Chapter 3

"Aria, what's wrong with you?" Seeing me remain silent for so long, Adrian instinctively frowned and called out.

The flash of impatience in his eyes was clearly visible. This time, I didn't hesitate to shake off his hand. "Thank you, Mr. Hunt."

Dropping those words, I turned to leave, but Adrian chased after me. "I saved you, and all I get is a thank you?"

"What, does Mr. Hunt want me to pay with my body?" I looked at Adrian sarcastically.

He was shocked by my attitude.

That's right. At this point in my previous life, we weren't familiar with each other. Logically, I should have been extremely grateful to him.

But the hatred from my previous life made me unable to tolerate him at all.

While Adrian was distracted, I had already gotten in my car and left.

Back home, looking at everything familiar, tears streamed down my face.

Seeing me cry, Mom and Dad thought Ethan had bullied me and quickly asked questions.

To avoid worrying them, I casually made up an excuse.

But being able to see Mom and Dad again made me quite content.

In my previous life, after I was imprisoned, when Mom and Dad couldn't find me multiple times, they suspected Adrian might be harming me.

Unfortunately, they were eventually plotted against, losing not only the company but also their lives.

Fortunately, everything was still in time now.

After comforting Mom and Dad, I quickly hired someone to investigate Adrian, as well as Ethan and Vivian.

Three hours later, I received all their information.

Looking at the densely packed text, my heart felt like it had fallen into an ice cave.

So that's how it was.

It turned out the first person to fall for Vivian wasn't Ethan, but Adrian.

Unfortunately, as childhood friends who grew up together, the confession that should have been spoken was delayed because of Ethan's appearance.

From then on, Adrian became Vivian's guardian.

And I became a pawn in their game.

I flipped through their information while reading the messages Ethan sent me.

[I'm waiting for you, Aria. If you don't come, my birthday won't be complete.]

[Aria, didn't you say you'd stay with me forever? You won't even come to my birthday?]

[I miss you so much.]

The 99+ messages indicated that Ethan wanted me dead.

Finally, I replied with one message: [I'll be there.]

Immediately, Ethan replied: [I'll wait for you.]

In the past, we used to exchange messages back and forth like this. Ethan even swore to me, "I'll always reply to your messages instantly."

And Ethan really did do that, but everything changed after Vivian appeared.

I didn't understand how a scholarship student could change Ethan in just half a year.

In my previous life, I really disliked Vivian. She always used her scholarship student status to play the victim.

When I asked her to submit group assignments, she would cry and say, "Aria, do you look down on me because I'm poor? Is that why you're targeting me?"

At first, Ethan would still take my side and scold Vivian. "Are you crazy? How is that what she meant?"

But later, Ethan would just frown. "Come on, Aria, Vivian didn't mean it."

At that time, I didn't notice anything wrong. Sometimes I would even complain to Ethan about Vivian.

But all of this became the catalyst for him breaking my legs.

He looked at me viciously and said, "Do you really look down on people that much? What has Vivian ever done to you? Why do you always target her? Is it just because she likes me?"

"Aria, when did you become so vicious? You think you can insult people just because you know how to skate? Let's see how you skate in the future."