My childhood sweetheart lost his sight in a car crash. Out of the goodness of my heart, I donated one of my corneas to him. He, however, firmly believed I had orchestrated the accident. He was convinced my donation was just a manipulative ploy to force him into marriage and tear him away from his first love. He hated me for the rest of his life. Right before he died, he spat that he would rather be blind than ever have to look at my face again. When I opened my eyes next, I was back in the moment right before he sped off in his car to chase after his first love. I pretended I didn't know a thing. In this life, I don't ever want to look at his face again either. 1 In the dead of night, my mother yanked me out of bed. While pulling on her coat, she said grimly, "Get up, quickly. Your Aunt Sarah just called. Arthur was in a terrible car accident. We need to get to the hospital immediately." My heart hammered in my chest. It wasn't until we arrived at the hospital and I saw Arthur's parents pacing frantically outside the operating room that reality finally set in. This wasn't my life flashing before my eyes right before suicide. I had actually been reborn. My mother rushed over to ask for updates on Arthur's condition. The adults were in an absolute panic. Ironically, I became the only person calm enough to speak with the doctor. "The family needs to prepare for the worst. The patient sustained severe facial trauma from a massive impact. Both corneas are completely detached. It's highly likely he will be permanently blind." Just like in my past life, Aunt Sarah nearly fainted upon hearing the news. I let out a silent sigh, my heart completely devoid of any emotion. I simply asked, "The corneas detached, but can the actual eyeballs be saved?" The doctor gave a noncommittal "We'll do our best" before shoving a clipboard and pen into my hand. "What is your relation to the patient? Please sign this quickly." The word wife almost slipped out, but I bit it back hard. I handed the pen to Arthur's father, who was holding it together slightly better than his wife. "I'm just the neighbor. I don't have the authority to sign." In my past life, when I heard Arthur was going to be blind, my reaction was just as hysterical as Aunt Sarah's. After all, he was the boy I had secretly loved for ten years. The thought of someone as vibrant and arrogant as Arthur never being able to see the world again broke my heart, so I volunteered to donate one of my corneas. Arthur regained his sight. After a few days of depression, he proposed to me right there in the hospital room. He held my arm and said, "Hazel, from now on, we will be each other's light." Ten years of unrequited love finally felt validated, but I still hesitated. "What about Chloe?" Arthur scoffed, pointing at his own eye. "If she hadn't thrown a tantrum and broken up with me in the middle of the night, this never would have happened to me..." He sounded so resolute back then, but less than two years into our marriage, he completely changed. By chance, I saw his search history on an AI app. [How to detach someone's corneas] [Help me design the perfect car accident] [Can someone who died of carbon monoxide poisoning still donate their corneas?] Seeing those queries felt like plunging straight into hell. I had given him one cornea out of decades of loyalty, yet he was plotting to take my other one. So, I sealed all the doors and windows in our apartment, lit charcoal briquettes, and shared a drink with Arthur for the first time since our wedding. When we were both buzzed, I asked him, "Do you regret marrying me?" The alcohol stripped away his filter. The look he gave me was like a physical blade. "If I didn't marry you, how could I ever repay you for the magnificent car accident you so carefully orchestrated?" He pulled out my old diary from God-knows-where and slammed it violently onto the table. "Hazel Vance! You've been obsessed with me since we were kids. You couldn't have me, so you staged that crash to blind me, didn't you?!" "When I went blind, you used your cornea donation to blackmail me into marrying you." "You destroyed my health, you destroyed my relationship with Chloe, and you thought you could force me to feel indebted to you for the rest of my life. You are absolutely vile! I would rather be blind forever than have to look at your face!" Every word he spat left me in utter shock. With red eyes, I desperately tried to explain it wasn't me, but he slammed his hand on the table and interrogated me: "Then why else would you willingly become a disabled freak just to give me your cornea?! Don't tell me you actually bought into that 'childhood sweethearts' garbage! We're just neighbors! We don't have that kind of deep connection!" I was completely stunned. So this was how Arthur had maliciously analyzed my actions all along. As the oxygen depleted and the carbon monoxide took over, my mind grew hazy. He and I both died in that room. It wasn't a particularly painful death. 