The golden girl's eyes grew wide, a look of profound shock lingering on her face as if she had been slapped by a ghost.
The food she had once considered her ultimate comfort dish—the very bowl she had shared in moments of warmth when "they" were still by her side—had betrayed her.
The bitter, rotting flavor of the moldy noodles coated her tongue like a physical manifestation of her own lies.
For a few seconds, she remained frozen over the vomit, her chest heaving.
Then, a dark, primal anger began to bubble up from the hollow pit of her stomach.
It was an heat that burned through her exhaustion, and in the silence of the room, she accidentally hissed a word she usually reserved for the darkest corners of her mind.
"...Disgusting."
The word felt like venom.
She leaned away from the table, sitting bolt upright with a sudden, eerie calm.
She picked up the bowl she had just labeled a disappointment and set it back down on the mahogany surface with a sharp, clinical click.
But she had forgotten the camera was still rolling.
She had forgotten the world was watching.
A notification chime pierced the silence, appearing at the periphery of her vision on the phone screen.
Her eyes darted toward it, and to her mounting horror, she saw the comment section had turned into a literal wildfire.
The numbers were skyrocketing, but the sentiment had shifted from concern to a jagged, collective outrage.
[What the hell did she just call it?]
One comment flashed by, followed by a torrent of others.
[Hey! Miso ramen isn't 'disgusting'! It's a staple!]
[How dare you?]
[I'm Japanese and I feel personally insulted. People made that recipe with love and tradition, and you called it trash just because you couldn't keep it down.]
[The way she vomited was bad enough. But then she repeated that word with so much hate. Not cool, Izha. Not cool at all.]
[I was going to follow you because you said you were a fan of my favorite food, but I'm offended. This is your first real flop, and it's a big one.]
Trizha's eyes grew even wider, her pupils shrinking.
Without realizing it, she began to lean closer to the screen, her face bathed in the harsh, artificial blue light of the live feed.
She wanted to scream an apology.
She wanted to explain that the food had expired, that it was dead, that she was just tired.
But she couldn't move.
She couldn't speak.
She was paralyzed by a single comment that cut through the noise like a jagged blade.
[You used to eat that with your friends, didn't you? Where are they now? Did they finally realize what you are and leave you? Oh, wait—maybe this is just the real you. Maybe you always hated miso ramen and only pretended to like it to fit in. Now that your friends are gone, you're finally showing your true colors. How idiotic to do it on a live stream.]
The words hit her with the force of a physical blow.
"No, it was just expired... I love it... and my friends... they... they didn't…" The thoughts swirled in her head, but they couldn't find a path to her lips.
To the thousands of viewers watching, Trizha looked like a wax mannequin.
She sat perfectly still, her eyes the only part of her that moved as they scanned the accelerating hate.
Each new comment felt like another brick being added to a wall that was sealing her in.
[He's right! Where are the other two girls?]
[This is Malacca's famous influencer? What a disappointment.]
[You really had to have a mental breakdown on live, didn't you?]
[Idiot with no friends!]
[Haha, look at her face! Her friends probably dumped her and now she's taking her anger out on her dinner! No friends? Get a life, Izha!]
[Where's your 'Prince Charming' boyfriend now? I thought he was supposed to save you from everything.]
The barrage was relentless.
While a few voices tried to defuse the situation, suggesting she was merely exhausted and not thinking straight, they were quickly drowned out by the mob.
Trizha didn't see the kindness.
She only saw the two words that hurt more than "disgusting."
No Friends.
The air in the room seemed to vanish.
Trizha's grip on the couch cushions tightened until her knuckles turned white.
The arrogance she had cultivated as "the best" finally collided with the reality of her isolation.
"Shut up!" she screamed at the phone, her voice cracking with a raw, jagged desperation.
The cheerful facade didn't just slip; it shattered into a million pieces.
She lunged toward the camera, her face contorted with a frantic need to defend the ruins of her reputation.
"Shut up, shut up, shut up!" Trizha yelled, her eyes wild. "You all don't know what happened! You don't know what I had to do! Don't you dare act like you know anything about my fucking life! You're all just faceless voices! You don't know anything at all!"
She was panting now, her hair disheveled, looking nothing like the polished icon people followed.
"That's right! My friends left!" she cried out, her voice dripping with a bitter, toxic honesty. "In fact, they aren't even my friends anymore! They left me, and do you want to know why? It's because of you! Because I had no other choices but to keep playing this game for you! I failed when I had my chance because I was too busy being what you wanted!"
She was losing her mind in real-time.
The more she pleaded her case, the more the audience turned against her, misinterpreting her grief as a narcissistic tantrum.
[Now she's blaming us?]
[What the heck did we do? We didn't make you vomit!]
[Typical attention seeker! Blaming the fans for her own mess. I knew she was fake!]
[Unsubscribing right now. Big failure for a little exhaustion.]
[Surprise, surprise,] one final comment read, the words lingering at the bottom of the scroll. [I'm a hater, and I wanted to dig a deep hole for your downfall. But I don't even need to pick up a shovel. You just dug it yourself.]
Trizha snapped.
With a guttural cry of rage, she snatched the phone from the table and hurled it across the room.
It hit the wall with a sickening crack before sliding to the floor, the screen finally going dark.
The silence that followed was deafening.
Trizha collapsed onto the couch, curling herself into a tight, pathetic ball.
She hugged her knees to her chest and began to sob, her body racking with tremors.
Even though she had turned on every light in the room, she felt like she was drowning in a darkness that no bulb could ever reach.
The world now knew the "she" that she had tried so hard to kill.
***
Somewhere else in the vast hotel complex, Zackier sat in a plush velvet chair.
He looked down at his own phone, the screen showing the "Live Ended" notification on Trizha's profile.
He let out a soft, melodic chuckle, a mischievous grin spreading across his face.
He had watched the entire train wreck from start to finish, savoring every moment of her self-destruction.
"Perfect," he whispered to the shadows.
As he stood up, smoothing out his jacket, another person's arm extended toward him from the darkness.
Another girl's arm.
And Zackier didn't hesitate.
He reached out and took the hand with a gentleness that was entirely performative, his eyes shining with a dark, predatory light as he prepared for the next phase of his game.