Chapter 8
Hearing her words, Kai turned and walked away without hesitation.
Jaxon just threw out one last line.
“Like you?”
“We pitied you, that’s all! You think you deserve the same kind of love Winter got?”
After that day, Scarlett stopped coming to school.
But Kai and Jaxon’s condition didn’t improve–it just kept getting worse.
When the SAT scores came out, Kai and Jaxon could only get into community colleges–Harvard and MIT were completely out of reach, let alone Columbia.
At least they’d managed to scrape together three months‘ worth of savings.
Kai called me again.
“Winter, it’s been a while.”
“I don’t know how you’re doing, but things aren’t great on my end…”
I cut him off immediately.
“So you finally figured out what Scarlett’s really like?”
“But, what’s that got to do with me?”
Kai was stunned.
“You…”
“You knew the truth all along?”
I was speechless.
“Did you really think someone who spends all day caking on makeup would actually be upset about not getting into college?”
“But since you chose her, you should’ve stuck with her till the end.”
“Half–assed rescuing is just fake virtue.”
17:26
Reborn Losers? Now I’m the CEO They Can’t Unseel
Chapter 8
The other end of the line went quiet.
When he heard I was about to hang up, he quickly added:
“Jaxon’s in the hospital.”
“We’re both on antidepressants now.”
“We’ve been thinking about you every single day, regretting what we did to you.”
I stopped him.
“Don’t dump your sob story on me.”
“If you’re depressed, get Scarlett to tell you some jokes.”
“You brought this on yourselves–don’t mess with my life.”
“After this call, you’ll never be able to find me again.”
Then I hung up.
Kai was so stressed it felt like his insides were on fire, and the physical shit hit him hard–he was curled up in the phone booth, shaking like a leaf.
If Jaxon hadn’t rushed over in time, he might have passed out completely.
After they got him stabilized at the hospital, the two of them sat there staring at each other, both with bloodshot eyes.
Jaxon let out a heavy sigh.
“Her number’s disconnected.”
“Now, once you lost someone’s phone number, they were gone forever.”
“But we don’t deserve her love anyway.”
Kai lay weakly in the hospital bed.
“Yeah.”
“When she was depressed, we wouldn’t even tell her a joke.”
“Now that we’re the ones who are depressed, we finally get how important emotional support is… We were complete assholes in our past life!”
“Still assholes in this one…”
17:26
Reborn Losers? Now I’m the CEO They Can’t Unsee!
81.5%
Chapter 8
Later, Scarlett never did jump in the river–she actually went and married that drunk from the street.
Then she resigned herself to having four kids with him.
Pretty traditional setup–three girls as the older siblings, one boy as the baby.
As for Jaxon and Kai, they never retook the SATs.
Since they knew what economic opportunities were coming, they both headed south to go into business, focusing on export trade, and made some decent money.
But they didn’t have much real experience.
When tariffs shifted, they pretty much lost everything.
Wherever they went, they had to carry their psychiatric medications with them–otherwise they’d think about me nonstop.
Fifteen years, day in and day out.
Rising and falling in the business world, scraping by, they only managed to make a few hundred thousand.
Neither of them ever got married.
And they kept focusing on trade with Britain, using every connection they had to track down information about
Americans.
When people asked about it, they’d say they were waiting for someone–an old friend who knew how to make buns.
Just like how I had waited for them to submit their college applications back then.
Pure agony.
17:26
