"Twenty years... it's finally time to end this."
John Rivers stared at the worn photograph in his hands, eyes blurred with tears.
"Everyone from Jiangwan’s old crowd is gone. My in-laws, my parents... they're all gone."
"I did what I could for them. Now, it’s time I joined you two. But... would you ever forgive me?"
His fingers brushed gently across the photo, like he was trying to feel the warmth of his wife and daughter’s faces again. His voice was low, filled with sorrow.
Three days later.
April 1st – April Fool’s Day.
Shocking news rocked the world.
John Rivers, billionaire tycoon, crashed his private jet over the Pacific Ocean.
His body was never recovered.
Reports claimed he left a will before the crash, donating his entire fortune to Huaguo Medical University to fund medical research and support care for HIV/AIDS patients.
The media went wild. People were stunned.
No one saw it coming—the death of John Rivers on April Fool’s Day, like the universe itself was pulling some cruel prank.
But what the world didn’t see was that fate had long ago played an even crueler joke on the man everyone thought had it all.
And that joke began on April 1st, 1983.
…
His eyelids fluttered open.
A beam of sunlight pierced through the patchy roof tiles, casting broken light into the dim, dusty room.
Cracked clay walls. A tile-roofed shack with peeling furniture. A crooked cabinet. A worn-out table with chipped paint. A creaky wooden bed...
This...
This was the old family home back in Jiangwan. From more than twenty years ago.
John’s head buzzed with confusion.
He’d gone down with that plane... hadn’t he?
Why was he here?
He pinched his arm hard.
Pain.
Not a dream.
Which meant—
He was alive again.
He’d been reborn.
A shaky laugh escaped him, tears spilling from his eyes as he chuckled.
He had sinned in his past life. Left his wife Sophia and daughter Emily to suffer alone. Their lives ended far too early.
He’d believed he’d never get the chance to make it right.
And yet, here he was.
“If the universe is giving me a second shot, I swear—I’m not gonna screw it up. I’ll protect you both, no matter what. No more pain. Just happiness.”
He clenched his fists, a mix of grief and determination washing over him.
Wiping his face, he sprang out of bed like a shot, rushing outside like a man possessed.
All he wanted now was to lay eyes on the two people he’d missed every day for twenty damn years.
Their house had only a couple of rooms beyond the bedroom—one main hall and a small kitchen shed out back.
He raced through the whole place. Empty.
No sign of Sophia or Emily.
Only the lone osmanthus tree in the front yard stood quietly under the sun, thick as a bowl at the trunk.
“Where are they?!”
His heart sank.
The joy of rebirth vanished in an instant.
Panic took over, gripping his chest.
“Don’t tell me… it's that day…”
Suddenly, a terrible thought hit him.
He’d come back, sure—but to what day? What year?
He glanced at the tree’s sprouting leaves, the greenery on the hills in the distance. Probably late March or early April.
And he remembered it all too well—April 1st, 1983.
The day Sophia went to sell blood.
The day she got infected with HIV.
“God, please... don’t do this…”
Just thinking about the tragedy of his last life made cold sweat break out all over.
He bolted from the yard.
Jiangwan was named after the Qingjiang River nearby. The river looped around Da Qing Mountain in a wide bend, its winding currents resembling a drawn bow from afar.
The terrain along that loop was flat and fertile. Walk a bit further inward, and there was the foot of the mountain dotted with scattered houses—about a hundred tucked along the hillside.The Rivers family was a big name in Jiangwan. Their housing compound was massive, with dozens of households all sharing the same last name—basically all uncles, cousins, or brothers. Everyone was related within five generations.
The homes were close together—sometimes just a courtyard or a vegetable patch between them. Little dirt paths connected everything, so dropping by someone’s house was as easy as a few steps.
John Rivers tore down one of those paths, all but sprinting, trying to find someone—anyone—who’d seen Sophia Forrest and Emily Rivers. Or at least someone who could tell him what day it was.
But to his frustration, every house he passed had its door tightly shut. Nobody was around. Of course—they were all out working in the fields. Who else but a bum like his past self would be home napping in the middle of the day?
Not finding anyone made John even more desperate. He ran straight through the village and charged toward the fields at the base of Shanmao.
It was April—the time when folks planted corn. As he pounded down the slope, he prayed, “Please, don’t let it be today. Maybe Sophia just took Emily to help out in the fields.”
Back then, rural families didn’t leave kids at home. Adults brought them along to the fields, let them play in the dirt while they worked. Older kids could actually help a bit. So his hope wasn’t totally unfounded.
At the bottom of the hill, he spotted a group busy working in the fields.
“Uncle Michael! Have you seen Sophia?” John shouted as he ran.
The man, probably in his forties, looked up from his hoe—Michael Rivers, his third uncle.
Michael paused, confused to see John so anxious. Since when did this good-for-nothing nephew care about his wife?
Probably ran out of gambling money again and needed Sophia to bail him out.
He spat on the ground, leaned on his hoe, and replied gruffly, “Nope.”
Hearing that took the wind out of John. He took a shaky breath and asked again, “Uncle, what day is it today?”
Michael exploded. “Boy, you drink yourself stupid every day, and now you don’t even know what day it is? Why don’t you just drink yourself to death already, save some food for the rest of us!”
John swallowed his frustration. Sure, he just asked a simple question and got an earful, but given how messed up he’d been in the past, it made sense that Uncle Michael had no patience. Besides, John knew his uncle had a sharp tongue but a soft heart.
Not wanting to waste time, John pressed, “Uncle, I mean it, this is serious. Please, just tell me.”
Michael squinted at him, still not buying it. “Serious? You? Probably just forgot what time it is for your card games again, huh? It’s April 1st, 1983. Burn that into your drunk brain! Wouldn’t mind if lightning struck you today!”
Boom.
It felt like a bomb went off in John's head.
It really was April 1st, 1983.
His last shred of hope disappeared—just gone. All that was left was gut-wrenching panic.
This was the day. The day Sophia went to the blood bank in Qingzhou. The day she got infected with AIDS.
She wasn’t at home, which meant she was probably already on her way.
John’s mind was spinning. Was fate really so cruel? Even now, after everything, would she still walk into tragedy?
“No!”
He let out a roar, raw and pained. He wouldn’t let it happen again. This time, he’d fight fate.
With every ounce of strength, John bolted toward Qingzhou.