Chapter 1
Yun Xin woke to the sounds of her neighbors.
The muffled clatter of dishes, the shuffle of footsteps, the rise and fall of voices—they filtered through the walls like echoes from another life. She lay still, her body tense, as the familiar noises wrapped around her.
Her breath hitched.
She wasn't supposed to hear anything. Not the scraping of chairs or the murmur of conversations. Not the world waking up around her.
She wasn't supposed to *be here at all*.
The calendar on the wall caught her eye, its glossy numbers glowing faintly in the pale morning light. Slowly, her gaze focused on the date: five years ago.
She sat up, the scratchy bedsheets tangling around her legs. Her fingers curled into the fabric, knuckles whitening as she clutched it tightly. Her chest heaved with shallow breaths, heart pounding a frantic rhythm against her ribs.
This room wasn't hers. These hands weren't scarred. And the world wasn't silent.
Her mind recoiled, fighting the growing awareness creeping into her thoughts:
She had been dead.
Not just dead—*violated*. Her body torn apart, silenced in every possible way. Her eyes had been taken, her ears made useless, her mouth sewn shut as if to erase every trace of her existence. She didn't know who had done it or why, only that it had been brutal and final.
But now...
She flexed her hands again, watching her fingers move freely. Her chest rose and fell, each breath sharp and undeniable. Her body was whole. Alive.
The question pressed against her like a weight: *Why?*
She swung her legs off the bed and stood on shaky feet, crossing the room to the small mirror propped on the wall. Her reflection stared back—a young woman with smooth skin, unblemished by time or pain. Her dark hair fell loosely around her face, framing wide, searching eyes.
The face was hers, but younger.
Her mind spun as realization settled in: she had been reborn. Five years before the day she would meet her birth parents.
A laugh bubbled up in her throat, dry and brittle, escaping before she could stop it. It sounded wrong in the quiet room, almost hysterical. *What am I supposed to do now?*
She had read novels about rebirth. In those stories, the heroines always knew what to do. They were clever, calculating, driven by a fiery thirst for revenge or justice.
But she wasn't like them.
Before her death, she had been quiet, withdrawn—a "cold gourd," as her adoptive parents used to call her. She wasn't the type to scheme or fight. Her parents had hated her for it, accusing her of being ungrateful, dull, and useless.
She pressed a hand against the cool surface of the mirror. Her reflection wavered slightly as tears pricked her eyes, but she blinked them away.
God, fate, or whatever force had brought her back—what did it expect from her? Was she supposed to change her fate? Hunt down her killers? Or hide and hope it never happened again?
The faint sounds of her neighbors' morning routines reached her ears again, grounding her in the present. She didn't have the answers. Not yet.
But as she stepped away from the mirror, one thought burned in her mind.
*I'm alive now. And I won't waste it.*
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