Chapter 6: The Reaping

Chapter 6: The Reaping

Six weeks. Six weeks of exams, graduation ceremonies, and the exhilarating chaos of moving into her own place. Elara stood by the floor-to-ceiling window of her small but bright studio apartment, a cup of tea warming her hands. The London skyline glittered before her, a constellation of possibilities. The dark, cramped dorm room where her plan had been born felt like a lifetime ago. She had a graduate job lined up at a respectable law firm, a new life taking shape from the ashes of the old one. The £5,000 was a scar, but it was no longer an open wound. She had survived.

She hadn't looked at the gaming forum since that night. She hadn’t needed to. Watching Julian walk into the trap had been enough. But tonight, as she stood on the precipice of her new beginning, she felt an urge for a final, definitive end. She needed to close the book, not just put it down.

Settling onto her new sofa—the first piece of furniture she’d bought for herself—she opened her laptop. Her fingers, moving with a strange sense of muscle memory, typed in the familiar URL one last time.

The forum was its usual chaotic self, but she wasn't interested in the noise. She went straight to the profile of ‘Croftinator96’. His last post was still the one where he’d arrogantly declared he was ignoring the court’s "scare tactics." Below it, a digital silence stretching for weeks. Until yesterday.

A new thread had appeared. The title was stark, stripped of all bravado.

‘They took everything.’

Elara’s breath caught. She clicked.

The post was short, the text rambling and incoherent, but the accompanying picture was brutally clear. It was a photo of a living room, but it was the negative space that screamed the loudest. An imprint in the carpet marked where a sofa had been. A dark rectangle on the wall showed where a television had hung. A lonely network cable snaked out from the wall, leading to nothing. The room was a hollowed-out carcass, stripped of everything that made it a home. The only things left were a few scattered clothes and an overflowing bin bag.

The text beneath was a frantic, desperate scrawl.

‘I don’t understand. I came home from work and the locks were changed. There was a letter taped to the door. Bailiffs. They had a court order. They came this morning while I was out and took everything. My TV, my PS5, my new PC with the 4090 in it, all my games. Everything. They said it was to pay for the CCJ I got for not showing up to court. I thought that guy on here said it would be thrown out? Sarah saw the mess and the letter and just… left. She called me a loser. She’s gone. They even took the coffee machine she bought me. I have nothing. I’m being evicted. What do I do? Someone please help me. This can’t be legal.’

Elara read the post twice, her mind coolly dissecting the legal fallout he was only just beginning to comprehend. By ignoring the summons, a default judgment had been entered against him. That CCJ had been escalated to a High Court Writ of Control, unleashing enforcement agents—bailiffs—with the power to seize assets. They hadn’t just taken his things; they had professionally and legally dismantled his life.

His new PC with the 4090 graphics card. The 60-inch television. The PS5. All the shiny toys he had paraded on Instagram, all bought with her stolen money, were gone. Sold at auction to pay off a fraction of a debt he could have settled for a few hundred pounds if he’d just shown an ounce of responsibility. She thought of the eight separate creditors she had awakened. This was only the first. The others would be coming for him soon, a pack of wolves that would hound him for the next six years.

Her phone, sitting on the arm of the sofa, seemed to pulse with a forgotten memory. The voicemail. Julian’s final, frantic message from the day he’d received the summons, the one she had silenced and ignored. Curiosity, cold and clinical, prompted her to open her inbox. She scrolled down and there it was, an unplayed message from six weeks ago. She pressed play.

His voice filled the quiet apartment, at first laced with a wheedling, manipulative charm she knew all too well. “Elara, babe, it’s me. Listen, I know things are weird between us, but I’m in a bit of a jam. Some legal thing. You were always so good at this stuff. I just need a bit of advice, that’s all. I know you’ll know what to do. Call me back, okay?”

There was a pause. Then the tone shifted, the charm dissolving into a bitter, resentful snarl when he realised she wasn't going to pick up.

“You know what? Fine. Be like that. You’re probably enjoying this, aren’t you? Sitting there feeling all superior. This is probably your fault somehow, I bet. You always had to make things so complicated. Well, I don’t need your help. I’ve got it sorted. Don’t ever call me again.”

The message ended. He’d got it sorted. He had listened to a faceless stranger named ‘Rogue_AI_42’ and it had cost him everything. He blamed her then, and he would blame her forever, never once looking at the real architect of his ruin: himself.

Elara stared at the phone screen, at the option to ‘Delete’. She thought about the £5,000 she would never see again. She thought of the sleepless nights, the humiliation, the frantic scramble to save her university career. The money was gone. But what had she gained in return?

Peace. Closure. And a chillingly perfect form of justice.

She hadn’t just collected a debt. She had ensured he paid the full price for his arrogance. He wasn’t just broke; he was a financial pariah. The County Court Judgements would follow him, rendering him unable to borrow, to rent, to build. He was trapped in a prison of his own making, and her £8.50 had forged the key. It was, she thought with a final, grim smile, a truly spectacular return on investment.

Her thumb pressed down firmly.

Voicemail deleted.

She closed the laptop, severing the last digital thread connecting her to him. The city lights outside her window seemed to brighten, beckoning her toward a future he could no longer touch. She had never gotten her money back, but standing here, in her own home, on her own terms, she realised she had collected something far more valuable. She had collected herself.