Youth Romance Doomed To Self-Destruct

The genius boy I secretly loved fell for a bad girl who smoked like a chimney and drank like a fish. He skipped classes, picked fights, and rented cheap motel rooms with her. His legendary grades plunged into the abyss. Out of pity and misplaced affection, I stepped aside and gave him my guaranteed spot at MIT. Years later, he made a fortune, became a rising tycoon in the tech industry, and invested heavily in my project. One month later, he framed me and threw me behind bars. When he visited me in prison, a faint, mocking smile touched his handsome face. "You stole my love story," he whispered. "So I erased your future. Fair trade, wouldn't you say?" When I opened my eyes again, I was sitting back in my high school classroom. Outside the window, the genius boy and the bad girl were sprinting through the pouring rain, looking like the tragic leads of a teenage melodrama. This time, I chose to stand back and let their wild, destructive passion burn itself out! 1 I was the definition of a good girl. Straight-A student, hardworking, predictable, reliable. The kind of kid teachers and parents held up as an example. Karl Mercer, on the other hand, was the boy God had personally blessed. He was bright, charming, and possessed a mind for numbers that bordered on terrifying. Without even trying, he could coast to perfect scores in physics, calculus, and chemistry. We were total opposites. I lacked raw talent, relying entirely on relentless grit. He lacked discipline, relying entirely on genius. Hoping we would balance each other out, our homeroom teacher made us desk mates. Karl used to ruffle my hair, leaning in close with a soft chuckle. "How can a girl be so innocent, Freya? You're going to get eaten alive out there." Or he'd toss his dark jacket over my head when a sudden thunderstorm hit. "Take it. I'm bulletproof. Rain can't touch me." He used to smile and whisper, "Study hard, Freya. Let's make it to MIT together. We can sit at the same desk for four more years. Hell, let's sit together forever." A young boy's affection is a wild thing, humble yet arrogant, gentle yet fiercely proud. He never hid his concern for me. And he never rejected the silent adoration in my eyes. Until the transfer student, Roxie, strutted into his world. She wore low-cut camisoles, scandalously short denim shorts, and streaks of vivid neon dye in her high ponytail. Bright green eyeshadow, plump glossy lips, glittering silver earrings. In our suffocating, monotonous high school, she shone like a flickering flame in a dark room. She always had a lollipop tucked into the corner of her mouth. She carried a confident, razor-sharp smirk that said she owned the room. Her beauty was a slap in the face to the dull, soul-crushing atmosphere of senior year. Out of place, wild, and utterly magnetic. Karl fell for her the second his eyes landed on her. I saw the way Roxie blew thick, sweet smoke rings directly into Karl's face, and the hypnotic, intoxicated daze that settled in his eyes. I saw the way Roxie took Karl's hand and pressed it flat against her chest, and the electric shock of raw, teenage wonder that exploded in his gaze. "Feel that?" Roxie had purred, her voice dripping with lazy confidence. "My heart is beating for you. God, Karl, how can a guy be this pretty? Why am I chasing you? Because I want you, obviously." Her love was a forest fire. Wild, scorching, impossible to tame. Karl's fall from grace was fast, public, and brutal. He ditched class to run through torrential rain with her, screaming vows into the storm. He fought older thugs in dark alleys for her, coming back with split lips and bruised knuckles, wearing his scars like badges of honor. They kissed beneath stadium bleachers, wrapped themselves around each other, and checked into grimy, five-dollar-a-night motels. They used no protection, letting their reckless impulse carry them to the absolute edge. Even when she ended up in a back-alley clinic getting an abortion, they treated the blood and pain as a badge of grand, tragic romance. And I was tossed into the dark corner of his mind, completely forgotten. To everyone else, I became the pitiful girl who lost. "Hey, Freya, I heard Karl went back to that motel with Roxie again. Aren't you dying of jealousy?" "Acting so cold and refined... no wonder Karl left you in the dust for Roxie." "Honestly, I envy Roxie. She lives so dangerously, so passionately. That's real romance." When we were young, forbidden fruit always looked sweet. In my past life, I had been devastated. I wept, I spiraled, I grieved for the boy I lost. But through it all, I kept my head down and stayed focused. I even tried to pull Karl back from the brink, begging him to focus on his studies. I voluntarily surrendered my spot in the National STEM Modeling Olympiad, handing him the automatic ticket into MIT. And what did I get for it? He hated me. He believed I had ripped him away from the love of his life. For four years, he accepted that fast-track program, only to be recruited straight into a classified military tech initiative due to his brilliant mind. Roxie couldn't handle four years of total radio silence in a long-distance relationship. She dumped him. Desperate for money and easy thrill, she fell into human trafficking schemes, was dragged across the border, and died a nameless death in an offshore ditch. When Karl returned and found out, he blamed me for everything. He framed me, ruined me, and watched me rot in a cage. His revenge made sense, didn't it? After all, to a romantic fool, love is paramount. Youth must be lived without regret. And I had given his youth the ultimate regret. 