Chapter 2: Awake

Late spring in April, suddenly warm yet still cold.

Gu Lingling lay muddled on the cold kang bed, vaguely hearing a woman’s coarse voice beside her ear, "She deserves to freeze to death, save for causing trouble for me again. When will this damn rain stop?"

And then, "Still dawdling? Why not take advantage of your dad coming back to heat the kang?"

How could it be her stepmother Wang Meili’s voice?

Gu Lingling thought she was hallucinating, her consciousness still unclear. She closed her eyes and drifted back into sleep.

During this time, she had moments of fleeting clarity, occasionally hearing Wang Meili hypocritically crying by the kang, saying, "You entrusted the child to me, yet I failed to look after her properly. I let you down, let Lingling’s mother down."

"Leaving the family to you, I am at ease, Juanzi’s mother."

Juanzi’s mother?!

This voice, this nickname... could it be that the heavens heard her prayer?

She came back?

She came back!

"Rustle rustle..." The rain outside seemed to have gotten addicted.

Gu Lingling lay on the kang, from her perspective able to see the rain drip-dripping down from the eaves outside.

She had slept for a whole day and night and finally understood that she truly was reborn back to when she was sixteen years old.

In 1974.

That year’s return of cold in spring was particularly fierce. As soon as the rain stopped, Wang Meili stuffed a basin of clothes into her hands and pushed her to wash them by the river. She had squatted by the river for just a little while before she was frozen stiff, then Gu Juan gently pushed her into the river.

How she returned, Gu Lingling forgot, she only remembered sleeping on the kang for several days, and upon waking, her father Gu Chunhai looked at her disappointedly without saying anything and left.

Gu Lingling was reserved by nature, suffered grievances without speaking, resulting in the impression she left on the Gu Family, including her biological father and cousin Gu Shaohua in her previous life, as being: this daughter (sister) is both reclusive and unsociable.

Whereas stepmother Wang Meili and Gu Juan were both adept at pretending, leading her to follow Wang Meili’s words as if they were the imperial edict. She said her distant nephew Lv Guodong was a good man, Gu Lingling obediently agreed to marry that slacker, even willing to elope with Lv Guodong.

Hence came the tragic life afterward.

Now, she’s back.

This lifetime, she will no longer live a lifetime of being a coward; she, Gu Lingling, will certainly live both lives fully, for those she must repay, she won’t let him tread the solitary path of the past life, loving those he shouldn’t love.

Those owed to her from the previous life, nobody should think of taking them away!

Those who intend to harm her, if this lifetime still holds such intent, let’s wait and see!

So, let’s begin now.

"Chunhai, don’t say that, Lingling is also my daughter," Wang Meili said while wiping her tears with her apron, "I shouldn’t have spoken about her; it’s all my fault. I didn’t expect her temper to be so fierce, run off to jump in the river."

No wonder! No wonder that in the previous life when she woke, Gu Chunhai was so disappointed, that he wouldn’t even speak to her.

Wang Meili really does tell a good lie.

However, she is well-versed in pretending to be virtuous and a good person because of taking care of her bedridden father-in-law, becoming known as a virtuous person within ten miles.

In her previous life, she was fooled by Wang Meili and Gu Juan, mother and daughter playing one as strict, the other as gentle, rendering her fearful to say anything, allowing herself to be completely in their grasp.

This lifetime, let’s start by tearing off Wang Meili’s false face.

This humiliation she won’t bear, this blame she won’t take!