"He was tripped," Melissa continued, voice rising. "Pushed. Set up to fail by children who think humiliating him is entertainment. We all know it."
"Melissa," Harold warned, tone like distant thunder.
"Danton stuck his foot out. We all know he did. He does it constantly—I've seen him do it in this house, in the hallways, on the stairs—"
Danton's face went carefully blank. "I would never—"
"Don't lie to me. I've seen you do it a hundred times."
"That's some serious accusation," Harold said coldly.
"It's the truth! And the punch bowl—someone pushed him. He didn't just stumble. Things like that don't happen to the same person over and over unless someone's making them happen."
"How would you know?" Delilah asked sharply. "You weren't even there."
"Because I know how this family operates!" Melissa's voice cracked—raw, desperate, something that made Phei's blood run cold. "I know what you all do to him, and I've been complicit for too long!"
The table went utterly silent.
You could have heard a pin drop. A heartbeat.
"You're very passionate about this," Harold observed, voice flat in a way that made Phei's skin crawl. "More passionate than I've ever seen you regarding Phei."
"Someone has to be."
"After ten years of silence, you've suddenly found your voice. Tonight. Why tonight, specifically?"
"Because I'm tired—"
"Of what? Of watching him suffer?" Harold's eyes narrowed, predator scenting blood. "How noble. How convenient that this conscience has developed right now, at this particular moment."
"It's not convenient, it's—"
"What's really going on here, Melissa?"
The question hung like poison gas.
"Nothing is going on. I'm just defending what's right."
"Are you?" Harold's gaze flicked between Melissa and Phei, back and forth, searching. "Because from where I'm sitting, you're defending him with unusual fervor. Looking at him with concern I've never seen in ten years. One might think something has changed between you two."
Melissa's face went pale. "That's absurd. He's my nephew. Do you expect me to just watch forever?"
"Exactly. Your nephew. Not your son. And yet here you are, acting like you have a personal stake in his well-being that goes beyond simple obligation."
The silence stretched, heavy and dangerous.
Phei's pulse thundered in his ears. Harold was circling. Closer. Closer. And Melissa had just stepped into the trap.
Oh fuck.
Harold was right there—perched on the knife's edge of discovery. His instincts were howling even if his logic hadn't quite bridged the gap yet. The man smelled blood in the water, and Melissa had just poured chum all over the table.
Phei had to kill this. Had to shut it down before it spiraled into questions no one could answer without detonating the whole house.
"It's fine," he said, voice slicing through the suffocating tension like a blade.
Every head turned.
"Uncle Harold's right," Phei continued, locking eyes with Melissa and begging her silently: Stop. Back off. Don't burn everything we've built. "I should've been more careful. Whether I was tripped or not doesn't matter—I should've been more aware of my surroundings."
"Phei, don't—"
"I'll write the apologies," he said, firm, final. "I'll take responsibility."
"It's not fine!" Melissa's voice cracked open. "They're making you take blame for their cruelty!"
"And that's my problem," Phei said, low, urgent. "Not yours, Aunt Melissa. Please… just let it go."
That please did it. The quiet, desperate plea in a single word.
Melissa's mouth opened. Closed. Her hands trembled on the table like leaves caught in a gale.
"You're right," she said at last, voice hollow, defeated. "It's not my place. I apologise, Harold."
Harold studied her for a long, measuring beat. Suspicion etched across his face like graffiti on a clean wall.
"Apology accepted," he said finally. "Though I suggest you examine why you felt compelled to overstep."
Translation:I'm watching you now. Both of you.
"I will," Melissa whispered.
"Good." Harold picked up his fork as if the last five minutes had been a minor interruption. "Phei, those apologies on my desk by Wednesday. Handwritten. Taking full responsibility."
"Yes, sir."
"You're excused."
Phei grabbed his plate and bolted upstairs before anyone could speak again. The door clicked shut behind him like a seal on a coffin.
His phone buzzed the second he locked it.
Melissa: I'm sorry. I couldn't help it.
Phei: You almost exposed us. Harold's suspicious.
Melissa: I know. I'll be more careful.
Phei: You have to. He's watching now.
Melissa: What do we do?
Phei: Nothing. Act normal. Like tonight never happened.
Melissa: I don't know if I can.
Phei: You have to. Delete these messages.
Melissa: Already done.
Phei set the phone down carefully, like it might explode. He sank onto the bed, heart still slamming against his ribs.
That had been too close. Way too bloody close. One more passionate outburst from Melissa, one more defense of him, and Harold would've started digging. Asking questions about why his perfect wife was suddenly the champion of the charity case she'd ignored for a decade.
