Chapter 2: Back to Square One
"Leonardo" —the name he had carried his whole life in Italy— woke up abruptly, gasping for air as if his lungs had been deprived of oxygen. He looked around in utter shock; the room was warm, the bed was soft, and the ceiling was decorated with very familiar patterns.
He sat up, clutching his stomach in panic: "Huh? Am I not dead?"
There was no blood, no trace of the knife wound that had pierced his body moments ago. He shouted in disbelief: "This place... it's my room in Italy!"
He grabbed his phone lying beside him, his eyes shining with shock as he read the date: June 12, 2026.
"I'm back... I really traveled back in time! I'm eighteen again!"
He quickly replayed the tape of his life. He remembered being a three-year-old in an Italian orphanage, memoryless, before being adopted by a kind elderly couple. He lived as an Italian, studying and speaking their language, never knowing his true Chinese roots until after his adoptive parents passed away when he was sixteen.
He remembered his past life with bitterness; how he traveled to China at this age to study and search for his family with only a "Jade Pendant," and how his life was ruined there. He remembered how a girl named Sophia exploited him, making him work as a delivery boy to provide for her while he failed his studies and got expelled.
Worse than that, he remembered his wife, Lian, and her wealthy lover, Fang.
The scene in his memory shifted to that hideous moment in their apartment in China; when he walked in and found them together. He remembered his trembling voice as he recorded with his phone: "How dare you, Lian! I'll sue you... we'll divorce, and I'm taking my son!"
Fang's cold, arrogant laugh provoked him. That man, dressed in the finest designer suit, walked toward him coldly, picked up a fruit knife from the plate, and stabbed him in the stomach without blinking: "You dare threaten me, you scum?"
Lian's laughter erupted as she looked at her husband drowning in his blood: "Let me tell you a little secret... that child isn't yours; he's Fang's!"
Fang finished the insult by kicking him with his polished shoe: "What a fool... you were like a guard raising my child all these years!"
Our hero returned to reality, gripping his bedsheets so hard his knuckles turned white. A cold, hateful look gleamed in his eyes. He remembered everything: his lost childhood, his family in China, and the traitors who destroyed his past life.
[Author's Note]
How should Gino handle Sophia this time around? Total ghosting or a cold confrontation?
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