The Thought Thief

Yes, I am the plagiarist. I will stop updating my comic and drop out of college to atone for my sins.

The moment I posted that final announcement, my loyal readers didn't panic, but the manipulative little clout chaser definitely did.

In my past life, I was just a quiet artist drawing a popular queer fantasy webcomic.

Then she came along. An influencer with a massive following. She framed me for stealing her work, incited a massive internet hate campaign against me, and even got my publisher to publicly denounce me.

She took my original universe, butchered the lore, and sold the movie and animation rights for millions.

Nobody remembered that when she first started posting her comic, she claimed it was just a "humble homage" to my work.

I couldn't handle the crushing weight of the death threats and the global humiliation. I stood on the edge of the campus rooftop.

I watched my sketchbooks flutter down into the abyss, and then I followed them.

The moment gravity won, my final sight was my parents. Their eyes were completely shattered, red and screaming with despair.

I fell into an endless, suffocating darkness, drowning in bitter regret and sheer hatred.

Then I opened my eyes. And the first thing I saw was the notification for her newest chapter update.

A sharp ringtone violently pulled me out of my trance.

The dorm room was pitch black. The only light came from my monitor, reflecting off my bloodshot eyes.

I frantically checked the date in the bottom corner of the screen.

I was back. Exactly two weeks before everything went to hell.

Which meant...

I scrambled to open my creator dashboard. In my scheduled drafts folder, my newest chapter was sitting there.

It was set to publish in exactly one hour.

Without a single second of hesitation, I smashed the cancel button.

In my previous life, that specific chapter was my absolute masterpiece. It perfectly tied together a massive plot twist I had been setting up for months.

When it originally went live, my comment section exploded.

"The storytelling is insane! Even the background characters have such tragic depth!"

"Why did you have to kill him off so early? I am literally sobbing over my keyboard right now."

"The artwork is breathtaking. The look of repressed agony on his face ruined me."

Those were my day one readers. The ones who had been with me since I was a nobody.

When the plagiarism accusations started flying, they were the only ones who stood in the trenches and fought for me.

Looking at their old comments begging for an update, hot tears spilled down my cheeks.

Thank you for believing in me.

But their voices had been completely drowned out by Ivy's rabid fanbase.

One of my top readers, a girl who always sent me premium gifts on the app, had her real identity leaked online.

She endured thousands of vicious messages, explicit deepfakes, and vile rumors.

Her mental health completely collapsed, and she had to drop out of her university.

Thinking about her, I opened my drafts again, staring at the panels I had painstakingly drawn frame by frame.

A sudden, freezing prickle crawled down my vertebrae.

I whipped my head around to look at my sleeping roommates.

I didn't know why, but it felt like invisible eyes were burning a hole in the back of my neck.

But the room was totally still.

In my past life, exactly three days after I posted this chapter, Ivy's fans went on a total rampage.

They posted timestamps showing that Ivy had updated her chapter exactly one hour before mine. The plot was identical.

The platform, which had always ignored my emails, suddenly posted a massive public statement.

They permanently banned my account and mass blocked anyone who tried to defend me.

They blatantly took Ivy's side.

Her fans didn't stop there. They tracked down my personal Instagram.

"Thieves deserve to rot."

"Did your parents raise you just to steal other people's talent?"

"No wonder your art is garbage. Go beg on the streets, you brainless hack."

"You go to Western Arts Uni? We are calling the dean right now to get you expelled!"

The school administration, terrified of bad PR, forced me into an indefinite suspension.

The day I packed my bags to leave the dorms, I barely made it to the ground floor before someone threw a dripping trash bag right at my face.

It was garbage from the communal bathrooms.

A sickening stench flooded my lungs. Before I could even wipe my eyes, a heavy boot slammed into my ribs.

"You filthy thief! Stealing from our queen! We'll teach you a lesson!"

"Go eat dirt, psycho!"

They pinned me to the concrete and kicked me relentlessly. They fractured two of my ribs and stomped on my dominant hand until my fingers snapped.

After that day, I went from being a top tier artist to a broken shell who couldn't even grip a stylus without shaking.

Everywhere I went, the whispers and the venom followed.

My fingers suddenly throbbed with a phantom pain. I looked down at my hands. They were perfectly fine. Unbroken.

My heart rate slowly leveled out.

My phone screen lit up, flashing a call from my boyfriend, Connor.

Connor and I were both in the fine arts program. He was the golden boy of the campus.

From the first week of freshman year, girls had been throwing themselves at him.

I never cared about his hype, but out of nowhere, he started pursuing me. Obsessively.

He waited outside my classes, brought me coffee, and flooded me with attention.

Eventually, I gave in and agreed to date him.

But a few months into our relationship, a new girl suddenly appeared in his orbit.

Ivy.

