Two Lifetimes of Love

I was Cole's doomed first love.

But the moment he looped back in time, his very first instinct was to abandon me.

He went straight to my stand-in to confess his feelings.

The boy who once cried with red-rimmed eyes, swearing I was the love of his life, now stood in front of a rolling camera. He looked deeply into the eyes of the girl who replaced me and made a solemn vow.

"Loving you is my business, and it has absolutely nothing to do with anyone else."

Later, on the day I accepted the confession from the untouchable genius of our college.

Cole lost his mind and completely shattered the wine glass in his bare hand.

People said that night, Cole completely lost it.

When I accidentally plummeted from the stage, the entire crew rushed over in a panic.

Only Cole walked away, his back turned to the chaos.

I rarely had the chance to see Cole walk away from me. In the past, he really did love me.

So it was always me who turned around first.

Fighting through the bone-piercing agony, I grabbed the wrist of a stagehand just before I blacked out.

"Please. Book me a full-body scan."

According to the original plotline, I was supposed to die of stomach cancer in exactly one year.

Then, I would become Cole's tragic, unattainable first love.

But the script had changed.

Seeing the resolute yet guilty look in Cole's eyes before he left, I knew I wasn't the only one who remembered the past timeline.

It was obvious who he was rushing off to find.

The male lead had been reborn. He finally realized who his true love was and was desperate to find his substitute girl to prove his devotion.

Their messy, passionate romance no longer needed a dying first love to serve as a stepping stone.

But those chemotherapy sessions hurt. They hurt so much.

And I really, really didn't want to die again.

I was unconscious for an entire day.

The doctor said my body was perfectly healthy.

Nothing but a bit of mild gastritis.

My calf was wrapped in a heavy plaster cast. It was clunky, but lying in that pristine white hospital bed, I felt an overwhelming sense of peace.

During the days I spent resting with my leg elevated, plenty of classmates and friends dropped by with fruit and flowers.

Cole never showed up once.

Actually, in my previous life, I also fell off the stage during that same rehearsal.

The difference was, the old Cole stayed by my hospital bed for three days and three nights without sleeping.

He loved me so much back then. I remember him staring at my cast, trying to suppress his furious panic, his lips pressed tight as his eyes grew bloodshot.

That was probably when he loved me the most.

I returned to campus a week later, hobbling on crutches. Completely by accident, I stumbled right into a grand, highly publicized confession.

Under the blinding spotlight, Cole handed a massive bouquet of baby's breath to the girl who had just delivered a flawless performance.

It was Lily's favorite flower. The substitute.

The live-stream cameras for the welcome gala were still rolling.

Because of my accident days prior, the performance I had prepared was handed over to Lily.

It felt like a universal rule. Whatever was mine would eventually belong to her.

Cole stood in front of the massive crowd. Under the glittering lights, his eyes shimmered with unshed tears.

I saw restraint in his gaze, mixed with the burning intensity of a man who had reclaimed his lost treasure.

He looked at her and made his vow.

"Loving you is my business, and it has absolutely nothing to do with anyone else."

I stared at Cole, feeling a bit numb. My mind drifted back to the year I was critically ill.

The boy who was notoriously wild and untamable had cried until his eyes were swollen. He lay his head on the edge of my bed, choking on his sobs, begging me not to leave him.

With trembling hands, he had carefully slipped a diamond ring onto my finger.

Unfortunately, the disease took my life shortly after.

I never got to give him an answer.

The grand confession pushed the gala's atmosphere to a fever pitch.

Lily flushed a deep red. With a shy, breathtaking smile, she accepted the baby's breath from Cole's hands.

They looked like a match made in heaven. Perfect. Destined.

Then Blake vaulted onto the stage. He snatched the white flowers right out of Lily's hands, his knuckles popping from how hard he gripped the stems.

He smashed the bouquet at Cole's feet. White petals exploded across the stage floor.

"Is this how you treat Audrey?"

Cole froze.

He instinctively turned his head, his eyes scanning the crowd until they locked onto me standing on the outskirts.

But his gaze darted away just as fast.

The boy who once loved me to his very core lowered his eyelashes and took a firm, protective step in front of Lily.

