My Roommate Stole My Past-Life Hack—I’ll Just Smile at Her Regret Chapter 12

My Roommate Stole My Past-Life Hack—I’ll Just Smile at Her Regret Chapter 12

In the ninth year of my superpower, Quinn was only one step away from a breakthrough.

At the same time, my funds were running dry. If I forced the company to keep going like this and our cash flow snapped, we would be staring bankruptcy in the face.

To solve the funding problem, I decided to raise another round specifically for Quinn’s project.

So I turned my cheat code back on and plunged into the world of finance, moving among elite men once again.

Right at that critical moment, damaging rumors about my company suddenly began circulating all over the market.

The accusation that caused the biggest uproar was gender discrimination.

An anonymous poster claimed that more than 81 percent of my company’s management team was male.

According to them, that proved we were clearly discriminating against women in both hiring and promotions.

And the fact that the company’s founder was a woman who was “highly attractive and exceptionally skilled at dealing with men” only added a layer of sexual insinuation to the whole mess.

Some of the more extreme voices said, “As an accomplished woman,

Natalie has completely betrayed women as a whole.”

Under the assault of that public backlash, my fundraising plan began to wobble badly.

Even if I could influence those elite men’s goodwill, a slight increase in it was not enough to outweigh that level of risk.

When money was on the line, they became ruthlessly rational.

And if I pushed that goodwill too high, it would bring a different kind of danger.

Jasmine was the perfect cautionary example.

Her second husband had been a paranoid obsessive. Jasmine had maxed out his affection toward her until he mistook it for overwhelming love.

After he married her, he kept her locked away, cut off every one of her social connections, and refused to let her have any contact with the outside world.

She endured it for a full three years before she finally found a chance to latch onto another man and use him to escape.

Thinking about Jasmine, I suddenly found this entire media storm oddly familiar.

It felt exactly like one of her usual tactics.

So I had people investigate Jasmine’s recent movements while also tracing the IP addresses of the major accounts driving the outrage.

In the end, we came to an interesting conclusion.

Jasmine had been controlling multiple accounts at the same time, deliberately steering the entire conversation.

When we found out the truth, the head of our PR department could hardly believe one person had done all that alone.

“She’s seriously some kind of time-management genius. Apparently she doesn’t even need time to eat, sleep, or go to the bathroom.”

I could not decide whether to laugh or sigh.

Jasmine had actually chosen to use her double-time superpower like that, just to get in my way.

But this time, her methods were much more sophisticated.

She used selective but technically real data to lead people toward selective conclusions, which made it difficult for me to pin anything concrete on her.

At that exact crisis point, Quinn’s research paper was finally finished and accepted by a top journal.

That night, we drove around for a long time with no destination in mind.

Out in a stretch of empty wilderness, we sat on the roof of the car, drinking beneath a sky full of stars.

Quinn, tipsy and bleary-eyed, asked me, “Why do you believe in me this much?”

I lifted my bottle and clinked it unsteadily against hers.

The crisp sound was carried far off by the wind.

“Because I’ve seen it.”

“What?”

Quinn had not heard me clearly.

So I leaned close to her ear and shouted, “I said, take care of your health and go get checked out.”