Backstabber's Diary(part-6)
Episode 5: Echoes and Imitations
"The scariest enemy isn't the one in front of you. It's the one inside your mirror." — Backstabber's Diary, Page 5
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Rhea had always trusted her mind. Even when Velmont tried to twist it, when teachers turned into bureaucratic puppets and students into stage props, she relied on her thoughts to stay sharp.
But now, her mind felt like a haunted house.
Since the diary incident, every shadow felt too patient. Every silence, rehearsed. The pages in her notebook no longer felt private, and her memories began to fog with suspicion. Was that conversation real? Did she actually lock her locker this morning? Had Caleb's tone shifted—or was that just fear painting over her memories?
She kept the duplicate diary hidden under her bed, locked in a box that once held medals from middle school debates. Now it held something much heavier—the possibility that her thoughts weren't hers alone.
She told no one. Not even Caleb.
Instead, she ran an experiment.
She wrote a lie. A perfect, tempting, deliciously false confession in her real diary:
> "I'm going to expose Dean Halberg next. He forged the faculty payroll system. Caleb found the files. He's helping me leak them."
She added fake documents. Sketches of emails. Even attached a screenshot from a dummy account she made that night. She printed it all, folded it between the pages, and left her diary in her locker for exactly one hour.
When she returned, nothing had moved. Except one paperclip. Bent slightly.
Her stomach dropped.
The next day, Caleb didn't show up to class. When she texted him, no reply. When she called, straight to voicemail. By lunch, the rumors had begun to flicker like sparks.
> "Caleb's suspended." "Something about hacking the staff portal." "He's been under surveillance for weeks."
Rhea stared at her classmates. Their voices buzzed around her like gnats, annoying and half-true.
The trap had worked. Too well.
She had proof now. Someone was watching her. Someone had access to her private diary. Someone had taken the bait and weaponized it against the one person she still trusted.
But who?
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That evening, Velmont's rain fell harder than usual. Rhea walked alone to the archives building—an old wing used for storing outdated curriculum records and dusty trophies from when Velmont was just another prep school.
She needed time. Silence. Answers.
She flipped open the copy of her diary. The fake one. The one that shouldn't have known her secrets.
She noticed something new.
A drawing. Tiny. Doodled in the corner of a page. A chess piece— A pawn.
Not her drawing.
Her hands went cold.
Below it, someone had written:
> "Your move."
The message wasn't threatening. It was mocking.
She ran her thumb over the page, hoping for ink smudges. There were none.
Whoever was inside her head… was careful. Calculated. And always one step ahead.
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The next week blurred. Students started treating her like she was radioactive. They smiled too politely. Their conversations stopped too fast. Even the teachers marked her present before she entered the room.
Velmont was recoiling. From her.
It was almost as if the school wanted to pretend she never existed. A ghost with a locker number. A name nobody dared whisper.
She found herself writing less and thinking more. She stopped using her phone. She only spoke to Caleb through hand-written notes they burned after reading.
When Caleb finally returned—unsuspended and smiling like nothing happened—he handed her a slip of paper before even saying hello.
> "They know."
"How much?" she asked.
"Enough to build a story. Not enough to finish it."
Rhea stared at the old hallway clock. Tick. Tick. Tick.
Someone was pulling strings. And she wasn't sure if she was a player anymore… or just another pawn.
But one thing was clear: If her diary could be copied… so could someone else's.
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That night, she stayed up rewriting everything she thought she knew. Who was on her side. Who wasn't. What the game even was anymore.
And then it hit her— The fake diary didn't just know her thoughts. It anticipated them.
Which meant—
> Someone wasn't just watching. Someone understood her.
Better than she understood herself.
The trap she'd built wasn't the end. It was the opening move.
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In her real diary, she wrote:
> "The enemy I fear most isn't Aidan, or the school. It's the one who reads what I haven't written yet. And laughs."
She drew a pawn beside the quote. Then circled it. Twice.
This wasn't just a diary anymore. It was war.
And she had just accepted the invitation.
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Author's Note 🖤 – The Mirror Has Teeth
Every diary has two sides: the truth we write, and the fear we don't. Rhea stepped into a game that was bigger than scandals. Bigger than Velmont. She thought she was the hunter—turns out, she's being studied.
Someone has cracked her pattern. Someone is writing her before she even speaks.
This episode was about paranoia, yes. But also about trust. The kind that breaks slowly and quietly, like a glass cracking from within.
Caleb is back. But is he still Rhea's ally? The enemy left a drawing of a pawn. They know this is chess.
Let's see who plays the queen first.
Next Episode: "The Mask in the Mirror" Where Rhea finally confronts the eyes behind the glass.
Stay silent. Stay dangerous. And above all— Never blink first.
— Your backstabber in the shadows, 🐼 Aarya Patil