Finally, the system gave in.
[||Second part Story Outline without Paige Blunt's transmigration into Paige Smith:
Jace was reborn and rushed back to school, accusing Lance and Paige of having connections to drugs. Lance tested positive for drugs, which got him kicked out of school, along with Paige, even though she was proven to be clean.
The school bully had crossed the line with the principal too many times, and in this timeline, Jace pressured him about her trying to murder Natasha with the help of Eve, too. Being clean didn't help her against all these accusations. Lance being kicked out was, again, on the street. This time, he found his assailants by working in the Monday club and not through school. When he found them, he killed all three on the spot without any preparation. The police were called, and through his sloppy work, he was identified, and his picture was broadcast in the news. He was drug-addicted and a murderer on the run.
Jane Walker, his mother, recognized him on the news. She talked with her husband, Terrence Walker, and after being told that he had indeed faked Jace's DNA test and that the boy on the news could be her real son, they searched separately for him.
After finally finding him, luckily before the police, they let him make a withdrawal while hiding him. Then they brought him to the police, letting him confess to his crimes. The Walker family had competent lawyers, and they let them all work on their son's case.
Lance, having murdered as a teenager after being heavily assaulted and being under the influence of drugs to which he became addicted because of the victim's drugging him, did not have to go to prison. He was sentenced to house arrest for four years, supervised by an ankle monitor.
The female lead, who could not forget him after seeing him on the first day of school, chased after him and became his tutor while he had to be at home, healing his soul.
Jace tried to get her, but he could never make an impression on her, and dropping the ways he used in his past life, he had to respect her decision. Jace later went abroad, leaving all this behind him.
Lance and Natasha got a happy end with her rescuing him again.... after defeating the final boss...||]
While the system talked about the rapists and him being assaulted, Lance's eyes flicked repeatedly to Paige. That was what he wanted the least.
That this was talked about in front of her.
His hands trembled lightly; Nothing was more difficult for him than this.
Lance suddenly thought again about leaving here and starting a new life somewhere. He could not live with this. Call it pride, but Lance, under no circumstances, wanted to be and be looked at as someone weak by Paige. He had been shoving away the cause of his leaving in the first place and not wanting to return even after getting his revenge. That shrill sound of the system was at fault, tormenting him. And then he was so angry with Paige that he stayed inevitably. Paige looked unfazed, but she noticed him looking at her.
"Let me go to the toilet for a bit before we discuss this," she said.
Lance nodded absentmindedly.
After arriving in the toilet, she spoke in her mind to the system,
[I have a question and want you to answer only me, not saying the same to Lance.]
[Aks, I will not let him know.] The system showed itself to be cooperative for the first time.
She observed that this system seemed to give Lance much more leeway than she did.
[Does Lance know he was raped in the first part?] She asked while sitting down and peeing. She really had to go.
[Yes.]
'Then he was away because of this.' She thought before asking again in her mind.
[Did you spill it?]
[No, it was Jace.]
That was surprising, but on the other hand, besides herself, only Jace and the system knew about this, so maybe there was some situation at school that got Jace to spite Lance with his knowledge of what happened to him. She washed her hands and went down again.
[The first part where Lance was raped. Is that something that had really happened before the world was reset? Or had Jace just had something like an accurate and realistic dream or vision about his 'past life'?]
[The world cannot be reset. Time cannot be altered.]
[Mhmm] She sat down on the couch.
[You can speak to the two of us from now on.]
Paige raised her hand.
[.....Yes.... Paige?]
She asked again, this time out loud.
"Did everything from the first part really happen? Was the world reset when Jace was reborn?" Lance's eyes shot up and met hers. He looked at her intently, waiting for the system's answer.
[Nothing of the first part had ever happened. There is one and only one timeline, and that is the present one. Neither Part One nor Part Two had ever really happened. That there are possible futures; there are billions of possibilities with every turn. Jace only saw and experienced in his mind a possible future without external intervention.]
The system dutifully elaborated. Lance breathed a long breath of air, which he did not know he was holding. He buried his face in his hands, bending forward, his elbows resting on his knees.
He was not raped.
He was not assaulted.
Nobody ever touched him.
He felt relief beyond what he had ever experienced as said emotion.
And he had never killed one. He was cleansed from the weight on his chest and from his sins of killing one of them on these and pot, the other three later. And this in both story parts.
"Thank you."
Lance let his hands rest on his lap and looked at Paige with genuine gratitude, unsure if it was for her saving him or for her clarifying that the first timeline had never happened.
Or both.