My phone started buzzing in the middle of French lecture, and at first I thought someone had posted my number in a group chat.
Then the friend requests began stacking up.
Spring Blossom.
Ready To Fly.
Karina Moreau.
Women I had never met were sending hearts, smiling selfies, and messages that sounded far too familiar for strangers.
I opened the first profile and felt my stomach fall through the floor.
The man in their conversations was me.
At least, he had my face.
My father had taken my college photo, cropped it, polished it, and used it across every dating account he could make.
For months he had been flirting with women online while pretending to be his own son.
When he was tired of one account, he told them he had switched profiles and sent them all to my real inbox.
My father had told these women I spoke French like a diplomat, understood investment trends better than fund managers, could identify antiques with one glance, and had once turned down famous directors because acting was too easy.
I was an aquaculture major at Coastal University.
Luna was the girl I had followed to this school like a fool.
I had liked her for years, and she knew it.
She had never been cruel enough to reject me cleanly, only polite enough to keep me orbiting.
Then Karina Moreau messaged me from the top of the request pile.
I am the exchange student from France.
You told me your French is C2.
Is that true?
I stared at the sentence until the letters blurred.
I was about to type an apology when a cold voice rang inside my head.
Congratulations, player.
You have bound to the Father Bluff, Son Profit system.
Every boast your father has made will become reality once acknowledged.
I sat frozen while my professor wrote a French passage across the board.
Karina sent another message.
Were you lying?
I typed, Yes.
French flooded my mind so completely that I gripped the edge of my desk.
The professor turned and called my name.
“Translate this.”
Everyone looked back, already entertained by the idea of me failing.
I stood up and translated the passage perfectly.
Then I corrected a tense problem in the original sentence because apparently my mouth had become more confident than my survival instincts.
The professor stared at the board for a long moment.
“You do not need to complete routine assignments in this class anymore,” she said.
That should have been the strangest moment of my day.
It was not.
After class, Luna stopped me outside with three friends and an audience that formed too quickly.
“Ethan,” she said, soft enough to sound kind and loud enough to be heard, “I know you did that to get my attention.”
My best friend Mason muttered something beside me, but I lifted one hand to stop him.
Luna kept going.
“I do not have feelings for you. You need to stop doing dramatic things for me.”
The old Ethan would have turned red and explained too much.
I simply said, “I did not learn French for you.”
She almost laughed.
Then the Ferrari arrived.
The driver stepped out in a black silk blouse and sunglasses that probably cost more than my laptop.
“Ethan,” she called, “sorry I am late.”
Every phone on the sidewalk lifted.
The woman leaned close enough for only me to hear.
“Play along,” she whispered. “I just saved you. Now save me.”
Her name was Sophie Shen.
Online, she was Spring Blossom.
In real life, she was the daughter of Shen Ventures, one of the most powerful investment families in the country.
She needed a fake boyfriend because her parents had been pushing marriage meetings on her like quarterly reports.
I needed to understand why my father had apparently promised her I was a genius.
On the drive to her family’s mansion, Sophie reviewed the lies he had told her.
“You said you could predict the next big industry trend.”
“True,” I said.
The system chimed.
Trend vision unlocked.
Suddenly markets made sense in a way textbooks never had, and I could feel which ideas were already late.
Sophie watched my face.
“You also told me you could spot fake antiques.”
I considered jumping out of the moving car.
Instead I said, “True.”
Appraiser’s eye unlocked.
When we arrived, Sophie’s parents were waiting in a living room that looked like it had been designed to make ordinary people sit carefully.
Mr. Shen asked my name, my age, and my major.
The word aquaculture made one of the guests smile.
That guest was Derek Zhao, a polished family friend with a suit sharp enough to cut fruit and the confidence of a man who had never had to wonder if his card would decline.
He had come with a gift for Mr. Shen.
A pale green jade tripod sat inside a carved wooden box.
Derek introduced it as a rare Qing Dynasty piece from an overseas collector.
Then he turned to me.
“Take a look, college boy,” he said. “You might never get this close to something valuable again.”
Sophie went still beside me.
I picked up the tripod.
The appraiser’s eye shouted at once: heat-aged surface, machine-clean carving, wrong polish marks, and three rams that looked exactly like cartoon characters.
“This is not Qing Dynasty,” I said.
Derek’s smile tightened.
“Excuse me?”
