Family Conflict

While sorting through my mother’s belongings, I found a crumpled notebook tucked under her pillow.

Four words were scrawled unevenly across the title page: “The Kill List.”

The first name on the list was the obstetrician who had delivered me.

The date noted beside it was the day I was born.

The second name was my father’s.

The date was the day he died in a mining accident.

The third name belonged to a stranger.

The date noted was yesterday.

The police told me that this person really did die yesterday, but my mother was buried over a month ago.

My fiancé had been secretly sponsoring a young girl behind my back.

As my car passed by her school, I saw the girl clutching the faded sleeve of a teenage boy, timidly calling him Brother Xu.

The boy had delicate, handsome features and stood tall and elegant, like a white birch tree.

“Bring him over,” I said. “Miss?” I lifted my chin, my tone indifferent. “It’s nothing. I just want to do some sponsoring of my own.”

My husband absolutely loathed his new graduate student.

He even went so far as to cause a scene in front of the Dean, demanding that she be transferred to another research group.

He claimed she was morally corrupt and a disgrace to academia.

That was, until the fire alarm went off. His custom-made suit was soaked through as he draped it over her head.

He pushed past me, carrying her in his arms like a princess as he rushed down the stairs.

I lost my mother at seven and my father at ten, leaving me with only Grandma to depend on.

Grandma made a living sewing and doing laundry for others, while I spent my summers farming and my winters heading into the mountains.

We managed to scrape by.

When I was fourteen, I had a dream.

In that dream, I was a princess.

After being brought into the palace, I engaged in a life-and-death struggle against the Impostor Princess.

In the end, we were both killed by the transmigrator, becoming nothing more than stepping stones on her path to power.

When my Adoptive Father first saw me, I was eating a bowl of spoiled rice.

Hungry flies were fighting me for the food, and I couldn’t even spare a hand to shoo them away.

Later, he took me home. He threw me a party for my seventh birthday.

He said, “Xiao Jue, today is your new beginning. From now on, this day will be your birthday every year.”

Everyone smiled at me. Only my Adoptive Mother roared after the banquet had ended, “She’s your illegitimate daughter, isn’t she?”

My cousin’s parents passed away, so my Imperial Mother brought her into the palace to live with us.

From then on, she enjoyed the favor of my parents, the protection of my elder brother, and the devotion of my younger brother.

Even my fiancé praised her for being exceptionally gifted and refined.

There was only one exception. His heart and eyes were filled only with me, never swayed by any outsider.

I married beneath my station to become his wife, and for a time, we lived a life of joy and freedom.

But later, he died-stabbed countless times before being hurled off a cliff.

At three in the morning, the funeral home’s Morgue was only supposed to have five registered bodies, yet I found a sixth, unregistered, nameless female corpse in locker number six.

A slip of paper was pressed against her chest with nothing but my name written on it.

Even more terrifying was the moment my hand brushed her wrist; I saw the last seven seconds of her life and heard her raspy, blood-choked voice whisper: “Shen Nian, don’t trust your father.”

That was the night I realized that sometimes, the dead don’t come to say goodbye-they come to reopen a case.

My Elder Sister and I have been bitter rivals since we were children.

At three, we fought over our mother’s attention; at five, we fought over the little boy across the street.

When we were six, people from the Marquis Manor came to claim her, saying my Elder Sister was their long-lost legitimate daughter who had been taken away as an infant.

I was so furious I didn’t sleep a wink that night. Later, my father-who had been away fighting at war for fifteen years-returned with a promotion and a fortune to take me away as well.

Once I arrived at the General’s Manor, the first thing I did was rush over to the Marquis Manor.

I stood there shouting for Gu Ruan to come out and face her doom, when suddenly, a small head poked out from the entrance.

She had my Elder Sister’s face. She toddled toward me, swaying unsteadily on her feet. “Mother is dead. Auntie, hold me~”

Jiang Yu broke up with me again.

This time, I planned to do what I did when he first dumped me at eighteen-go clear my head by the river.

But the wind off the water was freezing, so I decided to just head back. On the way home, I passed a barbecue stall. I thought I’d be like my twenty-year-old self, too heartbroken to swallow a single bite.

Instead, I found that the owner’s grilling skills were actually top-notch.

When I finally made it home, I intended to write him one of those long, pleading essays for a reconciliation, just like I did when we went through our routine breakups at twenty-two, twenty-three, and twenty-four.

But then my boss told me I had to go on a business trip. After nearly a month of being busy, I was practically entering a second honeymoon phase with my career in a neighboring city.

Jiang Yu finally couldn’t hold out any longer and called me. “Why haven’t you come to apologize yet?” Only then did I realize I’d forgotten something. Going through a breakup when you’re a little older is truly a hassle.

I could only ask him tentatively: “I’m so sorry, really. I’ve been so busy lately that I forgot to write the essay.” “How about… we just stay broken up?”

After my rebirth, my mother held me in her arms, teasing me playfully.

“Jiaojiao, which one of them would you like as your husband?” I looked at my two young elder cousins.

In my past life, one of them killed me, and the other killed my body double. Both were ruthless, predatory men.

If I ever got involved with them again, would I even survive? I couldn’t help but burst into tears.

Clinging to my mother’s neck, I acted spoiled and pleaded, “Mother, I don’t want either of them.” “Then… you shall have both.”

My mother’s expression was one of absolute determination. Me: ??