Adrienne was suddenly hit with a splitting headache. She groaned and pressed her palm against her head, wondering what was happening. How could a person who experienced death be suffering from yet another headache? At the thought, Adrienne jolted from the bed she lay on, eyes wide as she took in her surroundings.
’Where am I?’ She thought, before noticing that this room felt familiar. She had been here several times before and could recognize where she was.
She regretted her sudden movement as she was immediately hit with dizziness. The strong scent of alcohol hit her nose. Her stomach churned, forcing Adrienne to cover her mouth with one hand and dashed to the bathroom. She vomited into the toilet, the sound of retching piercing through the silence of the night.
Moonlight streamed from the bathroom window, barely giving Adrienne enough light to see anything. She broke into a cold sweat as she slumped on the floor, waiting for the retching feeling to subside.
Panting, Adrienne braced herself and pulled herself back to her feet. The bitterness in her mouth was strong enough to make her believe she wasn’t dreaming.
She turned on the tap and splashed the running water onto her face before washing her mouth clean. Feeling slightly better, she raised her head only to see her reflection in the mirror.
Wasn’t she already dead? Then how come she was looking straight into the eyes of her younger self in the mirror?
There were no eyebags nor the usual thick layer of makeup she used to douse on her face in her teenage years. Her skin was still soft, and her hair so long, something she hadn’t paid attention to in years. Adrienne had neglected herself from the moment she got married and hadn’t been her best since then.
Staring at her reflection, it was like time had truly been reversed, and Adrienne hadn’t lost everything just yet! Good, very good! The heavens seemed to pity a foolish woman like her and was willing to give her another chance.
Adrienne’s trembling hand touched the side of her face in disbelief. How much time did she have to turn the table in her favor? Which year was she reborn into?
She dragged herself back into the room, realizing it was her mother’s room. She saw her bag lying on the foot of the bed and grabbed it, rummaging through her stuff until she found her phone.
The date on the screen indicated that it was May 28th, the eve of her eighteenth birthday. She racked her brain, trying to remember what had transpired during this time.
Today, she and Myrtle had celebrated her birthday in advance. Her best friend brought her to a popular club where Adrienne touched alcohol for the first time and got wasted simultaneously. She went home before ten and sneaked into their house only to end up in her mother’s abandoned room.
No one had bothered to touch this room since her mother fell ill. Only Adrienne took time to keep everything clean and tidy, hoping that one day her mother would return home. Thinking of her past experiences and grievances, pain filled her entirety.
Adrienne sighed. She threw the phone on the massive bed, and dejectedly sat on the floor. It would have been better if she was reborn on her fifteenth birthday, before her mother’s tragic car accident.
By now, her father had already remarried, and Camilla and Elise would have lived with them for two years. In her previous life, as soon as she turned eighteen, she chose to move out and live on her own, thinking that things would turn out better. Sadly, they didn’t.
Others constantly harassed her, and rumors about her sent her reputation spiralling down the hill. Thankfully, she was with Myrtle tonight, so those thugs Elise and her mother hired to harm her had lost their chance.
Adrienne tilted her head and saw the time on the bedside table. It was now 11:55 PM. A little more, and she would be of legal age now. She had refused to hold a birthday banquet when Camilla suggested it, knowing that the woman would use the opportunity to convey to everyone that she, Adrienne, had acknowledged Camilla as her mother, cementing her title as Madam Jiang.
But how could Adrienne let it happen? Though she wasn’t as sinister as those three, she wasn’t entirely clueless about what they were up to. Her father had married Camilla despite Old Master Jiang’s refusal, and her grandfather never acknowledged Camilla nor her children as part of the family.
Now that she was aware of Cayden’s identity, it made sense to Adrienne why her paternal grandparents gave her brother the cold shoulder, and turned to her as the next successor of the family. She was well aware that those grandparents of hers only cared about the family’s reputation. Though on the surface they gave Camilla a lukewarm treatment, what happens behind closed doors could freeze even the warmest of summers.
Adrienne also knew that they didn’t value her either. Had they cared about her even one bit, she wouldn’t experience the pressure of being under the media’s scrutiny, slandering her name at every opportunity. As the eldest young miss of the Jiang family, her identity was nothing but an empty title that everyone ridiculed.
Hatred flashed through Adrienne’s eyes. Her nails digging painfully into her palms as she clenched her fist tightly. It didn’t matter. She thought. The heavens above had been kind enough to give her a second chance, and there was no way she would let it go to waste.
She had shed enough tears in her previous life, and Adrienne swore she wouldn’t waste even one drop in this lifetime. This time, she would live on her terms. She wouldn’t let go of those who had wronged her and was willing to drag them to hell with her own hands.