The Princess Lives in a Truman World Chapter 03

The Princess Lives in a Truman World Chapter 03

The comment feed was buzzing with discussion.

[Sofia still doesn’t know the debt collectors were hired by her own mother.]

[They show up three times a month like clockwork.]

[Even the men her mother brings home are paid actors. It’s all staged to test Sofia’s self-control.]

[How can her parents watch her suffer like this and not feel anything?]

The streamer posted, [This is part of the experiment too. It is meant to toughen her up. I paid people to stage it, so she should be grateful.]

[Once the scholarship finals are over, we’ll bring her home and make up for everything she has gone without over the past six years.]

[She has kept a level head in dangerous situations, maintained outstanding grades, and learned a wide range of survival skills. She is the one best suited to become heir to the Family.]

My hands shook around the phone.

Make it up to me? How could anyone make up for the damage caused by six years of lies?

They wanted me to inherit the Family, but I wanted nothing to do with it.

The next day at school, my math mentor came looking for me.

“Sofia, we heard back from Göttingen. They’re offering you a full scholarship that will cover your tuition and living expenses.”

She continued, “A professor at Göttingen is especially interested in the corollary on the distribution of prime numbers that you proved in your competition paper. The result could reduce computational complexity by an order of magnitude and has direct implications for optimizing core cryptographic algorithms. He wants you to join his research group in Germany.”

I nodded, my throat tightening.

“I want to go.”

My mentor placed a hand on my shoulder.

“Give it everything you’ve got. You’re the only student in the country they selected this year. Most people would do anything for an opportunity like this.”

This was probably exactly what my parents had wanted to see. The child raised in deliberate deprivation would suffer more, work harder, and ultimately excel.

My school counselor gave my shoulder an encouraging pat.

“All right. Since Göttingen has accepted you, you can skip the state merit-scholarship finals if you want. Take this time to rest and prepare. You can arrive on campus a little early.”

Why would I care about inheriting a vast crime family? What I wanted was to help advance science and technology.

Soon, I would escape this place and their twisted livestream game.

I would escape the people who called themselves my parents even though they had never deserved the title.

I could build a good life on my own.

After all, they were not the only ones capable of deception.

Later that day, several schools jointly hosted a citywide academic symposium. I attended as one of the outstanding students representing my school.

Before the main program began, an outstanding student from one of the city’s elite private academies was invited to speak.

The familiar figure who walked onto the stage was my twin sister, Aria Corleone, representing her school.

“Doesn’t that girl look a lot like Sofia Corleone from our school?” someone whispered nearby.

Several students turned toward one another and began murmuring.

“They even have the same last name.”

“Yeah, but that girl is obviously prettier. You can tell she grew up rich.”

“How is some broke scholarship kid supposed to compete with a trust-fund princess? They’re worlds apart.”

Aria and I were twins, and our faces had once been nearly identical. Years of malnutrition had gradually created visible differences between us.

I looked plain, and my hands were rough.

Aria’s skin was fair, soft, and smooth.

She had grown up surrounded by love and money, while I had grown up alone with nothing but hardship and tears.

“I have a friend at that private academy,” someone muttered. “Apparently, that girl’s grades are terrible. Her family’s money is the only reason she was allowed to speak today.”

Onstage, Aria spoke with polished confidence as she shared her study habits and academic experience.

Then I spotted Mom and Dad in the second row. They were smiling proudly and holding up their phones to record every moment of Aria’s speech.

When people love you, they want to preserve every moment of your life.

My parents did not even know I was attending the same symposium.