Revenge13 min read
The Yellow Chicken Rice and the Truth
ButterPicks15 views
I still remember the photo the delivery driver sent me.
"It’s at the gate. I left it by the pillar," the app text read, and the picture showed a crumpled leaflet and a thermos. I smiled and went down. I wanted a hot box of yellow-braised chicken rice for dinner.
But when I reached the gate, the bag was gone.
"Someone must have taken it by mistake," I told myself as I walked back toward the dorm. "A wrong order, a mix-up."
I checked the building’s tiny surveillance screen the next day only because the delivery record said the guy had posted a photo. The security guard grunted and said no at first, but I pressed until he sighed and tapped the old monitor.
A girl in a black skirt walked in, glanced at a pile of bags, and picked up my order without hesitation. She walked away like she belonged.
"So that’s her," I said into the phone, and before I thought too much I wrote on the campus confession page.
"Someone in a black skirt stole my yellow-braised chicken rice at the south gate. If you are the one, say it here and make it right."
I didn't post the screenshot. I wanted her to step forward, to apologize. Simple.
She showed up.
She stood there with eyes that refused to soften. "I grabbed the wrong bag," she insisted. "If you want money back, I’ll pay. I didn’t mean to—"
"You could have apologized," I said. "You didn’t."
She folded her arms. "You can’t post private footage."
"Then prove you ordered the same thing at that time," I said.
She shrugged and walked away. Her voice was sharp. "You’re making a scene."
I didn’t take the money she offered. I went back online and wrote one sentence that made some people mad.
"If a meteor hit the campus today, the only things that would survive are the mercy saints’ good smells and their stubborn mouths."
They shut up for a moment. Then the forum filled with comments—about me being dramatic, about me wanting attention. I answered in a calm line: "If I’m wrong, I will apologize publicly. If you can’t prove you ordered, apologize to me."
A phone call interrupted me. "You made it big on the wall," Colt Gordon, my boyfriend, said without hello. "Don't humiliate me. Don't do this."
I sat up and listened. I heard the assumption, the shame he felt as if my fight was his embarrassment.
"Then I won’t be your problem," I said. "If this is about saving face, then let’s make it official." I hung up. It felt cleaner than any apology.
For a while I reveled in the idea of one stolen dinner teaching me a lesson: people aren’t always what you think. That night I ordered the same yellow-braised chicken rice again—just in case the campus thief came back.
She didn’t. My ex did.
He cornered me at the gate holding my rice. "Joanna, listen. I—"
"You want to apologize?" I asked loudly. People slowed down and watched. "Tell her who you really are when you hug her. Tell her when your fingers are on someone else’s waist. Tell every girl you meet you’re ‘just friends.’"
Phones came out. One voice shouted, "Scumbag!" More cheers welcomed the moment. I felt victorious, a little drunk on the sudden justice.
"No," Colt said. "You don’t have to make this public."
"Too late," I said. "You should have thought of that before you chose someone else."
He was a tower of anger at first. When I told a delivery driver nearby—his helmet hiding his face—that I had a boyfriend to get the delivery guy to leave him alone, he handed me his phone.
"Not being rude, but do you want to scan my account?" he said, smiling.
"Why would I—" I looked at the QR code, connected, and before I knew it I had added him. He seemed amused and then said, calmly, "If you ever want to eat again without being robbed, text me."
I was supposed to be annoyed, but I found myself blushing. He had the kind of height that made other men look smaller, literally. He had a voice that moved like velvet.
"What's your name?" I asked.
"Hudson," he said.
I hadn’t expected to meet him again. I hadn’t expected him to matter.
Two days later, I walked into the only crowded skewers place on campus and found out fate liked irony. There she was—the girl from the video—sitting with the same friends. I tried to stay hidden. I failed because life loves coincidence.
Hudson was with me, and he sat directly behind Sara Coulter without knowing who she was. When their conversation turned into petty insults about me, I laughed to myself and recorded the whole thing.
"Who does she think she is?" one of them huffed.
"She’s so loud," another said.
Hudson leaned in and said, "You’re one of the girls who thinks the world owes you something."
I looked up. He caught my eye and smiled as if he’d just seen a small private joke.
"Do you want to leave?" he asked after our dinner.
"Maybe later," I said.
Hudson’s friend later sent me an image he had snapped by accident: a photo of Sara with Colt Gordon, arms around her waist, a face half hidden by a mask, bright and intimate. The date stamp read a month ago.
