Chapter 3

"Are you insane? You're throwing away your image completely?" Cassie continued, glancing at the equally shocked faces of the other customers in the coffee shop. Leo, too, asked with a sneer,

"Alex, what's this stunt now? Other people make grand sacrifices, and you're doing this? Are you shaving your head to make some profound statement?" Leo's words cut like knives.

I laughed. "Don't you know what 'starting over' means?"

I extended my hand to Cassie. "Give me back my wig."

Cassie clutched my wig, speechless, just staring at me. It was Leo who snatched it from her and tossed it into my lap.

I calmly put on the wig. After all, a skeletal man with a shaved head isn't exactly a sight for sore eyes on the street.

"Leo, you really don't have to be so scared. I'm not coming back to the Hayes family," I said with a smile. "Not in this lifetime, and certainly not in the next."

"I'm not scared! Mom, Dad, and Cassie only love me!" Leo cried out, furious, his usually handsome face twisted with rage.

Before my chemotherapy appointment, I went to pick out my burial plot, right next to my foster parents. In my next life, I wanted to be their biological son.

This life had been too painful. In my next life, I only wanted to live the way I did before I was 17.

To my surprise, the sales manager at the cemetery was Chloe, the neighbor from my foster parents' old house. She didn't ask too many questions, nor did she offer forced comfort. She'd probably seen enough of life and death. Her initial shock was probably just because it was her first time meeting the user of a burial plot in person.

Chloe seriously explained all the arrangements, even helping me choose a good, affordable urn.

Chloe walked with me towards my parents' graves.

"Dad, Mom…" I missed them so much.

I quickened my pace up the steps, all 108 of them. Standing before their familiar tombstone, I was pierced by the sight before my eyes, and my vision blurred!

There, on the tombstone, crude letters written in foul-smelling dog's blood screamed. I rushed forward, charging towards the grave…

[ALEX IS A BASTARD, AND THE PARENTS WHO RAISED HIM ARE ANIMALS!]

I dropped to my knees, frantically scrubbing with my sleeve. As I wiped, I apologized, "Dad, Mom, I'm so sorry… Your son is unfilial, I've dragged you down even in heaven, you can't even rest in peace…"

"I'm useless, how could this happen…"

"I'm sorry, I'm truly sorry!"

My hands were raw and chafed from scrubbing. My light-colored clothes were stained red and dirty.

Chloe returned from the office with a bucket of water and a rag, helping me clean.

The rain grew heavier. I was soaked to the bone. Chloe struggled to drag and support me down the mountain.

I was the biological son the Hayes family had searched for.

But when I returned at 17, there was already an adopted son, Leo, the same age as me.

Leo, who had soaked up all the Hayes' love.

In the four years since my return, no one seemed to remember to change my surname back to Hayes.

I continued to use the name my foster parents gave me, Alex Miller.

My foster parents had been wonderful to me. Unable to have children, they felt finding me was a blessing from heaven, vowing to cherish me as their treasure.

But when my DNA was uploaded online after a school blood drive, my biological parents, separated from me for 13 years, found me.

My foster parents still let me go. They believed I could get better educational resources with the Hayes, at least no longer needing to work part-time to help support myself.

But now, I was dying. Brain tumor, late stage.

To see my foster parents, who loved me so deeply, insulted like this… I felt like my insides were being brutally squeezed and twisted.