“It is modern quartz, machine carved, artificially aged, and probably sold wholesale for less than lunch.”
The room went silent.
I pulled up a picture on my phone and held it beside the tripod.
“Unless these cartoon sheep existed in the Qing Dynasty, this is fake.”
Mrs. Shen covered her mouth.
Sophie laughed first, bright and delighted.
Mr. Shen looked at the tripod, then at Derek, and quietly closed the box.
“Thank you for the thought,” he said, “but I will pass.”
Derek apologized through his teeth.
He had not really come for the antique.
He had come for the proposal folder he slid forward next.
Titan Group wanted Shen Ventures to co-invest in a premium e-sports peripherals project.
Derek explained his plan with practiced smoothness: one hundred million for affordable keyboards, wired gaming mice, celebrity endorsements, and rapid retail rollout.
Mr. Shen read without reacting.
Then he looked at me.
“Ethan, you seem to have opinions. What do you see?”
Derek almost laughed.
“With respect, sir, he studies fish.”
I looked at the proposal again.
The trend vision opened like a map.
“This project is already late,” I said.
Derek’s face changed.
“You have no core switch technology, no sensor advantage, no low-latency edge, and too much of the budget is going to endorsements instead of research.”
The room sharpened around me.
“Budget wired gear is crowded. Male gamers who care enough to buy specialized equipment are moving toward lightweight wireless setups with reliable switches, clean software, and low delay. Your plan is selling yesterday with tomorrow’s price tag.”
Mr. Shen leaned back.
Mrs. Shen nodded slowly.
Derek slammed one hand on the arm of his chair.
“You are making that up.”
I opened public market data, competitor launches, pre-order trends, and three months of forum sentiment.
“No,” I said. “You just did not read the room you claim to understand.”
Mr. Shen closed the folder.
“Shen Ventures will not participate.”
Derek tried to recover, then tried to bargain, then tried to promise a revised plan.
Mr. Shen refused all three.
That was when I made the second reckless choice of my life.
I told them I already had a better project: lightweight wireless e-sports gear, custom switches, ultra-low latency, no bloated software, direct online launch.
I asked for five million, expecting someone to laugh.
Mr. Shen funded it on the spot.
“Consider it a welcome gift,” he said, looking from me to Sophie. “And a test.”
Derek left the mansion with his fake antique and his broken proposal.
Outside, he threw the wooden box against the driveway.
I did not see that part then.
I only heard about it later, after he called men who solved rich boys’ problems with fists.
Sophie drove me back to campus and announced that since her father had invested five million in me, my fake-boyfriend contract was now an annual plan.
At the dorm, Mason saw the Ferrari, nearly stopped breathing, and asked questions until two girls from Luna’s circle heard enough to report that Sophie and I were not really dating.
By midnight Luna tried to message me and discovered I had deleted her.
I did not get much of it.
Serena Song messaged me before dawn.
Serena had been a movie star before becoming a producer, the kind of woman whose face could make a room behave.
She said my father had told her I was an incredible actor.
He had said Director Lou once begged me to play a male lead.
My soul briefly left my body.
Before I could answer, she sent an audition time and a location for a historical drama called Frost of the Forbidden City.
The system activated before sunrise.
Method actor unlocked.
I arrived at the studio expecting to be thrown out, but Serena greeted me like I belonged there while Director Lin, Producer Zhang, and the screenwriter watched from behind a long table.
They offered me two scenes: one easy first meeting, and one brutal palace path where Shen Yan meets the woman he loves after she has become the emperor’s consort.
I chose the second.
The room approved of the courage for about four seconds.
Then Cosmo Entertainment walked in with Ian Vale, a polished young star whose team clearly believed the role was already his.
Director Sun smiled at everyone and apologized for interrupting while interrupting completely.
He suggested a fair competition.
Ian and I would perform the same scene.
Winner got the role.
Ian went first.
He was smooth and handsome, but he played heartbreak like a man trying to be admired for suffering.
Director Lin thanked him carefully.
Then it was my turn.
I stepped into the light and let Ethan disappear.
I became Shen Yan.
Serena stood across from me as Consort Su.
For a long moment I did not speak.
My hand lifted, wanting to reach for her, and stopped halfway because she no longer belonged to any world where I was allowed to touch her.
The room vanished.
I dropped to one knee.
“This humble servant greets Your Grace.”
