Reborn Rivals: Love In the Ledger

Chapter 1: The Day I Died (Again)

I used to think rock bottom was when my family declared bankruptcy. Turns out, rock bottom has a basement.

The day I died, I was in court—again—watching my father lose the last of our properties. His once-sharp eyes had dulled, and his back, which used to tower like a mountain behind me, had collapsed into a weary slope. Mother stopped attending hearings altogether. My brother? Vanished to avoid the shame.

And me?

I sat in the back row with a leather notebook full of failed investment plans, scribbled calculations, and angry tears. I clutched it like it had answers. Spoiler: it didn’t.

My name? I don’t even remember what the headlines called me. “Heiress-Turned-Beggar,” maybe. “The Fallen Bloom of the East.” People liked poetic tragedy when it wasn’t theirs.

And the worst part?

He was there.

Daisuke Hayama. My arrogant, smug-faced childhood rival turned business genius. He watched my family unravel like it was a show he’d seen coming all along. No, he didn’t gloat. He didn’t have to. His silence was worse than any mockery.

He was winning.

That night, I walked home alone. No phone. No driver. Just me and the rain. It felt like the sky was ashamed of me too.

I didn’t see the car until it was too late. Blinding lights. Screeching brakes. A loud thump. A moment of weightlessness. Then, darkness.

When I opened my eyes again, I wasn’t in a hospital.

I was in my old bedroom.

My pink bedroom, complete with stuffed bears I’d given away ten years ago and posters from a girl group that disbanded half a decade ago.

I sat up, heart pounding. “What the hell…?”

My hands. Smooth. Young.

I scrambled for my phone. The date on the screen nearly gave me a heart attack.

April 7th.

Ten years ago.

The next few hours were chaos. I pinched myself. Screamed. Cried. Laughed. Checked the news. Checked my reflection. Ran into my mother, who was humming a tune and complaining about avocado prices like our future wasn’t about to explode.

It was real.

I was reborn. Not into someone else’s life, not into the future—but back into my own past, a decade before everything fell apart.

And just like that, I knew what I had to do.

Save my family.

They were about to make investments that looked genius on the surface but were absolute sinkholes. I remembered each and every one of them. Real estate disasters. Failed tech startups. Shady crypto schemes. The only thing worse than our bad luck was our stubbornness.

But I had information. Knowledge. And ten years of hindsight.

I wouldn’t beg for change this time—I’d change everything.

The plan was simple:

Start small.

Invest early.

Buy stock in that ugly little gaming company that’s about to blow up.

Put money in the bakery chain that would double in three years.

Stop Dad from funding that influencer's fashion app.

And most importantly—

Beat Daisuke Hayama at his own game.

Except… something was off.

I had started my plan quietly. Bought a few cheap shares in a nearly unknown app that was about to go viral. No one else knew about it yet—except…