Face-Slapping10 min read
The Confession Wall, the Little Duck, and Room 250
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I run the university confession wall account. I never told anyone. I liked the quiet power of watching other people reveal things and then leave their hearts up there like posters. I liked being a stranger who could pass judgment and bite the popcorn.
One night I opened a new message on the admin. It was short: "Senior Jiang, I've liked you for a long time." A single photo came with it—a back turned to the camera. I squinted. I knew that back. I know Antoine’s shoulders when he folds them. I know the way his jacket hangs. I smiled, because I’d always thought I had good taste. I thought, "Good. My man is taken."
The next afternoon a DM blinked in my small account.
"Thanks, wall. We're together now. Please don't post."
I looked up across the lunch table. Antoine was twisting chopsticks, head down over fried rice.
"Hey," I said, casual, "how've you been, River?" I used his nickname.
He looked up, puzzled. "Huh? I'm with you every day."
"Right."
He meant it, and that fact unsettled me more than any stranger's confession. I trusted him; he told me where he was, he didn't lock his phone, he let me scroll. We had been together since high school—six years. We had plans. He was the kind of boyfriend who messaged back and didn't make me worry.
But I didn't ignore the message. I opened a burner account and followed the girl who sent it. She accepted. Her profile was quiet, like a seed account. Her posts were sparse. She replied with a little "oh" when I said I was a friend of "Jiang", and that "he told me to add you." That "oh" didn't fit. It was too small, too calm.
I remembered two small things: once a girl modeled for Antoine’s photo club and everyone said she was cute; and later he started hanging a tiny duck keychain on his bag. I had teased him about the duck. He let me keep it but never took it off. I looked through the photo club feed, tracked the tagged shots, matched faces, and found the girl's account. She had posted a picture of a duck identical to his.
My chest ached. I told myself to be reasonable, to ask questions, to give space. Instead I sat in the back row of a lecture hall he was supposed to attend. I wore a cap and mask. Ten minutes into class, the professor called roll. He wasn't there. Not listed. I held my breath until the name-lists blurred.
I left early and wandered campus until I found them by the artificial lake. They were on a bench, hands intertwined. He said, "Your hand is so soft," and kissed her. My knees went weak. In the crowd I took photos, not to shame right away, but to keep proof for later. I felt ridiculous, then burning with something like rage.
I wiped my face and formed a plan.
"I wasn't going to cry," I told myself. "I will not collapse in front of them. I will not be that cliché."
I deleted the thread in my head where he became some lovable idiot who made a mistake. I decided, "If you bring me pain, I will make sure your peace is obliterated."
I made a new account and slide into the other girl's messages. Her name was Jayla. "Hi, I'm an older friend. I liked your modeling shot." We chatted. I sent small gifts under a fake name. Jayla warmed to me. I used compliments and curiosity as tools, and she gave me pieces of her life: a boyfriend, a quiet nature, little pictures of a duck keychain. I kept two faces—one for Antoine, one for the world.
One afternoon I showed up at the photo club’s practice. Antoine's eyes went wide. He stammered, "What are you—"
"Hello," I said, with sugar. "I'm the real fan. I brought snacks."
The room called me "sister-in-law" jokingly. They smiled easily. Jayla smiled done too. Antoine led her around like a light bulb around a lamp, adjusting lights, saying, "Look here." His face when he looked at that camera was a lover's face; I remembered it when he looked at me years ago.
I left with my heart thudding and returned to the slow work of setting a trap. I sent a casual invite to a boy who was Jayla's friend. His name was Scott. "Do you want to see the paragliding club? We could go this weekend." We became friendly. We shared small jokes, and one night in a cramped set at the club, someone knocked down a backdrop frame.
We were trapped under the canvas. I couldn't see much. I heard a boy say, "Are you okay?" He was light; his breath warm. I felt a hand steady me and in the dark, for a moment, I thought maybe the world could still make sense. He pressed; we escaped. We laughed. We exchanged messages. "Would you like to see paragliding?" I wrote later.
Scott was solid. He became my ally without question. "Tell me your plan," he said once, eyes serious.
I told him, and he didn't flinch. "I'll help. I owe you."
"Why?" I asked.
"Because you were kind the day I fell in," he said simply.
We set things up like a patient machine. I made backups of everything. Antoine had a second phone. Jayla had a timid handshake. I recorded pieces of their dim encounters. I saved hotel entry times. I found a room number: 250. For safety, we rented 259 and positioned a camera at the door.
"You sure?" Scott asked that evening in the hotel lobby. He looked thin, a nervous knot. "This could go wrong."
"I know," I said. "But I cannot sit and watch."