2 This time, I stood back with cold detachment as both families desperately searched for a donor cornea. I had absolutely no intention of getting tangled up in Arthur's karma again. Aunt Sarah wept continuously, and my mother looked deeply troubled. "Sigh, Arthur's a good kid. Why on earth would he be speeding in the middle of the night?" "What could possibly be so urgent that he'd risk his life? He was such a bright young man, and now..." A flash of pure hatred crossed Aunt Sarah's face. "I checked Arthur's phone. I found out he had secretly gotten a girlfriend named Chloe." "That girl was throwing a fit. She told him that if he didn't make it to the train station in ten minutes, she was leaving the city forever. Arthur panicked, and then..." I kept my eyes lowered and said nothing. Logically, this accident had absolutely nothing to do with me. Yet in my past life, Arthur managed to pin the blame entirely on my shoulders. Just as Aunt Sarah finished her sentence, a loud crash echoed from the hospital room. Before I could even react, Aunt Sarah and my mother sprinted inside. I followed them to take a look. Arthur had knocked his water glass off the nightstand and tumbled out of bed. He had violently ripped the bandages off his eyes and was currently reaching out, blindly grasping at the air, his eyes bloodshot and unseeing. "Arthur!" Aunt Sarah's voice cracked with heartbreak. "Get up, the floor is freezing." "You just woke up, you can't thrash around like this! You have a fractured leg, be careful!" Arthur gripped Aunt Sarah's hand like a drowning man clutching a lifeline. "Mom, what's wrong with my eyes?" "Why can't I see anything?! Why?!" Aunt Sarah's heart broke for her son. She opened her mouth several times but couldn't force the words out. She covered her mouth, sobbing silently, her shoulders shaking violently as she suppressed the sound. Unable to see where anyone was, Arthur looked around wildly, panic radiating from his blind eyes. Finally, my mother couldn't bear it anymore. She pulled me forward to help lift him back onto the bed. "Hazel? Is that Hazel?" "Tell me, what happened to me..." I shot a complex look at Aunt Sarah. Receiving her subtle nod of permission, I said: "The car crash caused your corneas to detach. You are permanently blind." Arthur froze, instantly blurting out, "Impossible." I didn't say another word. Aunt Sarah immediately stepped in to comfort him. "Don't be scared. Your father and Mr. Vance are already looking for donor corneas." "You'll get your sight back soon." Arthur, who had lived his entire life with arrogant, reckless freedom, was completely unequipped to handle this devastating blow. It took the attending doctor coming in on rounds to finally issue a stark warning: "You must take exceptional care of your eyes right now. If your condition deteriorates any further, even a donor cornea won't be viable for transplant." I smiled silently. If donor corneas were that easy to come by, Arthur wouldn't have been plotting to steal my remaining one in our past life. But wasn't this exactly what he wanted? In this life, at the very least, he would never have to look at my face again. 3 Arthur's father exhausted every connection searching for a cornea but failed repeatedly. His hair turned white in a matter of days. Unable to accept the reality of his blindness, Arthur radiated a toxic, volatile anger. Within three days of his hospitalization, the stress caused Aunt Sarah's blood pressure to spike so severely that she ended up admitted to the hospital herself. I actively avoided Arthur, which earned me a harsh lecture from my parents. "Hazel, our families have always been close. You have to step up and help out right now." Unable to find a valid excuse, I finally went to see him. The moment I stepped into his room, Arthur turned his head toward the door. "Is that you, Hazel?" I was slightly surprised, but then heard him let out a self-deprecating laugh. "I recognized your footsteps." "Why haven't you come to visit me? Do I look like a monster now?" I sat down a safe distance from his bed and replied coolly, "I've been too busy lately. Couldn't find the time." The ten years of unrequited love had been thoroughly incinerated by the psychological torture of our marriage in my past life. In this life, I was finally thinking clearly. Arthur was right. We were just neighbors. He seemed to be waiting for me to comfort him. When I remained silent, he started blindly reaching around his bed for his phone. After struggling to find it, he thrust it toward the opposite side of the bed, speaking to empty air. "Check if Chloe has called me." "I can't even unlock my screen. She must be terrified that she hasn't heard from me in days." I sighed in exasperation. "I'm over here." Arthur froze, a flash of humiliating defeat crossing his face. I took