All the relatives knew I had a "backward cousin."

For my birthday, she gave me a grocery-store pound cake.

When I ran a marathon, she presented me with a pair of worn-out canvas sneakers.

At my graduate school acceptance party, she even sent a funeral wreath of white lilies with a sash that read "In Sympathy," wishing me an early departure to the afterlife.

In my previous life, I slapped her so hard she tumbled down the porch steps.

My brother took her side and plotted revenge, falsely reporting to the university that I had cheated on my SATs. My admission was revoked.

"You're so modern. You know how things work," he sneered. "Plenty of people take a gap year. Just apply again."

My father also defended her, cutting off all my financial support.

"You've had so much schooling. You're so educated," he said coldly. "Support yourself."

Alone in a city eighteen hundred miles from home, I fought to survive. I called my brother and my father again and again—only to be blocked.

I delivered food while renting a room and studying to reapply.

At my lowest, my hands were raw and cracked from frostbite, scrambling for delivery shifts at four in the morning just to earn a small bonus.

Worn down by the cold and exhaustion, I suffered cardiac arrest at twenty-three and collapsed in a snowdrift in that unfamiliar city. No one ever came to claim me.

This time, I chose to let it go and accepted the wreath with a gracious smile.

To fully integrate myself into this family.

After all, what is a moment of pride compared to a lifetime's inheritance?

Under the scrutiny of the entire school faculty and my fellow students, I accepted the funeral wreath with a bright, unwavering smile.

I made no complaint. Instead, I gently comforted my cousin.

"You're just a bit traditional. You don't always get modern customs," I said kindly. "But I know you meant well, dear cousin."

Unlike my last life, my brother Nick didn't pin me down in public and force me to endure ten slaps from her to soothe her pride after I'd struck her.

This time, his eyes held only barely concealed concern.

"Today was supposed to be your big celebration. Audrey, she… Cathy really doesn't know any better. You were put in an awkward position."

My father squeezed my shoulder. His approving look carried a hint of remorse.

"Haven't you always wanted a stake in the family holdings?" he said. "I'll have legal draw up the papers today. Five percent is yours."

After a pause, he added, "You handled this with grace. Don't hold it against your cousin."

A flicker of cold irony passed through my gaze.

I'd been asking my father for shares in the trust since I turned eighteen.

Every time, he had a new excuse—too young, didn't understand the portfolio, needed more education.

In my last life, desperate to prove myself, I burned the candle at both ends through college. I studied relentlessly, entered case competitions, joined leadership boards. I honed my pitch, practiced diplomacy, even launched a startup.

In the end, I was given a token one percent.

Yet now, simply to keep me from making a scene over my cousin's blunder, my father casually offered five.

"It was an honest mistake," I said softly. "I'm not upset."

The faint note of loneliness in my voice made my brother's chest tighten.

"That solid gold Art Deco necklace you've always admired—it's yours."

That piece was a museum-grade antique, appraised at over three million.

I lowered my eyes and feigned refusal.

My cousin's eyes welled up as she pouted. "If you don't want it, then let me have it! I don't know much about heirlooms, but I love gold!"

My brother looked torn and shot me a pleading glance.

I let out a quiet breath. You can't land the big fish without letting go of a little bait. Besides, even if the necklace were mine, I'd have nowhere to secure it.

I didn't have an eight-hundred-square-meter mansion like my brother.

"Gold has a very classic feel," I said lightly. "It suits you perfectly, cousin."

Smiling, I took her hand.

"Dad already gave me my graduation gift. If Cathy wants the necklace, she should have it. As for you making it up to me—it's really not necessary."

My brother opened his mouth to chide me for being petty when I added, "Running the company must be exhausting. I should be more understanding."

The rebuke died in his throat.

The guilt in his eyes deepened. He didn't even acknowledge my cousin's sulking anymore.

I glanced down at my vibrating phone.

[Transfer Received: 1,500,000 dollars]

Another message followed from my brother: [Pick any car from the collection in my garage. The keys are yours.]

I glanced casually at my brother, still typing with his head down. No warmth rose in my chest—only a vast, quiet chill.

