Everyone assumed I secured my position as the wife of Manhattan’s most elusive tech billionaire purely through my face and a perfectly timed, “amnesia-inducing” car crash. Until one day, my genius ex-boyfriend showed up at a high-society gala with his newly invented time machine, publicly provoking my husband: “Mr. Pierce, wouldn’t you like to see what your pure, innocent, obedient little wife was actually like when she was eighteen?” A cold sweat broke out across my back. I was just about to laugh it off and change the subject. But my usually composed, aloof husband crushed his cigar in the ashtray, stared at my deathly pale face, and unprecedentedly nodded. “Sure. Let’s take a look.” The moment Declan agreed, a collective gasp echoed through the ballroom. My brain buzzed with pure panic. I forced a stiff smile. “This kind of experimental tech… it’s got to be dangerous, right? Why don’t we shelf this for a few years until the technology is more mature…” Before my words even hit the floor, the scientific prodigy coldly cut me off. “Mrs. Pierce, are you questioning my professional expertise?” Ethan Vance. MIT’s once-in-a-century scientific marvel. At a young age, he had won countless international awards and published in every top-tier journal. This time machine was his magnum opus, something he had nearly killed himself to build. It had already passed countless safety tests before he dared to reveal it to the public. I took a deep breath and maintained my plastic smile. “Of course not.” “I just think it’s unnecessary.” I turned to Declan, softening my voice to a sweet, pleading pitch: “Honey, you know my parents died when I was young. I barely survived those miserable days, and I finally have a good life. Who would want to go back and relive that trauma? Besides, you’ve already helped me make so many new memories to replace the ones I lost.” Declan was usually a very gentle, somewhat laid-back man. He was five years older than me and never interfered with my freedom. But today, he was acting completely out of character. Instead of indulging me, he stared deeply into my eyes, as if searching for something. “I’ve actually never seen what you looked like at eighteen.” My breath hitched. A chaotic mess of fragmented memories instantly flashed through my mind. The squeaking, rusty ceiling fans of a remedial classroom. The calculus problems I could never solve. The disgusting, leering jokes from the boys on the bleachers. The massive eye-rolls from my teachers, and the crushing betrayal of my cheating ex. But the most terrifying memory of all was my cousin, Serena Brooks, and her beautiful, venomous face. The person Declan wanted to see wasn’t me. It was the vibrant, radiant heiress he remembered as his childhood fiancée. The spoiled, delicate princess who sometimes played cruel pranks, but was always forgiven by the world the moment she batted her eyelashes. When I was ten, she cornered me in the bathroom and poured a freshly brewed, scalding cup of hot chocolate directly over my head. Not a single drop was spared. She smiled at me like an absolute angel: “Didn’t you go crying to my parents, saying you wanted to taste chocolate? This stuff is imported and expensive. You better lick it clean.” Her little minions held my head down against the cold tiles. That was the first time in my life I ever tasted chocolate. Scalding hot and sticky. It was so sweet it tasted bitter, clogging my throat until I couldn’t even scream. All I could do was let my tears fall, drop by drop, onto the floor. When I looked up, all I saw were the freezing porcelain tiles and her incredibly, brilliantly radiant smile. My eyes were practically identical to hers. Even the tiny teardrop mole under our right eyes looked like a copy-and-paste job. It was precisely because of this that I was later able to successfully steal her identity and live a life of absolute luxury. When we were intimate, Declan loved kissing the flushed skin around the corner of my eye. He would always whisper in my ear, telling me that even though I had forgotten everything about my past, my eyes were just as captivating as he remembered. For five entire years of marriage, I played the role of the sweet, fragile, amnesiac wife perfectly. I never let a single flaw slip. I swallowed the rising panic in my chest and let out a long breath. “What’s so special about being eighteen? We have old photo albums at home. I’ll dig them out and show you tonight.” “But I want to see it with my own eyes right now.” Declan stared at the sleek, compact device on the table, his brow twitching slightly, looking genuinely intrigued. “I’ve always heard you were a perfectly obedient, straight-A student. I think it would be fascinating to see.” Obedient. Perfect. Straight-A student. I kept the smile glued to my face. I waited until Declan’s flashy Rolls-Royce completely disappeared down the driveway before my expression instantly shattered. Did any of those words have a single thing to do with me? The second I turned around, I bumped right into the MIT prodigy. He was taller than before. His messy