Emma was drowning in full-blown panic, the kind that made her chest tight and her thoughts scatter like startled birds.
Josh's true face had been brutally exposed, shattering her carefully constructed dream of marrying into wealth and social status.
And now she had discovered that Jason, the guy she used to dismiss as a broke college student barely worth her attention, was actually swimming in money.
The moment she tried to circle back to him like a moth to flame, she realized with growing horror that he had already severed every connection between them with surgical precision.
Emma had been counting on Jason's old feelings for her, naively assuming it wouldn't be difficult to reel him back in with a few tears and sweet words. But the harsh reality was becoming painfully clear—things weren't the same anymore.
He wasn't the desperate, lovesick puppy she used to control with casualy. Now he was confidently surrounded by Megan, Quinn, and Holly—three girls Emma couldn't even begin to compete with on her best day.
That realization sent ice water coursing through her veins. In the past, Jason had been laughably easy to manipulate with the smallest gestures of false affection. But now? She could feel him slipping completely out of her grasp like water through desperate fingers.
Unable to contain her mounting desperation any longer, Emma hurried across the dining hall with quick, determined steps and sat down directly across from Jason without invitation. Her eyes immediately welled up with carefully practiced tears, her face twisting into an expression of pitiful, heart-wrenching regret.
This was her trump card—the secret weapon that had never failed her before. The "about-to-cry" look had always worked on him like magic. In the past, Jason would have been tripping over himself to comfort her the very second she looked this vulnerable.
"Jason..." Emma's voice trembled with perfectly calculated fragility. "I know I screwed everything up. I never should have ditched you on your birthday like that. Please, just let me make it up to you somehow. Don't stay angry at me forever. You wanted me to be your girlfriend, right? Well... I'm here now. I'm ready. I'll be your girlfriend."
At the neighboring table, Mike, Ryan, and Chris froze with forks halfway to their mouths, their jaws practically hitting the cafeteria floor in synchronized shock.
They exchanged meaningful glances loaded with disbelief, then quietly stood up with their dinner trays, moving strategically closer to eavesdrop on what promised to be the most dramatic conversation of the semester.
And they arrived just in time to hear Jason's response carry clearly across the dining hall, his voice steady and unmistakably final:
"I'm not angry at you anymore, Emma. But we're finished. Completely finished. You don't need to be my girlfriend, and I certainly don't need to be your boyfriend. From now on, we're just classmates sharing the same campus. That's the extent of our relationship."
Mike nearly choked on his soda, coughing violently. Ryan and Chris looked like they'd just witnessed a genuine miracle—the kind that gets written about in history books.
Jason just moving on?
No wonder, though. With Megan, Quinn, and Holly in his social circle, Jason could stride through campus like he owned every building on it.
Emma's eyes reddened with fresh tears as she leaned forward desperately, her voice taking on a pleading quality that would have broken the old Jason's heart instantly. "You say you're not angry, but you clearly still are. I admit I made terrible mistakes, but can't you find it in your heart to forgive me? You don't have a girlfriend, I don't have a boyfriend—we could go back to how things used to be between us. Please... isn't that enough?"
She tried to smile through her tears, the expression heartbreakingly beautiful in its vulnerability. "If you treat me like your girlfriend from now on, our love story could still be absolutely amazing. We could be perfect together."
But instead of softening with familiar sympathy, Jason felt his chest tighten with waves of old anger and fresh disgust.
Her words dragged up every buried memory—all the humiliation, all the casual rejection, all the lonely nights when he had been there for her unconditionally while she systematically chose someone with a bigger bank account.
Sure, part of him still felt a flicker of residual emotion—it was psychologically impossible not to, after everything they had shared over three years. But disgust and self-respect outweighed nostalgia by an overwhelming margin.
She had thrown him aside like yesterday's garbage the very second someone with more apparent wealth had walked into her life.
