Just as I reached the exit, Captain Miller caught up to me.
“Sophie,” he said, his tone serious. “Karen wants to see you.”
24
<
After that night, Carl was taken into custody for questioning, while Karen was rushed to the hospital for treatment.
According to Captain Miller, her legs were beyond saving.
Carl had shattered them with a wooden bat. She’d spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair.
And as if that wasn’t enough, the doctors discovered she was one month pregnant.
Judging by the timing, she’d gotten pregnant around the day of their engagement.
The moment I walked into her hospital room, she started screaming at me.
“You bitch! You planned this all along! You knew! You were the one who was supposed to marry Carl!”
Her words made everything clear.
Karen had been reborn too.
But unlike me, she hadn’t been given a good starting point.
I calmly picked up the pillow she had thrown on the floor and placed it back on her bed. Feigning innocence, I replied, “Why would I plan anything like that? You’re the one who insisted on coming with me to Carl’s. Remember?”
I smiled sweetly, tilting my head. “If you think about it, you actually stole my engagement match. And now that things didn’t work out, you’re blaming me? That doesn’t seem fair, does it?”
Karen glared at me, her eyes narrowing. Then suddenly, she burst into laughter.
Her laughter grew louder and louder, tears streaming down her face.
“I just keep thinking about how your mother broke your legs in our last life,” she gasped between laughter. “And how you suffered, giving Carl five kids! How did that feel, Sophie? Did you enjoy it?”
I leaned back in a chair across the room, flipping my college acceptance letter in my hand, a faint smile on my lips.
“But Karen,” I said softly, “you’re the one carrying Carl’s baby now.”
Her laughter stopped abruptly.
The fear in her eyes was unmistakable.
She was terrified of Carl, haunted by his violence. I’d seen that fear before–felt it myself in the last life. I’d spent five years enduring his beatings, his rage, and his cruelty.
I remembered the pain of being whipped raw, only to drag myself up to cook his meals.
Compared to my five years of torment, Karen’s month of suffering was nothing.
Her hands trembled as they hovered over her stomach, and then, with a sudden burst of anger, she started punching herself in the abdomen.
“Karen, I’m off to college. Take care of yourself.”
I didn’t wait for her to respond. Ignoring her screams and the sound of her fists hitting her stomach, I walked out of the hospital without looking back.
Outside, the autumn sun was warm against my face.
I boarded a train and left for college in another state.
For four years, I stayed away from that wretched village. I didn’t visit, didn’t call. There was nothing and no one left for me there.
In my second year of college, I received an unexpected call from Captain Miller.
M
NOWE
<
“Karen’s dead,” he said.
“How?” I asked.
There was a long pause on the other end of the line.
“She slit her wrists. Suicide.”
I nodded slowly, unsurprised.
“And the baby?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
Karen had hated Carl too much to ever bring his child into the world.
“She terminated the pregnancy in her third month,” Captain Miller confirmed.
After hanging up, I sat quietly in my dorm room, letting the news sink in.
This was her karma.
Everything she had done to me in our last life had come back to her.
I once thought Karen was my closest friend.
We grew up together. She was the only one in the village who ever played with me. I had believed her when she said, “Sophie, we’ll be best
friends forever.”
But her “forever” had been painfully short.
Looking back, I realized Karen had only kept me around to make herself feel superior. She thrived on outshining me at every turn.
After graduating college, I returned to the village one last time.
I visited my mom in prison.
When she walked into the visitation room, I barely recognized her. The prison uniform hung loosely on her frail frame, and her hair was a
tangled mess.
She froze when she saw me, her sunken eyes widening in disbelief.
“Sophie? Is that you?”
I nodded.
“Sophie! My sweet girl!” she cried, tears streaming down her face. “Mom’s so sorry. I was wrong–I was so wrong!”
Her voice broke as she sobbed, but all I felt was irritation.
“I should’ve treated you better,” she wailed. “I shouldn’t have spoiled Jason and ignored you.”
Ignored me? That was putting it lightly.
I’d had to beg on my knees just to be allowed to finish high school. The only reason she let me go to college was because she thought having a daughter with a degree would increase my value for marriage.
“Sophie,” she continued, “when I get out of here, I’ll take care of you. I’ll make it up to you.”
I laughed bitterly. “Take care of me? With what? The points you earn in prison for good behavior?”
Her face twisted in anger. She slammed her hands against the glass separating us, her voice rising.
“You ungrateful little brat! Don’t act like you’re better than me. Do you think I need to beg for your forgiveness?”
There it was. Her true self.
She had never felt guilty. Not really.
Her mindset was too deeply ingrained, too warped to ever change.
I got up and left, tuning out her angry shouts.
With my own name on a clean, independent identification record, I boarded a plane and left for graduate school abroad.
That village, that family, was nothing more than a distant memory now.
My life was finally my own.
It was only just beginning.
