Their new life settled into a rhythm that felt almost too good to be true.
Mornings smelled like cinnamon rolls and toasted sugar. Helen opened the bakery at seven, wearing the same apron with little embroidered strawberries. Ashley and Arthur helped when they could – Arthur doodling menu chalkboards, Ashley packing takeaway bags in record time. Anthea's job was to keep the music going and taste-test new cookies. She took her role seriously.
Ashley had never seen her family like this before – stable, warm, free.
But she never lost sight of the future. Ashley kept her eyes on the prize – not perfection, not popularity, but freedom.
Ever since she had gone back, she carved out so much time to study and prepare – pushing herself through the same coding books she once used in her first life. The logic came back quickly, like muscle memory. After school, while others played games or scrolled through their phones, Ashley quietly built tiny programs and personal websites. She was slowly laying the groundwork for a computer science degree, just like before.
Only this time, it wasn't out of desperation. It was a choice.
The world was changing again, just like it had in her first life. New tech startups were blooming, and whispers of bitcoin were starting to reach the edges of the internet.
She had marked the dates carefully. She remembered reading a random blog post during her first college years about bitcoin being practically worthless. A few years later, the same post was updated – bitcoin had exploded.
That timeline echoed in her mind.
She didn't need much – just enough to buy early. Sell at the peak. She wasn't trying to be a mogul. She just needed the launchpad.
In her first year in college, she would invest a small amount in bitcoin. And then, she would cash out..
That alone would give her enough to buy a few properties in a developing neighborhood – one she remembered had skyrocketed in value in the old timeline.
She had the plan, the memory, and the willpower to stick to it.
Everything else? That would come in time.