My son won an award for his college capstone project, which came with a $2,000 cash prize. He used $1,000 to buy himself a pair of limited-edition sneakers, $500 to buy his dad a tailored suit, and the remaining $500 to book a weekend getaway for his grandparents. I thought he was saving an even bigger surprise for me, waiting with a heart full of anticipation. When he noticed me waiting, he frowned and muttered, "You're just a stay-at-home mom. You've never sacrificed anything for me. What right do you have to a cut of my money?" Overhearing this, my husband looked at me with pure disgust. "Stay-at-home moms have it so easy. I've given you a wonderful life, and you have the nerve to be greedy for your son's money! You're insatiable." Later, the whole family signed up for premium health insurance policies, leaving me as the only one uninsured. They claimed that since stay-at-home moms didn't do any "real" work, I wouldn't get sick. As it turned out, out of the entire family, I was the only one who developed a critical illness from years of chronic overwork. Seeing the astronomical cost of the surgery, they immediately opted to pull the plug on my medical care. In the end, I died entirely alone in a cold hospital room. When I opened my eyes again, I had been reborn. And my son was currently screaming in my face, calling me a control freak. 1 "All you do is hover over me and control every little thing! You won't let me eat this, you won't let me drink that—you're so damn annoying! "Why don't you just go fucking die?!" My son's spit flew onto my face, snapping me out of a daze. Looking around, I was utterly shocked by the painfully familiar scene unfolding before me. I had been reborn. I was back in the year my son was in eighth grade! Because it was the final year before the crucial high school placement exams, I had drafted a rigorous study schedule for him. Today was the fifth day of that plan, and the moment he walked through the door, he exploded. He came in cursing and throwing a tantrum. I had barely asked him one question before he hurled that vicious insult at my face. He grabbed the expensive study tablet I had bought him, slammed it onto the floor, and stomped it into pieces. "To hell with English! If you care so much, go learn it yourself! Stop forcing your own pathetic dreams onto me and making me accomplish them for you, you selfish freak!" This was the third time he had thrown a violent tantrum this week. I looked at him and asked calmly, "Didn't you say you wouldn't settle for anything less than an elite prep school?" He let out a disdainful scoff. "I've been at the top of my class since middle school started. It's just a prep school; do you seriously think I can't get in?" My mother-in-law, Brenda, chimed in from the couch. "Exactly, Nora. You're way too strict with Tyler. Our Tyler is brilliant; he doesn't need to study all this extra junk. Your schedule is suffocating him. You need to reflect on your own behavior." My father-in-law, Arthur, spat a sunflower seed shell onto the coffee table and nodded in agreement. I asked them, "One hour of self-study every night, three hours of tutoring on Saturday, and taking all of Sunday off. For a student preparing for high school placement exams, is that really considered strict?" Tyler hurled his heavy backpack onto the floor. "You're a fucking control freak! You enjoy the power trip, so of course you don't think it's strict! I'm a human being, I need to breathe! Give me back my weeknights and weekends!" My husband, Mark, pushed the front door open, his brow deeply furrowed. "What's all the screaming about? I could hear you guys all the way down the hallway." He turned his gaze to me. "Nora, are you nagging Tyler again?" The entire family unanimously decided it was my fault. I remembered what happened at this exact moment in my previous life. I had desperately tried to provide evidence that if Tyler didn't put in the effort, his grades would slip. I was rewarded with nothing but eye rolls and bitter resentment from the whole family. Looking back, I realized how pathetic and ridiculous I had been. This time, I didn't get angry, and I didn't panic. I just looked at my son and asked, "So, what do you want to do?" Tyler looked at me in shock, as if he hadn't expected me to ask that. He stood frozen for a long moment before finally speaking up: "First of all, I get to eat whatever I want, and I go to sleep whenever I want. You are not allowed to manage me!" I nodded. "Okay." 2 Tyler's eyes nearly popped out of his head. In pure disbelief, he demanded, "Don't patronize me! I'm being completely serious!" Mark masked his own surprise and interjected, "Nora, this isn't the first time I've told you this. A growing boy needs more than just studying; he needs rest. You force him to bury his nose in books all day, you're going to depress him. Do you really not see that you're the problem here?" Brenda added fuel to the fire. "I've said from the start that Nora's parenting methods were toxic! Our Tyler used to be such a sweet boy, and her parenting has made his temper worse and worse. People outside the family keep asking me if there's something psychologically wrong with him and telling me to take him to a therapist!" Arthur let out a heavy grunt, angrily tossing a handful of sunflower seed shells onto the floor. He glared at me coldly. "As a mother, you cannot push a child to the brink like this! If we were living in the old days, a mother who drove her son to this point would be thrown in an asylum!" I couldn't help but laugh. I threw my hands up. "Why is everyone getting so worked up? What did I even say?" Brenda bared her teeth and spat at me, "I don't need you to say it to know you disagree with letting Tyler rest! It's not like I just met you yesterday!" I ignored her and looked back at my son. "Do you have any other demands?" Tyler glanced at his dad and grandparents, then tentatively added, "On top of those two, I want you to cancel my forty-five-minute daily screen time limit. I want to be on my phone as long as I want. If I want to