My Roommate Stole My Past-Life Hack—I’ll Just Smile at Her Regret Chapter 09

My Roommate Stole My Past-Life Hack—I’ll Just Smile at Her Regret Chapter 09

The next time I saw Jasmine was more than half a year later, at a selection test.

A renowned professor from one of the world’s top universities had been invited to give a lecture here and, while he was at it, choose a few students.

His selection method was unusual. He turned it into a game-like competition.

The test measured short-term memory, calculation ability, reaction speed, and more.

In short, the rules strongly favored someone with the double-time ability.

In my last life, I had been noticed through this exact test and earned a fully funded chance to continue my studies.

Jasmine, dead set on recreating my path, would never have missed this opportunity, so running into her there was no surprise.

What did surprise her was seeing me.

“Natalie, what are you doing here?” she asked, wary and baffled.

I almost laughed. “I applied, got accepted, and showed up.”

She looked me up and down with open contempt. “You think you can still win this time? Even if you can raise the professor’s goodwill toward you, the results of the competition won’t lie.”

“True,” I said with a nod. “But whether I win doesn’t matter. The real question is whether you can.”

Jasmine looked completely certain of herself. “We’ll see.”

The test began soon after, and each of us started answering questions on our own console.

This time, without the boost of a superpower, I felt my ordinariness with painful clarity.

So many images flashed by, and all they left in my mind were faint, blurry traces.

I did not manage to remember a single thing.

But compared with the total concentration I had brought to this test in my last life, I felt almost relaxed now.

I treated it like a game experience, guessing through half the answers and writing down whatever I could.

What Jasmine had never realized was that my strong performance in this test in my last life had not come entirely from my power.

For half a year before the competition, I had trained myself every single day.

A brain really could be sharpened through repeated practice.

I used double time to grind through endless training, then cheated during the competition with my ability, packaging myself as a counterfeit “genius.”

For years afterward, terrified of exposing how ordinary I really was, I studied day after day without letting up for even a second.

My advisor once called me in just to tell me I needed rest, that I should enjoy life and stop keeping myself wound so tight.

“You’re smart, and you work hard,” he told me. “The only thing you need to do now is be a little kinder to yourself.”

That was how he encouraged me.

But all I felt was shame.

The more true geniuses I had around me, the more afraid I became.

Because I knew the brilliance people saw in me was fake.

Ten years later, I would lose it.

And in this life, Jasmine was the one who had swallowed that pill.

Knowing Jasmine as well as I did, I knew she would never put in that kind of training.

So even with double time, she struggled badly with this test.

As it went on, her face grew paler and paler, and a fine sheen of sweat appeared on the tip of her nose.

When the test ended, the first batch of eliminated names appeared on the big screen almost immediately.

Natalie was right there on it.

Jasmine turned to look at me, a taunting smile on her face.

Her lips formed the words, “I won.”

I answered with a faint smile of my own.

She would never understand that I had never come here to beat her.

There was no point in that.

I had come here to find someone.