Ficorpio
Chapter 1
Chapter 1
Cold water flooded your nose, and you jerked upright over the sink.
In the mirror, the girl staring back at you was deathly pale. Droplets clung to your lashes, a cartoon bandage sat at the outer corner of your left eye, and yet there was something in your gaze that didn’t belong on that young face at all—something sharp, vicious, alive with hate.
You had really been reborn.
Just half an hour ago, at a class reunion, your fiancé, Adrian Sterling, had made out with Vanessa Hale right in front of you for a full ten minutes. Afterward, he’d smiled at you with maddening casualness and said, “Sophia, it was just a game. Don’t make such a big deal out of it.”
In your last life, you had believed him every time he said it was “just a game,” “just repaying a debt.” You had accepted three years as his secret mistress, hidden from the light, and in the end he had personally shoved you onto a bungee platform. You had been born with a heart condition. You’d never even dared go on a roller coaster. But he had still turned you into a bargaining chip to save his company.
Your heart had stopped in midair.
“Sophia, are you still mad?”
Adrian’s hand came toward your shoulder, carrying that same practiced gentleness, that same poisonous tenderness. You slapped him across the face before he could touch you.
The crack rang through the restroom so sharply that everything seemed to go still for half a second.
“We’re done, Adrian.” Your voice was calm, but every word carried the hatred of a lifetime. “The second you chose Vanessa, there was nothing left between us except ruin.”
His pupils contracted. He stared at you like he couldn’t believe what had just happened.
But you had already turned away, resolve flashing through your eyes.
This time, you weren’t just going to survive.
You were going to take back everything that had been stolen from you.
And Julian Sterling—the boy who had silently shielded you from every storm in your last life, the one who had even traded his own life to give you this rebirth—
This time, you would not leave him alone.
“Sophia, are you still mad?”
Adrian’s hand was just about to land on your shoulder when you shot upright from the sink full of water, gasping for air, both hands braced hard against the porcelain.
Your reflection looked ghastly. Water dripped from your lashes. The cartoon bandage at the corner of your left eye made you look absurdly young.
Only then did it finally sink in.
You had really come back.
Just moments ago, at the reunion, Vanessa had lost a round of truth or dare and been told to kiss Adrian for ten minutes.
He hadn’t refused.
He had actually turned to you and smiled, lazy and unconcerned. “Sophia, it’s just a kiss. You’re not going to blow this out of proportion, are you?”
Chapter 2
Chapter 2
“She only knows me here. If it was anyone else, she wouldn’t be able to do it.”
Your eyes had burned red with humiliation. While the two of them kissed like no one else in the room existed, you had spun around and walked out of the private room.
That was how it had happened in your last life too.
Back then, Adrian hadn’t even bothered coming after you. He had let you sulk alone until you couldn’t stand the silence anymore. Then you had gone to him first, trying to make peace. You baked the little cakes he liked with your own hands. You stayed up late fighting online for tickets to his favorite singer’s concert.
Because you loved him too much, you had lowered yourself too far.
Pathetic. Humiliating. Laughable.
“Stop this, okay?”
His voice was low and smooth as ever. “If it bothered you, I won’t do it next time. I hate seeing you upset.”
He reached for you, trying to pull you into his arms.
The instant his fingertips brushed your sleeve, your body reacted before your mind did. Your hand flew out and struck him hard.
The smack was crisp and brutal.
Adrian’s expression changed at once. His pupils shrank as he glared at you in disbelief. “Sophia Bennett, you hit me? You actually fucking hit me?”
When he saw the darkness on your face, he let out a short, angry laugh and pressed his tongue against his cheek. “I never should’ve spoiled your temper like this. After everything I’ve done for you all these years, you still don’t get it?”
“It was one kiss with Vanessa, and you’re acting this high and mighty? You even had the nerve to hit me?”
You clenched your fists, fighting down the fury crashing inside your chest. You hadn’t forgotten how you died in your last life. You hadn’t forgotten how thoroughly this man had trampled your heart.
More than anger, though, what you felt was exhaustion.
You and Adrian had been childhood sweethearts, the golden couple in everyone’s eyes. How had it all ended up like that?
“Sophia, you’re only acting like this because you know I love you,” he snapped. “Because you know I’d never break up with you—”
“Then let’s break up.”
Your voice cut cleanly through his.
Adrian froze. “What did you say?”
“We’re over,” you repeated, without a ripple in your tone.
He narrowed his eyes and looked you over from head to toe before letting out a cold, mocking laugh. “Over one kiss with Vanessa?”
You lifted your gaze to his. “Yes.”
“Fine. Have it your way.”
His mouth curved with contempt. “Let’s see how long you can keep this up.”
With that, he kicked the trash can beside him. It slammed into the wall with a violent clang, and he stalked out of the restroom radiating fury.
Silence fell instantly.
In your previous life, after the cold war between you finally ended, he had held you and kissed you for a long time. Then he said, “Kissing Vanessa was part of the game. You and I are together. It’s not the same.”
“Don’t dwell on it. It doesn’t matter.”
Back then, you hadn’t dared argue.
Now you knew the truth with perfect clarity.
It did matter.
Chapter 3
Chapter 3
The moment a boundary was crossed, it mattered.
You didn’t go back to their private room. But as you passed by, Adrian’s voice drifted out from inside.
“Sophia has a heart condition. I’ve spent her whole life being careful she doesn’t get hurt. If she leaves me, who else is going to put up with her like I do?”
You lowered your eyes, your phone clenched tight in your pocket.
Thank God.
This time, it was not too late yet.
Your engagement to Adrian Sterling had been arranged by your grandfather’s generation.
When your mother gave birth to you, the delivery went wrong. She never made it off the operating table, and when you were only hours old, the doctors discovered you had the same congenital heart condition.
So from childhood on, your family treated you like something precious and fragile, holding you in the palms of their hands and loving you almost too much.
In the beginning, Adrian had never cared for you much. He liked the engagement even less.
Until the year you were seventeen.
He had wanted you to be the one to call it off. Knowing perfectly well that you had a heart condition, he blindfolded you and coaxed you onto a roller coaster, pretending it was some harmless surprise.
By the time you realized what was happening, the ride had already started.
The wind screamed past your ears. It was the closest you had ever come to death. The violent strain on your body stopped your heart.
Luckily, the family butler who had come along noticed something was wrong and shut the ride down in time to save you.
Adrian stayed by your hospital bed for three days and three nights without sleeping. When you finally woke, the tension in him snapped all at once. Tears spilled from his eyes as he apologized again and again, begging you to forgive him.
But you had only forced a smile and asked, “I’m not blaming you, but Adrian… could you love me, just once?”
He had frozen, as if he’d never expected that after walking back from the edge of death, that would still be the only thing on your mind.
In the end, he’d answered, “Sophia… I really don’t know what to do with you.”
After that, Adrian stopped resisting the engagement. He spoiled you, indulged you, protected you like you were a child.
You knew it was guilt.
But your feelings for him had always been real.
When you were fifteen, he had stood beneath a flowering crabapple tree while the spring wind lifted the edge of his pale shirt. His cool gaze had drifted your way, and your heart had skipped a beat so hard it nearly hurt.
From that day on, you’d known you would never love anyone else.
You only wanted to be the one person he loved.
What you never expected was Vanessa Hale.