Serena’s eyes filled.
Not as Serena.
As the woman who understood exactly what those words cost.
When I rose, my hands trembled just enough to betray the man beneath the uniform.
“The snow is deep,” I said. “The road is dangerous. Every step must be taken with care.”
The line was about palace politics, and also about loving someone enough to warn her while pretending not to love her at all.
When the scene ended, nobody moved.
Director Lin took off his glasses.
The screenwriter wiped one cheek and pretended she had not.
Ian’s manager started talking about fan metrics.
Director Lin raised one hand.
“The role is Ethan’s.”
Cosmo Entertainment did not take rejection gracefully.
Director Sun smiled harder.
Ian stared at me with the same expression Derek had worn in the mansion.
That was when my phone buzzed with a message from Sophie.
Do not leave through the front gate.
Derek sent people.
Then another message arrived from my father.
“Son,” he said, sounding cheerful and guilty at the same time, “minor update. I may have told one of those ladies that you can turn enemies into witnesses.”
The system chimed.
Negotiator’s command unlocked.
I stepped outside through the side entrance with Serena on my left and Sophie arriving on my right.
Derek’s men were waiting near the loading dock, pretending not to wait.
Behind them, campus security, studio security, and Mr. Shen’s legal counsel were already moving in.
Sophie had not come alone.
Serena had not stopped recording after the audition.
And when Derek stormed up demanding I be taught a lesson, the men he hired looked at the cameras, looked at the lawyers, and began explaining who had paid them.
Derek folded faster than his proposal.
Ian’s team tried to distance themselves from him before the first statement was even drafted.
By evening, Shen Ventures had cut pending conversations with Titan Group, and Cosmo Entertainment had apologized to Director Lin.
I should have felt victorious.
Instead I went home.
My father opened the apartment door wearing cooking gloves and the expression of a man who knew judgment had arrived.
“Before you yell,” he said, “the pasta is almost done.”
I walked past him and saw his laptop open.
There were dating profiles, yes.
But there were also notes.
Karina, language.
Sophie, investment and family pressure.
Serena, audition access.
Every woman had a reason.
Not romance.
Opportunity.
My anger did not disappear.
It changed shape.
“You used my face,” I said.
He looked down.
“Yes.”
“You lied to people.”
“Yes.”
“You called me an embarrassment.”
His face tightened.
“That part was true only in one way,” he said. “I was afraid you believed it.”
He told me then that the system had awakened for men in our family before, but only around the son, never the father.
The father could bluff.
The son had to decide whether to accept the shape of the life being offered.
My grandfather had wasted it on cards, horses, and bar fights.
My father had spent twenty years trying not to use it because he was terrified of turning me into a trick.
Then he watched me shrink myself for Luna.
He watched me give up a better school.
He watched me apologize for being alive in rooms where I had done nothing wrong.
So he made the loudest, stupidest plan imaginable.
He bragged me toward doors I would never knock on.
“I did not choose wives for you,” he said quietly. “I chose witnesses. People who could see what you became before you could.”
I wanted that to be unforgivable.
Part of it still was.
But part of me remembered standing in that mansion, in that studio, in front of every person who had expected less from me.
“No more using my photos,” I said.
“Done.”
“No more girlfriends.”
“They were networking contacts with emotional confusion.”
“Dad.”
“Done.”
The next morning I signed the Shen Ventures project papers under my own name.
Director Lin sent the contract for Frost of the Forbidden City.
Karina asked if I wanted to practice French over coffee, and for once I did not answer out of panic.
Luna sent one final message through a classmate saying she had misunderstood me.
I believed her.
I also did not go back.
Three months later, our first gaming mouse sold out in four minutes.
Six months later, the show trailer dropped, and people online began arguing about where Director Lin had found the actor playing Shen Yan.
Sophie watched the numbers climb from my couch, barefoot, eating takeout from the spicy hot pot place she had pretended was our old favorite.
“Your dad is still insane,” she said.
“Correct.”
“But he has taste.”
I looked at her.
She did not look away.
That was when my phone buzzed with one last system notice.
Final father boast pending.
I opened the attached audio.
My dad’s voice filled the room, soft for once.
“My son will not need my lies anymore.”
I waited for the power to arrive.
No knowledge flooded in.
No new talent unlocked.
Only silence.
Then the system spoke.
Boast already true.