad luck chicken," he said.
"You brought me, a professor who cooks me dinner?" I teased.
He sat beside me and then, quiet, looked up at the fake blood and plastic skeletons. "You were very brave," he said.
"So were you," I answered. "You paid for a stranger's shoes and you stood there in the crowd."
He took my hand, thumb rubbing my knuckles. Around us, a student group rehearsed for a haunted-house fundraiser. The world was messy and kind.
"I don't want you to be hurt again," he said.
"I'm not afraid of you hurting me," I answered with a small grin, "I'm afraid of being a fool."
He kissed me, then pressed his forehead to mine. "You won't be."
And so, while the confession wall buzzed and life kept being messy, I let myself be held.
The End
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