bangs fell just over his brow bone. That freezing, unapproachable aura that kept everyone thousands of miles away hadn’t changed one bit. This machine today was brought out specifically to target me. I followed him into a secluded corner of the venue. Without a word, the man’s towering frame pressed forward, trapping me aggressively against the wall. “What the hell do you want?” I pushed him desperately, but he didn’t budge. Instead, he grabbed my wrists and pinned them against the wall. Ethan’s gaze slowly swept over my features, a dark, incomprehensible current churning in his eyes. After holding his breath for a long moment, he coldly spat out two words: “Get back.” My brain short-circuited. I thought I had heard him wrong. He mercifully repeated himself, his voice completely devoid of warmth: “I mean, you divorce him, and we get back together.” “I don’t mind letting you return to my side.” I found it absolutely, hilariously absurd. “Ethan, did you forget to take your meds this morning?” “I am perfectly lucid,” he stared at me, his tone frighteningly flat. “Hazel, I am the only person in this world who knows your real past. As long as you leave him, I swear on my life, the time machine will never reveal a single syllable of your secret.” The corner was so quiet I could only hear our breathing. I violently surged forward, shoving him away with all my strength. “Ethan, what do you think I am? A stray dog you can whistle for and kick away whenever you feel like it?!” I glared at him, trembling with every breath, dragging up our ugly history word by word. “Weren’t you the one who coldly threw me away like garbage?” He pressed his lips tightly together, not making a sound. There wasn’t a single shred of guilt in those pitch-black eyes. That cold-blooded, heartless reaction. It was exactly the same as seven years ago. Back then, my cousin and I both competed in the State Debate Championship, and our scores tied. As the President of the Student Council and head of the scholarship committee, he waved his hand and awarded the massive $50,000 grant directly to my cousin. The reason he gave back then was incredibly noble: Serena had just become an orphan. Her family was broke. She desperately needed that money to pay for her Ivy League tuition. As for me? My grades were an absolute disaster. I was destined to end up at a community college, so I was completely unworthy of him. “Hazel, you need to face reality. Neither I nor anyone else has an obligation to pay for your hopeless, dead-end life.” “When the SAT scores come out, if you can’t get into my university, then we’re done for the rest of our lives.” Back then, I truly hated Ethan. I hated him so much that whenever I thought of him, I wanted to march up and scream in his face. If you were so desperate to date an academic equal, why the hell did you mess with a delinquent student like me in the first place?! Hearing me dig up these ancient grievances, the Ethan standing in front of me only blinked slightly. His voice was as steady as ever: “I simply chose the most logical solution at the time. Even if I had given that money to you, it would have only been a drop in the bucket for your mother’s endless medical bills. What difference would it have made?” He was still so rational. So rational it was terrifying. He delivered those devastating, cruel reasons with total self-righteousness, as if he had calculated that I would never hold it against him. “As long as you get back together with me, everything I own is yours. Hazel, I’ve figured it out. I have everything I could ever want now. I don’t need a partner to fight alongside me in the trenches anymore. I just want you by my side.” His eyes were burning and obsessive. Hearing this, I only found it hilarious. I laughed so hard that the old, agonizing heartache completely vanished. I violently ripped my hand out of his grasp, fighting back the tears in my eyes, and gritted my teeth. “Then you calculated wrong, Ethan.” “I have never forgotten about that scholarship. I will never swallow that insult for the rest of my life.” I shoved him aside and turned to leave. As I walked away, the man stared at my back and suddenly threw out a chilling sentence: “What if I have a way to return the justice you were denied back then, exactly as it should have been?” Human nature is a funny thing. People always think the path they didn’t choose was the best one. Ethan genuinely believed his decision back then was flawless. But since I was so hung up on it… He didn’t mind turning back time, replaying the entire event, and showing me what true, unbiased “fairness” actually looked like. When I got back to the massive estate, Maria, our housekeeper, had already drawn a hot bath for me. When Declan pushed the bathroom door open, I had submerged my entire head into the cooling water. The man’s large, distinct fingers clamped onto the back of my neck, lifting me out of the water like a soaking wet kitten. His narrow, sharp eyes danced with amusement. “What’s this? Tired of living and trying to drown yourself?” I didn’t say a word. He leaned