After the college entrance exam results came out, the young master of Illinois’s elite circle received an offer from Roosevelt University.

He flashed a lazy, confident smile and announced the entire class. “Whoever gets into Roosevelt with me will become the future Mrs. Hernandez.”

Then, with eyes like stars soaked in moonlight, he looked straight at me.

“They say you’ve got a crush on me. Want to give it a shot?”

My heart skipped a beat and pounded like crazy.

That night, I went home and changed my application, becoming the final student Roosevelt admitted.

In the four years that followed, I used what I’d learned to double the Hernandez family’s stock value.

And he kept his word; after graduation, he married me and even made me pregnant with twins.

But on the day I was giving birth, he burst into the delivery room, eyes red, clutching a death notice.

His voice trembled as he forced the words out.

“If you hadn’t changed your application that year, she would’ve gotten into Roosevelt instead!”

“She wouldn’t have been bumped out. She wouldn’t have been forced to marry that monster!”

“You stole her future, and now you want to give birth to my children? How am I supposed to face her in the afterlife?”

He gave a cold order: sew me back up. Then, he cleared out the doctors and nurses, leaving me to suffer alone.

I bled and convulsed for a day and night. In the end, one corpse carried three lives.

When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to the day I changed my application.

——

After I returned home, my parents kept watching me, their gazes full of tension.

When I washed up and headed toward my bedroom, they suddenly stopped me at the door.

“Sweetheart, you're not changing your application?”

My body froze. Did they also reincarnate?

A stinging ache crept up my nose.

In my previous life, after my brutal death, they had fainted in grief the moment they saw my mangled body.

They’d always been strict, but they were still my parents.

So I shook my head and whispered, “The Illinois Institute of Technology is good enough. I'm not changing it.”

“How can you not change it?”

My mother’s furious voice thundered through the hall, making me jump.

They stormed into my room and opened the college application page on my computer.

“What’s your password? Quick, give it to us, and we’ll help you switch to Roosevelt!”

“Dad! Mom! I said I’m going to Illinois Institute of Technology!”

“You ungrateful brat!”

A slap struck my cheek without warning. My father's disappointed glare burned into me.

“You were this close to becoming Mrs. Hernandez last time. And now you’re backing out? Are you out of your mind?”

My heart sank.

So that was it. What they cared about wasn’t me at all.

“No need to change it.”

I pulled out my phone and showed them Michael Hernandez’s latest post.

In the photo, he and Emily Johnson stood hand in hand, wearing matching couple rings.

The caption read, [You are my only destination in this life.]

“Useless!”

Another slap crashed down, this time on the other side of my face.

Tears pooled in Mom’s eyes as she pointed at me, her voice trembling with rage.

“You couldn’t win his heart in your last life, and now she’s got him with barely a word. What was the point of raising you?”

“The Davis family was counting on marrying into the Hernandez family to rise, and you can’t even contribute a single thing!”

“Fine! I can’t contribute!”

I suddenly shouted, “Don’t worry, once I get to college, I’ll earn every cent back and repay you in full, interest included! You’d better hurry and have another kid. Maybe your next child can marry into a rich family for you!”

With that, I shoved the two of them out and slammed the door shut.

They pounded and screamed outside, but I just covered my ears.

In this life, I refused to let the twisted ambitions of the wealthy control my fate.

I’d live for myself and only myself.

In the days that followed, I had no contact with Michael.

Even though his social media made it clear, he’d been reborn, too.

But I had no intention of reliving anything with him.

In this life, he could date whoever he wanted. I was done. I would focus on my research. Whatever existed between us was long gone.

But just as I returned home after a farewell drink with my girlfriends, I found my doorway swarmed with over a dozen people.

Michael stood right in front of my computer, coolly commanding his subordinates, “Delete everything.”

I watched in horror as my application form vanished into a blank screen. My heart seized, and I lunged forward like a madwoman.

“Michael! The deadline’s almost here! What are you doing?!”

But the bodyguards had been ready. They pinned me down at the doorway with ease.

Michael held up the small notebook where I’d written my password. His smile was icy, cruel.

My voice trembled, “Michael, I didn’t apply to Roosevelt. There are still three minutes left; please put it back. I won’t fight Emily for her place, I swear.”

“What a performance.”

He pinched my chin.

“You think I don’t know you threatened Emily to make her withdraw her Roosevelt application just to squeeze yourself in?”

“You came back just to change it again, didn’t you?”

I stared at him, wide-eyed. “What threat? I’ve never even met her!”

Michael ignored me. He pulled out his phone and dialed.

“Baby, I’ve erased her application. You can go ahead and apply to Roosevelt now.”

“Michael!”

Tears streamed down my face as I pleaded, “My application’s blank now! If you won’t let me go to Roosevelt, at least restore my original choice, the Illinois Institute of Technology! It wouldn’t affect your relationship!”

“Abigail.”

He forced my face up to meet his eyes, gaze unrelenting.

“When you’ve made a mistake, you pay for it. This life, the last one, you owe Emily.”

The alarm blared.

I screamed in despair. “No!!”

The deadline had passed.

And then came a soft voice from the door.

“Brother Michael?”

Emily rushed in, straight into his arms. “You really did all this for me… I’m so touched…”

The cold sharpness in Michael’s eyes instantly softened into something tender.

“Standing up for you… that’s what a partner should do.”