And her fundamental character hadn't changed one bit—Jason could see that with crystal clarity. Even if he somehow overlooked their entire painful history, what would happen the day he lost his fortune? Or when someone even richer came along with better prospects, unlikely to happen but still? She would abandon him again without the slightest hesitation.
Right now, her remorse wasn't born from genuine love—it was pure survival instinct. She had glimpsed his newfound wealth and desperately wanted back into his good graces.
"Emma, maybe I gave you the wrong impression about who I was before. Maybe I was too accommodating, too willing to be pushed around, and that made you think I'd always come running back like a trained dog. But listen to me very carefully: I'm not angry at you anymore. Anger requires emotional investment, and I simply don't have any left for you. I'm just done. Completely, irrevocably done. There's no chance between us anymore. Not as a couple. Not even as friends. From this moment forward, we are strangers who happen to attend the same university."
Emma froze like a statue, staring at him with an expression of utter disbelief as his words sank in with devastating finality.
For the first time in her life, she truly understood—she hadn't just risked losing Jason through her selfishness and cruelty. She had already lost him, completely and permanently.
Maybe it had happened that night she chose Josh over him without explanation. Maybe it had been building for much longer than that, through countless small betrayals and casual dismissals.
Her chest ached as buried memories stabbed at her consciousness like shards of broken glass. People always remembered the past most vividly when it was gone forever, when regret was the only thing left.
Emma's tears slipped silently down her cheeks, no longer calculated but genuinely heartbroken.
"Jason, please..." she whispered, but her voice cracked and broke before she could form complete sentences.
Lily, unable to stand watching her friend's emotional collapse any longer, rushed to Emma's side and wrapped a protective arm around her trembling shoulders. "Jason! How can you be this absolutely heartless? Emma's crying her heart out right in front of you—can't you see how much she regrets everything? Is your heart made of stone?"
Jason gave Lily one completely disinterested glance, as if she were background noise, then turned away without dignifying her outburst with a response. He wasn't about to waste precious energy arguing with Emma's eternal enabler. Lily had always been Emma's backup singer, consistently encouraging her worst impulses.
He picked up his dinner tray with deliberate calm and walked away, his footsteps echoing with quiet finality.
Behind him, Emma remained crumpled in her chair like a broken doll, quietly sobbing into her hands as the weight of permanent loss settled around her shoulders.
The other students at nearby tables exchanged uneasy glances—some pitying her obvious distress, others shaking their heads at the dramatic spectacle.
But Samantha, who had been observing the entire exchange with clinical detachment, simply crossed her arms and spoke with brutal honesty. "She deserves exactly this outcome. If Jason actually took her back after everything she put him through, what kind of message would that send? She needed this wake-up call more than anything else in the world."
Jason walked out of the dining hall with measured steps, his phone buzzing insistently in his pocket like an annoying insect.
He frowned when he saw the notification—his system's favorability tracker had just registered another unexpected increase.
Emma: Favorability +5
He sighed deeply, running a hand through his hair. "Fantastic. Now I'm at 121 for the day. Complete waste of efficiency. I genuinely thought rejecting her would lower her favorability, not somehow increase it. The psychology of her makes absolutely no sense."
He shoved his phone back into his pocket with mild irritation, muttering to himself as he walked. Worship her like a goddess and she barely acknowledges your existence. Reject her completely, and suddenly she's obsessed. The logic is absolutely unreal."
Before he could analyze the situation further, his phone buzzed again with a distinctly different notification tone.
A text message had appeared from Megan, the preview making his eyebrows rise with interest:
"Hey Jason! Don't forget—my birthday party is the day after tomorrow. Private Room 006 at The Willow Lounge, 8 p.m. sharp. You better be there!"
Jason blinked, his memory suddenly crystallizing around her casual mention of the celebration yesterday during their restaurant encounter.
At the time, he had assumed it was just polite small talk—the kind of invitation people extend without expecting anyone to actually show up. But now? This was clearly an official, personal invitation with specific details and obvious expectations.
His lips curved into the first genuine smile he'd worn all evening as he typed back:
"Wouldn't miss it for the world."
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