Chapter 4

4: 4

“Harry, I need the money for something urgent. The interest……could you knock it down a little?”

Cold sweat broke out over me. I lunged and slammed the phone shut.

“I can quit school. That call, never!”

Before my parents could argue, my future self was already shrieking in my ear.

“Kay Maxwell, don't push your luck!

Without your parents borrowing that money, how do you think you stay in school?

Do you have any idea how much it costs me, on my end, to send a single message to you?

I'm doing all this to change our fate, and you're this ungrateful?”

I remembered the last life, how Harry Finch beat my parents to death because we couldn't pay him back in time.

I remembered walking home to find them lying in a pool of blood. My heart clenched, and I refused, hard, inside my own head.

“Force them to borrow now and you're sending them straight to their deaths!

They're your parents too. Why are you so set on getting us killed?

You say you're scraping by on delivery gigs now, but everything you wear is designer. Why lie to me?”

She went quiet for a long moment. In the end she only said one cold thing.

“You'll regret this!”

I had no time for her. I grabbed my parents' hands and headed for the station, ready to go home and re-study, but they blocked me.

“Kay, you're the whole village's hope. If you slink home like this, our family will never live it down!

Harry's no good man, but he wouldn't actually kill anyone, would he?

We'll swallow our pride and borrow the money. At least you'll keep your footing in college, and there's still a future in that!”

But the sight of how they died last life ran through me like ice. I shook my head at once.

“We go home first. Hold out one year and I can test into somewhere even better!”

We'd just cleared the underpass when my advisor and a crowd of classmates cut us off, faces tight with anger.

“Look what you've done! You get expelled and drag down the school's name, and now the whole internet is cursing us!”

She pulled out her phone. On the screen was a video from the train I'd taken to enroll, of me eating a piece of designer chocolate.

The caption was worse.——

“A mountain girl who can afford luxury chocolate her first week of college. Where's the money coming from?”

Before I could explain, the advisor scoffed and put her phone away.

“I looked it up. One little square of that brand runs over a hundred dollars. How does someone at your level afford that?

It's obvious. You blew the original tuition on luxuries, your family couldn't come up with more, so you had your parents put on an act with you!

Today we're going to livestream your fraud and clear the school's name!”

The classmates watching were just as worked up.

“Dressing all country-poor on purpose to milk sympathy, when she's a flat-out con artist!”

“Conning the school now over vanity means conning more people later. Scum like this can't be allowed to stay!”

There was nothing I could say to defend myself.——

That chocolate had come from the well-dressed young man in the seat beside me, who'd shared a piece with me.

At the time I thought I'd escaped last life's nightmare, so I let my guard down and ate one.

Someone posted it online, and just like that I was the rat everyone wanted to stomp again!

Worse still, this time I'd schemed so carefully to avoid posting anything, and I still couldn't outrun getting piled on online.

With all their phones already up and livestreaming, I had no time to explain. I just shielded my parents and tried to push out through the crowd.

I'd barely gone a few steps when a sleazy figure blocked my way.

“You borrow my money and you think you can run? No chance!”

I looked up. It was Harry Finch!

I froze and turned to my parents, but they were shaking their heads just as hard.

“We never borrowed anything from him!”

A sly little smile tugged at the corner of Harry's mouth.

“Still playing dumb? You know exactly how dirt-poor everyone in that village is!

After Kay Maxwell lost the money the first time, you went door to door begging. Nobody had any to spare,

so they handed you what they'd borrowed from me and shifted their debts onto the Maxwell name.

Add it all up and you owe me a hundred thousand now. Pay up, fast!

Or your daughter works it off with her body!”

It hit me at once. He'd seen the outrage online and come to shake me down while I was cornered.

But what made my chest seize was this.——

I'd done everything I could to dodge last life's pitfalls, and somehow, round and round, they'd all come true on me again!

I was still working out how to shake this thug when my future self's mad laughter rang in my ears again.

“You think crossing me gets you a happy ending? Dream on!”

Harry had already drawn a knife to force me into it, and my parents rushed to plant themselves in front of me.

But I would never let last life's tragedy play out again. I shoved them back and faced Harry's vicious sneer head-on.

“This all started because of me. You cheap little thug, extortion and blackmail is all you've got!”

Taken for a challenge, Harry burned with rage in an instant and drove the knife straight at me.

In that split second I looked to the people around me for help on instinct, and saw only one cold face after another, teachers and classmates alike.

“A disgusting con artist like you should be wiped off the face of the earth!”

It stung, but right now all I could do was protect my parents.

In the very instant I shoved them clear, it came to me in a flash.——

So this was why my future self wanted to hurt us!

I let out a shout, dodged the blade, and clamped down on Harry's wrist with everything I had.

“Hold on. I know where that borrowed money went. I'll pay you back!”