"Ms. James, are you sure you really sank your e-bike here?" The officer climbed back onto the bank, his expression grim. "There's no vehicle at the bottom of the river—just this one fragment. And based on our preliminary investigation, the e-bike wreckage at the explosion site does match your vehicle registration."

"I don't know what's going on..." I clutched my head, my mind spinning into chaos.

I remembered it so clearly. I'd pushed the e-bike to this exact spot, strapped rocks to it, and watched it sink beneath the surface.

But now the bike was gone. All that remained was a single fragment.

Had I remembered wrong? Had I never sunk the bike at all—had I pushed it straight to the village entrance instead?

No. Impossible. I remembered the bite of the frozen surface against my skin. The weight of the rocks lashed to the seat. The bubbles rising as the e-bike slipped beneath the water.

Those memories were too vivid. Too real. They couldn't be false.

"Doreen, stop making excuses!" My mother's voice cut through the crowd, shrill and tearful. "A life for a life, a debt repaid—that's how it works! We may be poor, but we can't have someone in this family doing something so monstrous!"

"Exactly! Does it and then won't own up to it—what kind of person does that?"

"She always seemed so quiet and honest. Who knew she was this rotten inside!"

The villagers' insults sliced into me like knives.

I looked around. Every face was at once strange and familiar.

In my last life, they'd cursed me the same way. For twenty straight years.

But before I died in that life, I'd learned the truth. I'd learned I was innocent.

This time, even I was starting to doubt myself. Had I really sunk the e-bike in the river?

"I want to see the surveillance footage," I said suddenly. "There's a camera at the village entrance, isn't there? Check whether I pushed the bike through there!"

The officer nodded. "We've already pulled the footage. Unfortunately, that particular camera broke down yesterday. It hasn't been repaired yet."

My heart sank.

"Then... what about other cameras nearby?"

"We checked. You were recorded pushing the e-bike out of the village at six a.m., but after that, no camera picked you up."

"What about the road to the river? Are there any cameras on the hill behind the village?"

The officer shook his head. "The back hill is wasteland. No surveillance."

Despair closed in around me.

No footage to prove I'd sunk the bike. No bike to prove my innocence. Everyone was pointing fingers at me, and even my own certainty was crumbling.

Had I really not sunk it? Had my e-bike actually caused the explosion?

"Sis, don't do this to yourself." Phil walked over, his face arranged into a picture of concern. "Even if it was an accident, we won't blame you. We're family. We'll get through this together."

He reached out a hand to help me up.

Looking at that fraudulent face, a wave of nausea hit me.

In my last life, he'd said the exact same thing.

"Sis, we'll get through this together." And then I was the only one who bore anything. He was the only one who benefited.

"Get away from me." I shoved his hand aside. "I don't need your fake sympathy."

Phil's expression flickered, then instantly rearranged itself into wounded innocence. "Sis, I know you're under a lot of pressure, but how can you treat me like this..."

"Enough!" My father charged forward and drove his foot into my shoulder. "You ungrateful wretch—you screw up and then have the nerve to snap at your brother? You've lost your mind!"

I crashed to the ground. My shoulder burned white-hot with pain.

My mother threw herself at me next, pinching and slapping in a frenzy. "I'll beat the life out of you, you curse on this family! You killed two people and now you want to drag us all down with you! Why don't you just die!"

I curled into a ball on the ground and let them hit me.

In my last life, they'd shoved all the blame onto me and painted themselves as the victims.

At least before I died, I'd learned it was all an act.

But in this life, I didn't know that yet.

If they truly had no idea what happened—if the explosion really was an accident—then their rage right now was genuine.

And I was the one responsible. Two lives lost. A $300,000 luxury car reduced to ash. All on me.

"Stop hitting her!" An officer pulled my parents back. "The investigation isn't finished. You can't take the law into your own hands."

"What's there to investigate? She did it!" Mom wailed, beating her chest. "What did the James family do to deserve this? We raised a curse in human skin!"

They brought me back to the village and locked me in the main room of the house.

Night fell. I curled up against the wall, my mind a tangled wreck.

Those memories of my past life—of my parents conspiring together—were they real or not?

If they were innocent, then what did those twenty years of my previous life even mean?

A fog crept over my thoughts. Had I actually lost my mind? Were all those memories from my past life nothing but delusions?

In the dead of night, I slipped out through the window and crept toward the pond, hoping to find some trace of evidence.

What I found instead were my parents and my brother.

Their voices were barely above whispers, but I caught enough.

"What do we do? The plan changed? She actually sank the car?"

"If she really sank it, then whose car exploded?"

"Doesn't matter. It already blew up. We stick to the original plan..."

"What about the two people who died? They're actually dead—but they're not the two we arranged..."

"Who did it?"

"No idea. But hey, saves us the money we would've spent staging it."

Ice flooded my veins. Every nerve in my body went numb.

They had a plan all along.

The explosion, the deaths, the debt from my last life—all orchestrated by them. All real.

But in this life, the explosion and the deaths had turned genuine, spiraling beyond what they'd anticipated.

And still, they were going to go through with it. Still going to hang it all around my neck. Still going to make me their scapegoat.

"What about the car in the pond?" That was Phil's voice. "Why is it gone?"

"No idea. Maybe she remembered wrong and never actually sank it."

"Impossible. I went to the pond this morning. There's a hole in the ice—something definitely went under."

"Then what happened? The car grew legs and walked off?"

"Who cares. There's no evidence now. Nobody's going to believe a word she says. We just insist it was her car and make her pay."

"But those are two human lives. You really want her to go to prison?"

"Prison? Nobody's going to prison. She just pays up. We'll play the loving family, act like we're helping shoulder the burden. She'll be so grateful she won't question it. Then we send her out to work and funnel every penny back to us—same as the plan. She's our cash cow."

I knew it.

What I'd heard on my deathbed in my last life wasn't a hallucination.

This was their plan all along.

But if all of it was real, then where was the e-bike I'd sunk to the bottom of that pond?

My parents didn't know. Phil didn't know.

All they wanted was to run the same con again. Keep draining me dry.

And even if they couldn't bleed me for money, they'd still find a way to dump every last shred of responsibility on my shoulders.

But the only way to clear my name was to find that e-bike.

Then it hit me.

When I'd first bought it, I couldn't afford to pay in full, so I'd gone with an installment plan.

The seller had installed a GPS tracker in an inconspicuous spot on the frame.

They said the tracker could only be removed once the bike was fully paid off.

With that thought, I headed into town that same night and found the dealer. I asked him to check the e-bike's GPS location.

One look at the screen, and my world shattered.

I finally understood where the e-bike I'd sunk in the hillside pond had gone—and whose bike had actually exploded.