the phone and checked. Zero missed calls. I opened his texts. Their last conversation was from days ago. I glanced at him. Driven by a morbid curiosity to understand why he blamed me for his accident in my past life, I opened the chat log. "Arthur! My mom said if we're getting married, the dowry has to be a shopping mall. This is non-negotiable." "Your family is loaded, giving up two malls is nothing to you. If you're not willing to show your commitment, we're breaking up." Arthur's replies were incredibly subservient. "Let's just talk this through, okay? I promise I'll discuss it with my parents." Chloe responded with a photo of a high-speed train ticket departing in thirty minutes. "Then come find me when you've discussed it with them." Arthur begged her not to leave. Finally, she relented, but issued an ultimatum: he had exactly ten minutes to get to the station. Reading the texts, I couldn't help but sneer in disgust. They got into a fight over a dowry extortion attempt, which had absolutely nothing to do with me. Yet in my past life, simply because I was kind enough to donate my cornea to him, he projected all his rage and resentment onto me? "Well? Did she text me?" Arthur asked anxiously. I shook my head and placed the phone on his lap. "No." "Impossible!" He blindly fumbled with the phone, trying to hand it back to me. "Is it dead?" "Or maybe it broke in the crash, and it's not receiving messages?" "Hazel, go buy me a new phone, please?" Watching his desperate panic, a spark of vindictive satisfaction flared in my chest. I spoke with deliberate, retaliatory cruelty: "Chloe hasn't contacted you. Not a single time." 4 From that day forward, Arthur made me check his unread messages every single day. As the days passed, his panic became palpable. "It's been so long. Why isn't she contacting me?" "Do you think something happened to her?" I just stared at him with zero expression. But then he suddenly demanded, "Call her for me." The second the call connected, Arthur's eyes widened with hope. It was the first time he had smiled in days. "Chloe..." The voice on the other end was icy. "Why are you calling me? I told you I'd only wait ten minutes, and you never showed." "I figured that meant you agreed to break up. Stop bothering me." Arthur frantically tried to explain, "I'm sorry, Chloe! Don't hang up!" "I... I didn't mean to be late, and I definitely don't want to break up! It's just... I got into a car accident. I've been in the hospital." I stood up and walked out of the room, terrified that if she rejected him, he'd somehow find a way to blame me again. But witnessing his subservient, pathetic groveling made me finally realize: he truly did not love me. We grew up together, and I had never seen Arthur act this pathetic before. When Aunt Sarah arrived, I tracked down his attending physician. If the crash was so severe, why was the rest of his body only mildly bruised, while his eyes took the absolute worst of the impact? The doctor looked sympathetic but resigned. "When the paramedics found him, his face was covered in blood." "It turns out he had glued raised, hard plastic bedazzled decorations onto the steering wheel logo. When the airbag deployed, it essentially launched those hard objects directly into his eyes." "It's a tragic shame..." I raised an eyebrow and walked back home, the puzzle finally pieced together. In my past life, my entire heart was devoted to Arthur. It wasn't until the moments before my death, reviewing my life, that I realized how spectacularly I had ruined a winning hand. This time, I took two-thirds of my life savings and bought physical gold bars. My mother looked at me suspiciously. "Are you opening a jewelry store?" I smiled brightly and shook my head. "Just an investment for the future!" That night, my father came home looking miserable. He sighed heavily at the dinner table, his eyes constantly darting toward me. "There are simply no donor corneas available. I'm afraid Arthur might..." I met my father's gaze steadily. "You did everything you could. Even if they never find one, his family won't blame you." Both my parents snapped their heads toward me, probing cautiously. "I'm just worried you won't be able to handle it." "We know you and Arthur have been incredibly close since childhood, and as you got older..." "If you're absolutely determined to stay with him, your mother and I won't oppose it." Hearing the implication behind their words, I set down my chopsticks, my expression deadly serious. "Mom. Dad." "I don't like Arthur anymore." "It's not because he's blind. It's because he already has a girlfriend. He's not the right person for me. We're just casual friends. Neighbors." "Please, never bring this up again." My parents looked stunned for a moment, but quickly nodded in agreement. "Hazel, don't worry. Whatever you choose, we support you 100%."
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