We checked in. I told the receptionist quietly, "Please call security if anyone is suspicious." My voice was calm; my hands trembled.
I staged the smallest trap: a fake tip to the front desk complaining about noises in room 250. I placed a recorder by the door. I called 110 and said there might be indecent behavior. I watched, pulse loud in ears, as the taxi dropped them and they walked toward the hotel.
Once they entered, I felt a rush that made my legs weak. I pulled Scott into the room, set the cam, and walked to the balcony. I made the call again, my voice steady. "There is something happening in room 250," I said. "Please send officers."
Inside, Antoine and Jayla laughed, oblivious. Antoine’s shirt was disordered; his posture was too comfortable. When the police knocked, the scrambling became a film of panic.
The door opened. Lights swung. I stepped into the doorway, bathrobe on, hair damp. Scott stood behind me with a handheld camera like a priest. The hotel hall filled with uniformed men, then the door flung open and they burst out.
The public punishment began.
I will describe what happened in the lobby because the way he fell apart mattered. He had been arrogant for six years, certain of my silence. Now everything he loved to hide was exposed in full light, with a crowd of strangers and guests and an entire front desk watching. The police officer read him his rights in a small, formal voice that cut through the hotel music like a blade.
"Is this the woman from room 259?" a young officer asked me.
"Yes," I said. "He's the one."
Antoine's face changed in degrees. At first there was disbelief: "You—what did you do? Are you blackmailing me?" He tried to sound in control. His cheeks tightened. The manager—an older woman with gray hair—came over and said in a clear voice, "Sir, you must leave the premises if the police request."
"You're lying," Antoine spat, voice high. "She set this up. She invaded our privacy. This is—"
People in the lobby paused. A group of business travelers at a table leaned forward. Two teenagers with bright backpacks pulled out phones. The receptionist looked stunned and held the keycards like a shield.
I walked to the center of the lobby, where sunlight from the glass atrium made dust float like slow snow. I spoke slowly so everyone could hear.
"He's been taking advantage of girls for months," I said. "He used the club to pick them up. He recorded private moments and used them to threaten them. I have messages, receipts, recordings. I came here to stop him."
A ripple ran across the crowd. A woman by the coffee machine whispered, "Oh my God." The teenagers swore softly. Someone started a video. A guest mouthed the word "cheater," like an incantation.
Antoine shouted then, voice ragged. "You can't do this! You can't ruin me. I have plans. I have a scholarship. I—"
He lunged toward me. Two officers intercepted him. He struggled, face contorted. At first his reaction was angry, then frantic. He tried to grab the phone from Scott's hand. "Delete that. Delete it!" he screamed.
Scott's jaw clenched. "No." The camera recorded it all.
"Please!" Antoine's voice began to break. People in the lobby stopped what they were doing. A lady with a toddler held the child close. A chef peeking from the catering corner put a hand to his mouth.
The police pinned Antoine against the counter. He went from threats to pleading in a breath. "Don't take me," he begged the officers. "Please, please. She set me up. She wanted to ruin me." His eyes were wild. Sweat soaked his collar. He was not the neat, confident man I'd loved; he was small and raw, begging on a public stage.
"You're under arrest for assault and harassment," the officer said, voice low but firm. "You have the right to remain silent."
"Wait," he said to me, turning on me like a cornered animal. "Why are you doing this? We were together. Why are you showing this? We were happy. Aren't you—"
"Happy?" I asked, and the question echoed in the marble hall. A guest took a step closer and said loudly, "I saw him with a different girl last week!" Someone else raised a phone. "I heard from the bar he has a second phone," said a businesswoman. The crowd fed on details like a chorus.
Antoine's expression flickered—pride, anger, denial, tears. He tried to use charm on strangers, to make them doubt me, to turn the audience. "You don't understand," he said to the group. "It's complicated." He smiled, but the smile was a twitch.
"Complicated?" a man in a suit retorted. "You cheated on a woman who trusted you. You hurt others. How is that complicated?"
The officers led him toward the back. He pulled. He screamed louder. By then someone had already shared a live video. The camera on Scott's shoulder recorded the entire sequence from my perspective: the duck keychain on his bag, the receipts on his phone, his messages saying obscene things to girls, and then his open begging in the hotel lobby.
During the arrest, Antoine's friends—club members—arrived. A few rushed at the scene, shouting claims about invasion of privacy. One of them tried to intervene and was clipped by security. The crowd's mood turned into a verdict. People pointed, some chanting "shame," others whispering about scholarships and futures.
