I reigned as the undisputed queen of Hollywood paparazzi. Not a single celebrity ever managed to escape my lens. I had reached the absolute peak of my profession, feared and hated in equal measure.
Bang.
A heavy fist slammed into my jaw, instantly blurring my already fading consciousness. Directly above me hovered the face of Rick—or Richard—that golden-boy actor everyone loved.
Usually, he wore a charming smile, but right now, his handsome features were stained with raw anger.
Two bodyguards held me down. One pinned my shoulders to the hard floor, while the other straddled my waist, wearing a greedy, disgusting grin.
"How dare you destroy my career?" Richard scowled, his voice dripping with venom. "Let me show you exactly how it feels to have your private moments leaked onto the internet."
He signaled the thug sitting on me. Obediently, the man yanked his T-shirt up, exposing his dark, charcoal skin to the cold air.
A distinct clicking sound reached my ears, but I grimaced. It came from my own gear.
"Damn it… that shutter sounded wrong. There's no battery left. Don't you dare break it; that thing costs a literal fortune."
It took nearly ten years of slaving away in my youth just to afford that specific model. Boasting 20k resolution video quality and a global shutter, the device snapped perfect pictures even inside a pitch-black room.
The raw video output, recording at massive bitrates, helped me capture the slightest micro-expressions on the faces of lying celebrities.
Although the casing was military-grade durability, I always handled it like a fragile piece of glass. Watching these idiots manhandle it so roughly made my heart feel like it was about to explode in my chest.
"What! You crazy bitch, you're still thinking about a camera when you're about to become a whore?"
Bang.
Another slap rocked my face. Ugh. That really hurt. Fiercely, I glared up at the slapper.
"You Motherfu—"
Bang.
A third strike. Then, a loud crack echoed. Not from the camera, of course.
Suddenly, the face of the man who hit me changed color, draining of blood until he was pale. Shouldn't that terrified expression be on my face?
Wait. Why did no words come out of them? Their lips were moving as if they were screaming.
Ah. It must be my ears. It seemed I had gone deaf. But why was my sight slowly losing clarity if only my hearing had stopped functioning?
Had I gone blind, too?
No. This sensation felt different.
It felt like…
Like what?
Like…
Who was I again?
Oh.
"I'm going to die."
"Not if you push the baby, Madam!"
"Ahhh… push what?!" I screamed, experiencing a level of pain I never imagined existed in this world. My blurry eyes adjusted to the dim light above, and my gaze fell onto my own outstretched legs.
Push what?
"Urghhhhhh…"
Another wave of agony hit me, feeling as if it intended to tear away all my intestines and pull them out through my hips. My consciousness felt like it was going to re-click itself off again.
"I'm gonna die. Ugh."
"Push… just push!"
"Fucking stop saying push! I quit. Urghhh…"
If I didn't know what was happening to me, then I would be an absolute idiot. I died, and then I transmigrated. Unlike everyone else in novels, I arrived as a woman mid-labor. What the hell was this luck?
'So this is why she hated me this much…'
A soft voice echoed inside my head. It must be an illusion. Fuck, I didn't have the resolve to pinpoint the source. Right now, I just wanted to cease existing.
"Just kill me… no, cut it open and take that thing out!"
'She didn't even consider me human.'
"Aaahhhhh…"
With a final, desperate push-strength I didn't know where I summoned from-I finally emptied whatever was in my stomach.
Desperately, I gasped for air, waiting to hear the sound which was supposed to come after giving birth.
Although I didn't keep this baby in my womb for ten months, I was the one who experienced the torture of childbirth.
Since I paid the price, I didn't want to see anything happen to the product. After not hearing its cries, panic set in.
"Madam, it's a baby boy."
Ah. So he didn't die.
"…But is he dumb? Why isn't he crying?"
'Your mother is dumb. Your whole family is dumb.'
"Waaaaaaaaa….."
"Shh, little master. Your mother is right here."
The old midwife, her face a roadmap of wrinkles and sweat, didn't give me a second to breathe.
I lay paralyzed on the blood-soaked sheets, my limbs feeling like lead weights dragging me down into the mattress.
Before I could protest, or even summon the strength to lift a finger, the woman's rough hands were on me.
She tugged at the front of my damp blouse, exposing skin to the cool, stale air of the room. Without ceremony, she deposited the screaming bundle of flesh onto my chest.
Instinct took over. Not mine, but his.
The baby rooted blindly for a second before latching onto my nipple with a ferocity that made me gasp.
A strange tickle shot through my chest, followed immediately by a rhythmic tugging. He drank greedily, as if he hadn't eaten in two lifetimes.
I should have hated this.
In my previous life, I was a notorious clean freak. My apartment was a sterile zone, bleached and sanitized to hospital standards.
People were germ factories. Handshakes were a necessary evil I engaged in only when absolutely required, and I always carried a bottle of high-grade sanitizer in my back pocket.
Intimacy? Gross. Physical contact with sweaty, sticky humans? A nightmare.
Yet, as I looked down at the tiny, wrinkled creature feeding from me, the revulsion I expected never arrived.
Instead, a bizarre warmth spread from my chest, diffusal and soft, overriding the pain of childbirth and the sting of his hunger.
His tiny hand, no bigger than a memory card, rested against my skin, fingers curling into a fist.
For the first time since waking up in this hellish scenario, the panic receded.
He was mine.
The feeling was terrifyingly similar to the day I bought my first professional rig.
That sense of overwhelming responsibility, the fear of dropping it, the obsession with keeping it safe from the world's grit.
I loved him as much as my own camera.
Wait.
I frowned, staring at the tuft of dark hair on his head.
Did I just compare my biological son to a piece of electronic equipment?
That was probably a sign of sociopathy. I shouldn't compare a human being to a camera.
A camera was reliable. A camera didn't scream. A camera didn't poop.
'This woman… why is her heartbeat so chaotic?'
The thought cut through my internal monologue like a lens flare ruining a perfect shot.
I froze. My eyes darted around the dim room.
The midwife was busy cleaning up the bloody towels in the corner, humming a low tune. No one else was here.
'In the past, she would have thrown me aside by now. She hated me. She blamed me for ruining her figure and her cultivation prospects.'
The voice was clear, distinct, and dripping with a bitterness that no infant should possess.
I looked down. The baby had stopped drinking. His large, dark eyes were open, staring up at me with an intensity that made the hair on my arms stand up.
'Whatever. Enjoy this peace while you can, Qiao Ling. Once I recover my cultivation, I will leave this cursed family. And then… I will kill him. I will kill that bastard Lin Xiao.'
Lin Xiao?
The name hit me harder than the actor's slap.
Suddenly, the headache that had been lingering in the background surged forward, transforming into a tsunami of foreign memories.