"Beep—"

"Her heartbeat’s gone!"

"Defibrillator! Turn it all the way up!"

Those frantic voices floated in and out, like someone was talking to her through a thick layer of water—clear one second, muffled the next.

Evelyn Rivers vaguely remembered the last thing she saw: the loading bar on her monitor frozen in place—core algorithm stuck at ninety‑nine percent.

Her fingertip was still hanging right above the Enter key, just one tiny tap away.

Then a piercing pain tore through her whole body.

Right before everything went black, the final thought that popped into her mind was—

Great. Didn’t even push the code. Does this count as a workplace accident?

And the mortgage next month is still waiting to be paid!

After that, she remembered nothing at all.

No flames of hell or anything dramatic—just a cool, faint scent wrapping around her, with a hint of sandalwood. It smelled oddly like the old wooden cabinet back at the orphanage.

…

Evelyn’s head felt stuffed with cotton, heavy and hazy, and it took a long moment before her mind crawled back to clarity.

"Water… I need water…"

Her throat felt like someone had poured sand down it, the pain so sharp it made her frown hard.

A moment later, a warm hand brushed gently against her cheek, careful and trembling, as if one wrong touch might shatter her.

"She’s awake! Sir, look! Evelyn’s awake!"

A woman’s voice burst out suddenly, thick with tears, pitched high with excitement, like she’d just recovered something precious she thought she’d never see again.

Evelyn struggled to peel her eyelids open, and the blurry shapes in front of her slowly came into focus.

The first thing she saw was a carved rosewood bed draped with a pale aqua silk canopy. The air carried a mellow whiff of incense—expensive stuff, the kind you’d never find in a normal household.

Two people stood right beside the bed.

The woman wore a deep‑purple cheongsam, her hair pinned neatly in place. Her eyes were swollen from crying, and she just stared at her without blinking.

Next to her, the man in a finely made long robe clenched a handkerchief so tightly that the veins on the back of his hand stood out. Looked like he was forcing himself to hold something in.

"Careful with the water now, steady… no need to rush."

The woman fumbled a little as she picked up a white porcelain cup rimmed with gold and held it to Evelyn Rivers’ lips herself, as if Evelyn were some fragile trinket that might shatter at the slightest touch.

Warm water slid down her throat, and Evelyn finally felt like she wasn’t dying anymore.

She took a long breath, her eyes darting quickly around the room.

Rosewood chairs, silk drapes, gilded porcelain…

Hold on.

This setup—this décor—was way too fancy.

Don’t tell her she’d somehow ended up in one of those outrageously pricey VIP wards?

Great. As a wage slave who basically lived at the office, her first thought wasn’t gratitude. It was pure financial panic.

There was no way insurance would cover a place like this.

How much would she have to pay out of pocket?

How many all‑nighters would it take to scrape that money back?

She instinctively scooted backward, slipping into her usual overly polite work mode. Her voice came out cautious, almost apologetic.

"Sorry… um, who exactly are you two? And where is this? Shouldn’t I be in a hospital?"

Clink.

The lid of the porcelain cup slipped from the woman’s fingers and thudded softly onto the quilt.

Her smile froze, panic flashing across her face.

"Evelyn, what… what are you saying? I’m your mother! And this—this is our home!"

Evelyn Rivers let out a thin, helpless laugh and gave a small shake of her head. She really didn’t want to disappoint this well‑dressed lady who obviously wasn’t short of money, but the woman had definitely gotten the wrong person.

"You’ve got it mixed up. I grew up in an orphanage. No parents, no house, no car, nothing."

The words hit the woman like a hammer. She went limp, nearly collapsing as she clutched the arm of the man beside her, her breathing breaking into sobs.

"Master… what do we do…? Evelyn took that fall and now she doesn’t even remember her own parents! Did her soul not make it back yet?"

The man she called Master had red‑rimmed eyes too, but he was clearly hanging on better than she was.

His gaze—seasoned, steady, used to seeing all sorts of people—locked onto Evelyn. Completely different from the dull‑eyed girl who used to giggle at nothing, the one standing here now had clear, sharp eyes. The way she spoke was calm, almost too organized, and there was a heaviness in her expression—a tired alertness that didn’t belong on someone her age.

"Iris, stop crying."

Raymond Rivers lowered his voice as he tried to steady his wife, and there was a firmness in his tone that left no room for argument.

"Do you remember what that crazy Taoist said ten years ago?"

Iris Rivers froze mid‑sob, her whole body going rigid.

"He said that when Evelyn turned six, she would face a calamity. Her soul would leave her body and wander somewhere else to suffer. Only after enduring enough hardship could she come back."

Raymond let out a slow breath, his eyes never leaving Evelyn.

"We’ve spent the last ten years doing good—building bridges, fixing roads, giving out food and medicine. Isn’t that all just to build up blessings so she’d find her way home again?"

He took a step closer, putting aside the authority he usually carried, softening his voice as if coaxing a frightened child who’d lost her way.

"Evelyn, you just told us you were an orphan… but do you remember how old you were when you first got to that ‘orphanage’?"

Evelyn’s mind boomed like something had snapped into place.

"Six."

She answered without thinking, feeling her throat tighten.

"Do you remember what you were wearing that day?"

Evelyn Rivers frowned hard, digging through the blur in her mind. Those years were like fog.

