Chapter 3

Chapter 3

This mother-daughter pair couldn’t wait to send me away.

It had been the same in my previous life.

I left Dad.

We were separated by mountains and rivers. I had a rotten temper, and Dad wasn’t exactly the soft-spoken type either.

With the two of them stirring up trouble, even the smallest misunderstanding had no way of being cleared up.

Dad and I became sworn enemies.

Jiang Zhao kept stuffing clothes into the bag.

I kicked the bag aside. “No need to pack. I’m not going.”

My stepmother and Jiang Zhao both froze.

Jiang Zhao’s eyes flickered. “Didn’t you say you wanted to stand beside your idol? That you wanted to share the same stage with him?”

Yes.

But later, his image collapsed.

He ended up in prison.

My entire youth had been wasted on a lost cause.

I shrugged. “Didn’t the old man strongly object?”

“I’ll appease him first, then we’ll see.”

In truth, as long as I studied hard, got into a good university, and found a good job, then one day I could buy a front-row VIP ticket to see any idol I wanted.

I packed my schoolbag and headed out for tutoring.

Before leaving, I ran to Jiang Zhao’s closet and dug out a new dress she hadn’t even had the chance to wear yet. “This is pretty. Let me borrow it.”

She was very reluctant.

But my stepmother spoke up. “You’re the older sister. Let Zhizhi have it.”

I gave my stepmother a radiant smile. “Auntie, you’re so nice. Anyone who didn’t know better would think I was your real daughter.”

Jiang Zhao was still young after all, and her expression nearly cracked.

After changing, I sighed at Jiang Zhao. “I’m so jealous of you. You get to enjoy summer break instead of suffering through tutoring like me.”

The corner of Jiang Zhao’s mouth twitched, and the hatred in her eyes vanished in an instant.

In my previous life, I had gone against Dad again and again, wasting all his arrangements and good intentions.

In the end, I only barely made it past the cutoff for a junior college and went to a specialized music college.

Jiang Zhao, meanwhile, picked up every opportunity I threw away, one by one, and eventually got into a Project 985 university.

After graduation, she joined a major tech company.

As for me, I became a resident singer at a bar.

From then on, our lives were worlds apart.

Now that I had been given another chance at life,

I was going to correct those mistakes. I was going to get into a good university. I was going to take back the life that should have been mine.

The tutoring center had been carefully chosen by my stepmother.

The teachers she booked were also the best.

Dad had even praised her for it.

But in reality, she had long since calculated that I wouldn’t go. All these benefits would ultimately fall into Jiang Zhao’s lap.

Killing two birds with one stone. What a clever move.

As was customary, the teachers for each subject had me take a placement test.

When they saw my scores of thirty, forty, and fifty-something points, every single one of them lost their composure.

There was nothing I could do.

After so many years away from school, the fact that I hadn’t scored a zero was already thanks to me staying up last night flipping through textbooks.

When Dad came home from overtime and heard that I had gone to the tutoring center, he was overjoyed.

“Let’s go out for Western food tonight.”

He ordered me a steak that cost 158 yuan, while he only ordered himself a 38-yuan plate of pasta.

“I’ve got a Chinese stomach. I still can’t get used to this stuff.”

When the steak was served, I was in the middle of digging in.

My stepmother spoke slowly and calmly. “Zhizhi, I called today to ask about your tutoring. The teachers said you failed every single one of your five placement tests. Did they make a mistake?”

Jiang Zhao feigned surprise. “That can’t be. With your foundation, Zhizhi, there’s no way you’d get scores like that.”

My stepmother sighed. “Zhizhi, are you angry that your dad won’t let you study music, so you deliberately bombed the tests?”