Chapter 4: In Another Life, I Watched Them From Below

Past Life Flashback, Shylie Reed (Before death, early 20s-40s) 

Before the awards.

Before the agonizing solitude.

Before her lonely death, COVID filled lungs bloated with fluids asphyxiating in a hospital room —

There were two names she would never forget.

Darren Tan

Elias Tan

Shylie's story began at Roseville Academy. It was there she first saw Darren Tan, a timid 11th grader lost in the opulence of the elite school's halls and wealthier students. Darren was a senior in her class. He was untouchable. A god. A type of student who didn't have to try, and yet people deferred to him, just by his presence.

He was everything she was not. He was in every room. The type of guy who could smile at you and make you feel like you were the most important person in the room with the most powerful handshake. Captain of the swim team. Class president. A natural-born leader, who appeared to have a no fail formula for success. It was impossible to not see him and impossible to not notice him.

But he never saw her. Shylie was invisible.

She always was, coming in second place to her parents' melodramatic lifestyle, their ability to create their own spectacle, to command attention. Shylie didn't want it, either way, they had their own battles, and she was too exhausted to join. She had her own silent rebellion in being ignored, in the freedom it allowed her to build her mind, her strategy, her play, quietly, from the sidelines.

She observed Darren, at a distance, during lunch at the quad, at swim meets. She absorbed the way in which he moved through his environment with such ease, how effortlessly he dominated his world. Friends. Teachers. Classmates. He knew them all and he knew how to make them feel like they mattered.

Shylie didn't hate him. She simply couldn't imagine herself ever being in the same room as him. He was in a different universe, his life so far away from her own.

As time passed, Shylie worked. Hard. She built her intelligence, honed her skills, while the rest of the world, her family, turned their attention to other matters. She graduated early, a feat unseen and unnoticed by the people who should have cared most: her parents, her brother.

The world moved on. Shylie buried herself in her work, taking up night school while working part time jobs to keep her afloat. Meanwhile, Darren Tan seemed to be everywhere, in the news, on television, headlining each new feature article on the Tan Group's exponential growth.

Shylie observed from the sidelines as Darren continued on his meteoric rise:

"Darren Tan Funds Clean Water Project in Rural Villages"

"Tan Group's Youngest Prodigy Nephew Spearheads Youth Innovation Fair"

"Future Tech's Friendliest Face: Darren Tan's Surprise Success Story"

He was a golden boy. Unscathed by life's usual misfortunes. He was a top-tier executive at Tan Group, a family business that by all accounts controlled everything.

But they never met. Never.

Then, at the age of 38, after years of quietly climbing the ladder in the AI field, Shylie finally came face to face with him—once again, Elias Tan, the icicle, cold patriarch of the Tan family.

The night of the tech gala had been set to be just like every other networking event, rubbing elbows with people she had nothing in common with, presenting her latest AI research to a room of nonplussed faces, but the moment Elias stepped into the ballroom, everything changed. It was as if the room had sensed him, temperature dropping. People make their way instinctively. Elias Tan did not merely enter a room, he took over it.

He was everything she had heard, and so much more. He wasn't just a legend, he was the legend, the CEO of Tan Group, a former military officer turned businessman who had a reputation for being an almost coldly efficient corporate shark with an obsession for order, cleanliness, precision, and results.

And then they locked eyes.

It was not the type of look she expected. Elias didn't look down on her as most of the elites at the party would. He didn't eye her with the bored curiosity of one patron gazing at another piece of meat. He looked at her. And, for a fleeting moment, Shylie felt herself seen, not as a woman in the room, not as some object of passing amusement or sexual desire, but as someone whose presence he registered. And that was enough.

Her breath hitched in her chest, but Shylie quickly composed herself. She had worked too hard, spent too many sleepless nights preparing to present her research, too many to let one fleeting look throw her off.

The night ended in failure. Shylie had presented her AI prediction model to a room of half-listening people, a few glances her way, but for the most part, a sea of bored faces. It had started to rain just as she left the ballroom, the streets outside drenched as she waited by the curb for a taxi.

It was then, when the cold rain had just started to dilute the remnants of her confidence, that she noticed the black car.

The window rolled down. A voice, calm, filled the sudden void of silence that nighttime usually held: "Miss Reed."

Her heart jumped. She recognized that voice. Elias Tan.

For a second, she hesitated. Was she supposed to ignore him, move on, simply walk away? But she couldn't. Some part of her knew that she couldn't. This was too important a moment, one not to be passed up.

"Get in."

The order was curt, no room for argument. Shylie complied.

The car was private, the warmth enveloping her as Elias refused to engage in idle chitchat. They didn't discuss much. In fact, there was nothing small talk about their conversation. Just formulas, risk analysis, forecasts, projections. Efficient. Cold. Clinical. But Shylie found herself falling into it, the natural quickness of her mind already matching Elias' own.

He didn't flatter her, didn't engage in empty niceties or business card exchanges. He didn't need to be seen with her, didn't need to impress her with his name or his money. He simply listened, carefully, intently as she spoke, her spiel on her work, her prediction models for the future of AI research. He didn't need to like her. He didn't need to praise her, simply needed to grasp the full extent of her intelligence.

And when the car came to a stop at her building, it was over. No offer, no deal, just a nod of acknowledgment at a kindred spirit. A man who understood that in war, it was not fought on the battlefield of emotion, but that of precision, calculation. Shylie had never felt more invisible and more powerful at the same time.

Now, here she was. Sixteen again. Roseville Academy. Here. Back in the same halls where Darren used to laugh at jokes with his friends, Elias, an unreachable figure on the horizon.

But things would be different this time.

This time, she wasn't the quiet girl at the back of the room anymore. This time, she would rewrite the rules. She wouldn't be passive. She wouldn't sit back. She had committed her mistakes in the past life to memory, all of them. Every moment she had wasted, when she could have been making moves, building connections, comprehending and understanding the hierarchies at work in this world. She would not do that. This time, she would act. Strategize.

She wasn't just another piece to someone else's plan. This time, she would be the one in control of the game.

Darren Tan, golden boy, future superstar, was in her path. And Elias Tan, the calculating icicle, who had built an empire around him, he was the prize. Shylie wasn't just a passive observer anymore. This time, she wouldn't watch from below. She would climb, outsmart, and rewrite the rules. And nothing, no one, would stand in her way.