Chapter 3: Burned Bridges and Bitter Karma

The show would start in an hour.

Producers were buzzing around like bees on the first day of spring. I sat in a corner checking my gear when a voice came from above.

“Natalie?”

I looked up, hesitating.

It was Lillian Brooks.

She was one of today’s guests—and also my college classmate.

Lillian had always had a knack for landing on her feet. She’d reinvented herself more times than I could count.

She lost her job last year and begged me to help her find work. At the time, our station needed a stagehand, so I pulled some strings to get her in.

I remembered her voice on the phone, shaky with desperation. I’d spent hours pestering HR until they finally relented.

Unexpectedly, during a shoot, she accidentally appeared on camera. Because of her sweet looks and voice, she became an overnight sensation.

It was pure dumb luck—a close-up in the background, and boom, the Internet loved her. Overnight, she was everywhere.

After that, we never spoke again.

Suddenly she was too busy for old friends, swept up by sponsorship deals and manager calls.

I smiled politely. “What a coincidence.”

My voice was practiced, polite, the same one I used for difficult parents at school fundraisers.

She blinked, looking surprised. “Natalie, it really is you? Still carrying a camera? I thought you’d be a manager by now.”

She gave a sheepish look. “Life’s weird, huh? If you’d been the one caught on camera that day, maybe you’d be the popular one now. But—”

Her tone shifted, her lips curling up. “It’s all fate. Back when I begged you for a job, you made things so hard for me, always giving me the toughest, dirtiest work. Maybe even the universe couldn’t stand it, so I got my big break overnight. Natalie Chen, this is your karma.”

I stayed silent. My jaw locked, knuckles white around the camera. I could taste copper—anger or humiliation, I wasn’t sure.

There was no use arguing with someone who’d already decided the past was my fault.

Back then, she’d been fired for breaking equipment at her old company. She cried to me every day, said she couldn’t even afford groceries, begged me to help her find a job, swearing she’d do anything as long as she got paid.

I remembered the frantic texts, the late-night phone calls, the way she’d looked so small in my apartment, eating ramen out of a mug because all my bowls were dirty.

I thought she was pitiful and worked hard to get her in. In the end, she thought I was making things hard for her.

It stung a little, how quickly she rewrote the story.

What else could I say?

Sometimes, people only remember the version that lets them sleep at night.

Someone walked over from not far away.