“This year, we’ll go to Roosevelt together. Once we graduate, I’ll marry you.”

Emily’s body tensed.

Michael sensed something was wrong. His brows furrowed as he looked at her.

“What’s wrong? Couldn’t submit the application?”

Emily bit her lip hard. “Actually… my score… wasn’t high enough for Roosevelt…”

Michael’s frown deepened.

“698 should be enough to try. Why not?”

Emily’s face turned even paler.

“Not 698… it’s… 268…”

“What did you say?”

Michael stared at her in disbelief.

“Didn’t you say your score was high, and you only gave up applying because Abigail threatened you?”

My eyes, still red, slowly lifted as I looked straight at him.

So, because of someone who never even stood a chance at Roosevelt, my entire future was destroyed?

“Brother Michael, I… I…”

Emily’s eyes turned red, and she dropped to her knees. Pointing at me, she cried out, “It wasn’t just the application! She threatened me before the exam, too! She said if I scored over 300, she’d have the hospital pull my grandpa’s oxygen tube!”

“You liar!”

I swung my hand across her cheek with a sharp slap.

“You only managed those scores because Michael fed you the answers! 268, that’s your real level! You couldn’t get in, so now you’re dragging me down with you?!”

Emily curled up on the floor, sobbing in fear.

Michael stormed over, grabbed me by the wrist, and slapped me hard across the face.

“Bitch!”

The bodyguards pinned me down at once as Michael slapped me across the face again and again, each strike searing hot against my skin.

“You already tore us apart once. Why the hell are you trying to come between us again in this life?! Abigail, you hurt her, and I’ll make you pay a thousand times over!”

The taste of blood filled my mouth.

I seized a brief opening and bit down on his hand, hard, until I tasted his blood, too.

“You’re insane!”

Michael frowned, yanking his hand back.

My hair fell over my eyes as I said coldly, “Who said I was trying to separate you two? If you love her so much, why not go to vocational school with her?”

Michael froze.

Emily instinctively turned to look at him, too.

But he said nothing.

I let out a cold laugh.

“See? I never stood in your way. Not once. Even in the last life, if you’d really had the guts, nothing could’ve pulled you apart. But no, you couldn’t let go of Roosevelt. You couldn’t give up your family's stock value. And you couldn’t bring yourself to blame your precious little lover. So you blamed someone else instead.”

I stared at him and sneered.

“Michael, you’re not a victim. You’re just a coward, a clown in his own tragedy.”

“Enough!”

Michael’s voice trembled as he grabbed Emily’s hand and turned to leave.

“You really are insane.”

The bodyguards trailed behind him, disappearing out the door.

I collapsed to the floor like discarded cloth, left behind without a trace of dignity.

A sudden notification lit up my computer screen.

It was a message from a professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

[Student Davis, we were deeply impressed by the project files you submitted. We’ve decided to make an exception and admit you as a research member of our university. We look forward to your contributions to the nation’s scientific development.]

Attached is an official offer letter.

Tears streamed silently down my face.

In truth, the misplaced affection from my past life had never been my real regret.

What haunted me most was that I had been so close to breaking a critical technological barrier for my country, only to die on the delivery table because of Michael.

Michael was never my regret.

It was the dream that had been torn from my hands, the unfinished work, the halted research.

But this time, armed with everything I remembered from before, I had made the breakthrough.

At last, in this life, I could chase my dream again of serving my country through science.

In the days that followed, I threw myself into remote collaboration with the research team.

Once the technology was deployed, it would push the nation’s scientific advancement to an entirely new level.

For enterprises like the Hernandez family’s, rooted in old-money traditions and outdated industries, it would be a fatal blow.

The night before I was to report in, I quietly packed my bags.

But just as I was about to step out, more than a dozen people stormed in and dragged me away without warning.

My parents, beaming as if they’d won the lottery, couldn’t stop smiling.

“You really hit the jackpot this time,” they said cheerfully. “The Hernandez family agreed, college or not, the marriage will still go through.”

“For the next four years, you’ll stay at the Hernandez estate and learn how to be a proper Mrs. Hernandez. Once Michael graduates, he’ll return and make you his bride.”

I couldn’t breathe.

The Hernandez family was built on deep-rooted traditions, a world where women bowed morning and night, weren’t allowed to touch electronics, and had to obey strict rules, dutiful wives, submissive daughters-in-law, perfect mothers.

Any disobedience was met with punishment.

In my previous life, I had been spared.

Because they needed my expertise to keep their stock afloat, and because Michael shielded me, they hadn’t dared to enforce those suffocating customs.

But I had seen the fate of other women in that house, obedient dolls shackled by rules.

“I’m not going!”

I screamed and thrashed, only for a sharp slap to land across my face.

Mom’s brows pinched with disgust.

“Do you know how many girls dream of marrying into that family but never get the chance? You’ve already lost your advantage, and they’re still willing to take you. You should be grateful!”

“I…”

Before I could finish, a filthy rag was shoved into my mouth, cutting off my cries. They dragged me into a car like cargo.

When I came to, I was already locked inside the room the Hernandez family had prepared.

Outside the window, the sound of laughter drifted in, a celebration banquet.

They weren’t celebrating me. They were sending off Michael and Emily.

Michael had spent a fortune to buy Emily a spot at a private university near Roosevelt.