I stared. A cold knot formed in my stomach. The girl who had stolen my rice was also the one who had been entwined with my ex.
"That's the one," I said aloud to no one.
I didn’t rush to post. I collected. I remembered every small detail Sara had said and done—the way she had refused to show an order when I asked, the way she had called me intrusive. I also remembered my roommate Fallon Mills had been too quick to smile at me as others scolded me online. Fallon had a camera habit that made me slightly uneasy.
Days passed. The forum cooled and then flared again. The girl who had stolen the food posted an order—an order suspiciously similar to mine. At first people turned on me. Then someone noticed the matching punctuation, the same dislikes listed twice. The thief had tried to cover the timestamp. Somebody with patience found that out and the thread shifted back.
I rode the wave. I wanted two things: an apology and some dignity.
But it escalated. Colt and Sara started pushing false stories. Someone posted photos that made me look like I had moved on from my ex instantly. A dirty article insinuated I had left one man for another. The attention was not quiet sympathy but a loud public appetite for salt.
I sent Colt a message: "One day before noon. Explain yourself. Or accept you get what you deserve."
He posted a clarification the next day, but then came a new blow: a lewd photo of my leg appeared in a private chat that leaked to the whole campus. My heart stopped. Then it felt like it split.
"Fallon," I said, closing the curtains. "Why?"
"I didn't mean—" she started.
"Tell me everything, Fallon."
Her voice broke. "We were dared. Sara asked. She promised she'd help me win a scholarship."
"She promised to help," I repeated. "She promised to ruin my life for a scholarship?"
"It was stupid—" Fallon cried. "I thought a photo, a small thing, wouldn't hurt. She told me she’d cover it."
On instinct I grabbed Fallon’s phone and forced it open with her fingerprint. There: albums named "Joanna," full of photos taken through gaps in curtains and angles that made me feel like a stranger in my own room.
"You put your camera where?" I asked.
"In the window frame," she said, sobbing. "She said she needed new material for a blog. She said she’d help. I’m sorry."
I felt both fury and a weirdly calm determination. "We’re going to talk to the counselor," I said. I left and drove straight to Mercedes Hansson’s office.
"These are charges," Mercedes said when I explained. "You did the right thing. Leave it to me."
I trusted her, because she had a reputation for fairness. I handed over everything—the photos, the conversation logs, the surveillance clips.
Someone had to answer for both petty theft and for violating my privacy. The school seemed slow and slippery at first. The dean, Grady Blanc, smiled badly and said, "We must be careful. Reputation matters."
"Reputation?" I asked. "Whose reputation? Mine?"
Later I learned that Sara’s father, Edsel Francois, had called the university. "My daughter is a good girl," he said on the phone. "We can settle this quietly. Ten thousand, a statement that clears her name."
He said it like a bargain. He believed money could make people forget.
I walked into the dean’s office and I heard the words he thought would buy me. "A million," he said when he met my face. "We will handle it. You can keep your scholarship if you agree."
"Are you offering me hush money?" I asked, and the smile withered. "Do you think I am for sale?"
He looked surprised. "You could hurt the university."
"Not if the university does justice," I said. I left his office and felt the old fury return, colder now because it was steady.
When the campus lazily tried to arrange a quiet apology and a short statement, I refused. The longer they tried to make it private, the louder I became. I posted. I sent the conversation logs to a lawyer Hudson recommended—Ricardo Christiansen—someone who could move fast.
Two things happened quickly. First, Sara staged a dramatic scene on a rooftop. She stood on the edge, crying that I had ruined her with accusations and that she didn’t have medicine that day and she felt lost.
Everyone came. Phones lit the sky like fireflies. Crowds whispered and police arrived. Cameras rolled. I walked up to the edge with my hands in my pockets.
"You want attention," I told her. "Go ahead. Jump and the world will clap and your father will cry rich tears."
"Stop!" someone yelled.
Sara teetered, and a cop reached out. For a second I thought she might fall. She didn't. She returned to the crowd and sobbed, playing the harmed girl. Her father appeared and suddenly the tone shifted. He offered money again—this time to me.
"This will all go away," he said. "A million."
"You're buying me off," I said.
"You can't ruin us," he insisted.
I felt something hard and steady inside me. "Then let the truth decide."
He stared until he saw I meant it. After that, he scowled and left.
That rooftop incident changed everything. It made the campus split between "believers of the crying girl" and "people who knew the truth." It made the dean look frantic. It also meant the university could no longer pretend to be blind.
