Death and Rebirth
Warning: This work contains references and description of traumatising events like rape (gang rapes), suicide, domestic violence (it's one of the major arcs), imprisonment, and general violence. Approach with caution if you are easily triggered.
Early morning. The room was quiet and calm. The person in bed was still asleep. Sunlight shone brightly through the crack in the window and shone over the young man's sleeping face, painting a faint golden halo around him. With it, he looked even more radiant like an angel.
His brows were not thick nor were they thin. They were in a gentle shape that didn't detract from his gentlemanly handsome aura. The outer corners of his eyes, which were calmly closed in sleep, tilted up slightly. The long curly eyelashes cast a small patch of shadow underneath his eyes. Below his straight nose were a pair of full and rosy lips. The lips opened up a crack, revealing the faint uneven pink colour of the tip of his tongue. His skin was very white. It wasn't the pale white tone of sickliness but the beautiful fair white of pearls. The delicate cheeks appeared blushed under the rays of the sun. A thin layer of fuzzy hair was also revealed. Altogether the young man looked like quiet china doll, unrealistically beautiful. If someone walked into the room at this moment, they would think they've travelled to a fantastical place with a sleeping little prince in it.
After a while, his brows formed a faint frown. The tranquil expression became one of pain and suffering. A faint layer of cold sweat formed over his bright and clean forehead, as though he was trapped in the midst of a nightmare. Under the thin eyelids, his eyes rolled about non-stop as if he was struggling to wake up with all his might. A long moment passed, he seemed to have defeated the nightmare demon and abruptly opened his eyes!
And what sort of expressions did his eyes convey? One conveyed a deep and heavy dejection born from a harsh life filled with waves after waves of change. An expression that did not fit his perfectly beautiful appearance.
With wide open eyes, Bai YiHan's chest violently surged up and down. After a long while, he finally calmed down from his panic. He felt like sighing. Why wasn't he dead yet? He clearly felt the pain of a bullet piercing into his heart and the powerlessness that came with a rapidly escaping life. Why was he still alive? His family's already bankrupt. The whole family was in dire straits and, not long ago, his grandfather even passed away. The simple funeral had cleared off the last of their savings. To think they once were one of the most rich and powerful family in Hua City. In just one generation, the great family toppled. Everyone pushed the wall that was about to collapse. Everyone in the family instantly fell from the Heavens into Hell. And all of this was because of his stupidity! At this point, his grandfather had died from being upset by those photos of him. He'd also become a useless cripple. Emergency surgery, hospitalisation, treatment, post-recovery sessions. How much did those cost? His family's current financial situation absolutely could not bear it! And that tiny bit of money he'd earned were most likely not even worth a single drop of the total sum. Why must they save him? His existence only gave the family who loved him bad luck. He'd even feinted to attract that policeman's attention and make the policeman kill him. So why hasn't he died?
He silently laid there. His thoughts rushed around like a train wreck. A sparkling tear drop slid down from those beautiful eyes and quickly disappeared into his hair. After another long moment, YiHan finally felt that something was wrong. There was not a single bit of pain in his body. He tested his left arm, fingers and his right leg. His heart stopped in shock. His eyes focused and what he saw made his pupils shrink. How could this be?
This was the room he lived in before his family went bankrupt! Window drapes in champagne colours, furniture complimenting each other to give off a warm aura. The whole room shone in a subtle display of wealth and glamour. Everything was so familiar. But this mansion was clearly sold off to pay bank the bank's loan!
Shocked, he sat up and pulled up the pale blue legs of his sleepwear to find his right leg, the right leg that was snapped in a beating and had revealed the stale white of broken bones, was currently whole and perfect against the bedsheets. The china-white skin tone. The elegant thin calf with perfect lines and sparse leg hair. Under that round and smooth anklebone laid a pretty white foot with thin calluses, round toes and pink nails. It didn't look like a man's foot at all. And currently, it's curled in shock and seemed both pitiful and cute.
He raised his left hand to his eyes and stared at it under that ray of sunlight. It looked like an exceedingly beautiful hand with smooth and pale with long, thin fingers and well-defined bone structure. The healthy pink nails were also neatly manicured. Under sunshine, the whole hand shone in a pleasing flesh pink tone and looked like the most perfect hand sculpture in the world.
But Bai YiHan clearly remembered. This hand had been stomped on and smashed with rocks until it didn't look like a hand. Broken, bent and swollen, it looked like a messy bleeding pile of flesh and not a hand. Even the world's best doctors couldn't let it regain its original form. Yet it's now perfectly fine before his eyes as if it had never been hurt before. He gently closed it into a fist and felt the strength within it. His heart thundered as he looked down at his equally fine right leg. He didn't know what was going on at all. He thought for a while then looked up the date on the phone that was lying on the headboard. It's…four years ago? He suddenly jumped down from the bed and rushed into the bathroom.
He stared at the young, naive and untainted face in his mirror, then again at his left hand. He turned it this way and that, and looked at it over and over again. After a long time, he gleefully laughed with his hands covering his face. At first, it was just a light chuckle. As it went on, he began crying as well and big drops of tears flowed from between his fingers and down into his sleeves.
The gods must pity him to let him to return to the time before the whole tragedy occurred. This time, he will take good care of his family's love. Carefully. He'll be a good child and not cause a ruckus anymore…