in closer. “Still sulking about what happened today?” I uncomfortably turned my face away. “I don’t have the time for that.” “Then why were you so resistant? Honestly, aren’t you curious to know what kind of temper you had before you lost your memory?” Seeing me act like a sealed vault, refusing to speak, he good-naturedly ruffled my soaking wet hair. His voice carried a lazy drawl. “To tell you the truth, when I first met you at nineteen, you were exactly like this. Constantly sulking, a temper the size of Texas. You screamed and cried, demanding I honor the trust fund marriage our grandfathers arranged, insisting on following me abroad to study. If it weren’t for what happened later…” He suddenly stopped talking. If it weren’t for the fact that my cousin accidentally fell into the ocean on the day of their engagement party, missing and presumed dead for three whole years… The two of them probably would have been married by now. Until a few years later, when he was vacationing on a remote island and accidentally stumbled upon me—a girl pretending to be his amnesiac fiancée. Steam swirled in the bathroom. The man’s warm palm gently cradled the back of my head, abruptly closing the distance between us. He lowered his voice. “Do you know, Serena? Sometimes I find it incredibly hard to reconcile the person you are now with the person you used to be.” “I constantly wonder… just how much suffering did you endure to turn into this timid, cautious version of yourself? You never cry out loud, you never laugh without restraint, you don’t even throw tantrums at me anymore.” He gently nuzzled his nose against my forehead, speaking as if murmuring to himself: “Do I need to dig up your entire past to figure out which one is the real you? The feral, defensive girl from before, or the sweet, understanding girl standing in front of me now? Which one actually cares about me more?” In the palm of his hand, the micro time machine was blinking with a rhythmic red light. My pupils violently shrank. I didn’t even have time to reach for it. “Keep your heart in your chest. No one will see. This trip through time is just for the two of us.” As soon as the words left his mouth, his long finger pressed down. Click. We were both instantly sucked into a temporal vortex, hurtling ten years into the past. To this day, I still haven’t figured out what wire crossed in Ethan’s brain to make him hand his time machine over to Declan. I stared blankly at my youthful, edgy reflection in the high school bathroom mirror, closing my eyes in utter despair. When I walked out, I saw a group of boys and girls in their blue-and-white uniforms laughing and shoving each other in the hallway. I bit my lip hard, keeping my head down as I pushed through them, predictably drawing a chorus of sleazy catcalls. “Hazel! The bell already rang! Why are you dawdling?!” The class president was screaming at me from the door of the remedial classroom. — Hazel. My brain short-circuited for a second. When my mom had me, it was a season of heavy nostalgia for her. She gave me the name Hazel because she wanted me to grow up strong and resilient like a hazel tree, deeply rooted in reality. If I really calculated it, how long had it been since someone called me that? Probably since the day I made the decision to steal Serena’s identity and marry into the Pierce family. Honestly, living with Declan these past few years hadn’t been that suffocating. At his corporation, he was known as the absolute Grim Reaper—ruthless and dictatorial. But at home, he was completely declawed, like a lazy Persian cat. On lazy Sunday afternoons, his favorite thing to do was squeeze onto the sofa with me to watch old movies, mess with the plants on the balcony, or just use my lap as a pillow and sleep for hours. Sometimes, if I casually mentioned a dish I was craving, he’d patiently pull up a YouTube tutorial and learn to cook it step-by-step. If I really had to pick out his flaws, I couldn’t find any major ones. The only fatal flaw was that the woman he held in his heart… wasn’t me. The sun outside was blindingly bright. I squinted and stepped into the classroom. This rundown, cramped room smelled of teenage sweat from the boys who just finished playing basketball. Even the endless buzzing of the cicadas outside the window felt maddening. This was the absolute last era of my life I ever wanted to revisit. It was an English class. I had zero interest in paying attention. I propped my cheek on my hand, my brain turning to mush, trying to figure out how to avoid bumping into Declan in this timeline. A group of girls in the back row were huddled together, whispering excitedly. They were gossiping about the billionaire sponsor of the upcoming State Debate Championship—a young, incredibly wealthy tycoon who had just returned from studying abroad. Apparently, he had specifically come to our school this morning for an inspection. “I sneaked a peek when I walked past the bathroom earlier. He definitely looks like old money. That face, those long legs… absolutely unreal. The principal wanted to assign