It was the ultimate defensive posture.

Once a toxic male lead finally wakes up and realizes who he truly loves, he will never let his new leading lady suffer even a fraction of an ounce of disrespect.

Not getting an answer, Blake swung a brutal punch right at Cole's jaw. The romantic, cinematic confession instantly devolved into a messy brawl.

Standing far away from the chaos, my fingers brushed against the crescent moon bracelet on my wrist.

It was a birthday gift from Cole.

He had put so much effort into it back then. A boy who hated sitting still actually spent an entire month designing it just for me.

When he clasped it around my wrist, he pretended to be fierce, ordering me never to take it off.

He told me it was one of a kind. A symbol of his exclusive devotion to me.

But I was never his leading lady.

I was just the doomed first love, a mere plot device meant to push his relationship with Lily forward.

What isn't mine will never belong to me.

I decided I needed to find a time to give the bracelet back.

I have seen what Cole looks like when he truly loves someone.

It happened in the timeline after my death.

He didn't know my soul was trapped by his side. He didn't know I was forced to watch how the story unfolded.

At first, he spiraled into a dark depression. Then, he became obsessed with collecting things that reminded him of me, finding a string of girls who shared my features.

He had a lot of stand-ins.

But Lily was the one who looked the least like me.

She stayed by his side the longest. She was his ultimate female lead.

It happened in the third year after my death.

Cole finally snapped out of his delusion and realized he had fallen deeply in love with Lily.

Their intense, dramatic romance left no room for anyone else. The so-called "first love" was just a tool to trigger their jealousy and push them closer together.

When Blake found out Cole had caught real feelings for the substitute, he was furious and threw a punch.

He demanded to know, "Is this how you treat Audrey?"

Cole and Lily's wedding reception was completely ruined by the sudden brawl.

My ghost floated helplessly beside them.

I wanted to break up the fight, but my hands passed through everything.

I wanted to tell them to stop. I wanted to say Cole didn't owe me anything.

The only thing Cole might have felt guilty about was the time he got jumped in an alley, and I took a knife to the back for him.

The cut was so deep it hit the bone, leaving a massive, ugly scar across my spine.

Later, when I was diagnosed with terminal illness, Cole went absolutely insane trying to find a way to save me.

He cried by my bed, swearing he would only ever love me.

That he would only ever marry me.

I had never seen him cry with such devastating despair.

But promises are just words. They were never meant to be taken seriously.

I snapped out of my memories.

The two guys wrestling on the stage were finally pulled apart by the crowd.

Cole had managed to land a solid punch right next to Blake's ear.

His eyes were completely dark, his voice a lethal warning.

"Stop acting like a psycho."

In the last timeline, after Blake ruined the wedding, Cole used his family's money to bankrupt Blake, eventually driving him to take his own life.

Blake was only doing this for me. There was no way I could just stand by and watch.

I hobbled over on my crutches, looking straight at a pale, trembling Lily.

"Don't misunderstand," I told her seriously. "There is absolutely nothing going on between Cole and me."

Plotline aside, our connection should have been severed completely a long time ago.

Hearing this, Blake wiped his mouth, stood up, and shot Cole a freezing glare. He carefully supported my weight and walked me out of the auditorium, step by step.

Before I left the building, I unclasped the bracelet.

It held the warmth of my skin, but as the cool night air hit it, it quickly grew cold.

I thought about it for a second, then tossed it directly into a nearby trash can.

I deliberately didn't mention the bracelet in front of Lily.

I knew Cole wouldn't give her something I had already worn.

He always gave Lily the very best of everything.

Never a simple, fragile trinket like this.

I felt a burning stare drilling into my back, practically piercing through my bones.

I glanced over my shoulder. Cole was staring dead at my completely bare wrist.

His face was terrifyingly pale.

After that night, I heard the rumors. While I was stuck in the hospital for a week, Cole had launched an aggressive, highly public pursuit of Lily.

People called it love at first sight. He made such a massive scene that the whole campus knew, and their relationship practically had a dedicated fan club.

That was exactly how Cole operated when he liked someone.

Passionate. Fearless.

