Rebirth

Despite dreaming of attending university all my life, I ended up stuck in my farming village. I married my brother-in-law and became my nephew’s stepmother. This all happened because my sister died trying to make money for my tuition fees on the day my results came out. I thought I had failed to secure a place at university and stopped thinking about higher education out of guilt. I married my brother-in-law according to my sister’s wishes. To pay for my sins, I raised my nephew and treated him like my own son. I made money and tutored him so that he could get into Northside University. In the end, I developed late-stage cancer. Before dying, I attended my nephew’s celebration, but he publicly accused me of being a homewrecker while my husband agreed that I had seduced him. They brought out my sister, dead for eighteen years, and made me apologize to her. It was then that I found out she had faked her death and used my university admission letter to finish her study. She had become a university lecturer after tricking me into taking care of her family. Outraged, I had a cerebral hemorrhage. When I woke up, I found I had gone back to the day my sister faked her death.

My husband constantly ignored my pleas in my previous life, giving his salary to his first love despite my objections. After giving birth, I couldn't produce any milk due to prolonged starvation. My son cried desperately from hunger. When I finally managed to buy formula and brought it home, my husband snatched it away to give to his first love. "Vicky's milk supply is low too, and she's a widow. Let's give it to her child first," he insisted. I fought to take it back, but my husband knocked me unconscious. I staggered to look for him when I regained consciousness, only to discover my husband at Victoria Langford's house, putting on diapers for someone else's child. My son had already starved to death then, and out of despair, I followed him in death. When I opened my eyes again, I found myself back to the moment I first learned of my pregnancy. This time, I chose to terminate the pregnancy and file for divorce.

When my best friend and I went for prenatal checkups, we both found out we were carrying babies with the super-male gene. The doctor advised us to terminate the pregnancies. I immediately went through with it, but my best friend was hesitant. I kindly advised her, "This child will ruin your life someday." She reluctantly agreed. Later, her husband cheated on her and tried to justify it. "If you can't give me a son, why shouldn't someone else?" Her husband's mistress chimed in, "What's the point of a woman who can't bear sons?" As a result, she blamed everything on me. When I wasn't paying attention, she poisoned my water and watched me die. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day of our prenatal checkup.

When the flood hit, my husband, Patrick Holmes, who was part of the rescue team, stood between me and his first love, Victoria Clarke, torn with hesitation written all over his face. Without thinking twice, I shoved the only lifebuoy into Victoria's arms. In my previous life, Patrick had handed the lifebuoy to me instead and stayed behind with Victoria, choosing to die alongside her. Just before they both drowned, rescuers arrived in the nick of time and pulled him out, but Victoria didn't make it—she drowned that day. After that, he devoted himself completely to me, taking care of me in every moment of our daily lives. I had thought that the disaster made him cherish me more, but I was wrong—so terribly wrong. While I was hospitalized, Patrick unplugged my oxygen tank himself. He hissed, "If you hadn't insisted on going home to rest that day, I wouldn't have been torn on who to save, and she wouldn't have died. Now, you'll atone to her in the afterlife." I struggled helplessly as my vision blurred and death crept in. Then, everything went dark. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the very day the flood began.

The day my brother, Chester Rodney, came to the orphanage to take me home, my boyfriend Dominic Huxley looked at me coldly and said, "If you choose to acknowledge your birth family, we're over." I knew he had his pride—he could never accept the difference in our social standing. So, for him, I turned my back on the family I had yearned for my whole life. In the decades that followed, I toiled without complaint, saving every cent to help him rise to success. By the time I was not yet fifty, overwork had worn me down. Lying on my deathbed, my breathing shallow and weak, I watched Dominic on television. He was now an acclaimed scientist, just awarded the nation's highest research honor. Tears welled in his eyes as he thanked another woman. "All these years," he said, "I never felt worthy of Alicia. But now, maybe I can use this award as the prologue to a love I've owed her for decades." The "Alicia" he spoke of was the woman mistakenly switched with me at birth—the false heiress the Rodney family raised as their own. The camera zoomed out. Alicia Rodney stood radiant, graceful, and perfectly preserved by years of luxury, blushing as she accepted the trophy. "I waited for you for decades," she said sweetly, "but marriage is still something I'll need to ask my brother about." Chester, who had long taken over the family, looked at her with an indulgent tenderness tinged with something unspoken. "I was adopted by our uncle back then for one reason—to protect Alicia. Making the only princess of the Rodney family happy has always been my life's mission." Only then did I realize—everything I thought I had chosen freely, every sacrifice I made without regret, was nothing but a trap, carefully woven by two men, all for Alicia. The betrayal pierced my heart. I died without peace. But when I opened my eyes again, I was back on the very day Chester came to take me home from the orphanage. I glanced past the two men eyeing me with subtle disdain. Without hesitation, I stepped into the car. "Take me home," I said. This time, I'd send whoever stole my life back to the gutter they slithered from.

