Rebirth: A Second chance at life-Chapter 54

Outside, as she walked back toward her car, a group of students blocked her path. Among them was a girl with perfectly styled blonde curls, her arms crossed as she sneered.

"Well, well, if it isn’t Aurora Smith," she drawled mockingly. "Did you get lost, or did you suddenly think you belong here again?"

Aurora glanced at her with disinterest. "Move."

The blonde girl scoffed. "Oh? No stuttering? No avoiding eye contact? My, my, you’ve changed. But let me remind you—you don’t belong here anymore."

Aurora sighed, stepping forward until she was inches away from her. The blonde girl instinctively took a step back at the sheer intensity in Aurora’s eyes.

"You’re right," Aurora said with a smirk. "I don’t belong here. I belong above you."

With that, she stepped past them, her head held high. The students stood frozen, watching as she got into her car and drove away.

The blonde girl clenched her fists, her expression twisted with anger.

Meanwhile, on the school’s online forum, the heated discussion continued. Some mocked her, but others—those who saw the fire in her eyes—began to doubt their ridicule.

"She looked different. Not just her face, but her whole aura."

"Yeah... I felt like she wasn’t the same girl we bullied before."

"Tch, whatever. She’ll still fail tomorrow."

Aurora sped through the streets in her sleek car, her fingers gripping the steering wheel as Bishop’s information replayed in her mind.

Luna, trapped in Aurora’s body, found herself reminiscing about the fragmented memories of the original Aurora.

The recollections were blurry, disjointed, like a shattered mirror reflecting only pieces of a painful past. Aurora had no recollection of a warm childhood; the only part of her early years she could remember was filled with hardship and misery.

John, her so-called father, a habitual drunkard who reeked of alcohol and stale sweat. He never played the role of a father, nor did he ever show her even the slightest ounce of kindness.

Instead, he would send her out to pick up rags, scavenging through dirt and filth for mere pennies.

But even those meager earnings weren’t hers to keep. John would snatch the money from her tiny hands the moment she stepped inside their rundown shack, and if she failed to bring enough, he would lash out with curses that made her little body tremble.

"You abomination! Your slut mother left you hanging around my neck, and now you have the audacity to mooch off me?" John’s voice was a thunderous roar, venomous and filled with disdain.

And then came the beatings. He would strike her with anything within reach—a belt, a stick, even the back of his rough hand.

Aurora was barely four years old then, her tiny body too frail to endure such cruelty. Yet, she never cried out. She had convinced herself that if she were good, if she endured, her mother would return for her and take her away from this nightmare.

Her mother. The word felt foreign, almost like a myth. She had never seen her. John always spat the same story—how her mother had abandoned her right after birth, running off with another man without so much as a backward glance.

But despite hearing it time and time again, Aurora refused to believe it. Somewhere deep inside, she held onto the hope that her mother had loved her once, that she had a reason for leaving.

But all hopes came crashing down when reality struck her with a cruelty she never anticipated.

John had eventually died—whether from alcohol poisoning or a street fight, she never knew. When the authorities found her, frail and starved, they took her to child welfare services.

That was when they found an address—her mother’s address. The moment Aurora heard it, her heart leaped.

For the first time in her miserable life, she thought she would finally get to see the woman who had given birth to her.

She imagined a warm embrace, gentle hands caressing her hair, soothing whispers telling her that everything was going to be okay. But reality had other plans.

The moment she arrived at the Smith residence, she was met with a cruel slap across the face. Her mother, Lily, was nothing like the figure of love and warmth she had dreamt of.

Instead, she was cold, disgusted, her eyes filled with nothing but resentment. The words that fell from her lips shattered whatever remaining innocence Aurora had left.

"How dare you come here? You’re nothing but a disgrace! I should have never given birth to you!"

The blows rained down on her like a torrential storm.

Aurora could barely register what was happening. But through her blurred vision, she saw something else—someone else. A little girl, barely two years old, cradled in Lily’s arms.

Veronica.

Unlike Aurora, who was unwanted and despised, Veronica was showered with affection. Lily held her as if she were the most precious thing in the world, her touch gentle, her eyes filled with love.

For the first time, Aurora truly understood what it meant to be unwanted.

Jealousy crept into her heart like a venomous serpent, twisting and coiling, suffocating the last remnants of rationality. One day, that resentment boiled over. One day, she snapped.

She pushed Veronica from her cradle.

The little girl had let out a sharp cry before she hit the ground, and the entire household erupted in chaos.

The Smiths were beyond furious. To them, Aurora wasn’t a child who had suffered abandonment and abuse—she was nothing but a wicked, rotten seed that didn’t deserve to be part of their family.

For three whole days, they locked her in the basement as punishment. No food. No water. Just a cold, damp room where the darkness became her only companion.

By the time they dragged her out, her body was burning with fever, her lips cracked from dehydration, and an infection had taken root in her lungs.

She could barely keep her eyes open, but she still remembered—remembered how Lily had looked down at her with nothing but disgust before giving the order to throw her away.

And so they did.

They sent her to the countryside, to the care of Helen—Lily’s mother. But there was no warmth waiting for her there, either.

Aurora was nothing but an unwanted burden, thrown away like trash. She was barely six years old by then, and whatever memories she had of those years were hazy at best.

Perhaps it was the trauma, or perhaps it was the chronic bacterial infection that had affected her mind.

But now...

Now, those memories were returning.

Luna’s grip on the steering wheel tightened as she pieced everything together. It all made sense now.

The nightmares she had been having lately weren’t just random flashes of the past—they were suppressed memories, slowly resurfacing.

And with Bishop’s information, she could finally put the pieces together.

It was when Aurora was five years old that her registration and birthdate had been altered.