MTL - Those Years When I Was Cannon Fodder - Chapter 14 anxiety

...[Inside an underground basement]“You are going to die for nothing, hahahaha,” the old man's voice thundered through the room, sending chills down my spine.Step.With a swift and ruthless motion, he lunged forward, his sword slicing through the air and slashing my throat, crimson droplets staining the darkness.“We'll see,” I whispered defiantly, my final words escaping as a mere breath against the impending darkness.Slowly, inexorably, my consciousness slipped away, and I descended into a deep, unfathomable slumber.“Huh!?” My eyes fluttered open, and I found myself seated in a bustling tavern, the air thick with laughter and the clinking of glasses.In front of me stood a captivating lady, her beauty juxtaposed with an angry furrow upon her brow, threatening to shatter the harmony of the jovial scene.“Don't follow me around!” Her words pierced the air like shards of ice, the intensity of her emotions palpable as she cast a resentful glare in my direction, before swiftly departing from the tavern....Am I trapped within the confines of a game? The fragments of my shattered common sense scattered before me, leaving me to question the very fabric of my reality.

Xiao Rou, a girl growing up in a poor countryside family, finds that she’s actually the daughter of a wealthy couple. Her mother had mistaken another girl for her back at the hospital. Thinking she would change from an ugly duckling to a noble swan and live happily ever after with her real family, reality strikes her in the face.

The other girl, Xiao Jinning, who had taken her family, her fiancé and everything else from her, uses every mean possible to frame her up, so when she returns to her biological parents, she finds her parents despising her while still doting on Xiao Jinning. Framed as a thief, she is expelled from the family and as soon as she walks out the door, she gets hit by a car and her spirit dies a miserable death thanks to Xiao Jinning.

Meanwhile, Tang Xi, a real princess, the heiress of the powerful Empire Group, is murdered by her greedy relatives. When she opens her eyes again, she finds herself in another girl’s body. She has become Xiao Rou and has a magic system—008 in her body! With the help of 008, she begins her journey for revenge. She would avenge poor Xiao Rou, punish her murderers, become the most famous star, and… make up with her true love—Qiao Liang.

- Description from Novelupdates

# endoftheyearJi Yuanyuan was the type of person who would ruin a nicely dealt hand. She could have led a carefree life under her family and ex-husband’s protection. Alas, for the sake of a scum named Zhao Tianhua, she caused her mother to die an aggrieved death, her eldest brother to die in a foreign land, and her second brother to be run over by a car and had his head disembodied. She herself even died from childbirth in a shabby house at the countryside, and her baby was strangled to death by Zhao Tianhua. It was right before her death that she learned that her quiet ex-husband almost went mad searching for her.Ji Yuanyuan was reborn back into the 90s era with extreme luck and a mysterious spatial ability. Since then, Ji Yuanyuan would find money on the ground, boars would run into trees on their own if she was lost in the wild, and her investments would all be successful… When the b*stard scum, Zhao Tianhua approached her again, Ji Yuanyuan kicked him away and latched onto her ex-husband’s leg instead. “Sir, please protect me.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”“Tell you what, Richard? What would you have done?”“I don’t know. Apologized sooner? Bought you a burger to make up for it?”Her eyes lit up with fire, “You think what you did to me… you think a burger can make up for it?” her eyes twinkled like she was fighting tears. Did I hurt her that badly? I was just a foolish teenager.“Nita, I am sorry. I was young, I was stupid. I wish I could take it all back and tell you how I feel instead of being a constant jerk to gain your attention.”“How did you feel that would justify what you did to me?”I paused for a minute, finding the words. “I had a huge crush on you at the time. And I didn’t know how to express myself. I was full of myself, I was the school’s ladies' man and the one girl I had eyes for didn’t even care if I existed,” “And that justified what you did to me? Richard, you broke me. I can forgive you for ‘accidentally’ spilling your ice cream on me, or throwing my due assignment in the toilet, or the gum in my hair, or the glue in my chair but tell me how can I forgive you for what you did that night? Tell me!”“What night? Nita, what are you talking about?”“Remember when you asked me if I knew who sexually assaulted me?”I nodded, but what does that have to do with anything? The more we spoke, the more confused I became.“You did and I cannot believe that you would stand there and pretend like it didn’t happen!”Nita has spent years trying to forget the torment she endured at the hands of Richard. When her family’s financial ruin forces her into an arranged marriage, she is horrified to find out the groom himself was her bully.Richard, a charming and successful businessman meets the first woman to be repulsed by him. Intrigued, he proposes a deal of a one year marriage of convenience.Navigating life as a couple, old wounds reopen, buried memories surface. As Richard learns more about his wife, he finds that he has enemies that followed him from his past to continuously cloud his wife’s judgement.Will Nita believe the truth and bury old wounds or will the pain of the past prove too strong to heal?