My Stolen Taste, My Mountain Of Mangoes

By the ninety-ninth time a meal made me want to vomit, translucent text suddenly floated across my vision.

[The heiress is so pathetic. She wants to throw up every time she eats.]

[She still doesn't know her sense of taste was stolen by the scholarship student, Hazel, using a System.]

[All those Michelin star meals she eats? The System transfers them right into Hazel's mouth.]

I dropped my silver fork. My stomach cramped, hollow and burning with acid.

Across the dining hall, Hazel sat by the window. Her cracked plastic bowl held stale dinner rolls and cheap canned beans from days ago.

She tore off a piece of the dry bread, put it in her mouth, and chewed with a blissful smile. She looked like she was savoring world-class caviar.

Another line of text drifted past.

[It is not just the taste. All the nutritional value is transferred too. The heiress is going to keep wasting away until she literally starves to death...]

I pinched my own hollow, sunken cheek. The sharp sting of pain made me inhale sharply.

The floating text was real.

Well, if Hazel wanted my sense of taste so desperately, I was going to put my mouth to very good use.

My stomach churned with acidic hunger. I rested my head on the mahogany table, staring at Hazel across the room.

My mind drifted back to the first time I met her three years ago.

It was early September. Hazel stood at the front of the classroom wearing a faded, hand-me-down t-shirt.

"Hi, I am Hazel. I come from a really bad neighborhood on the south side. I have to take three different buses and walk two miles just to get to school..."

The classroom fell completely silent. Then someone whispered.

"Three buses? What time does she even wake up?"

Another muttered, looking at her clothes. "They are practically falling apart."

The voices were low but painfully loud in the quiet room.

The girl sitting in front of me turned to her desk mate. "She is amazing. Coming from that kind of poverty and still ranking first in the entrance exams."

Hearing those words pull at my heartstrings, I genuinely wanted to help her.

The very next day, I went to our homeroom teacher and offered to fully sponsor Hazel's tuition and living expenses.

But Hazel stood up in front of the entire class and flat-out rejected me.

"I appreciate Sloane's charity, but my parents taught me to rely on my own two hands. I refuse to live off someone else's pity just because I am poor."

"I might not know what a five-star meal tastes like. I do not even know what a proper braised short rib tastes like. But I love my stale bread and cheap beans because I bought them with my own hard-earned money."

She bowed. The class sat in stunned silence for two seconds before erupting into thunderous applause.

From that day on, I became the villain. Everyone whispered behind my back. They said the spoiled capitalist heiress tried to humiliate the poor girl with her dirty money.

Even my own desk mate moved her things away, sneering at me. "Do not think you can do whatever you want just because you are rich."

That was the day the entire senior class isolated me.

And it was the exact same day I lost my sense of taste.

Steak tasted like rubber. Fresh greens tasted like bitter ash. Swallowing premium rice felt like chewing sand.

I saw countless specialists. They all agreed my tongue was perfectly fine. They diagnosed it as psychosomatic.

For three years, I forced down food that tasted like literal dirt.

In those three years, my weight plummeted from one hundred and ten pounds to barely eighty. My cheekbones jutted out. My wrists were so thin you could count the bones.

Nobody felt sorry for me. Whenever people looked at me, they just muttered the word "Karma."

Looking at the floating text above my head, the horrifying truth finally clicked into place.

But I had never done anything to Hazel. Why would she do this to me?

[If everything goes according to the plot, Sloane will drop dead in the middle of her final exams. Hazel will score perfectly and get a full ride to Harvard.]

[The school board will even recommend that Sloane's billionaire parents adopt the brilliant, hardworking Hazel to cope with their grief.]

I stared at the word "adopt." My nails dug so hard into my palms they almost drew blood.

She had been plotting to steal my entire life from the very beginning.

But I could not just confront her. I needed hard evidence.

I skipped my afternoon classes, called my driver, and headed straight to the hospital.

Our elite academy did all its annual physical exams at this specific private hospital. Conveniently, my family happened to be the hospital's largest shareholder.

It took exactly three minutes for the chief of medicine to hand over my class's medical records.

