When Mr. Smith kicked me out of the house, Mrs. Smith did try to stop him, but how much of that was genuine?
The thought made me even more agitated. To this day, I still didn't understand where things had gone wrong.
At the computer store, I met an experienced technician who pointed at my wristwatch and said, "Young lady, that's a nice watch. Is it mechanical?"
I nodded absentmindedly, not really paying attention.
After purchasing a new computer, I hurried home with it in my arms.
Checking the date on my watch, I realized there was less than a day left until the competition submission deadline.
I forced myself to stay calm as I installed software on my new computer, scanning for viruses one by one. I was determined not to install any risky software—caution was key.
Once all the programs were set up, I tentatively wrote a couple of lines of new code.
Then I anxiously monitored Sophie's forum, refreshing the page repeatedly to see if she had posted anything new.
I waited for over an hour without any updates from her. My heart raced with excitement—could it really be that my computer had been the problem?!
In a hurry, I dashed downstairs and threw my old notebook as far away as possible; I didn't want it spying on me anymore.
Back in my room, I rolled up my sleeves and wrote a short segment of code before waiting again for Sophie's forum to update.
Another hour passed with no news from her.
Even her adoring fans began to get anxious and asked about her progress, but there were still no updates from Sophie.
I felt a sense of triumph; no matter how deeply she hid her actions, I had managed to uncover them.
But the painful lessons from my past haunted me—I feared making another wrong judgment could cost me my life again.
I raised my hand to check my watch; two hours had passed since then and still no updates from Sophie. A wave of joy washed over me—so it really was an issue with my computer!
With the memories from my past life, I was able to write the remaining code without much debugging, completing it in one go.
However, a nagging feeling of unease settled in my chest, prompting me to reopen Sophie's forum.
What I saw made my heart drop.
[Today's testing went very smoothly, and I've finished all my code. Tomorrow, I'll take my entry to the competition.]
The accompanying image showed the last few lines of my code, punctuation marks and all, perfectly intact.