I didn't realize it until right before my death, but Ivy was the mastermind behind the webcomic account that ruined my life.

Ivy had this striking, almost unearthly aesthetic. Deep violet eyes, porcelain skin, and a tragic, delicate aura.

She looked ethereal, completely untouchable by the real world.

She transferred to our program a few months ago. Rumor had it her mother was a famous Hollywood screenwriter and her dad was a prestigious novelist.

Within weeks, she was crowned the undisputed campus queen. She had just as many stalkers as Connor did.

Connor swore they were just distant childhood family friends. He claimed they practically grew up in the same sandbox and viewed each other like siblings.

So I brushed off their constant, overly intimate touching.

Until the night he got too drunk at a frat party and accidentally dialed my number.

I walked into the VIP room and found Ivy sitting right on his lap. They were sipping from the exact same glass of whiskey.

Their lips were practically brushing.

I walked right up to them, my face deadpan, and snatched the glass away. "Sharing a cup seems a bit inconvenient, doesn't it?"

"Actually, keeping me around is what's inconvenient."

"We are done."

But the very next day, we were back together.

He staged a massive public apology in the middle of the quad. He spelled out my name in expensive candles and shoved a giant bouquet of roses into my arms while a crowd cheered.

I felt incredibly humiliated and completely trapped.

I agreed to take him back just to escape the hundreds of staring eyes.

But once a cheater, always a cheater.

Every time I caught him getting too close to Ivy, he would pull another massive, manipulative stunt to force my forgiveness.

I was completely exhausted by the toxic cycle.

But I never knew how to break it.

Now, with a second chance at life, my only goal was crystal clear. I was going to stay a million miles away from this pathetic, cheating duo.

Connor's name flashed on my screen again. I declined the call and went straight to his contact profile to delete him.

But right before I hit block, I saw his newest status update.

"Nothing is more beautiful than a girl chasing her dreams."

Attached was a photo of Ivy's back. She was sitting at a cafe, drafting storyboards in a leather notebook and scribbling script notes.

Something felt incredibly wrong. I zoomed in on the picture.

The script she was writing was the exact same plot from my unpublished drafts folder.

It wasn't just a similar vibe. Her outline, the camera angles, the emotional beats, even the specific dialogue lines were identical.

The only difference was that my story was about two male fantasy warlords, and hers was a traditional male and female romance.

Sure, the High Fae fantasy genre had common tropes, but matching dialogue and panel pacing word for word? That was impossible.

She literally just took my tragic male protagonist and slapped a dress on him!

This was exactly how she killed me in my past life. She published her chapter exactly one hour before my scheduled release.

It locked me in as the undeniable thief.

I always thought it was a freak coincidence or a massive leak. But looking at it now, something darker was happening.

Every single plot twist in my comic came directly from my own brain at random hours of the night.

They were purely mine.

I rarely read other comics, let alone copied anyone.

I searched up Ivy's latest published chapter on the app.

My eyes went entirely cold. She even copied the deliberate, unresolved cliffhanger I had written when I was suffering from writer's block. Word for absolute word.

My brain felt like a knot of barbed wire.

I sat in the dark and thought about it all night long.

By dawn, I made a ruthless decision. I permanently deleted every single unreleased file in my drafts folder.

I was going to completely nuke my own storyline.

I was shifting it from a sweet, slow burn romance into a highly toxic, agonizing psychological tragedy.

I wanted maximum emotional damage.

I spent the entire morning writing a brand new outline, drafting twisted new character motivations, and sketching rough character sheets.

I had been posting art online since high school. Over the years, I had built a reputation as a veteran creator.

Because my genre was a bit niche, I wasn't mainstream famous.

But my core audience was fiercely loyal.

Since the day I signed my publishing contract, this comic had completely dominated the top ranking charts.

It had been sitting at number one for months, beating the second place comic by tens of thousands of premium tips.

My ultimate dream was to see my universe adapted into a beautiful animated series.

I wanted to pick the voice actors and oversee the script myself.

Even if a studio couldn't capture every nuance, I had already mapped out exactly how to translate the subtle romantic tension to the screen.

Every night before I fell asleep, I imagined my characters moving and breathing on a cinema screen.

This specific story was inspired by a random moment from my teenage years.

I saw two guys walking in front of me in the rain. The taller one playfully flicked the forehead of the shorter one.

He laughed and said, "If you're an angel, I'm definitely your downfall."

"I won't just break your halo, I'm going to break your heart. That's the only way you'll never forget me."

That passing joke sparked my entire universe.

I spent three years fleshing out the lore, breathing life into the words.

And Ivy had stolen every single drop of it.

In my past life, she used my soul to secure massive animation and film deals.

And she let the studios butcher it.

She made an absolute fortune while my life's work was humiliated.

