Chapter 4: Death and a Second Chance

The car crashed into me. I felt myself being thrown into the air and flung dozens of meters away. The moment I hit the ground, a wave of pain surged through me. I immediately felt the shattering, agonizing sensation in every bone of my body.

It was the greatest pain I had ever experienced in all these years!

Screams rang out in my ears, and the world suddenly became strangely noisy.

My vision gradually blurred, as if covered by a layer of red haze. I vaguely saw Lilya and Ryan rushing toward me, trying to say something, but I could not hear them clearly at all.

It was the first time I had seen Lilya and Ryan cry. Were they crying because of me?

At that moment, my mind became empty. The pain slowly faded away, and my vision dimmed until I could no longer see anything.

“Ah, so this is how I will die.”

I had thought about the future countless times, yet never once had I thought about how I would die. Only now did I realize that in my short life, I had never once lived for myself.

In the end, my painful life ended with immense physical suffering.

“If I could go back, I would definitely not live like that again.”

That was the last thought that appeared in my mind.

A faint white light suddenly appeared before my eyes, and my stiff body gradually regained sensation.

“Could it be that I’ve arrived in heaven?”

Just as that thought flashed through my mind, a sharp voice rang out and startled me awake.

“Wake up, it’s time for breakfast! We still have a lot to do today!”

I opened my eyes wide and looked up at the ceiling, both unfamiliar and familiar at the same time.

The pain from the car accident still felt so real that I could not believe I was able to sit up like this.

I saw the head of the orphanage standing with her hands on her hips, urging everyone to wake up and fold their blankets in the morning.

“What is going on?”

This room, both strange and familiar, was the place where I had grown up during my years in the orphanage. It was not even one-third the size of a servant’s bedroom in the Dominic house. I had lived here, squeezed together with three or four other girls, until adulthood.

In this cramped room, there was only a single window. Three or four single beds were placed close together, leaving only a narrow path in between. When we were young, we only had one wooden wardrobe with a broken leg to store our daily clothes.

The orphanage took care of too many children, while the funding was limited. The roof leaked, the walls were cracked and peeling, and rain and wind blowing in was a normal occurrence.

At this time, most of my roommates had already married and left the orphanage at a very early age. Most children who grew up in the orphanage and were not adopted would go out to work and marry early just to have a home of their own.

Only I had grown into adulthood without marrying. Half of the money I earned from outside jobs was given back to the head of the orphanage to help care for the younger children.

After being taken in by the Oliver family, I had never returned here even once. My last memory of this orphanage was the image of the head and the children watching me step into the luxurious car of the Oliver family, their eyes filled with both admiration and happiness.

I reached out and touched the worn window frame, murmuring to myself.

“I’ve returned to the orphanage… Could this be a dream because I’m so tired of the Dominic house?”

I got out of bed and walked to the mirror. The face reflected in it was younger than I remembered the last time I looked at myself.

The reflection in the mirror was me at just over twenty years old, without wrinkles, without that weary expression. It was me from before I became Leo Dominic’s wife.

Tears welled up uncontrollably. The pain from the car accident still felt so real, yet I realized that I had truly come back to life.

“Thank goodness! Have I really… really returned?”

I sobbed until my breath hitched. Whether this was a dream or reality, I no longer cared.

“I’ve really come back!”

I no longer knew whether that prison-like life full of suffering was real or not, but it truly made me tremble every time I remembered it.

Leo Dominic, the entire Oliver family, I did not want to love them ever again!

I cried like a child, and only after a long while did I finally calm down. After that outpouring of tears, I completely believed that I had truly traveled back in time, not merely a dream.

I stood up and picked up the phone on the table. I wanted to confirm exactly what point in time I had returned to.

“March 2nd, year…”

I walked to the window and looked outside.

“If that life was truly what I experienced, then today will be the day he finds me.”

That’s right, the person who would come to the orphanage today and greet me with a falsely warm smile was the biological father I had always longed for—Joseph Oliver.

It was this very day that he came and said that I was his long-lost daughter. I still clearly remembered the happiness I felt at that time when I learned that my family had never given up searching for me.

I fell back onto the bed and could not help but laugh out loud.

“Haha, this is truly fortunate! I’ve returned right before everything happened.”

I had been given a second life. Though I did not know why, this was a chance for me to choose my life again.

Unlike before, this time I would not believe in that false affection ever again.

My feelings, my sincerity, my youth, this time I would absolutely not hand them over to anyone.

Looking at my reflection in the mirror, I remembered the wrinkles and the exhausted look I once had.

“This time, I will live only for myself.”

Let go of all expectations, discard all false love.

I will be only myself.