The Oleander Reborn

My brief life was thus accompanied by bullying throughout, up until my death.

Children’s malice was often purer and more unrestrained, yet it cut deeper. They didn’t perceive it as offense or harm, but merely a game.

They called me a garbage-eating trash bin and formed a group that took pleasure in tormenting me. They even assigned someone to block my access to the school toilets.

I relied on collecting recyclables for money, yet time and again, my earnings would be snatched away by older students.

I cried to my father for help, only to receive his cold rebuke.

“Why do they target you and not others? Why can’t you build a good rapport with your classmates?

“Why don’t they bully me, but instead single you out? Ultimately, it’s your social skills that are flawed. If you can’t even deal with something this trivial, then you’re not qualified to inherit anything your mother left you!”

One day, I was hit by a car that ran a red light and was thrown more than a hundred feet away. When the hospital called him, not only did he refuse to sign the surgery consent form, but he also refused to pay a single cent of medical expenses.

“She’s almost an adult. She should take responsibility for her own actions.

“If she still needs her parents to cover her medical bills, then what’s the point of continuing such a failed life?”

I once naïvely believed this was his way of training me. Though I harbored resentment, I never truly hated him.

After my death, however, I discovered he had long had a son eight years younger than me; a b*stard born to him by his secretary.

The “strict parenting” was never imposed on that b*stard son of his. He was given a fairytale-like childhood, where a single ordinary dinner cost more than I earned in a year of scavenging.

As for the harsh discipline forced upon me, it was nothing more than a scheme to wear me down to death so that he could clear the way for that b*stard.

The eulogy he delivered at my mother’s funeral had put him on a pedestal, leaving him in a tough spot. If I didn’t die, that son of his would never be able to step into the spotlight.

Now, I had been reborn, back to the day my father stood before me and eloquently declared that he would begin his so-called strict parenting.

As I watched him solemnly expound his grand principles, I severed the last trace of father-daughter affection in my heart.

Afraid to kill me outright and invite public condemnation, he resorted to this roundabout tactic to exhaust me to death instead.

Unfortunately for him, I was someone who had already died once. Everything I had endured back then had long since crystallized into searing hatred after my death.

Now that I had been given a second life, I would no longer subject myself to living in humiliation and blind obedience.

“These are the challenges you’ll face from now on. I won’t offer you any help. You have to depend on yourself, and nobody will support you.

“You’re almost eight. If you can’t even manage your own survival, you’re destined to be a failure. Do you understand?”

My eyes brimmed with a mix of confusion and understanding, to which I nodded obediently.

Satisfied with my bewildered expression, he patted my head and turned around toward his study.

As the door to his study closed, the confusion in my eyes slowly faded, replaced by bone-chilling coldness.

‘If you’re so eager for me to yield to that b*stard, then I won’t even give him any chance to enter the arena.’

After all, the only way to prevent being suckerpunched was to keep the opponent out of the ring.

In the days that followed, I began collecting scraps for money based on memories from my past life. I worried daily for a single dinner roll, and occasionally feigned breakdowns and sobbing to confuse my father.