Chapter 1

Chapter 1

After being sent flying by a heavy truck, I watched my bright red blood spread rapidly across the white snow.

I was so unwilling to die.

I wanted so badly to live all over again.

When I opened my eyes once more,

I had returned to the summer vacation after my first year of high school. My stepmother was stuffing ten thousand yuan into my hands. “Young people should be brave enough to chase their dreams. I’ll talk to your father.”

In my previous life, my grades had been average, so Dad had signed me up for an expensive one-on-one tutoring program that summer.

But all I could think about was learning music and chasing after celebrities.

After a huge fight with Dad, I took the money my stepmother gave me and went alone to Haishi to look for a music school…

The tutoring center’s fees were nonrefundable, so in the end, my stepsister Jiang Zhao went in my place “reluctantly.”

When my stepmother saw I wasn’t moving, she urged me, “Hurry up and take it. This is my private savings.”

“I’ve already bought your ticket to Haishi too.”

Back then, I had been so moved. I thought she was the only one who understood my dream.

But now…

I accepted the money, desperately holding back the urge to strangle her. “Thank you, Auntie.”

Just you wait.

That evening, I saw Dad again.

He was changing into slippers in the entryway, the warm yellow light by the door spilling all over him.

The hair at his temples had not yet turned white. There were no tubes in him, no ventilator keeping him alive.

My voice choked. “Dad…”

Dad paused in the middle of changing his shoes. Then he looked at me with a frown. “Don’t try that with me. You’re staying home this summer and studying properly. I will never agree to this music nonsense.”

My tears came flooding out in an instant.

In my previous life, my stepmother had deliberately kept the truth from me. By the time I rushed to the hospital, the doctors could no longer save him.

At his bedside, I called out “Dad” again and again.

I cried as I told him I shouldn’t have been willful, shouldn’t have trusted the wrong person, shouldn’t have loved the wrong person, shouldn’t have left home, shouldn’t have made him angry.

But until the day he died, he never answered me.

Now, though, he had.

My stepmother came out of the kitchen and gently complained, “Look at you, making the child cry. Go wash your hands. Dinner’s ready.”

My stepmother was extremely good at pretending.

Every meal, there would always be one or two dishes I liked.

Dad put a piece of braised pork rib into my bowl. “You’ve rested enough these past few days. Tomorrow, you should go to the tutoring center.”

“And forget about learning music. I won’t give you money for it either.”

My stepmother shot me a look, signaling for me to agree for now and not talk back.

“I don’t need your money.” As I spoke, I pulled out the ten thousand yuan my stepmother had given me and slapped it onto the table. “Auntie gave me money. She supports me!”

“And she’s already bought me a train ticket for tomorrow.”