Game Over, Evil Roommate

My roommate bought an antique bronze censer online. She burned incense day and night, praying to be with a wealthy boyfriend. I thought it was silly, until her face began to look like mine.

Soon, she became the admired heiress, while I was left drowning in debts she had deliberately racked up. I begged her for my identity back, and she pretended to agree. However, she tricked me into giving her my bank account password and pushed me off a rooftop.

I learned at that moment that the censer was a cursed relic that grants wishes by draining the life and luck of another. She could take everything from me once my life was ruined, but death was not the end for me. I woke up on the day she first got the cursed censer.

The truth was every wish comes with a price, and I was going to make sure she pays.

"You're so stingy, Luna Hill. Sure, your bedsheet got dirty, but how could you throw Sia's belongings on the floor?"

The voices around me pulled me back to consciousness. The terror of being shoved from the 33rd floor had not faded.

My knees buckled and I clutched my chest, crouching in pain. That was when I realized, with horror, that I had been reborn.

The girl in front of me flinched. "What are you doing? I'm warning you! Don't you dare fake an injury to extort me!" she warned.

I looked around. The small dorm was packed with delivery boxes, and three girls stood in front of me, glaring at me angrily.

One of them was someone etched into my memory forever. She was Sia Lowe, my roommate, the girl who had pushed me off the building and tried to steal my life!

Sia was known on campus as the rich and beautiful girl, but only I knew the truth. Her family was average, and she was living from paycheck to paycheck.

Sia would splurge online every year during online promotion day to keep up her image. She would order so many packages that they nearly filled half the dorm room.

It was no exception that year.

She had bought a strange-looking bronze censer and burned some special incense in it every day. She would kneel devoutly in front of it and make wishes.

The smell was foul and nauseating to the point that I was gagging, but somehow, Sia seemed not to smell it at all.

I had protested several times in my previous life, but Sia refused to put the censer away. She spread rumors in class instead, claiming that I was jealous of her.

She kept that incense burning for the entire semester without a break, not even during winter vacation.

When the holiday ended, everyone was stunned when we saw her again. Our roommates, Yennifer Hann and Moana Howel, stared at her face, then at mine. They stammered, "Sia… Why do you… look so much like Luna?"

They were right. Sia had started to resemble me at some point. She did kind of look like me!

Her expression twisted for a brief second. She tried to brush it off, claiming she had gotten cosmetic procedures over the semester break.

She then frequently lit incense in the dorm, and her face began resembling mine even more as time passed.

I was too busy preparing for competitions back then, so I did not pay much attention to it.

One day, right after I finally completed a major project, I woke up and realized I was lying in her bed. When I looked into the mirror, it was Sia's face staring right back at me!

I grabbed my phone in a panic, only to see our group chat flooded with congratulatory texts and videos.

A stranger with my body was beaming in the video. She held the trophy up, received praises, and went through interviews that should have belonged to me. My instinct told me that person was Sia.

I had been forced to swap identities with her.

Sia became the real rich and beautiful girl, excelling in both academics and in love. She soon got engaged to a wealthy boyfriend, but I was crushed under the weight of the massive debts she left behind. I lived in poverty, and I was constantly on the run.

I tried to prove who I was, but no one believed me. Everyone thought I was insane.

I begged Sia desperately to switch us back. She pretended to agree, then lured me to the rooftop and shoved me from the 33rd floor.

The last thing I saw before I hit the ground was her twisted expression, overflowing with ecstatic joy.

"With your death, your identity will be mine alone!" she exclaimed.

It was only then that I realized the censer Sia had bought online was a cursed relic. She lit the special incense and made her wishes to it. Over time, she was able to swap bodies with a chosen person and steal their identity.

However, making a wish for something so sinister could never come without a price.