"Oh my god! Whose baby is that? How’d he end up outside the balcony like that?"

"Is there no one at home? The kid’s about to fall out the window and nobody’s watching him?"

"This is the fourth floor! If he drops, that’s it!"

"Help him, hurry!"

Voices burst out all around, tense and messy. Joanna Fletcher, who happened to be walking by, lifted her head in a daze—just in time to see a naked baby slip right through the gap of the window above.

A sharp scream tore out from the crowd. The man who had climbed onto the second-floor anti-theft bars reached out desperately, fingers brushing only air as the baby slipped past him.

Joanna’s eyes widened. She didn’t even think—just rushed forward, two steps turning into one, arms instinctively lifting to catch the falling child.

A heavy thud echoed.

The baby landed in her arms, but the sheer force from the fall knocked Joanna’s shoulders out of place and sent her crashing backwards onto the ground.

A bolt of pain shot through her, so sharp her vision went black. Her consciousness scattered instantly.

She didn’t know how much time passed before she heard someone calling faintly by her ear.

Her eyelids trembled, but she didn’t open them.

She’d been widowed young. The only thing that kept her going through all those bitter years was the hope of finding the daughter who’d been sold away.

But she’d searched most of her life… only to learn, when she was already old, that her little girl had died long ago.

Joanna felt hollow. Really, what was the point of living anymore?

"Sis, hey… wake up? Can you hear me?"

Ruby Morrison bent over her, patting Joanna’s shoulder as she spoke.

When a couple of nudges didn’t work, her mother, Yvette Anderson, grabbed Ruby by the arm and tugged her out of the room.

"Alright, enough. She’s probably fainted clean away from the shock. Come on, let’s talk outside."

Two voices drifted in from the yard, low and muffled, like they were afraid someone might hear.

“Mom, Joanna Fletcher’s belly is almost seven months now. A baby that far along can survive. If we tell her to get rid of it at this point… you think she’ll listen?”

Belly?

What belly?

She was nearly fifty—how could she possibly…

No. No, something was off.

The more she listened, the stranger it felt. Joanna’s eyes flew open. What she saw first was a wooden bedframe she hadn’t seen in decades, and an old grayish mosquito net hanging over her head.

On the paper window, someone had pasted a faded double-happiness character.

This… this was the bridal room she and Brandon Morrison had lived in back in the village after they got married?

How?

Wasn’t she knocked out by that falling baby?

Why wasn’t she waking up in a hospital bed? Why was she back in the old house she’d lived in when she was young?

Her belly rose high under the quilt. That shape was unmistakable…

Could it be… one of those bizarre things from TV? Going back in time? Being reborn into her younger self?

Joanna stared into space, stunned. Just then, a sharp hum came from the yard, full of annoyance.

“Why ask me? I’m not her real mother-in-law. No matter what I do, she’ll blame me for it. I’m not taking the blame for making decisions for her. You want answers, go ask your dad.”

Joanna knew that voice. It belonged to Yvette Anderson—Brandon’s stepmother.

That vicious woman. She’d taken Joanna’s daughter, held her head high like she’d done nothing wrong.

Joanna had cried until her eyes were swollen, begging to know where her child was. But Yvette not only refused to tell her—she even sneered, saying the baby was born unlucky and wouldn’t survive anyway.

Joanna hated her to the bone. Even if she turned to ash, she would never forget that voice.

"I’m just the younger one in the family. How could Dad ever talk to me about something like this?" Ruby Morrison muttered, face tightening with embarrassment.

She’d had enough of living in that old mud-brick place. She’d been eyeing her eldest brother’s red‑brick house for ages. But she and Brandon Morrison were only half siblings, and their relationship had been sour since they were kids. Once grown, they barely exchanged a word.

Ever since the house was built, she hadn’t stayed there a single day.

So when she accidentally overheard her parents whispering their plans behind closed doors, and realized that all the money and that house Brandon left behind might end up in their hands, her heart had been pounding with excitement.

But once that excitement faded, the worry rolled right in.

Ruby let out a long sigh and asked, "Mom, if Big Brother’s really gone, that baby in Joanna’s belly is his only kid. What if she insists on keeping it and then clings to the money and the house? What are we supposed to do?"

Earlier at noon, a telegram arrived from the army. It said Brandon had fallen off an icy cliff while saving a teammate during a mission and had gone missing. They’d searched for a week, found nothing, and for now were listing him as missing, asking the family to prepare for the worst.

Everyone knew what “missing” meant. On a cliff that high, who could survive a fall like that? They just didn’t have a body yet, and not enough time had passed to file the official paperwork, so “missing” was the only label they could use.

The moment the news reached the village, Joanna Fletcher fainted right there in the village chief’s home.

On the way back from carrying her home, Yvette Anderson’s mind had already started spinning. That child in Joanna’s belly—there was no way she could let it be born.

Joanna was a sent-down youth. No one knew when she might be sent back to the city.

If the baby turned out to be a girl, that’d be fine. No matter if Joanna went back to the city or remarried, she could take the girl with her. Then the money and the house Brandon left behind would still belong to the Morrisons.

Three south-facing red‑brick rooms—no other house in the entire Great Morrison Village was that decent. Perfect for Adrian and Molly to move into after they got married,

The noise in the yard finally drifted off, leaving the place quiet again.

In the small room behind the main hall, Joanna Fletcher lay flat on the old wooden bed. She pulled her gaze back from the window, lowered her head, and with trembling fingers brushed gently over her swollen belly.

Abort the baby…

So that was what the Morrisons were planning.

That fall she took in her last life probably wasn’t an accident at all.

They wanted to grab Brandon Morrison’s inheritance, so they schemed to make her fall and lose the child. But the baby was already too far along, and somehow survived the birth. And once things got to that point, they simply tore off all pretense, bared their fangs, took over the brick house Brandon had built with his own hands, stole her child, smeared her reputation, and threw her out of the home.

Yet even after taking the baby, they didn’t want to raise her. Barely a couple of weeks old, that tiny preemie no bigger than a kitten was passed around in the dead of winter and shipped off to another province.

She spent decades trying to find her daughter. When she was already old, she finally learned the truth: the child had died on the train just days after being taken away, and the traffickers had buried her in some weeds by a riverbank, without a thought.

Her whole life, she searched and searched, and in the end… found nothing.

But heaven does watch over people. All those years she couldn’t find her own daughter, she helped countless others reunite with their missing children. Those good deeds brought her blessings.

Merciful as it is, heaven must’ve pitied her. It sent her back to her younger days—back to when her daughter was still safe in her womb. Everything could still be changed.

As Joanna sat there dazed, her hand still resting on her belly, the skin suddenly bounced under her palm.

A kick.

The baby was moving.

Realizing that, Joanna finally felt, deep in her bones, what it meant to live this life again.

At the same moment, far away in a place she knew nothing about, a man buried under layers of avalanche ice slowly opened his eyes.