"Is that thieving little bitch dead yet? If not, tell her to hand over the money now!"
Jean woke to the sound of shouting. As she opened her eyes, an old woman's furious voice echoed through the courtyard.
"Mom, please calm down. Jean is still unconscious. Just wait—I'll tell you as soon as she wakes up."
Her heart skipped a beat. Both voices sounded eerily familiar. In her memory, the harsh, aged voice belonged to her grandmother, Benedicta, while the timid, pleading one was her mother, Eve Lauren. Peering through the window into the courtyard, she confirmed it—the two women arguing were indeed her grandmother and mother.
"Am I... not dead?"
Instinctively, she reached down to touch her legs—and froze. They were intact. Ever since the car accident three years ago, she had lived without them. But now, her fingers traced smooth, slender skin. Disbelieving, she pinched her own arm. It was thin. And it hurt. This wasn’t a dream.
In her memory, after the miscarriage that wrecked her health, she had taken hormone treatments to conceive again, bloating her body beyond recognition. She had never been this slender since. A mirror hung by the window beside the bed. Leaning closer, she caught her reflection—a youthful, achingly familiar face. Large eyes, long lashes, a straight nose, a delicate pointed chin, and lips like ripe cherries.
Isn't this exactly how I looked in my youth? Had I been reborn? Was this truly a rebirth?
Jean was momentarily stunned. She pinched her arm again, wincing at the sharp pain, before finally accepting the reality—she had indeed traveled back in time, returning to her teenage years.
Only then did Jean take a proper look around the room. The space was modest, barely over ten square meters. A large wardrobe stood by the bed, and on the opposite wall hung a propaganda poster that read, "Learn from Comrade James Cadwell." Beneath it sat a simple wooden table, upon which rested two enamel mugs emblazoned with red five-pointed stars. The furnishings were sparse and crude, yet everything felt achingly familiar. It was an exact replica of her childhood home in the early 1980s—not a single detail out of place.
Outside in the courtyard, her domineering grandmother, Benedicta, was berating her kind-hearted mother yet again. Even from a distance, Jean could tell the topic was the same as before—the accusation that she had stolen money. In her memory, the year was 1982, and she had just turned fifteen. That year, the fourteenth day of the lunar New Year fell on a Sunday.
On that fateful day, Jean had been helping her grandmother make dumplings. Parched from the labor, she had gone inside to fetch hot water. The thermos was kept in Benedicta’s bedroom, so she had entered briefly to retrieve it and pour herself a drink. But by afternoon, her grandmother claimed that 300 dollars had gone missing from her room. Her second aunt, Oliva Kate, testified that she had seen Jean enter the room with her own eyes. With that, Benedicta had immediately accused her of theft. Cornered by her grandmother’s relentless interrogation and unable to defend herself, a tearful Jean had fled to the nearby Crest River that evening. In a desperate bid to prove her innocence, she had thrown herself into the icy waters without hesitation. Fortunately, a passer-by had pulled her out in time, saving her life—though she remained unconscious throughout the night. Now, it seemed, was the morning after her suicide attempt.
And Jean remembered all too well what came next. Benedicta didn't relent in her persecution even after Jean's attempted suicide by drowning. She forced Eve, Jean's mother, to make the girl confess to stealing money. Subsequently, the family home was sold off by the old woman, and mother and daughter were were driven out of Tennesse Village, with Jean's reputation as a thief spreading far and wide.
Taking refuge at her uncle's home, Jean lived alongside her cousin Emily, thus beginning a lifelong feud between the two. The mere thought of Emily now made Jean's blood boil with rage. This cousin had been her sworn enemy in her previous life—the very architect of her demise. From the moment they lived under the same roof, Emily treated Jean like a slave, constantly ordering her about and subjecting her to endless bullying. But that wasn't all. Consumed by jealousy, Emily envied everything about Jean—her striking beauty, her academic prowess. Later, she even grew envious of Jean's handsome fiancé Brian Smith, repeatedly throwing herself at him in shameless pursuit. On Jean's wedding night, Emily pulled a despicable stunt—she and an accomplice knocked the bride unconscious and slipped into Brian's bed, only to be dragged out by Jean who regained consciousness in time.
A year later, when Jean was seven months pregnant, the vindictive Emily pushed her into a ditch, causing a miscarriage that left Jean permanently infertile. During Jean's convalescence at her mother's home, Emily seized the chance to sow discord between the couple, urging Brian to divorce her. When this failed, Emily set fire to the house at midnight, killing Eve while Jean narrowly escaped. After this atrocity, Emily mysteriously vanished.
With her weak-willed husband Brian proving useless beyond enjoying the good life, Jean had no choice but to rely on herself. Through twenty years of relentless effort, she built the massive Sunny Sky Group empire, while her idle husband continued mooching off her success. Three years ago, when Sunny Sky recruited new staff, Emily reappeared—now with a new face and identity after plastic surgery. Unrecognizable to Jean, she was hired for her competent work and that inexplicable sense of familiarity, eventually becoming Jean's close assistant. Little did Jean know she was inviting a wolf into her home. The reinvented Emily not only rekindled her affair with Brian but also turned the spineless husband against his wife, exploiting Jean's infertility to wound Brian's fragile male pride. Completely bewitched by Emily, the handsome but empty-headed Brian conspired with her to stage a car crash that left Jean a double amputee, before systematically seizing control of Sunny Sky Group's assets and power. Under the pretense of caring for her, Emily secretly placed mercury in her room, causing her to suffer from chronic poisoning. Her skin festered, her hair turned brittle and pale. Though barely forty, Jean looked like an old woman, bedridden day after day, tormented by illness, enduring three years of living hell. Finally, Jean uncovered the truth—she had been poisoned. But Brian and Emily showed no mercy. They forced a lethal dose of sleeping pills down her throat, sending her into a deep, endless slumber.
Now that fate had granted her a second chance at life, she refused to relive the past—decades of relentless struggle, only to be betrayed in the end. The deep-seated hatred she bore for Brian and Emily demanded vengeance. Right now, Benedicta was just beginning to pressure her mother into admitting that Jean had stolen money. She couldn’t let Benedicta bully her. She couldn’t let everyone believe she was a petty thief. She couldn’t let Benedicta sell off their family home. The days after moving in with her uncle had felt like the start of a nightmare—one she would never relive.
Jean was determined to change everything, starting from the root.
"Mom—!" She deliberately drew out the word, calling out loudly.
