Chapter 1

My mother had severe, obsessive-compulsive OCD.

Because I was born five ounces heavier than my twin sister, Clara, my mother despised me from day one.

Whenever I cried myself hoarse from hunger, she would pump her leftover breast milk, store it in the fridge, and save it only for Clara.

She fed Clara eight times a day with that milk.

Eventually, both Clara and I ended up in the hospital. I was admitted for severe malnutrition, while Clara was hospitalized for consuming spoiled food over a long period.

But that wasn’t enough for Eleanor. As Clara grew plumper under her care, Eleanor couldn't stand how skinny and frail I was. She forced me to eat fatty pork—the one food she knew I was highly allergic to.

I suffocated to death.

But after I died, I found myself back inside my mother's womb...

I was dead.

My mother had forced me to eat that fatty pork. My throat swelled up instantly, blocking my airway, and I suffocated to death, gasping for air.

Yet, after my death, I felt it again—the familiar, warm embrace of amniotic fluid.

That womb was the only place I had ever felt any semblance of maternal warmth in my entire life.

In the next second, a voice echoed. "Doctor, is there any way to make my two babies come out at the exact same time?"

"Mrs. Vance, you are asking for the impossible. The birth canal is only so wide. It is biologically impossible for two babies to slide out simultaneously."

Hearing this familiar conversation, a bolt of lightning flashed through my mind, sparking a fire of realization.

Sure enough, the next line from my memory came right on cue. "I don't care! You must get them out at the exact same time! Otherwise, I’ll report you to the board for sexual harassment during delivery!"

It was Eleanor. Her voice. As her words overlapped perfectly with my past life's memories, I knew.

I had been reborn.

I was back in my mother's womb, and she was currently on the delivery table.

In my previous life, she had paid a fortune to a fortune teller to calculate the perfect, luckiest minute for her babies to be born.

But she was carrying twins. Chloe and Clara. It was physically impossible for us to be born at the exact same second.

And I, in my mother’s words, was greedy. I had fought to come out first, which immediately earned me the reputation of being a curse to the family.

Clara, on the other hand, was the lucky one. She was born at the exact minute the fortune teller had predicted.

So, when the doctor announced that I was five ounces heavier than Clara, Eleanor didn't even look at me. She furrowed her brow and immediately put me on a "diet."

I didn’t get a single drop of breast milk. I was forced to fast.

That was why I grew up malnourished. Later on, my body lost the ability to absorb nutrients properly, leaving me perpetually thin and weak.

Since Eleanor had given birth to twins, her milk supply was abundant. She would pump the milk Clara couldn't finish, store it in the fridge, and feed Clara eight times a day.

In the end, she successfully sent both of us to the ER. I went in for starvation; Clara went in for food poisoning from spoiled milk.