The director reviewed my charts and sighed.

"Miss Sloane, your vitals are dangerously low. Your body is showing signs of severe, prolonged malnutrition. But..."

I knew exactly what confused him. I was the daughter of a billionaire. My three daily meals were prepared by private chefs and delivered straight to the academy. How could I possibly be malnourished?

He shook his head. "We have run every scan available. We simply cannot find the medical cause."

I did not reply. Instead, I pulled Hazel's medical file from the stack.

Her vitals were absolutely perfect. Under the physical fitness assessment, the doctor had actually written "Excellent."

I pulled up her intake records from freshman year to compare.

The difference was staggering. After three years of supposedly eating nothing but stale bread and cheap canned food, she had grown two inches and gained a very healthy thirty pounds.

Unless she was tapping into some supernatural force, that was biologically impossible.

Armed with the files, I took a sleek black car straight back to the academy.

I walked into the classroom and stopped right in front of Hazel's desk.

"Did you do this to me? Did you steal my sense of taste?"

The classroom went dead silent.

Hazel looked up, her eyes wide and innocent. "What do you mean?"

I slammed my hand on her desk. "You stole my taste. Every single thing I eat gets transferred straight into your mouth."

Hazel's expression faltered for a fraction of a second before her eyes welled up with tears. Her voice trembled.

"Sloane... I really do not know what you are talking about. I eat dry bread and cheap beans every single day. I buy them from the discount rack..."

The rest of the class immediately stood up to defend her.

"Are you psychotic, Sloane? Hazel literally eats scraps. She has it hard enough without you making up crazy conspiracy theories!"

"You cannot blame other people just because your own body is failing!"

Hazel wiped her eyes, reaching into her worn-out backpack to pull out a crinkled plastic bag. Inside was half a dry roll and some unappetizing pickled vegetables.

"Look. I really do not eat anything good..." Her voice trailed off, making her sound like a heavily wronged martyr.

"Really?" I let out a cold, sharp laugh and threw both medical reports onto her desk. "Then explain to me how a girl who survives on dry bread and pickles managed to get perfectly healthy, grow taller, and gain thirty pounds?"

Hazel froze. She stared at the papers, completely lost for words.

Right on cue, a familiar voice rang out from the back of the room.

"Sloane, leave her alone! Just because Hazel refused your charity does not mean she cannot accept help from someone else."

Preston walked down the aisle, acting like a knight in shining armor. He placed a carton of premium organic milk gently onto Hazel's desk.

"Here is your daily milk, Hazel."

He looked so incredibly smug, as if Hazel's perfect health was entirely his doing.

Looking at the carton of milk, a wave of disgust washed over me.

"Preston, did you forget who you actually grew up with?"

The moment those words left my mouth, Hazel frantically shoved the milk carton back toward him.

"Sloane, I am so sorry. I should not have accepted Preston's kindness. I did not mean to make you jealous." She looked down, her voice trembling. "I promise I will never accept anything from him ever again. Just please stop bullying me."

In one breath, she completely twisted my legitimate accusation into a petty, jealous catfight over a boy.

Preston instantly stepped in front of her.

"Are you serious right now, Sloane? I literally scoured the city for rare delicacies to help cure your taste loss. Are you seriously going to throw a tantrum over a single carton of plain milk?"

My blood boiled. I pointed directly at Hazel.

"I cannot taste anything because of her! She has some sort of system. No matter what I eat, the taste and the nutrients get transferred directly to her. She did this to me!"

He did not even hesitate. He looked at me like I belonged in an asylum.

"Do you even hear yourself right now, Sloane? A scholarship student from the slums used a 'system' to magically steal your taste?"

"You are absolutely insane."

"You are malnourished because you refuse to eat your food! Stop projecting your eating disorder onto her!"

I stared at him. I had looked at that face for over a decade, but right now, all I felt was profound disappointment.

I did not wait for Preston after school. I went straight back to my family's estate alone.

Staring at the massive, floor-to-ceiling wine cellar, an overwhelming wave of grief hit me.