After receiving the report for an STD test, I went back to the barbeque restaurant, and there I ran into a young woman who was about three months pregnant. She asked me to let her cut in line, and, feeling sorry for her, I agreed to help her out. I quickly made arrangements for her and made sure she had a seat. But to my shock, after she finished her meal, she had a miscarriage. The girl posted about the incident online, and before I knew it, I was trending on social media, facing a wave of cyberbullying. The internet users went even further, digging up my health records and finding that everything came back positive. [She's positive for everything—she's clearly a woman with a messy private life!] [No wonder she caused the woman's miscarriage just by being near her—she's a biological hazard!] The cyberbullying got so bad that it pushed me into depression. Even my fiancé turned against me, accusing me of being filthy and breaking up with me. The emotional weight became too much, and in my pain, I drove straight into a reservoir. Meanwhile, the girl gained millions of followers online and skyrocketed to fame as a popular influencer. It was only after I died that I learned the shocking truth—this girl was my fiancé's first love. To boost her own popularity, she and my fiancé had come up with this entire scheme together. When I opened my eyes again, I found myself back on the day when she asked me to let her cut in line.

In my previous life, my brother and fiancé teamed up to sabotage my company for the sake of my so-called best friend. After I went bankrupt, they stood beside her watching me collapse in the pouring rain, laughing mockingly at my pathetic state. "Linda Turner, you look as pathetic as a drenched dog!" they sneered. When I opened my eyes again, I was back at the project bidding meeting three years earlier. In my previous life, when my company was just starting out, my brother and fiancé had warned me against using the Turner and Peterson family connections. They claimed it wouldn't be fair to others, but then turned around and handed projects to my best friend under various pretexts, just to see her smile. Now that I was back, I watched them secretly manipulating things just like before, giving my projects to my best friend. I finally gave up on them completely. When they found out I was leaving the country, my brother and fiancé set off fireworks all night, celebrating that they'd finally gotten rid of me, the burden. But three years later, at the Trada Corp's bidding meeting, I took the stage as the CEO's wife—and they couldn't hide the redness in their eyes.

I was reborn. Right back to the day I adopted Peter. The wind cut sharp, baby cries slicing through the cold. That's when it hit me—this was the day Stuart Pete, my oh-so-loving husband, dumped his illegitimate child right in my path after work. He knew me too well. The second I picked the kid up, he'd spin it into an adoption, making the boy ours. Last time, I fell for it. This time? I walked away without a second thought. Later, I heard the kid got pneumonia from being left out in the freezing cold—fever so bad, it wrecked him for life. I laughed until my stomach hurt. What I didn't see coming? Peter was reborn too—about to experience the life he was meant to have.

My mom kindly took in the daughter of her deceased friend. Unexpectedly, the girl smoked, drank, fought, and refused to improve. She even fell madly in love with the school bully and jumped into a river to prove her love for him. My mom tried to save her, but the girl pushed her head underwater. The girl was rescued and embraced by the bully, but my mom drowned. Reborn, I stopped my mom from jumping in, but she shoved me into the river, shouting, "Why isn't it you jumping in?"

My husband sends me a photo of our obedient daughter holding a plate of food. He writes, "Thanks to my patient guidance, our sweetheart has finally made her first dish! We're waiting for you to come home and taste it!" The exhaustion I feel from work is swept away when I see that. No one expects that I'll reach home half an hour later and kill him.