Chapter 2: This is not a punishment
This time I am the youngest son of a family with 3 kids. My older brother is 7 years older and my sister is 5 years older than me. I was an accident as my mother did not even know she was pregnant until 6 months in.
Reasons; stress, malnutrition and various medications not suitable for pregnant women. From my understanding, the family was going through a very bad time but my birth was a wakeup call that made my parents make some changes that improved everyone's life.
When I was 1 month old, I stopped needing external help to breathe. At 6 months old, most of my internal organs were working enough to be able to go home. I still had no legs but it did not stop me from enjoying the life of a kid. My new dad was the strict one while mum was the kind one. At the beginning, I was able to use my disability and their guilt to get what I wanted but they quickly changed their education to match my siblings with the encouragement of some professionals.
In this life, I learned that family love was not about giving and receiving material goods. It was about all the small things like the pride in my dad’s eyes when I gave him my first drawing - it was a dragon but everyone thinks it was a worm - or the kisses I get from my annoying sister. The time my brother took me to play outside - despite our age difference and that I could not walk properly at that time -
My mom’s fried rice - that is not really fried because of my bad digestive system - and all their encouragement and support during my rehab to learn to use artificial legs. Not that I needed much encouragement, the pain I endured was nothing compared to my previous life.
Up until I was 15 years old, I lived a relatively normal life that included family, school and friends. My brother was studying to be a doctor, my sister chose to be a police officer while I helped my parents once in a while at their small coffee shop.
I loved cooking and baking with my mom and playing chess with my dad - I always lost though.
At last I had a good family and a happy life
I was still happy even when I ended up at the hospital because my organs started failing shortly after my 15th birthday. We all knew it was coming since I was 6 months old. I just felt lucky it took 15 years instead of the 5 predicted by the doctors.
The current medical technology helped me live for another 5 years even though I was in bed most of it. I passed it watching movies and reading books.
I loved teasing my brother by giving him spoilers on movies and basketball games as he was always too busy to watch them.
My sister preferred reading novels so she always bought me a ton of books... then nags me to give her reviews before she starts any of them. She would send me different types of novels but she loved how I always had something to say about cultivation novels to become stronger and extend their lives. This process is called cultivation and people who do this are called cultivators1Chinese cultivation novels where characters often practice martial or mystical arts - with my past life, I had a LOT to say! -
so she always took time to find as many cultivation novels as she could for me. This is how I found out that my previous life was in a novel…