Chapter 1

A heat wave was coming, and my girlfriend couldn’t stand the outhouse in her rural hometown, so she moved into my house with her entire family.

Her sister took over my bedroom, while her brother turned my study into a toy room.

Her father stubbed his cigarettes out in the flowers I raised, while her mother poured her tea into the same pots, and the two of them never flushed the toilet after using it.

I took them in, yet they demanded that I sleep on the balcony.

As the temperature kept rising, the water and food at home ran out, and they ordered me to go out and buy supplies.

My girlfriend shoved me outside, locked the door behind me, and told me not to come back unless I managed to buy everything.

I suffered heatstroke under the sun, collapsed on the asphalt, which was over fifty degrees, and eventually died of heat at the entrance to the apartment complex.

When I was reborn, every trending topic was filled with heat-wave warnings.

My girlfriend called me on FaceTime, but I gave a cold laugh and deleted and blocked her.

……

The top three trending topics were all about the heat-wave warning, announcing that the entire country would face an unprecedented heat wave over the next ten days, while searches for “heat wave” and “stocking up” had already exploded.

My SnapChat call kept ringing, but I lay sprawled on my bed, unable to move even one finger.

In front of me were real-time posts on Instagram from people warning one another to stock up in advance, while officials had also stepped in to remind everyone not to take any chances. The entire country would suspend work and school for the next ten days, and everyone was to stay home and avoid going outside whenever possible.

The internet was buzzing with news, but in sharp contrast, my body was ice-cold.

My hands and feet were cold, my body stiff, and I lay limp on the bed as cold sweat trickled down my back. Everything that had happened before my death kept replaying in my mind.

The voice call ended and started again, but the familiar special ringtone had lost its usual cheerful liveliness. To me, it sounded like someone coming to claim my life in broad daylight.

In my previous life, when my girlfriend Amy called me, I answered with joy. On the other end, I heard her younger brother and sister making a racket, her parents complaining, and my girlfriend speaking in a suppressed voice.

“Ethan, I remember you said your parents bought you a place near the university. Is it finished yet? Can my family come stay there for a few days?”

“You’ve seen what people are saying online, right? There’s going to be a heat wave across the country for the next ten days. And the outhouse back home… I seriously can’t take it anymore!”

Amy spoke too hastily, and much of what she said didn’t hold up to scrutiny, but back then, I was afraid she was suffering and agreed without thinking twice.

I even paid out of my own pocket to buy train tickets for her entire family and arranged a private car to pick them up at the station.

During all this, I completely forgot to ask how Amy had found out that my parents had bought me a place near the university.

Only my roommates knew about that.

During the first year of my relationship with Amy, she was constantly crying poor to me. Either one of her parents needed medical treatment, or her younger siblings needed money for school, and every few days she tried to squeeze money out of me.

Once, I was broke too, but she cried and told me she couldn’t hold on anymore. I still softened and immediately transferred the only two thousand dollars I had left to her.

The next day, I was exhausted and went to the hospital to pick up my medicine. The doctor prescribed more than two hundred dollars’ worth of herbal medicine, and that was when I realized I couldn’t even pay for it myself.

I called her and asked her to return three hundred dollars first, but she actually said I was putting pressure on her and had no consideration for her at all.

Her questioning left me speechless. I went from feeling wronged to apologizing, then hung up and borrowed the money from a friend.

When I went through my payment records, I realized that from the beginning of our relationship until then, I had transferred seventy or eighty thousand dollars to her.

I had squeezed it out of my own material life, sacrificing my own needs to give it to her.

Yet when I needed help, she wasn’t even willing to lend me three hundred dollars.

No matter how much you love someone, disappointment will gradually build.

After that, I didn’t want any more financial entanglements with her. Whenever she hinted that I should give her money, I would pretend to be broke too, complain about my difficulties, and brush the matter aside.

As for the fact that my parents had used their hard-earned money to buy me a house, I hadn’t told anyone.

Only my roommates had found out because I often didn’t return to the dorm and they discovered that I had a place of my own.