A cold, inward smirk was all I could muster.

Too spineless to show his own sister basic kindness in front of his darling cousin—what a pitiful man.

My fingers, however, flew across the screen: [I want the Bugatti.]

That hypercar cost over five million after taxes, was one of five in the country, and was worth more than any antique necklace.

It was my brother's crown jewel. He frowned, hesitated for a long moment, then finally gritted his teeth.

[Fine.]

As we were texting, the university's leadership arrived.

The dean took one look at the glaringly out-of-place funeral wreath.

"What is the meaning of this?"

One by one, eyes turned to me. I calmly met my cousin's gaze.

The dean didn't wait for an explanation. He motioned for campus security to remove both the wreath and my cousin from the event.

"Completely inappropriate!"

Watching several officers escort her out, my brother and father panicked.

"Audrey, go talk to the dean!" my brother shouted. "Cathy didn't mean anything by it! She's just from a different world—she doesn't understand!"

I wore a mask of regret, my face full of sympathy for my cousin.

But I didn't move an inch.

"Dad, this isn't back home in Tempas," I said calmly. "Here, I'm just another incoming graduate student—not the daughter of the state's wealthiest family."

The implication was clear: my hands were tied.

Hearing this, my brother shot me a furious glare.

"Then why did you insist on a school clear across the country? This place is practically uncivilized!"

I remained unmoved, watching the two of them hurry after my cousin's retreating figure. My heart didn't so much as flicker.

They were supposed to be my family. Yet in the end, the only things I could truly rely on were the share transfer agreement on my phone and the million and a half already in my account.

Over the next week, I used the money to get fully settled on campus and finally began living the life I should have had in my previous life.

Meanwhile, a cell phone video of my cousin being escorted out that day made its way online and gained some traction.

Furious, she bought a last-minute ticket and flew straight back to Tempas City.

Just like last time, she trashed my room.

Back then, it was because I'd slapped her down the stairs.

My brother and father had even stood by, telling her to toss all my things out of the family estate if it made her feel better.

The only photo album I had of my mother and me—she tore it to pieces, then took pictures and sent them to me as a final jab.

This time was no different.

I stared at the image of shredded photographs scattered on the floor and swallowed down the ache in my chest.

In my previous life, I'd booked the first flight home and confronted her violently.

My father had been in the middle of closing a major international merger. The scandal broke his focus, and he lost a deal worth billions.

When Grandmother found out, she declared she never wanted to see me again and had her security detail put me on a plane back to school.

With Grandmother's protection revoked, my brother quietly worked behind the scenes until I was expelled.

This time, I only sent a calm voice note.

"Be careful, Cathy. Don't cut yourself. Dad and Nick would be so worried."

Then I forwarded the chat history to the family group: [Cathy made it home safely. Dad, Nick, no need to keep searching for her.]

In my last life, it was my father who'd told her to wreck my room to blow off steam.

This time, she'd done it entirely on her own.

A faint, cold smile touched my lips as I put my phone away and walked into the research lab.

The next morning, I received a call from my father.

"Sweetheart…"

He rarely called me that. When he did, it meant something was very wrong.

"Cathy destroyed your room," he said, his voice rough. "She went after your mother's things, too. I'm sorry. This is my fault."

He offered to compensate me with another three percent of the family trust shares.

I let my voice break, struggling to get the words out.

"If she… if she wanted me gone, that would be one thing. But… those were the only things I had left of Mom."

"That will never happen!" My father's guilt was palpable. "You are my daughter. This is your home! Cathy just lost control. She's already facing the consequences!"

As he spoke, he sent me a photo.

In the dead of a cold snap, my cousin knelt on the stone floor of the family chapel in nothing but a thin sweater. Her cheeks were livid, the slap marks so harsh they'd broken the skin—the capillaries beneath likely shattered.

Grandmother had intervened. She despised nothing more than those who sowed discord in the family.

"I'm asking you, please—say a word to your grandmother for her," he pleaded. "Cathy has a weak constitution. She can't handle kneeling in this cold!"

So, after all that, it was still about Cathy.

With the tip of my finger, I brushed away the single tear tracing its way down my cheek.

