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.

Seeing me faint from hunger twice in just one short month, my father began to let his guard down a little around me.

Right at the moment his vigilance was at its weakest against a seven-year-old child, I delivered him a gift that nearly broke him.

…

For an entire week, I scavenged for recyclables day and night. Even on weekends, I rummaged through trash bins at the residential entrance late into the night.

My father paid no mind. To him, I was simply terrified of starving. Working myself so desperately was merely my way of trying to fill my stomach.

To keep the money from being snatched away by the older students that my father had arranged, I deliberately took half a day off on Friday afternoon and sold off the scraps I’d painstakingly gathered.

In just one week, I managed to save a whopping hundred dollars.

Clutching the crumpled bills, I first bought a switchblade from a street vendor. Then, I raced to a family restaurant for a hearty meal of pot roast before bringing home a large bag of dinner rolls.

Over the weekend, I stayed in the villa, living off dinner rolls and cold water while reviewing my schoolwork.

Nancy was my father’s informant. She wouldn’t offer any help, and neither would she interfere much with my actions.

As noon approached, the doorbell rang.

I “sensibly” beat Nancy to open the door, and saw a woman in a business suit waiting outside.

Big, wavy curls paired with a silver blazer and a fitted pencil skirt; black stockings hugging her long legs, finished off with stilettos. No wonder she had completely enchanted my father, so much so that he’d sacrifice his only daughter to pave the way for her out-of-wedlock child.

“Ma’am, may I ask who you’re looking for?” I asked politely as I looked up.

As she looked at me from above, her fake smile couldn’t hide the disgust and loathing in her eyes.

Then again, it was only a natural expression to show toward an obstacle for your future child.

“Little girl, don’t call me Ma’am. Call me Miss.”

Smugly, she looked down at me and said, “I’m here to deliver documents to your father. Is he home?”

She wasn’t surprised at all by my shabby clothes, clearly aware of my father’s ill treatment of me.

I shook my head. “My father went to work. He’s not back yet.”

“Oh? Then may I come in and wait?”

Though she asked, she had no intention of waiting for permission and moved to walk past me and into the house.

I blocked her path and held out my hand. “Ma’am, the entry fee is five dollars.”

She froze for a moment, seemingly remembering something. A vague smile flickered across her face. “Little girl, didn’t your father teach you manners?”

I shook my head again. “No. He only taught me to be self-reliant.”

She dropped her act and rolled her eyes at me. “You little money-grubber. Just you wait till your father gets home. He’ll hear all about this.”

With that, she shoved me aside and strode right in.

Nancy clearly knew her and greeted her respectfully, “Hello, Ms. Powell.”

She nodded in acknowledgement. “I’ll wait for Mr. Stone in the study.”

“Ma’am, wait!”

Hearing the childish cry behind her, impatience finally flashed across the woman’s face.

She turned around. “I’ve told you. Are you ever going to…”

Before she could finish, a switchblade was already plunged into her lower abdomen.

She stared blankly at the blade protruding from her stomach, then looked at me. Her eyes were filled with confusion and shock, a total disbelief at what she was seeing.

Quickly, I pulled out the switchblade protruding from her stomach and stabbed her twice more in the same spot.

With a serious expression, I looked up into her eyes and said, “Ma’am, no money, no entry!”

Amid Nancy’s scream and my hands covered in blood, I picked up the phone on the coffee table and dialed 911.

…

When my father, the chairman, Mr. Emmanuel Stone, rushed into the hospital in his bespoke suit, I was already surrounded by a few police officers.

The red light outside the operating room still glowed as doctors fought to save the woman’s life.

My father spoke solemnly with the officers for a moment before turning toward me.

“Nadia Stone, why did you stab her?”

“Because she wouldn’t give me money.”

“Why would she give you money?”

“Because I opened the door for her. So she had to give me money.”

“Why does your opening the door for her mean that she must give you money?”

I lifted my head and looked at him with my wide, innocent eyes.

“You said it yourself. Everything in this world has a price. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Nothing can be gained without paying for something in return.

“Since I did something for her, shouldn’t she give me money?”

My father suddenly felt an inexplicable sense of helplessness.

“Even if she didn’t pay you, you still shouldn’t hurt her with a knife.”

“She gave me a mean look like I’d done something wrong. But I didn’t do anything wrong. In fact, she was the one in the wrong, so why did she treat me like that?

“And you told me before that if someone treats me badly the first time we meet, they’re likely to become my enemy later on. And that I should eliminate that threat before they can hurt me.”

Hearing this, my father’s expression twisted into something as foul as if he’d swallowed a pile of filth.

Back when he pushed his strict parenting, he’d also drilled some pretty extreme business principles into me. Little did he know I’d not only memorized them, but also obediently put them into practice.

As a result, Lara Powell, the woman who had borne him a son in my past life, now lay on the operating table, fighting for her life, while he sat on the bench outside the operating room, reaping what he had sown.

“Where did you get that blade?”

“I bought it.”

His suspicious gaze swept over my face. “You bought it? What for?”

“Lately, a group of older students has been robbing me of the money I earn from selling scraps after school. I told the teachers, but they ignored me. You were the one who told me to reflect, and that failing to protect my own earnings was my own fault.

“I really didn’t know where I went wrong, so I had to find a way to protect my money.”

My eyes remained clear and innocent. “Next time they try to take my money, I’ll use the same way to deal with them, as I did with the ma’am. I won’t let them steal my money again.”

The suspicion in his eyes faded. After all, no one would suspect a seventeen-year-old soul inhabiting the body of a seven-year-old girl.

He let out a long sigh and leaned his head weakly against the wall.

…

At seven in the evening, the surgery finally ended, and Lara was wheeled out of the operating room.

The good news was that her life was saved.

The bad news was that two consecutive stabs had precisely pierced her uterus. Not only was the one-month-old fetus lost, but she also had been stripped of her very right to be a mother.

Her uterus had been removed.

Outside the ward, I pressed my face against the door and peeked inside. There lay Lara, tears streaming down her face uncontrollably. My father was standing beside her, clutching the surgical report, his entire body trembling violently.

Thereafter, I never saw Lara again.

A barren woman had no reason to stay by his side.

As for those older students who had ambushed and robbed me before, I never encountered them again. It was as if those bullies had mysteriously vanished overnight.