Reborn: The Return of the Villainous Mr. Liu

*Present*

No…

Jun felt his head spin. For his entire past life, he hated Jin’s sight because he had snatched Shui away from him. He had kept his heart burning with resentment for his brother for taking away the woman he cherished more than anything in his life.

But now his whole reason for which he had pushed Jin away from him shattered in just a second. The sound of that shatter was so sharp as if he felt his ears bleeding.

He was under the assumption that Jin and Shui had an affair, and she rejected him when he proposed to her. He didn’t want to believe that she would ever do this. But his heart arrived at the same conclusion over and over again.

‘I am in love with Jin,’ was what Shui had confessed to him as she cried.

But now when that scene replayed in his mind, he realized that she never said that Jin liked her back too. Or that they both were in love with each other. She only one sidedly affirmed her feelings for Jin.

It was enough to break his whole world apart and enough for him to not care what Jin’s real feelings were this whole time. He saw his love slip from his hands like sand, and he simply assumed that Jin loved her too. Everything ended with that single assumption.

It didn’t matter how much Jin kept begging him to listen to him and to believe him, Jun never paid any heed to him. He had made up his mind.

Jin was guilty. He was the culprit.

Every word that came from Jin’s mouth as he rejected Jun’s accusations against him only made him feel as if he was acting like a pitiful white lotus. Instead, he felt as if was the villain this whole time, who forced two lovers to be apart.

‘Bro, I don’t like Shui! You are misunderstanding me.’

‘I cannot ever think of hurting you. Please trust me…I didn’t betray you, Bro.’

‘Please Bro. Don’t hate me…I beg you. Please don’t hate me…’

Jin’s chest heaved up and down. His eyes reddened with pain and fury. He saw the realization and remorse hit Jun. Jin felt as if somebody was tearing his heart apart. His eyes brimmed with tears, watching the hopelessness settle in his gaze.

He wanted to hug him, but he was also crushed by the pain Jun had inflicted upon in his past life, which still felt fresh in his mind.

“I thought you would definitely believe me one day. Once you calmed down, you would realize that I could never betray you. But that day never came! And what happened instead? Shui’s one rejection changed you forever! You were not the same Bro Jun anymore whom I had loved the entire time! You kept on hating me and our family with every passing day! You threw us away from your life because you couldn’t have Shui. You humiliated Mom and Sis Nuo, who only cared about you and nothing else!”

Jun shook. He looked down at his shivering hands with which he had pushed Nana away. He had questioned her love for him. He spoke the cruelest words to his mother that broke her heart.

“Even when Great-grandma wanted to meet you one last time, you selfishly refused to see her even though you knew she had not much time to live!”

Jun suddenly jerked his head towards him and stared at him blankly. “What? Great-grandma had ca-called for me?”

Jin angrily laughed. “Are you feigning ignorance now? She got so sick after you left home that none of the treatments worked on her anymore. How could she bear her great-grandson resenting his family? The only thing she wanted…” he clenched his fists, “was to see her family together one last time. That was her dying wish. But you never came to see her no matter how much we called you!”

His eyes slowly widened. The more he spoke, he only got more confused. “Impossible, Jin…When did you or anybody from the family inform me about Great-grandma’s wish to meet me? The only thing I knew was that she was no more one day and when I went to her funeral…nobody allowed me to see her.”

“Of course, Dad didn’t allow you! Did you expect that anybody would let you in when you didn’t even bother to meet her during her final moments? That’s how cruel you had become for Shui’s sake…” he trembled.

“No…no, no, no!” Jun hastily replied. “Jin, I wasn’t aware of this at all. I really didn’t know that Great-grandma wanted to meet me!”

Ai quickly nodded. “Yes, Jin. There is definitely a misunderstanding here. I know Jun had behaved wrongly, and he did hurt his family. But he would never become so cruel to reject his dying great-grandmother’s wish. He would never go that far.”

Jin stared at Ai in a daze.

How does she know…

For that matter, he wondered that he and Jun were talking about the past life for such a long time, but Ai hadn’t dismissed it at all or expressed her disbelief over this whole rebirth thing.

Shouldn’t it have been impossible for her to believe this fantasy?

Ai noticed his gaze and understood what he was thinking. “It’s a long story, but I know everything about Jun’s past, including that he is reborn. He told me this himself.”

“…And you believed it?” He jolted and sincerely couldn’t hold his shock.

She pursed her lips. “That’s another long story but yes, I believed it. I have no reason not to.”

Jin stayed silent. He never thought that Jun would reveal this truth to anybody because it was just too bizarre to accept.

“…Dad also knows,” Jun quietly said.

That came as another massive shock to him. Jin widened his eyes. “You told Dad!? And he believed you too?”

“Yes. I…told him because I wanted him to punish me for all the sins I did,” he wryly chuckled, “I wanted him to hit me and throw me out of the family because that’s what I deserved.