him a student guide for the campus history museum. The guy just glanced at the roster and specifically asked for Serena.” “Why didn’t he ask for Hazel? Didn’t she tie for first place with Serena in the regionals?” Someone nearby scoffed coldly, full of disdain. “Serena isn’t just beautiful, she’s the valedictorian. The billionaire picking her just proves he has good taste. Now look at the girl in our class. All she does is dress like a punk and flirt with boys. She has zero actual brains and acts so arrogant. Just because a blind squirrel found a dead mouse and she lucked into a high score, she actually thinks she’s on the same level as the valedictorian?” I slowly blinked twice, finally realizing exactly what year, month, and day it was. This was the critical juncture where Serena and I had tied for first place in the State Championship, and the school administration was holding a meeting to decide who would get the massive scholarship grant. But in my original timeline… There was absolutely no billionaire sponsor who had studied abroad. In the school’s VIP reception room. The principal was bowing and scraping, pouring tea for the aristocratic billionaire sitting across from him, apologizing profusely with a sycophantic smile: “Mr. Pierce, if you had only told us you were gracing us with your presence, we would have prepared a proper welcome! Look at this place, we have nothing ready. We’ve truly slighted you.” The man’s long fingers casually spun a delicate porcelain teacup. He replied lazily, “It’s fine. I was just passing through today. I wanted to see a familiar face.” A few moments later, the class president sprinted back in to report that Serena Brooks was having terrible period cramps. She was lying in bed in her dorm room in agonizing pain, and she probably wouldn’t be able to give the museum tour today. The principal looked incredibly awkward, asking if he should quickly find a sharper student to take her place. Declan stared at the two identical perfect-score exam papers laid out on the desk. He flipped to the one underneath, saw the aggressively messy signature at the top, raised an eyebrow, and asked, “Hazel?” “Yes, yes, Hazel,” the principal quickly supplied, plastering on a fake smile. “Even though the girl is in the remedial class, her English scores are genuinely top-tier. She actually tied for first place with Serena in the state competition.” “And according to the other students, this girl has been working like a maniac these past few months. She’s up at 5:30 AM every day pacing the hallways memorizing vocabulary! She’s a hardworking kid. Having her give you the tour won’t be a mistake.” The man fell into a thoughtful silence for a moment. “If they tied for first place, why is there only one name—Serena’s—on the scholarship recommendation list?” “Well… about that… to tell you the truth, the school administration is actually about to hold a meeting to discuss that very issue.” Seeing the principal stammering, unable to squeeze out a coherent excuse, Declan couldn’t be bothered to interrogate him further. He was never the type to meddle in other people’s business anyway. Besides, his time in this era was limited. He had a maximum of three days. Declan glanced at his luxury watch and suddenly turned his head to ask his assistant, “What’s the date today?” “August 1st, Mr. Pierce. Do you need something?” Early August. That date didn’t align with his wife’s menstrual cycle. But then he thought about it—she had fallen into the ocean, suffered massive trauma, and lost her memory. It was completely normal for her cycle to be thrown off. Declan dismissed the tiny inconsistency from his mind. The man pondered for a moment before instructing his assistant, “Go to the pharmacy nearby. Buy some brown sugar ginger tea and some heating pads.” “Mr. Pierce, are you intending to…?” the principal asked cautiously, thoroughly confused. The man stood up, smoothed out his immaculate suit, and gave the principal a polite nod. “I’ll skip the history museum. You don’t need to waste your time entertaining me here.” “Since you have a meeting to attend to, I’ll go see Serena Brooks myself. Once I see her, I’ll leave.” When the bell rang, I was staring blankly at my desk. The class president suddenly tapped my shoulder, telling me to get to the faculty office immediately. The moment I pushed the door open, oh boy. It was packed to the brim. The principal, my homeroom teacher, the proctor from the competition, the dean of students, and the kids who sat around me during the exam—they were all standing there. The only person missing was Serena. Ethan was wearing his crisp, tailored Student Council uniform. He still had that arrogant, aloof demeanor, acting like he was above the mortal realm and everyone else was beneath his notice. He shot me a sidelong glance, then pulled up the security footage from the day of the exam on his laptop. He turned the screen so everyone in the room could see it clearly. “Since Serena and Hazel scored the exact same points in the competition, I believe that if we don’t provide irrefutable