My stoic, self sacrificing hero was rewritten into a whiny, boy crazy idiot who was willing to destroy the universe just to get a kiss.

It was utterly psychotic!

Thinking about that, an electric spark lit up my brain.

Wait. Wouldn't an unhinged, psychotic protagonist actually be a brilliant twist?

If I rewrote the angel's descent to earth as a descent into absolute madness, the lore would be incredibly rich.

I downed two iced americanos and didn't sleep for a second. I just typed and sketched like a machine.

The ideas were bleeding out of my fingertips.

By the second afternoon, my heart was hammering against my ribs.

My nervous system was completely wired.

The adrenaline rush was so intense it actually hurt.

It felt like my brain and my physical body were violently wrestling for control over my own hands.

The manic trance didn't break until my roommate gently placed a cupcake on my desk.

"Serena, you haven't slept or eaten in thirty six hours. Are you trying to put yourself in the ER?"

"Put the pen down. Eat something."

I violently snapped out of the trance, gasping for air.

I exhaled deeply, feeling like my soul had been scooped out with a spoon.

"Thanks for the sugar. I'll eat it right after I upload this chapter."

My roommate wasn't having it. She hit save on my software and physically closed my laptop lid.

"You already update twice a day. What is the rush?"

"If you don't eat right now, I am calling your mom to tattle on you!"

Defeated, I picked up the fork and started eating.

While I was chewing on the frosting, I aimlessly scrolled through social media and completely froze.

A forgotten memory slammed into my chest.

Back when Ivy first started gaining traction, a few eagle eyed readers pointed out that her lore felt way too similar to mine.

She had responded to a comment directly.

"I am just paying homage to Heavy Rain." Heavy Rain was my pen name.

"Is paying homage a crime now? Or does she own the copyright to the entire fantasy genre? Did she invent the universe?"

That single comment started an absolute war.

Remembering this, I quickly opened the app and found her creator profile.

Her original replies were still public.

Reader: "Why does your world building feel like it was directly copy pasted?"

Ivy: "Haha, you caught me! I totally borrowed Heavy Rain's vibe. I just thought her style was cute."

Reader: "Your villain's backstory is exactly like Heavy Rain's protagonist."

Ivy: "What can I say? I am her biggest fanboy! I practically worship her!"

I took rapid screenshots of every single admission and finally let out a breath of relief.

In my past life, she eventually deleted all the comments where she admitted to copying me, keeping only the vague, defensive ones.

Those deleted comments later became the weapon her fans used to destroy me.

They accused me of having a god complex, bullying a small indie artist, and gatekeeping the entire fantasy genre.

I never gatekept anything.

It was an entirely fabricated narrative.

But the internet mob didn't care about the truth. To them, my explanations were just pathetic excuses.

"Thieves always lie through their teeth!"

"She is actually sending her toxic fans to harass our princess on Instagram!"

"Our princess is having panic attacks because of her! She needs to be held accountable. I need to know where she lives so I can handle her in person."

And they did. They found my university.

They found my parents.

The university was flooded with so many bomb threats and angry calls that they forced me out.

My phone was bombarded with disgusting texts from strange men asking for my hourly rate.

Ivy had posted my personal phone number on explicit hookup forums.

Disgusting creeps tracked my location.

One night, right outside the dorms, I was almost dragged into an unmarked van.

If my roommate hadn't screamed for campus security, I would have been...

During that absolute nightmare, I called Connor begging for help. He just screamed at me through the phone.

"Serena, you make me absolutely sick. I cannot believe I dated a fraud."

"Don't you feel pathetic stealing from someone else? You can't even draw your own stick figures! You call yourself an artist? You're a parasite!"

"I never want to see your ugly face again. Go jump off a bridge!"

"Looking at you makes my skin crawl. I must have been blind to ever touch you."

I had smiled a broken, hollow smile, dropped my phone, threw my sketchbooks into the wind, and stepped off the ledge.

When my skull cracked against the pavement, my eyes locked onto my parents' faces, completely destroyed by grief.

In that split second, the regret consumed me.

If I could do it all over, I would burn the world down before I let them hurt me again.

And now, the universe had handed me a second chance.

This time, I just needed to figure out exactly how Ivy was getting access to my unreleased thoughts. Once I cracked that, she was finished.

The suffocating memories made my chest tight.

I couldn't breathe. My heart seized with a sharp, terrifying pain.

Something was deeply wrong. In that moment of intense pain, an unnatural, burning urge commanded me to open my laptop and upload my draft.

I violently fought the urge, distracting myself by endlessly scrolling through my phone.

A second later, Ivy's new comic update popped onto my feed.

A layer of freezing sweat coated my spine.

Her brand new chapter was the exact same unhinged, psychotic plotline I had literally just hallucinated in my head!