She Plagiarized My Work and Lost Everything Because of It

Zephanie's POV

I deleted my social media account with over a million followers.

Almost instantly, the internet exploded with speculation, wondering if my account had been hacked.

Then Lesley Hall, another influencer in the same niche, messaged me directly.

[Why would you just quit out of nowhere? Are you out of your mind?]

Even so, I shut everything off and went on a solo trip to see the beauty of the world.

In my last life, Lesley and I had posted the exact same kind of video content. People accused me of copying her and called me a knockoff clone doomed to fade. I got bombarded with hate publicly and privately, and even in real life.

To prove my innocence, I shared screenshots of my scripts, behind-the-scenes content, and timestamps. But they called it fake and said I staged it all.

The constant cyberbullying pushed me into a deep depression. So, I ended up alone in my apartment, slitting my wrists.

But then, I woke up.

To my shock, I was back on the very day Lesley and I had first posted those identical videos.

——

My finger was literally hovering over the post button. One second later, I would’ve hit it and sealed the fate I already knew.

As such, my body jolted like I'd been pulled from deep water. I yanked my hand away just in time, chest heaving as I gasped for breath.

Looking around the familiar room, at the camera, the lights, and the draft of the video, I realized I had been reborn at the moment when I first tried to pivot my content.

After calming down, I saved the video to my drafts and immediately searched for Lesley’s social media.

It didn’t take long, and her latest post popped right up.

And this one was nothing like her usual style. Her old videos were clunky, poorly edited, and barely scraping a few hundred likes.

But this new one had racked up tens of thousands of likes in just thirty minutes.

The comment section was also full of praise.

[Imagine this look in a survival game setting—unstoppable.]

[She’s doing million-follower work on a tiny account.]

[God, is this level of beauty even humanly possible?]

[Wife, my wife. Who the hell stole my destined wife?!]

...and on and on.

The dark background, the bold styling, the cinematography, music, and script, every single detail matched the video I had just saved to my drafts.

If I didn’t know that I got the idea from watching a British drama and stayed up countless nights writing that script, I might have thought I copied her.

But the truth was clear. Somehow, she posted it first.

And just like that, she went viral overnight.

In my past life, that exact video destroyed me.

I remembered feeling excited, thinking the internet would finally recognize my work when I posted it.

But when I checked the comments, the joy quickly turned to dread. Everyone said I was a copycat. They even linked the original, which was Lesley’s video.

When I clicked it, I found the same concept, same angles, and same style. A 99.9% match.

But I swear. I never copied a single thing.

I was instantly furious then. Desperate to prove I was the true creator, I posted all my drafts and BTS footage.

But it didn’t help.

Because Lesley also posted her process, and somehow, her timestamps were earlier than mine.

Then came the backlash.

[She planned this ‘evidence’ in advance just to drag Lesley down!]

[Support originality! Say no to plagiarists!]

[Zephanie, get out of the beauty community! You don’t belong here!]

[LMAO. You came looking for proof and got slammed by it.]

Even Lesley’s team and management released official statements saying they didn’t copy anything, that everything was planned in-house.

I, on the other hand, was just an independent creator. No team, no manager. Just me, working on every piece from start to finish. So, no one stood up for me. Not even my boyfriend.

In fact, he posted a video too, announcing publicly that he was breaking up with me. Said all my content was stitched together from other creators, and that I was a serial plagiarist.

And that was the final blow.

The internet dragged me harder than ever. My comment sections were flooded with hate. My DMs were bombarded with unreadable and disgusting content.

The pressure crushed my creativity, and brands pulled away. As such, I hardly got by.

Eventually, I started hurting myself and soon visited a psychiatric clinic, where I was diagnosed with severe depression.

And one sunny afternoon, in a cramped little rental apartment, I decided to end it all.

But then, I opened my eyes, only to find myself back at the beginning, where none of that had happened yet.

But this time, I was going to find out the truth behind all of it.