I popped the cork on a bottle of premium whiskey and poured glass after glass.

I cried while I drank.

Growing up in a strict, aristocratic household, I was never allowed to touch alcohol. I had absolutely zero alcohol tolerance.

But with my taste gone, the whiskey did not burn. It did not sting my throat. I drank it like it was tap water, desperately trying to drown out the suffocating sadness.

I drank until I felt physically full.

Then my phone lit up with a video call from Preston.

The second I answered, he started screaming at me.

"Sloane, what the hell did you do to Hazel?!"

"Why is she acting like this?!"

I stared at the screen. Hazel's face was flushed bright red. She was slumped over a trash can, violently throwing up. It was the most hilarious thing I had seen all day.

"How would I know what is wrong with her?" I asked coldly. "And why is it automatically my fault?"

"Who else would sabotage her?!" Preston yelled, his face contorted in anger. "Did you poison her? We were sitting here eating a perfectly normal dinner, and suddenly she started complaining about being dizzy and nauseous. Now she is completely delirious!"

Hearing his blind accusations, my rage hit its absolute peak.

"When my body started failing, I told you Hazel was behind it, and you called me crazy!"

"Now Hazel has a stomachache, and without a single shred of evidence, you immediately accuse me of poisoning her?!"

"We grew up together. Does a decade of trust mean absolutely nothing compared to her?"

He held Hazel tightly against his chest, glaring at the camera with total disgust.

"Hazel is not capable of something like that. You, on the other hand, are a spoiled, vindictive brat. I would not put it past you to try and ruin her."

Hearing those words, the very last trace of affection I held for Preston evaporated into thin air.

"Believe whatever you want."

I hung up the phone.

I was so furious I reached for another glass, but halfway there, reality crashed into me.

I was drinking straight whiskey.

Because I had no sense of taste, I was not getting drunk. But the physiological effects of the alcohol were being transferred to Hazel through her precious system!

That was why she was dizzy and vomiting. She was experiencing severe alcohol poisoning.

This meant that whatever I consumed, good or bad, healthy or toxic, went straight to her.

I was a billionaire's daughter. I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth.

The formula I drank as a baby was the most expensive in the world. The water I drank was flown in from private mineral springs in Europe. My sprawling mansion housed a team of elite private chefs.

In eighteen years, I had never consumed a single piece of garbage. Even my cold medicine was custom-flavored to taste like candy.

That was exactly why Hazel chose to bind her system to me.

For three years, she reaped the benefits of my luxurious diet. She never realized her system had a fatal flaw because I never ate anything remotely bad.

Tonight was the very first time she suffered the consequences of stealing from my mouth.

But it was definitely not going to be the last.

A thrill of pure excitement rushed through me. I pulled out her medical report.

Right under the allergy section, it was written in bold black ink.

Allergic to Mangoes.

I opened a premium grocery delivery app and immediately ordered fifty pounds of fresh mangoes.

The very next day, fifty pounds of mangoes were delivered straight to the lobby of my private academy dorm.

I hauled the massive boxes into my room and ripped them open. Dozens of bright yellow mangoes were neatly packed inside.

I picked one up. It was smooth and cold against my palm.

I hated mangoes. I had not touched one in three years.

I locked my dorm room door and set up my phone on a tripod. I typed out a livestream title.

"Eating One Hundred Mangoes Challenge."

I hit the go-live button. The viewer count started trickling in.

I peeled the first mango and took a massive bite. I could not taste the sweetness. I could only feel the mushy, fibrous texture mashing against my tongue.

I chewed twice and swallowed.

Then came the second. Then the third.

By the time I finished the tenth mango, the chat was blowing up, praising me for being a competitive eating god.

Since the system was transferring the actual fullness and digestion to Hazel, I did not feel bloated at all. Quantity was completely irrelevant to me.

Honestly, I was just dying to know what the physical limit was for someone with a severe mango allergy.

The answer was fifteen.

Right as I swallowed the last bite of the fifteenth mango, someone started violently pounding on my door.

"Sloane! Open the damn door! What did you do?!"