It had been five years since I died. My ex-boyfriend, Richard, became a business tycoon.

He suddenly returned from abroad to seek revenge on me for his first love.

To find my whereabouts, he sent someone to kidnap my father.

He cut off my mother's ICU treatment.

He was satisfied, waiting for me to kneel, beg for his forgiveness, and apologize to his first love. However, his assistant informed him so.

"Mr. Hawk, it was found out that Kate Hill committed suicide five years ago."

"The day before you went abroad, she was humiliated by multiple people."

"Those who humiliated her are gangsters, who had conflicts with you."

"They told her that you would be safe as long as she behaved obediently."

--

In a dilapidated building, several men in black tightly held my father.

Richard snorted and stepped on the man's hand, crushing it with force. He was enjoying the man's miserable howl.

"Richard Hawk! When you were with Kate, she loved you wholeheartedly. Why do you hate her so much?"

Richard's face changed as he tightly held the ring in his hands.

I recognized that it was the ring that his first love, Emery Bradford, had given to him.

"She was good to me to provoke Emery. She even caused Emery to be hospitalized now!"

"Since she is hiding out of guilt and refusing to apologize to Emery, then you, as her father, should be in her place!"

He waved his hand indifferently. The black-clothed men immediately took out bone-cutting knives.

I cried out in tears, intending to protect my father, but my body passed through them repeatedly.

I almost forgot that I was dead. As a person who had been dead for five years, I found it a luxury to protect my loved ones.

I could only watch my father lying on the ground in pain.

My hollow atrium suffocated, and was about to burst out, but I couldn't do anything.

Richard calmly looked at the scene in front of him. My father's right thigh was exposed with white leg bones. Lying limp on the ground, he had extremely pale lips.

"Your daughter caused Emery's right Achilles tendon to rupture. Emery can never dance in her whole life. So, you should repay her debt!"

"Tell her that this is just the beginning. If she doesn't show up, you must endure the double pain and repay her debt!"

Richard's eyes are full of restrained anger. Looking angry, he had shocking momentum.

He was no longer the white-clad young man, who gently said he loved me in my memory.

"I chose to give him a better future, but it was me who drove him crazy too."

I left with him in a car, having all kinds of emotions in my heart.

He retaliated against me by resorting to extreme measures for Emery. He wanted me to kneel and repent.

But he didn't know that I had long been dead.

"What's the point of finding a dead person?"

Richard rushed to a villa outside the suburbs and eagerly entered a large room.

Lying on the luxurious bed in the middle was Emery, whose face was pale.

If it weren't for the mole on her face, I would have thought I saw myself dead years ago.

Richard stumbled and crawled to Emery's side, holding her hand affectionately.

"Emery, don't worry. I will find Kate and let her taste the pain you have suffered over the years."

Emery forced a smile weakly.

"It's okay. Richard, it's all my fault. I shouldn't have angered Kate back then."

When Richard heard this, he cursed fiercely as if he had thought of something.

"You did nothing wrong! She is such a vicious woman. Otherwise, why would she treat me indifferently to force me to break up with you?"

"If I had been by your side that night, you wouldn't have been pushed down ten floors. You could continue dancing!"

He recalled the past in pain. I felt great sorrow in my heart, but I couldn't say anything.

He changed medicine for her and wiped her sweat. It reminded me of the year when I had a high fever and was unconsciously hospitalized. He had been by my side loyally. He had been no less worried than he was now.

At that time, he loved me the most.

But everything happened because of my choice.

I forced him away, and all of this was my fault.

Seeing him love Emery so affectionately with my eyes, I was overwhelmed by a burst of sour bitterness.

"It turns out that what Emery said to me at that time was true. Richard truly loves her."

Emery saw Richard, who was unruly, lose his sanity for her sake. She smiled cunningly and pretended to say pitifully, "Richard, I'm just worried that you haven't let go of her yet. You're just using revenge as an excuse, but you want to rekindle your old flame with her..."

...

"Richard, will you despise me for being a disabled person in a wheelchair?"

Richard was startled. A trace of panic flashed in his eyes.

"How is that possible? I came back to make her repent to you! I will destroy everything she has! I will always be by your side."

"Indeed, Richard not only hates me for my heartlessness but also hates me for hurting his first love. How could we reconcile and be as good as before?"

"If he knew that I was dead, he would probably celebrate it with a party, right?"

For a whole week, Richard had been inquiring for news about me everywhere, only to get nothing. He wanted to torture my family members to force me to show up.

Decisively, he found someone to smash my father's ward. He looked around. It was like the information he got. There was no trace of me.

"Kate is heartless to the extreme, not caring about her biological father, who is about to die! It seems that she will only beg for mercy after I cut off her father's other leg!"

My mother stared at the madman in front of her with red eyes, struggling to get up and coughing incessantly.

"You heartless person! Kate treated you so well back then! She begged us to pay your tuition fees and sent you abroad. She... she won't see you!"

My mother held back her words and trembled with tears.

"I know she doesn't want to mention my death for fear of causing secondary harm to me."

But Richard didn't care about my mother's change at all. He became angrier upon learning about his miserable past. He instantly pulled my mother up.

"Don't think that being emotional with me will work! Even though you gave me alms, so what?"

He pulled off my mother's oxygen tube. Suffocating, my mother tried to regain her life-saving straw, but she couldn't reach it no matter how hard she tried. As she bent her body, her eyes almost popped out.

"Don't you look down on me in your heart? She relied on the fact that I had no money back then. She has been oppressing me with a little benefit. Now that I have everything. You still have a high and mighty look!"

Richard gritted his teeth.

The past seemed to be a shackle that had been bothering him. He kicked the oxygen machine aside without hesitation.

"I know that he still cares about the fact that I begged my parents to help him with his tuition fees back then."

He was at the top of his class in college, but his parents died. He couldn't pay the tuition fees all at once.

When I took the money from my father, he overheard my father's suspicion of him unexpectedly.

"Kate, what's good about the poor boy? Consider the money as a donation, but you must never marry him!"

I handed the money to Richard perfunctorily, only to see his trembling and humble look.

He cried and said, "Kate, give me another two or three years. I will make you live a life that everyone envies."

"I believed him. Later I learned that he had an opportunity to study abroad through an exchange program. That's why I didn't hinder him from heading towards a broader world and put my selfish desires aside."

"When he firmly gave up the opportunity to go abroad, I called him a poor guy and said that I just pitied him."

As clever as he was, he cried and begged me not to say such words out of anger. He couldn't be without me.

Feeling sad in my heart, I laughed with great disdain.

I made him kneel and beg me. Then I went to scold Emery, who he treated as his younger sister.

I spread rumors about how intimate they were in private. I used various means to force him to hate me.

"I wonder if he will relate to the pain in my heart when he achieves his ideals."

He stubbornly refused to leave. Then I showed him the kiss marks on my neck that were made by others. Only after that was he in despair.

"I will never tell him that I forged the kiss marks."

"No one can understand my pain of driving away the man I love the most."

"I never dare to believe that in the five years since my death, Richard does fall in love with Emery."

"I underestimate Richard's hatred for me. He grew up in hatred and gained the ability to decide other's fate without bearing the consequences."

Watching my mother suffer and unable to speak, he grinned.

"If Kate doesn't apologize to Emery on her initiative, I can't guarantee what I will do."

I cried and threw myself into my mother's arms. I begged her to tell Richard about my death and not to hide it anymore.

I dared not recall the day when I had died so desperately and horribly.

My mom pursed her lips tightly.

She couldn't hear my cries, but she used her meager strength to preserve my last dignity.