But worse than the near-exposure, worse than Harold's fresh suspicion, was the cold realisation sinking into Phei's bones.
He'd completely forgotten about the ice sculpture.
Forgotten Danton's trip, the punch bowl shove, the humiliations that had once been footnotes to the bigger disaster—the theft frame-up that never happened in this timeline.
In the old timeline, those "smaller" incidents had been swallowed by the hospital stay. Forgotten. Irrelevant.
But now? Now the theft hadn't occurred. Which meant every petty prank, every setup, every moment of cruelty was suddenly visible again. Important again. Consequences again.
He'd been so focused on Melissa, on the Dragon Rise, on the apartment, on the harem, that he'd let the past sneak up on him.
And the past in this house was a loaded gun.
Phei stared at the ceiling, breathing slow, forcing the panic down.
He couldn't afford to forget again. Couldn't afford to be blindsided.
Tomorrow, he started the real hunt. School. Training. Conquests.
But tonight he'd learned something vital: the timeline wasn't fully rewritten. The old wounds were still there, bleeding fresh.
His mind started spinning, urgency flooding through his veins like adrenaline.
He needed to rework his memory. Needed to sit down and actively, deliberately remember what this week had in store for him. Every incident, every humiliation, every trap that had been laid in the original timeline.
Because if he'd forgotten about Danton's ice sculpture prank—something that had actually happened, that he'd actually experienced, that had left him covered in frozen swan shards and public shame—then what else had he forgotten?
The original timeline had been like staring into a nuclear explosion. The blast was so bright, so overwhelming, so all-consuming that everything else vanished into the glare. You couldn't see the trees, the buildings, the people—just the mushroom cloud swallowing it all.
The theft accusation had been his mushroom cloud. And now that it hadn't happened, all those other details were suddenly visible again. All those Monday-through-Saturday incidents that had seemed like nothing at the time.
All those "minor" humiliations that added up to death by a thousand cuts.
He had to remember them. Had to anticipate them. Had to either avoid them or—and this was a new thought, glittering and sharp like broken glass—figure out how to capitalise on them.
Phei grabbed a piece of paper from his desk, started trying to piece together the week.
Tuesday. Tomorrow. School.
Something had happened at school, he was sure of it. Brett had done something, or Anderson, or one of the academy girls. But what exactly? The details were slippery, like trying to catch fish with bare hands.
His brain had filed them away as unimportant, and now he was paying for that convenience.
His backpack? No—wait—he'd avoided that one by staying home sick today. The backpack getting thrown in the pool had been… Tuesday? Wednesday? And he'd skipped Monday entirely because of the "food poisoning" cover story.
But there'd been something else. Something in class, or in the hallway, or in the locker room. Some humiliation that Brett or Danton's crew had orchestrated.
The details wouldn't come into focus. Like his brain had hit the delete key on anything that seemed minor compared to the theft accusation. Like none of it had mattered enough to remember.
What else? What else?
The calculus test he'd failed because someone had switched out his notes. That had happened, he remembered now—Brett had somehow gotten into his locker and replaced his study notes with blank paper.
He'd shown up to the exam completely unprepared.
Something with Delilah. She'd… done something to his clothes? Made him wear—
The memory was fuzzy. Incomplete.
Sierra and her clique. They'd cornered him somewhere. Library? Bathroom? Made him do something humiliating. He couldn't remember what, just the feeling of it—hot shame crawling up his neck, laughter ringing in his ears.
Something with Harold?
Saturday. The worst day before Sunday. He couldn't remember specifics, just a general sense of dread, of everything building toward catastrophe.
So much he'd forgotten. So much he needed to remember.
And he only had until Tuesday morning to put together a plan.
Phei stared at the paper in his hand—mostly blank except for fragments and question marks—and felt the weight of it settling on his shoulders.
The system had given him a second chance. Had literally turned back time to save his life. But it hadn't given him perfect memory, hadn't automatically sorted out all the problems waiting for him.
He was still going to have to face this week. All of it. Every trap, every prank, every casual cruelty these people had planned for him.
The only difference was that now he knew it was coming.
And now, maybe, he had the tools to fight back.
Think, he told himself. You're not stupid. You survived this week once already, even if you didn't survive the aftermath. You know these people. You know how they operate. Use that.
His purple eyes stared back at him from the cracked mirror, and for just a moment—a flash, gone almost before he registered it—he saw something in them that hadn't been there before.
Not just the weird new colour.
Something sharper. Harder. More dangerous.
The look of someone who was done being prey.
The look of a dragon learning to hunt.