Reborn, I Refused Love and Chose Power Instead

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.