Hudson did not leave my side, even when the crowd gossiped as if we were actors in a play. He lent me his quiet presence. He held my arm when I felt dizzy. He sent a lawyer's letter to Sara demanding a formal apology.
Not long after, Sara's own thread of lies began to look fragile. Fallon confessed in a private statement that Sara had asked her to take photos and that Sara had paid her with promises and small favors. Someone unearthed a picture of Colt and Sara taken a month earlier.
The campus conference room the university arranged for mediation filled fast. I sat at one end, raw and precise. Sara sat near the dean, smudged mascara and a cold smile. Her father watched from the back. Fallon looked like a child who had been scolded in front of her school.
"Joanna," the dean began, "we can resolve this quietly. An apology, a note—"
"No," I said.
"You can at least help the school cover this calmly," he urged.
"I don't help cover crimes," I said.
He kept pushing until I pulled out the audio recordings I had made—of Sara insisting she had not stolen, of Fallon taking photos, of the dean suggesting hush money.
When the recordings played, the room changed. Conversations stopped. A teacher sighed and left. The dean’s face went pale.
"You recorded us?" he said angrily.
"Yes," I said. "Because the truth matters more than your reputation."
That day the conversations spread beyond the campus chat rooms. The university could not bury the recordings anymore. Reporters called. Someone took my screenshots and turned them into public proof. Sara's father sent a lawyer.
Her lawyer, Jules Bird, a woman with a steady voice and a firm chin, showed up and tried to spin a new story.
"This is not simply theft," Jules told the crowd outside. "My client has mental health issues. She has been under medication and the stress pushed her into unstable behavior."
A murmur of sympathy rose immediately. People love a tragic story.
But I had documented everything. Fallon’s confession showed premeditation. The timestamped photos showed the plan. Colt's face in the photo with Sara showed betrayal.
The hearing became legal fast. The university moved from internal investigation to formal charges—privacy invasion, theft, attempted assault when Sara had shoved me on the rooftop, and slander.
What I had wanted at the start was small: an apology and my chicken rice back. What I demanded now was public truth: that the system that let this happen be held accountable.
The public punishment began at a hearing in the lecture hall filled with students, campus reporters, and a string of online viewers. I stood and told the story plainly.
"This started with a stolen box of yellow-braised chicken rice," I began. "It ended with photos, threats, and nearly a death on the rooftop."
"You are melodramatic," Colt said from the back.
"You are the one who cheated," I shot back. "Tell them why you hugged her in public."
"You're making this personal," he said.
"Good," I said. "Make it personal. You made it personal for me."
The hall hummed. Jules Bird rose and spoke. "My client is ill," she said. "She was under medication, and her actions were not her true self."
Ricardo Christiansen, Hudson’s lawyer, stood and laid out the documents: timestamps, bank transfers that showed Sara funded Fallon for favors, surveillance footage, and the recorded threats. He closed his folder and looked straight at Sara.
"This is not a temper, a single lapse," he said. "This is a planned campaign: the theft, the leak, the staged photos, the rooftop stunt. That is not mental illness, that is a strategy."
People gasped. The dean tried to interject, but the students hissed. Cameras flashed. The moment grew heavy.
Then the public punishment rose like a tide.
First came exposure. Senior students who had been neutral posted the evidence. The student union called for immediate sanctions. The scholarship committee revoked Sara's application. The campus accountability board recommended expulsions. The dean's name became tied to attempted cover-up. The dean’s old memos showing lenient treatment of wealthy patrons surfaced.
Sara’s father went on camera and tried to bargain. He looked smaller under the bright lights than he had in his office. He was forced to answer under oath about payments to staff. He stuttered.
"Why did you offer money?" one reporter asked.
"For my daughter's reputation," he said weakly.
"Do you think money undoes the theft?" someone shouted.
He could not hold the room’s gaze. His shoulders fell.
Second came the social collapse. Friends posted. People who had filmed me that had once called me loud posted apologies and confessions. Fallon’s face appeared in dozens of posts as someone who had helped and who had now admitted wrong.
They recorded her crying in a hallway, and the video looped. Faces changed from scorn to pity to disgust. It was a public funnel of feeling. People gathered outside Fallon’s dorm, not to hurt her physically, but to say the truth out loud: "You broke trust."
Third came legal consequence. The campus police, embarrassed by the scandal, filed a formal complaint with the municipal authorities. The evidence showed coordinated wrongdoing: theft, privacy invasion, falsification of timestamps, and the rooftop shove.
