Chapter 1: The Exchange System

For as long as I can remember, I've always been stuck at second place in my class. Now I've gotten myself tangled up with something wild—an app that promises you one shot to swap anything you want, like some twisted version of Wish.com for your life.

There’s this weird hush that settles over our fluorescent-lit classroom whenever someone mentions rankings—a tension that sits heavy, like a storm about to break. I can practically feel the weight of every report card, every whispered comparison. But today, there’s something different in the air. Static hums in my head, and suddenly, my thoughts light up like a Twitch chat during a streamer meltdown:

[It’s over, it’s over! The mean girl supporting character is about to yeet Lillian’s SAT score and still get roasted—classic supporting character move.]

[Thank goodness our main character can hear the system’s conversations with the supporting character! Now she’ll slack off, nap through the SAT, and just vibe senior year.]

[No matter how hard the supporting character schemes, she’ll only manage to swap for a score of zero, while our girl Lillian just donates a building to Harvard. Peak satisfaction!]

There it is. Mean girl supporting character. Me?

But——

Who said I want to swap the main character’s SAT score? What I want to exchange is something even more precious to her:

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[Congrats, host, you’ve activated the exchange system. You have one—and only one—chance to make a trade:]

I ask, "Can I swap anything? Including the SAT score?"

[Of course. Please specify your exchange target:]

Lillian Hayes.

The moment I finish speaking, not far away, Lillian Hayes clenches her fists. The look she gives me is pure contempt and mockery.

It seems—just like the Twitch chat says—she can hear the conversation between me and the system.

Lillian Hayes has always been first in our class. And I’m the one everyone jokes about as the eternal runner-up.

She comes from a family with money and every advantage. Even my mom is just a housekeeper in her home.

My mom often scolds me:

“Miss Lillian is special, Natalie. Who do you think you are? You don’t deserve to compete with her for first place.”

My cheeks burned every time she said it, like I’d been caught cheating at a game I never even wanted to play.

When she heard I was bullied in the girls’ bathroom by Lillian’s friends, my mom didn’t care:

“You must’ve upset Miss Lillian, that’s why she took it out on you. Born unlucky, where do you get all these complaints?”

I used to think my mom just wanted to keep her job at the Hayes’ house, so she went along with everything Lillian did.

Until the live chat told me:

[The supporting character is actually pretty tragic—she’s the real daughter of a rich family, but was switched at birth. Her ‘housekeeper mom’ is actually Lillian’s biological mother...]

[Still, the supporting character deserves it. Who told her to go after Lillian’s SAT score? Lucky for us, Lillian was ready, deliberately scored zero, and ruined her plan.]

[After the SAT, when the supporting character is recognized by her birth family, Mr. and Mrs. Hayes still don’t like her. She gets totally crushed by our brilliant Lillian. Even if she’s the real daughter, so what? Unloved, isolated, and in the end, she even takes her own life out of depression—that’s what she gets.]

Isolated. Depressed. Suicide.

No way. Not a chance in hell.

Because what I want to exchange isn’t Lillian Hayes’s SAT score at all—

But something even more precious to her.