Chapter 1

The air conditioning was running full blast in the internet cafe.

Lucy Quade spoke in a soft, fragile voice, her eyes rimmed with red.

“Shane, the system says you’re the chosen one. No matter which school you attend, you’ll always come out on top.

“I’m your destined leading lady. If we don’t attend the same school, the plot will go off track, and I’ll be erased from existence. I’ll disappear from this world forever.”

Shane Felton gazed at her with tender affection and gently patted her head.

“Lucy, what’s a place at Edevane worth compared to you? If it means you get to stay in your own world, I’d gladly give up my life,” he said firmly.

As soon as he finished speaking, he clicked the submit button.

The students around us gasped, staring at Shane as if he had lost his mind.

Tears streamed down Lucy’s face as she nestled helplessly against him, as though he had just saved the entire world.

My grip on the mouse tightened as I watched the scene unfold.

In the previous timeline, Shane and I were childhood friends, and everyone assumed we would eventually end up together.

However, everything changed after Lucy transferred into our class.

She had brazenly pointed at Shane and declared, “You’re living in a novel, and I’m the female lead. As the male lead, you’re bound to fall in love with me.”

At first, everyone scoffed at her claims, and Shane openly told her to get lost as his face twisted with disgust.

But Lucy was impossible to shake. She kept doing strange, inexplicable things that somehow tugged at his heartstrings.

Whenever Shane got hurt playing sports, she would insist on patching him up through her tears. Whenever his father scolded him in public, she would step in front of him without a second thought.

With each passing incident, I watched Shane go from resisting her to quietly indulging her, and eventually to showing a tenderness he struggled to contain.

Somewhere along the way, the two of us, once inseparable, became a trio.

But the real breaking point came during PE class.

The girls in our class had collectively excluded Lucy because she was always clinging to Shane.

Since no one wanted to team up with Lucy during volleyball class, the teacher had paired me with her.

But as we practiced, I accidentally sent the ball off course and hit her in the head.

Lucy had let out a startled cry and fainted on the spot.

Almost instantly, Shane came charging over like a madman. He roughly shoved me aside and pulled Lucy tightly into his arms.

His eyes were bloodshot as he bellowed, “Tessa Weddell, have you lost your mind?! You’re just jealous, aren’t you? You can’t stand having another girl around who genuinely cares about me! How can you be so vicious?”

At that moment, something inside me went cold as I met his guarded, disgusted stare.

From that point on, things between us were never the same.

Shane grew increasingly hostile toward me, all while throwing himself into one act of rebellion after another for Lucy’s so-called mission.

He skipped classes, got into fights, smoked, and drank heavily, turning himself from a promising young man into a troubled teenager.

In the previous timeline, I thought he had simply fallen under Lucy’s spell temporarily, so I did everything I could to get him back on track and preserve his admission to Edevane University.

But all my efforts only earned me a horrible death.

The pain seemed to linger in my bones.

With a second chance at life, I refused to let the same tragedy happen again.

I turned back to my computer and clicked “Confirm Submission.” It was my application to Edevane University.

Then, I shut down my computer, took off my headphones, and prepared to leave.