Willing to lay the absolute best of the world at their feet.

As for me.

Some people waited to watch me humiliate myself. Others just pitied me.

I didn't care either way.

My family's background was on par with Cole's, and our dating rumors had eventually reached our parents' ears.

When my mom called to ask, I just laughed it off and clarified that we were strictly platonic.

It was a favor to Cole, and a favor to myself.

I refused to get dragged into the messy drama of the main characters ever again.

Balancing a heavy stack of library books in my arms, I slowly made my way down the stairs. My foot hadn't completely healed yet. Suddenly, someone rushing to class clipped my shoulder from behind.

The books scattered everywhere. I lost my balance. Seeing the hard concrete stairs rushing up to meet my face, I instinctively squeezed my eyes shut.

The brutal impact never came.

Someone firmly caught my forehead, steadying me.

When I opened my eyes and saw his face, my eyelashes fluttered. I managed a clumsy, "Thank you."

It was Sebastian.

I hadn't seen Sebastian in a very long time. I had only heard whispers that he recently published another groundbreaking paper. The faculty worshipped him, and his spot in the top grad program was already locked in.

Girls confessed to him constantly, but he never gave them the time of day.

Just like in high school, he was the campus untouchable. Completely out of reach.

Cold, detached, and impossible to claim.

He quickly pulled his hand back and crouched down to gather my scattered books.

His crisp white shirt seemed to glow in the sunlight spilling through the stairwell window. The tiny mole under the corner of his eye caught the light, gleaming in a way that made my chest ache.

Right now, his expression was entirely blank.

As if he didn't even know me.

I took the books he handed back. Just as he turned to leave, I reached out without thinking and grabbed the hem of his shirt.

"Hey... could I get your number?"

It was the clumsiest pickup line in existence.

A brief flicker of surprise seemed to cross Sebastian's features, but then it was gone, leaving nothing but ice.

He looked down, his voice barely a whisper, yet every single word cut deep.

"Are you trying to play me again, Audrey?"

There was a bitter edge of self-mockery in his tone.

My breath hitched.

Ah.

He hadn't forgotten me after all.

Which meant he probably hated my guts.

I met Sebastian long before I ever met Cole.

But our ending was anything but graceful.

Or rather, in Sebastian's eyes, we never even had a beginning.

I had told him I liked him. I worked myself to the bone just to get accepted into the same college as him.

But the moment he finally gathered the courage to confess to me, I shot him down with brutal cruelty.

At that time, the story's algorithm had activated. I was destined to meet Cole freshman year, and I was destined to die a few years later, cementing my role as the untouchable ghost of his past.

It was an unchangeable script.

But back then, I had almost melted Sebastian's frozen heart. The boy who was as cold as a glacier actually smiled at me with pure, unfiltered warmth.

The System absolutely refused to let that happen.

When the System attached itself to me, Sebastian's existence almost got completely wiped out.

People started forgetting the brilliant, aloof physics prodigy. His body began to turn translucent. Every trace that he had ever existed in this world was being erased by a supernatural force.

Using my System privileges, I sneaked a look at what Sebastian's future was supposed to be.

It was beautiful.

He was meant to enter the most prestigious university in the country and become a globally renowned astronomer at a shockingly young age.

He would discover a planet, and they would name it after him.

He shouldn't lose a bright, brilliant future just because of me.

At the high school graduation banquet, in front of our entire class, I dumped a glass of red wine right over his head.

The dark red liquid ruined his shirt, completely crushed his pride.

And annihilated his love for me.

With my chin tilted high, I looked at him with absolute disgust.

"You're just a charity case living off my family's money. Who gave you the right to like me?"

No one knew my hands were violently shaking inside my sleeves.

I never saw Sebastian again after that.

After burning the bridge so thoroughly, he vanished from my world entirely.

And eventually, I ran into Cole, the male lead I was mathematically obligated to fall for.

The inescapable algorithm forced me step-by-step into the role of the tragic, short-lived first love.

But all these years, I never once dreamed of Sebastian.

Sometimes I thought I had been so wicked, so cruel.

That even in my dreams, Sebastian refused to look at me.