evidence to settle this, rumors will spread that our school is unjust.” As Ethan spoke, he lifted his eyelids. His gaze hit my face like a blazing spotlight. In my original timeline, ten years ago, I never experienced this kind of brutal, public interrogation. Because by the time I found out the results, the scholarship money had already been wired into Serena’s bank account. I had lost my mind with anger. I ran through a torrential downpour to find Ethan, screaming myself hoarse, demanding to know why he did it. Why did he treat me like that? Was it because we were dating, and he wanted to “avoid a conflict of interest” by sacrificing me? Or was it because my handwriting wasn’t as neat as Serena’s? Or was it because he despised my reputation as a remedial student and was afraid giving me the spot would embarrass the school? Back then, the arrogant, untouchable boy just listened to my hysterical screaming and frowned in annoyance. “Regardless of everything else, she is your cousin. Your aunt and uncle raised you and your mom for years. Now her parents are dead. Can’t you be the bigger person and think about her for once?” “But that’s completely unfair!” That was the first time he ever looked at me with pure, unadulterated disgust. “Then teach me what fairness is! Does the earth revolve around you? Do people have to step aside for you just because you grew up poor?” The justice I had screamed my lungs out for and never received back then… today, he had used a time machine to travel back and graciously bestow it upon me. In the office, the boy’s voice wasn’t loud, but it cut like an ice pick. He stared me down, articulating every word with lethal precision: “The moment the audio portion of the exam ended, the proctor announced that all pencils must be put down. Hazel, why were you still holding your pencil?” My breath hitched. My entire body stiffened as if I had been paralyzed. Under the suffocating stares of a dozen pairs of eyes, my fingers slowly curled inward, my nails digging painfully into my palms. I forced out a dry, cracked sentence: “I was just checking to make sure I didn’t bubble the wrong row on the scantron.” “Even if you realized you bubbled it wrong, what were you planning to do?” Ethan’s tone was flat, but his words were a brutal interrogation. “Were you planning to defy the rules and secretly change your answers?” “I wasn’t,” I said, grinding my teeth. The moment those words left my mouth, Ethan slammed my scantron down onto the desk with a sharp smack. His finger tapped heavily on a poorly erased pencil mark, his tone aggressive and unyielding: “On the final, hardest question of the audio section, you clearly bubbled ‘A’. But in the final few seconds before the proctor collected the tests, you suspiciously glanced to your front-left, and guiltily changed your answer to ‘B’—the exact same answer as Serena.” “Hazel, do you admit to this, or not?” The dark, desperate little thoughts I had harbored in the shadows were suddenly ripped out and exposed to the blinding sunlight. I stood there like a mute, refusing to say a word. Ethan delivered his final ultimatum, his eyes looking like they wanted to carve me open. “Is it true, or is it not?” In this spacious office, so quiet you could hear a pin drop, my eyes were glued to the floorboards. My throat was impossibly dry. It took an eternity to force out one word: “No.” In the face of ironclad evidence like security footage, all my denials felt pathetic and weak. But I remained incredibly stubborn, squeezing the words through my teeth: “I absolutely did not look at Serena’s test.” “I was just looking at the clock on the wall, trying to see if I had enough time to correct my answer.” “Looking at the clock? Hazel, do you honestly think any of the teachers or administrators here believe a ridiculous lie like that?” Ethan pressed his attack, looking as though he wouldn’t rest until the label of ‘cheater’ was permanently branded onto my forehead. I suddenly felt like the man standing in front of me was a complete stranger. “Didn’t you tell me this yourself? Ethan.” “The broken clock on our school wall is exactly thirty seconds faster than standard time.” My eyes turned red. My palms were slick with cold sweat. I stared him down, demanding an answer from his own mouth. —This was exactly what Ethan had told me after a monthly exam, pointing at his expensive mechanical watch. He had even joked that one day, he could use that thirty-second discrepancy to blindly guess one more multiple-choice question. A deathly silence spread across the office. The arrogant boy’s breathing suddenly hitched. Slowly, he pressed his lips into a tight, thin line. This time, for the first time ever, he didn’t instantly jump to contradict me. Just as the suffocating stalemate reached its breaking point. A student suddenly burst through the door from outside, completely out of breath. “Principal! The billionaire sponsor, Mr. Pierce, just came back from Serena’s dorm room! He says he wants to see you one more time before he leaves!”
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