When police arrived at the hearing to announce formal charges, Sara’s face drained. She had been confident; now she was trembling.
"How could this happen?" her father whispered to no one.
Colt’s career? He had been paraded in social media with a label no one wanted. The sports teams that had given him perks canceled his appearances. A video of him flirting with another student found its way into a WhatsApp group, and within hours his name was mud.
The worst punishment of all for them was the public shame. The moment I had always wanted—where those who had mocked and attacked me would be forced to swallow their words—arrived.
I watched as those who had laughed at me now avoided my eyes. They scrolled past my posts pretending not to see. Some tried to denounce me as "overreacting." Others quietly messaged to apologize.
"Why didn't you stop them?" a woman whispered to Sara in the hallway.
"I thought—" Sara began, but nobody believed her.
The legal judge ruled after a long public process. The court found sufficient evidence. Sara was sentenced to prison time for the combined charges and was expelled. Fallon received disciplinary action and probation; her scholarship was rescinded. The dean faced censure and resigned. Colt was banned from representing the university as a student and lost campus positions. Edsel Francois faced a formal investigation into bribery and improper influence.
When the court read the judgment, the room held its breath. Reporters typed fast. Students cried. Sara's face crumpled. Her lawyer could not spin the story into pity any longer.
I watched her go from confident to small to broken. She first smiled that half-smile of a person who believes rules are for others. Then it fell. She began to deny everything. She tried to say it was a joke. She begged for mercy. Then she stared at the cameras as the weight of her choices closed in. At last she turned to me.
"Please," she mouthed. "Forgive me."
I answered, not with words, but by turning away. It was not cruelty. It was finality.
Outside the courthouse, a crowd of students chanted. They had watched their own campus be poisoned and then cleaned. I thought about the yellow-braised chicken rice in my hands months ago and how small it had seemed.
Hudson squeezed my hand. "You did the right thing," he said quietly.
"I did what I had to," I said.
The punishments did not look all the same. Fallon broke down and begged for forgiveness; her reaction was raw and different from Sara’s hard collapse. Colt, who had lashed out and tried to hide, now sat alone in a corner of the student union with no one willing to stand with him. Edsel’s arrogance dwindled into frantic phone calls. Each punishment played out with unique echoes: shame from peers, legal consequences, loss of trust.
When the campus finally returned to a kind of ordinary, there was an awkward peace.
I kept receiving messages. Some were supportive; some were sharp. "You started all this for a meal," one person wrote. I ignored it.
Hudson and I walked under the trees one afternoon.
"Did you ever think you would be dragged into all this because of a delivery?" he asked with a small laugh.
"I thought the world owed me a hot meal at night," I said. "I didn't expect to get a whole story."
He stopped and looked at me. "Joanna," he said softly. "I saw you that day at the gate. You were so sure about small things. It made me think you’d be sure about bigger things too."
"You rode with me through a public trial," I said.
"I rode with you through the truth," he corrected.
He reached for my hand. "Do you want to eat yellow-braised chicken rice again?" he asked.
"Yes," I said. "But not stolen."
We smiled. The campus still whispered sometimes. People still remembered the drama. The dean’s resignation hung like a lesson. The scholarship board added transparency rules. The security guard said he would stop deleting footage. Mariana in the cafeteria started putting receipt stickers on bags with a promise: "Scan this and your order is safe."
I kept the photograph Hudson had sent, the one where Colt’s face was half-hidden. It was a reminder of how small pieces, when pieced together, could show a whole truth.
One afternoon, months later, I walked past the south gate. A new security post had a little laminated note on it: "Lost items? Check the camera." I laughed and sent Hudson a picture.
"You like that?" he texted back with a thumbs-up emoji and a small, "Meet me at the skewer place at six."
"I will," I replied.
When we sat down later with two boxes of yellow-braised chicken rice and a plate of skewers, I looked at him and said, "Do you remember the first time you joked about picking up girls while delivering?"
He grinned. "I may have exaggerated about my women's magnetism."
"You have height and good manners," I said.
He laughed. "Those are two very different skills."
We ate. People watched. Some whispered. Some smiled. I felt a small, calm joy I had not expected.
Weeks later, a reporter asked me one last time outside campus, "Was this all worth a box of food?"
I looked at the camera and then at the campus behind me. "It was never about the food," I said. "It was about who we become when we stand for ourselves."
The yellow-braised chicken rice tasted the same as before. But the next time I picked at the cardboard box, I knew exactly who I had become.
The End
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