Chapter 50: The Market Crash

Ethan Mercer’s hands trembled so violently he nearly dropped his phone onto the desk. The bright screen cast a harsh glare against his pale, sweating face.

The Bitcoin chart was a sea of steep, terrifying red lines plunging straight down off a cliff.

He had dumped $300,000 into high-leverage Bitcoin positions, fully convinced by his memories of his past life that the cryptocurrency was on the brink of an unprecedented, historic bull run. But instead of soaring to the moon, the market had completely collapsed overnight. His $300,000 investment had been decimated, leaving him with barely $100,000 in liquidated equity.

"How is this possible?!" Ethan gasped under his breath, his chest heaving as panic tightened around his throat. "It was supposed to surge! How could it crash like this?!"

A sudden, terrifying memory flickered in his mind—a forgotten detail from his previous life. Years ago, before the massive crypto boom, Bitcoin had suffered a brutal, unexpected crash followed by a year-long bear market.

He had gotten the timeline wrong.

A cold sweat soaked through Ethan’s shirt. To fund his plays, he had taken out a crushing $700,000 high-interest loan from underground lenders. Out of that pool, $300,000 went into the crypto crash, $100,000 paid for his mother’s sudden medical emergency, and the remaining funds had been spent on living expenses and stock plays. He had less than $50,000 in cash left in his bank account.

How was he supposed to pay back $700,000 to ruthless loan sharks?

Ethan sat paralyzed in his seat all morning, his mind spinning in a dark vortex of terror.

At eleven o’clock, the campus public address system crackled to life, breaking the tense quiet of the lecture halls. The principal’s enthusiastic voice echoed across the quad.

"Attention, students and faculty! We have a monumental announcement today. President Victoria Sterling, head of the Sterling Group, has officially acquired a controlling stake in Capital University and become our institution’s largest majority shareholder!"

BOOM!

The announcement ignited an instant uproar across every building on campus.

"President Victoria Sterling?! The wealthiest, most powerful woman in the country?!"

"Is she really coming to campus? Do you think we’ll ever get to see her in person?"

"Keep dreaming," one student snickered. "She’s an unapproachable titan. People say she’s cold, merciless, and completely terrifying."

Ethan froze in his seat, his face turning ghost-white.

In his previous life, Victoria Sterling had never bought shares in Capital University. Yet in this life, everything was shifting out of control. Julian Vance had transformed into a refined genius, and Victoria Sterling was suddenly stepping onto campus.

Ethan’s heart raced with familiar, suffocating dread. Was fate bending itself to push Victoria back into his life? Images of his past life resurfaced—he remembered feeling like a caged bird in her grand rose estate, stripped of his freedom while she lavished him with endless wealth and comfort. He hated her control; he wanted to build his own empire!

"No," Ethan muttered through gritted teeth, his eyes filled with stubborn conviction. "I escaped her once. I won’t let her trap me again!"

___________

Across the central courtyard, Sean walked alongside Julian, acting like his dedicated sidekick.

"Jules," Sean asked curiously, glancing at the buzzing crowds around them. "What do you think President Sterling is actually like? The internet says she’s either an ruthless demon or a icy goddess."

Julian paused his stride, a faint, fond smile touching his lips. "Victoria is gorgeous, and honestly, she has a very sweet temper."

He didn’t care how terrifying she was to the business world—to him, as long as he stayed by her side and showed her affection, she doted on him without limits.

Sean chuckled, shaking his head. "Bro, you really know how to joke around."

Sean assumed Julian was just poking fun, knowing the firmly established media consensus: Victoria Sterling was a cold, distant business titan who had zero interest in romance, let alone a college boyfriend.

"I’m serious," Julian said casually with a slight shrug. "I told you before, my backer is a super-wealthy woman. She’s my girlfriend."

Before Sean could respond, Ethan stepped onto the pathway, overhearing Julian’s words.

Ethan halted, his brow furrowing as he looked at Julian. Every time he saw this handsome, composed version of Julian Vance, an intense, irrational distaste flared up inside him.

Ethan let out a cold, mocking scoff. "Julian, you might have fixed your hair and put on nice clothes, but let me give you a reality check—Victoria Sterling could never be interested in a guy like you."

Julian stopped, raising an eyebrow with amused curiosity. "Oh? And how exactly do you know who she likes?"

