"Rias…?"
'How does she know that name? No one remembers her, so how…?'
"What do you know about my relationship with Rias?" Rudy asked curiously.
"What am I supposed to know?"
"Do you know how I met her or how we started going out?" Rudy asked calmly.
"Why are you asking me all that?!" Janet uttered in an annoyed tone.
"Then why are you asking if I am cheating on her?" Rudy questioned back.
"That's…" Janet averted her gaze and passed the bag from her left hand to her right hand, seemingly it was heavy for her to carry.
"That's…?" Rudy asked. But after a brief pause, he asked, "Are you sure you don't have a thing for me?"
"I don't!" Janet yelled.
"Then why do you interfere in my relationship? And what made you think I am cheating?"
"I saw you today with Alice."
"...!" Rudy was surprised, but he didn't let his expression change. 'She saw us? When? In the classroom? On the rooftop? Or when we were in the park?'
"What's weird about that?" Rudy shrugged his shoulders and said, "You already know Alice and I are childhood friends, so what's wrong if we are together?"
Janet squinted her eyes and said, "I saw you hugging her from behind and touching her boobs."
"That's…. Normal skin ship between childhood friends," Rudy said while avoiding eye contact with Janet.
Janet furrowed her brows and glared at Rudy before saying, "I thought you were a kind and innocent boy, but you turned out to be the same as every other boy."
Janet was born in a low-class family because her mother was a single mother. When her mother was 19 years old, she started university and there she met a foreign guy with blonde hair.
They had many classes together and they became friends. One thing led to another, and they ended up dating. But after dating for three months, when Rachel told her boyfriend that she was pregnant, he started acting strange.
One night, he told Rachel that he was going to buy milk, and then he never returned. He changed his phone number, deleted his social accounts, and moved to a different university far away.
When Rachel's parents found out about it, they kicked her out and stopped giving her tuition fees. So She had no other choice but to drop out of the university and do a part-time job to make money.
Around the same time, Eleanor had started her business and she gave the post of manager to Rachel. But after giving birth to Janet, everything changed, for good.
Rachel found herself happy with her daughter and she was enjoying the life of a single mother, and she had no regret in giving birth to Janet, even though her parents wanted her to get an abortion and marry someone.
Janet's natural hair was blonde, just like her father, and her eyes were blue, just like her mother's. Both Rachel and her ex-lover were beautiful looking, and Janet inherited the beauty.
Naturally, she was popular in school, among both boys and girls, so she was also the target of bullying. But after entering high school, she decided to become a bully herself.
While she never physically abused someone, nor did she hurt them emotionally, she threatened everyone and gave 'don't come near me' vibes. She thought she would be fine without making any friends. She simply pretended to be a bad girl.
But just as honey attracts insects, Janet attracted other bullies who wanted to be friends with her. Janet knew that if she denied them, then she would get in trouble, so she started hanging out with them.
But unlike Janet, who was only acting to be a bully, the other girls were real bullies who bullied weak boys and girls of the class who were also alone with no friends to protect them.
Out of everyone, Rudy was one of their targets. And as a new member, Janet was forced to bully Rudy.
Janet was well aware that if she didn't do as they said, her cover as a fake bully would be exposed, so she had no other choice but to bully Rudy.
Rudy, however, knew about Janet as he was the constant target of bullying because of his weak body and meek behavior. He also knew that Janet wasn't a bad person.
A few days passed by, and the bullies kept asking Janet to bully every loner student they saw. And due to that, Janet's grades dropped, and she was suspended many times before getting a final warning from the school.
Apparently, the bullies who asked Janet to bully others snitched on Janet when they got in trouble.
That's when Janet finally realized that she was getting bullied by them all along. She then broke her friendship with them and started hanging out with other girls in the class, including Alice, who was also one of the popular girls in the school.
It took everyone a while to accept Janet, but everything worked out eventually.
"That reminds me, you never apologized for bullying me," Rudy remarked with a grin on his face, seemingly, he was teasing her.
"I did apologize!"
"When? I don't have a memory of that."
"I placed an apology letter in your bag…" she uttered in a low voice.
'Oh! So it was her? She never wrote her name, and I was constantly bullied, so I never figured out who it was.'
Rudy looked at the bags in Janet's hand and said, "You should drop this all 'pretty girl' act. You are trying too hard to achieve something you already have."
"Shut up! You don't know how the world works for girls!" Janet retorted.
SIGH!
Rudy sighed and recalled his past life memories about Janet.
Everything was the same in this life, but Rudy and Janet never interacted again in high school.
Janet kept trying to get more fashionable and that attracted lots of playboys, who all left her heartbroken in the end. She then graduated from high school and went to the same university as Rudy.
Rudy and Janet eventually became good friends, but it seemed as though they were about to become friends in high school in this life.
"I will tell you what I know about Rias," Janet asserted.