"Fine. In addition to the three percent in shares, I want to buy a manor villa—paid in full."

I stopped the hysterics. Instead, my composed resignation seemed to move them.

My father agreed immediately and approved a forty-million-dollar budget for the property. My brother messaged to say he'd cover all the interior design and renovation costs. He even praised my generosity.

"Cathy destroyed Mom's things. I really lost my temper with her. I've let her get away with too much. To think she'd dare to trash your room…"

I smiled—coldly—and went to Grandma to plead for leniency.

She felt for me and quietly signed over a small, profitable subsidiary to my control.

"With your own income, you won't have to take so much disrespect. Your father's lost all perspective! Who knows where the family assets will end up?"

Quietly, I expedited the property purchase.

On the day I signed the final papers, my cousin flooded my phone with family photos.

Cathy: [Uncle said the torn pictures don't matter. We can take new ones. You're not upset, right, Audrey? They say four's a crowd—three makes for a perfect family portrait.]

Me: [Okay. Add a little more blush—it'll photograph better. Peach tones suit you, they brighten your complexion. Take another set.]

Cathy: [Nick insisted on taking the whole family on a two-week tour of Aerope to make it up to me. I thought it was just one of those fake Aeropean villages back home. This is just to cheer me up. It's not that we purposely left you out.]

I let out a cold laugh. Two lifetimes, and she was still running the same playbook.

She played the "small-town cousin," all wide-eyed innocence, while flaunting her importance right in my face.

The moment I showed a flicker of anger, she'd turn on the waterworks—sobbing, wailing, acting like she'd been orphaned all over again.

Casually, I used an app to generate a detailed, day-by-day luxury travel itinerary.

Me: [These spots are stunning. Make sure Dad takes you.]

After sending it, I turned off my phone.

Cathy didn't reply again.

That feeling of punching cotton—hitting nothing, no matter how hard you swing—probably left her with nowhere to put her fury.

I'd known that hollowness ever since the accident that shattered her family.

That year, my father and brother were inspecting a high-rise construction site. A falling steel girder nearly killed them both.

It was Cathy's father who shoved them aside and took the full impact.

Her mother, eight months pregnant, couldn't withstand the shock. She went into early labor and hemorrhaged on the table.

In a matter of days, Cathy lost both parents and fell gravely ill herself.

My father, drowning in guilt, took her in and funded every specialist and treatment.

Back then, she was two years my senior—my elder cousin.

It was my father who said the older sibling should watch over the younger, so we swapped what we called each other.

Later, as Cathy's PTSD worsened, she'd have violent episodes. In her rages, she'd scream at me like I was the one who'd stolen everything from her.

The doctors said we needed separation for her recovery. So my father sent me to live with distant relatives out in the countryside.

"An education is an education anywhere," he'd said. "We all owe Cathy a life! If it weren't for her father, you'd be an orphan! You can go keep an eye on your uncle's grave."

I kept watch in the countryside for three years until Cathy was finally declared stable.

Father sent for me then—but I'd become the permanent outsider in my own home.

My brother called her sis. My father called her sweetheart.

In their mouths, I became "her."

But her father died, and Cathy received a million-dollar settlement. And we had cared for Cathy, body and soul, for thirteen years.

All this time, my father neglected my own maternal grandparents' needs. Instead, he supported her paternal grandparents in full comfort until they wanted for nothing.

Relatives from her mother's side—my father found them jobs, too. Anyone even tangentially connected to her family could come to ours for a handout.

My father never complained. He only said we owed them a life.

He'd even earmarked two percent of the family company shares, waiting to transfer them to Cathy when she turned twenty-five.

But that day, four people had been walking together. With a steel beam that size coming down, her father couldn't have outrun it.

Besides, my own mother had died under that same beam. She had shoved Nick to safety with her last breath.

So why does everyone talk about "her father's sacrifice" and never speak of my mother's?

Her father has been thanked for years, showered with posthumous glory and generational wealth.

As for him, I feel no debt.

I even believe that if he hadn't called in a favor to get his friend that construction contract—a friend who cut corners—there would have been no faulty operations.