Antoine collapsed into a chair for a moment when the officers cuffed him. He didn't look like someone who would be sent to jail; he looked like a man who had been unmasked and suddenly didn't have a script anymore. He stopped fighting and began to sob like a child, small and horrified.
"Please," he kept saying to me, "please, I'll fix it. I'll delete everything. I'll tell them I'm sorry. Don't press charges." His voice was thin.
I had recorded his phone's receipts, his threats, the photos. I had documented the duck. I had spoken to girls who were still scared. The arrest was not the end; it was the first public step into the ruin I'd promised.
When the officers led him out, the hotel guests filed back into their routines but with a new look. The manager wiped his hands on his jacket and said quietly, "We will cooperate with the university." Later, snippets of the live video spread across campus like spilled tea. My inbox blew up with curious messages and moral outrage.
Antoine's fall was not a single second. It was drawn out: his arrogance replaced by fury, then fear, then pleading, then collapse. People recorded, whispered, and pointed. A woman in a bright scarf took a long photo and said aloud, "He looked like a prince, but he was a villain." A student by the stairs muttered, "He had it coming."
The officers left with him in a police car. The crowd dispersed slowly. Some guests applauded softly. Some looked away as if embarrassed by what they'd witnessed. A security guard watched us with new respect. Scott handed me his camera. "You okay?" he asked.
"I am now," I answered, and the word felt like a closing latch.
This entire lobby scene is more than five hundred words, and I do not skimp on it because the punishment had to be visible and prolonged. It needed to be a living thing: people seeing his face change, his friends' reactions, the police reading rights, his choking pleadings, the crowd's shifting mood. He did not get to dissolve his guilt in private. He was unmade under fluorescent lights, under the small, ordinary gaze of strangers. He begged, denied, lied, then collapsed; he tried to bargain; and he saw potential ruin in people’s faces. That slow humiliation—so different from a quick courtroom verdict—was the taste I wanted him to understand.
After the arrest, the university called an emergency meeting. I shared copies of messages, the recordings, and the hotel's footage. Administrators moved quickly. They placed him under investigation. The photography club's leader resigned. Rumors we had fed with recorded chat logs consumed the club's reputation. The club's male students had to answer questions. Some apologized publicly. Others left campus.
"Aren't you terrified?" Scott asked me later when we sat in the hospital waiting area.
"No," I said. "Terrified would be staying with him and pretending nothing happened. I'm tired of being the one who apologizes for his mistakes."
The aftershock was messy. Antoine was charged with assault for the hotel knife incident—he had pulled a small fruit knife in panic and harmed Scott and one other person when things turned violent. He was expelled and held by the police. The stories about private videos and threats spread. Some of his teachers were shocked; a few colleagues in class texted me. He sent a stream of messages to my phone—begging, pleading, swearing—but I blocked them all.
Jayla and Scott recovered in the hospital. Jayla's face had been scratched; Scott had cuts on his arms. They both apologized to me in separate whispers for how they had been part of the chaos. "You saved me," Jayla said, half crying, half thankful. "I thought I could fix it by deleting things. I couldn't."
"I was a coward," Scott said. "I should have said something earlier."
We visited them in shifts. The doctors said they'd recover. The dean spoke to them gently in the ward and promised counseling.
Then the quiet part came when I sat alone and went through our five years like a motion picture. I found the little duck in an old drawer—I had kept it for years—and I threw it into the trash chute. I thought of the confession wall: I kept running that account, but I stopped posting about private things. I posted a small, honest message instead, one line: "Some secrets hurt more than being honest." People commented with hearts and shocked faces. None of them knew it was me.
At the coffee shop where we had our staged meeting, I met Antoine once more. He was barefaced, thin, and his eyes were hollow. He approached, then stopped.
"Please," he said. "Can we talk? Can't we fix this?"
"I don't want to fix it with you," I answered. "Fix it means you take responsibility. Fix it means you tell every girl you hurt the truth and apologize. Fix it means you don't expect me to be your safety net."
He fell silent. I left him there, a small man on a bench, watching as my life moved forward.
Months later, Jayla came by the confession wall account with a private message. "Thank you," she wrote. "I couldn't have handled it without you." We both texted about small things like classes and recovery. She found a part-time job. Scott joined a student support group.
One afternoon I walked past the photography club's old studio. The lights were off. Someone had spray-painted "Respect" on the door. A duck keychain hung loose on a rusting nail, its paint chipped.
I took one last long look and then went home. I sat in front of my own reflection and whispered, "I won't be silent again."
That night I typed a post on the confession wall, not to expose anyone, but to warn: "If you hurt the people who trust you, the world will notice. And when it notices, it will decide what to do."
The End
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