"I think… it was a red silk jacket. The sleeves had gold thread on them. The dean kept saying I looked too well dressed, like some rich family’s lost kid. But my head was all banged up back then, I was dazed all the time, didn’t even know where home was…"

"Was it embroidered with that ‘hundreds of children’ pattern? And was there a pearl button on the collar?"

Evelyn’s eyes widened. "…Yes."

Iris Rivers’ hands trembled so badly she almost dropped what she was fumbling for. She hurriedly pulled out a warm piece of mutton‑fat jade from inside her clothes.

The red string on it had faded to a chalky pink, the kind that only turns up when someone rubs it day after day.

She held the jade right in front of Evelyn, her voice trembling into broken pieces. "And this? When you disappeared, wasn’t this hanging around your neck? I prayed three whole days and nights at Hanshan Temple for this charm to protect you!"

Evelyn stared at the cloud‑patterned jade, her breath catching in her throat.

It was the same.

The tiny crack on the bottom right corner—she knew it too well. She got it when she was six, shoved to the ground during a scramble for food at the orphanage.

This jade was the only thing she’d had on her when she’d been abandoned at that door. Even later, when she could barely afford instant noodles in a basement room, she never once thought of pawning it.

On all those nights she stayed up coding till dawn, she’d unconsciously hold it in her palm. That bit of coolness… it was the only warmth she had in that cold, uncaring city.

She lifted a hand to touch her neck—

Nothing.

But the skin under her fingertips was soft, warm.

No stiffness from years of overtime, no panic attacks from sleepless nights, no thinning hair, no calluses from slamming at a keyboard.

This wasn’t the body that collapsed under a mortgage.

A wild thought surfaced—ridiculous, yet making perfect sense.

"I didn’t cross into another world…"

Evelyn Rivers mumbled under her breath, and out of nowhere her nose stung and her eyes started to burn. That strange pull in her blood had nothing to do with logic or any clean-cut formulas she used to trust. The couple in front of her weren’t NPCs, weren’t strangers—they were the parents who’d lost her for ten years and still waited like fools for their daughter to come home.

“I… came back?”

Iris Rivers didn’t even give Evelyn time to steady herself. She lunged forward and wrapped her up in a tight, almost crushing embrace. Ten years of fear, worry, and the shock of getting her child back all slammed into that one hug. Evelyn felt as if her chest had been bumped hard, her whole body swallowed by a warm hold carrying a faint scent of skincare cream.

Hot tears soaked through her shoulder in seconds, the warmth of them making her heart clench with panic.

“My baby… my Evelyn…”

Evelyn froze like a statue, arms lifted awkwardly in midair, fingers twitching at the tips. After years in big companies, she’d gotten used to keeping distance from coworkers, used to eating cold takeout alone in a tiny rental room, used to staying silent even when she felt awful. A hug this direct, this desperate, this overwhelming—it was way outside anything she knew how to deal with.

But damn… this embrace was warm.

Not like polite small talk in an office, not like that helpless squeeze on a packed subway. This closeness felt like it had always been there, buried somewhere deep in her bones.

Her stiff arms slowly dropped, settling gently on the woman’s trembling back. The silk of the qipao was smooth under her palms, and the thin body beneath it was tense and shaking.

No prompts. No quests.

Only Iris Rivers’ muffled sobs and that warm dampness against Evelyn’s neck.

“That’s enough!”

Raymond Rivers suddenly spun around, yanking up his sleeve to wipe his face in a messy, flustered motion.

He strode to the doorway, shooed off all the servants peeking inside, and slammed the door shut with a sharp click.

The movement was so abrupt and heavy that even the sparrows on the windowsill flapped away in a panic.

Evelyn Rivers followed the sound toward the window.

Through the carved wooden lattice, she caught the faint clang of a copper gong from the street. Voices drifted in too—people shouting things like “asset inspection” and “support the new policy.” The noise wasn’t loud, but each word felt like a thin needle pricking straight through the quiet.

Raymond Rivers’ face drained of color. He shot a nervous glance outside before turning back, his voice dropping to almost a whisper.

And when he faced them again, this usually sharp, commanding businessman had eyes so red he looked like he’d been crying, though he still tried to put on the airs of a stern family head.

“Iris, Evelyn just woke up. Don’t squeeze her like that. What if something happens again?”

Iris Rivers only held on tighter, burying her face even deeper against her daughter’s shoulder. Her voice came out muffled but firm. “Mind your own business. I’m holding my daughter. No one can stop me.”

Raymond opened his mouth but couldn’t get a word out. He rubbed his palms together, pacing at the edge of the bed. After a couple turns, he simply dragged over a chair and sat right by them, staring without blinking, as if afraid they’d vanish the second he looked away.

Watching him like that made Evelyn’s nose sting. Tears nearly slipped out.

In her last life, she’d worn herself out in an eighty‑square‑meter apartment, working overtime till she collapsed at her desk, and no one even cared.

But now?

No mortgage.

No endless overtime.

And two people treating her like she was the most precious thing in the world.

The feeling was… ridiculously good.

She sniffed, leaned into Iris’s arms, and though her voice was still scratchy, she spoke with a newfound ease.

“Ma… don’t cry. The way you’re holding me… I’m starving.”