2 "Youth is about pushing yourself to the absolute limit!" Our homeroom teacher slammed his fist onto the podium, his face red with frustration. He glared around the classroom, his gaze locking heavily on certain empty desks. "It means grinding through thousands of test papers, mastering every single mistake, and fighting for top rank in this state! It means forcing the world to acknowledge you!" He took a sharp breath, his voice laced with venom. "Some students think they're special. They think raw talent means they don't have to work hard. Open your eyes and look at the leaderboard! Your scores are in the gutter!" "And some of you aren't just destroying your own future, you're dragging other people down into the mud with you! How do you sleep at night?" "Living without regret means taking responsibility for who you're going to be tomorrow! It means having a spine!" "Love is paramount? Can romance pay your bills? Can love put food on your table?" To me, love certainly couldn't buy a meal. But to Karl and Roxie, love wasn't just food. It was their religion, their oxygen, the supreme purpose of their existence. So, when Karl's mother came to me, holding my hands with tears pouring down her face, begging me to yield my STEM competition slot to Karl, I didn't hide it. I went straight to Karl and Roxie and laid it all out. Karl was shocked at first, then exploded in a volcanic fury. He stormed home and unleashed a terrifying tirade against the mother who worshipped the ground he walked on. "You've been doing this my entire life!" he screamed at her. "You never give a damn about what I actually feel!" "I don't care about your stupid competition! I don't care about MIT! Keep your damn spot!" "I love Roxie! Even if I end up working a dead-end job, I'm staying with her!" That night, Karl brought Roxie back to his house. He stood in the living room and explicitly refused to take part in the contest, severing his fast-track future in front of his father and mother. I happened to be walking past his house after finishing a grueling late-night practice test. Through the iron gates of their garden, I saw Karl kneeling in the dirt, his father's leather belt coming down across his back again and again. Roxie knelt right beside him, tears streaming down her face, screaming at his parents to accept their pure, unsullied love. Karl's mother was sobbing uncontrollably, clutching her chest. "I poured my heart and soul into raising you!" she wept, her voice breaking. "I don't ask you to pay me back, Karl! I just ask you not to throw your life away!" "You talk about love now, but what about ten years from now? When you get married and have kids and the bills start piling up, how are you going to feed her? How are you going to keep a roof over your head?" "You used to be my biggest pride, Karl. Now you're my biggest embarrassment!" And how did Karl respond? He wiped the blood from his lip, looked his mother dead in the eyes, and spat: "My life is my own!" "I love Roxie. Without her, I'd rather be dead! College is just a path for boring, ordinary sheep!" "I'm a genius! Even without a diploma, I can crush this world!" He sounded so passionate, so righteous, so heroic. His mother, unable to contain the agonizing pain in her heart, rushed forward and slapped him across the face, over and over again. She wanted to wake him up. She wanted her brilliant, golden boy back. Karl just laughed through the blows. "Roxie didn't fail at life! She just failed some stupid standardized test! Grades don't define a human being!" "So what if our names aren't on some Ivy League roster? There are a million roads under our feet!" "We aren't committing crimes, we aren't sick, we aren't a burden on society!" "We just want to love each other! You're the greedy ones! You just wanted a trophy child so you could show off to your snobbish friends!" "Take your high expectations and shove them! You call yourselves parents, but you're just selfish tyrants!" I stood in the dark outside the gate, listening quietly. Then I turned around. I walked back home, pulled out a fresh book of practice problems, and went back to work. 3 The next morning, Karl's mother blocked my path near the school gates. Her eyes were swollen, raw red from crying all night. She glared at me with a mix of betrayal and accusation. "Why did you tell Karl about the competition spot, Freya? You never used to be like this." I stared at her, my expression entirely blank. Her tone grew sharper, her fingers digging into my arm. "You and Karl used to be so close! How could you just stand by and watch him ruin his life? Freya, where did that sweet, kind girl go?" I bit my lip, refusing to waste a single second of my energy arguing. It was senior year. Every minute counted. When I tried to pull away, she gripped me tighter, her voice dropping into a desperate sob. "He's going to ruin himself! Freya, please, help me. Help Karl!" "Take the competition for him! With your discipline, you can win that guaranteed spot, and then you can transfer it to him! Please, I'm begging you!" "When Karl makes it big in the future, he'll be grateful to you! He'll realize you're the only girl who was ever worthy of him!" I took a deep, steady breath. The memory of my cold, dark prison cell flashed through my mind. In my past life, after Karl framed me, my frantic parents had begged his mother for mercy. And what did this woman do? She manipulated my parents, driving them to sell our house, take out illegal loans, and attempt to bribe a federal prosecutor. When the sting operation exposed them, my parents were ruined. The night before the authorities came to arrest them, they lit a charcoal grill in our sealed living room and ended their lives. Karl was an arrogant, vengeful sociopath. And his mother was no better. I looked straight into her eyes, my voice cold and calm. "There's only one guaranteed spot, Mrs. Mercer. The principal clearly stated it belongs to whoever ranks first in the state." "Karl's grades have plunged so low he can barely pass basic algebra. Handing him my hard-earned work would ruin my future. You're asking me to cheat for him. If we get caught, do you have any idea what happens to my record?" "Besides, whether Karl thrives or rots in a gutter has absolutely nothing to do with me." "I admit I used to like him. But I liked the bright, hardworking boy who looked toward the future. Not a brain-dead romantic who throws his life away for a girl." "I don't know if I'm 'worthy' of your son, Mrs. Mercer. But I know for a fact that he isn't worth my time." I ripped my arm out of her grip. I turned and walked toward the school building, my footsteps steady and deliberate. Karl's youth was about chasing a foolish, tragic romance. My youth was about building a life that no one could ever tear down.