Ethan smirked with absolute, unshakeable confidence. In his mind, Victoria Sterling was a woman obsessed with him—both in his past life and this one. She would never look at another man.

"Don’t ask me how I know," Ethan said disdainfully, adjusting his jacket. "I’m just giving you a friendly warning. Don’t waste your time fantasizing about a woman who belongs to someone else."

With an air of supreme superiority, Ethan brushed past them and walked away.

Sean stared after him in total bewilderment. "What is wrong with that guy?! Why did he just walk up and start talking nonsense? Does he even know you?"

Julian chuckled softly, watching Ethan’s confident stride. "He’s just deeply narcissistic."

In the original novel’s plot, Ethan had taken all of Victoria’s immense wealth for granted—using her money to buy luxury villas for his mother and grand gifts for his female friends—all while claiming he hated her control and yearned for ’freedom.’

"Narcissistic?" Sean scratched his head, completely baffled. "What does that even mean?"

"You’ll see later," Julian replied smoothly. "People like him always regret their pride the moment reality hits them."

Returning to his classroom, Ethan sat down at his desk, his mind furiously spinning as he tried to figure a way out of his mounting financial disaster.

The $700,000 high-interest debt was a ticking time bomb. The underground lenders wouldn’t wait forever, and if he defaulted, they would ruin his life before he could even build his business empire.

Think, Ethan, think! he urged himself, tapping his fingers nervously against the wooden desk.

Focus, Ethan," he whispered frantically to himself, his teeth gritting so hard his jaw ached. "You’re a regressor. You have the ultimate cheat code. A single setback doesn’t end the game."

He closed his eyes and forced his mind back through the foggy currents of his past life. He stripped away the terror of the present, searching through years of buried memories, looking for a lifeline.

Then, like a bolt of lightning cutting through a pitch-black night, he remembered it.

Then, like a bolt of lightning cutting through a pitch-black night, he remembered it.

It had happened during the fall semester of his third year in his past life. He remembered sitting in a high-end coffee shop downtown, listening to two prominent venture capitalists discuss the future of financial technology. Back then, a brilliant startup called Apex Quant had taken the institutional investment world by storm, introducing a revolutionary high-frequency algorithmic trading model that utilized microsecond latency arbitrage across global currency exchanges.

In his past life, Ethan had meticulously studied Apex Quant’s publicly released whitepapers, pitch decks, and architectural blueprints after they went public. He had practically memorized their core proprietary logic—the mathematical framework that allowed them to front-run institutional orders with zero directional risk.

A slow, cold grin spread across Ethan’s pale face, chasing away the shadows of his panic.

"Apex Quant hasn’t even been founded yet in this timeline," Ethan muttered, his voice trembling with a sudden, intoxicating surge of adrenaline. "The founder is probably still struggling to get a seed meeting... but I already have the finished code structure and the entire business architecture right here in my head."

He didn’t need to guess crypto trends. He didn’t need to pray for a market recovery. He was going to steal the blueprint of a multi-billion-dollar enterprise before its original creator even had the chance to write the first line of code.

In this plan! He didn’t need to rely on unpredictable crypto markets or beg anyone for help. He already possessed a proven, million-dollar pitch stored right in his brain!

He immediately pulled out his laptop and opened a blank document, his fingers flying across the keyboard as he began typing out the intricate financial models and corporate pitching deck from memory.

If he could pitch this proposal to top-tier private equity firms in the city by the end of the week, securing a multi-million-dollar seed round would be a breeze. Not only would he easily pay off the $700,000 loan, but he would also establish the foundation of his own independent corporate empire—completely free from Victoria Sterling’s shadow.

His fingers began to fly across the keyboard, the frantic clattering filling the quiet room like gunfire.

Meanwhile, sitting in Lecture Hall 3, Julian pulled out his phone and sent a short text message to Victoria:

[Are you coming over to my dorm again tonight?]

A few seconds later, his phone buzzed with a reply:

[Of course, julian. Make sure the balcony door is unlocked for me.]

Julian looked at the screen and smiled softly, completely unbothered by Ethan’s delusional confidence. Let Ethan chase his grand dreams—Julian was more than happy enjoying the sweet, spoiled life with his yandere chaebol girlfriend.