game, I game. If I want to watch streams until three in the morning, you are not allowed to interfere!" I nodded again. "Done." His eyes widened even further. He immediately grabbed a pen and paper, ducked his head, and frantically scribbled down over a dozen demands. I skimmed the list. The gist of it was simple: he wanted me to completely step away from every aspect of his life. He shoved the paper toward me. "Sign it! I'll only believe you if you sign it!" I swept my gaze over my husband and my in-laws' reactions. They were all looking at me with smug expressions, fully expecting me to say "no," ready to jump in and ruthlessly criticize me the moment I did. I had lived that life for nearly ten years. Tyler was not naturally gifted at academics. A concept that another student could grasp in one minute took him half an hour to fully understand. Yet, from a young age, he was obsessed with being number one and wanted everyone to call him a genius. Since he lacked natural talent but desperately wanted the glory of getting into an elite prep school, he had to work twice as hard. In my previous life, when I realized this, I weighed my career against his future and chose him. I quit my job as a teacher, dedicating myself entirely to being a stay-at-home mom. I single-handedly dragged him from the absolute bottom of his grade to the top ten. Every single day, apart from doing chores and waiting on my in-laws hand and foot, my routine consisted of buying him study materials, making schedules, tutoring him one-on-one, solidifying his knowledge, and making sure he didn't burn out. For almost ten years, year in and year out, I did this. Though the days were monotonous and exhausting, seeing him improve made me feel it was all worth it. I swallowed his constant, unreasonable tantrums, bore the brunt of his family's baseless accusations, and successfully molded him into an Ivy League design student who even won a prestigious award for his senior thesis. And what was the result? When he stood on that stage to give his acceptance speech, he thanked everyone under the sun. He thanked himself, his dad, his grandparents, his professors, his classmates—he even thanked the stray cats on campus. But he didn't mention me once. When it came to the prize money, I was entirely excluded. After college, riding on the coattails of the stellar resume I had essentially built for him, he landed an incredible offer at a top firm. The very first month he got paid, he rented an apartment and moved out. For an entire year, he didn't even come back to visit me on holidays. Later, when the years of repressed stress and exhaustion manifested into a terminal illness, I lay in a hospital bed and begged to see him. He dragged his feet, taking half a month to finally show up. The moment he walked into my room, his face was buried in his phone, and he even chuckled at whatever he was watching. When I tried to speak to him, he cut me off impatiently. "I'm an independent adult now! Are you seriously still trying to micromanage me just for playing on my phone?" After that, the only other time he came to the hospital was when I was on the brink of death. He rushed in and immediately told the doctors to withdraw all life-saving care... Now, staring at the piece of paper in front of me, I smiled. I picked up a pen and signed my name with a fluid stroke. "From today onward, you're free, Tyler." 3 My son literally jumped for joy. He kicked his shoes off, threw his jacket on the floor, grabbed a massive bottle of Coke, and bolted into his room to boot up his gaming PC. After playing for a bit, he yelled out into the living room. "Grandma! Order me some KFC! I want fried chicken! Two whole buckets!" Brenda eagerly obliged, as always. "Okay! Whatever my precious grandson wants to eat, Grandma will order it. Unlike some people, who micromanage every bite of food that goes into their own son's mouth." As she spoke, she pulled out her phone to order the food, her eyes shooting daggers in my direction, clearly waiting for me to step in and stop her. Tyler hated exercise but loved deep-fried food. At 5'11", he was already pushing 200 pounds. He was heavily overweight, and his blood panels were all bordering on dangerous levels. I used to try desperately to help him lose weight, cooking him healthy, low-fat meals. But I couldn't stop his dad from secretly giving him allowance money to buy junk food at school. Because of that, I strictly forbade him from eating any junk food once he got home. Over this one issue alone, the family and I had fought no less than five times. Seeing that I wasn't saying anything, Brenda deliberately raised her voice to Arthur. "Old man, look! I ordered two whole buckets of fried chicken for Tyler!" Her voice was booming, as if she were terrified I wouldn't hear her. I picked up my phone and walked outside to take a call, completely ignoring her. I had sent a text earlier to an old colleague asking about job opportunities, and she was calling me back. We used to teach at the same school. Later, I quit to become a housewife, and she quit to open her own private tutoring center. A year ago, when we ran into each other and she found out I had been personally tutoring my son the whole time and hadn't really left the education sphere, she was thrilled. She practically begged me to join her company as a partner. In my previous life, I had been incredibly tempted, but the thought of Tyler needing my one-on-one attention made me refuse without hesitation. This time, I was going to reboot my life. Hearing that I was ready to join, she excitedly invited me out for dinner. I immediately grabbed my purse and got ready to leave. Seeing this, Brenda asked nervously, "It's almost six o'clock! Where are you going? Aren't you making dinner?" "I have plans." "You have plans?! You can't just leave! The whole family is waiting to eat!" Brenda scowled, her mouth gaping open like a bottomless pit. "If you have hands, cook it yourself. If you don't, then starve." Dropping that sentence, I walked right out the front door. I grabbed dinner with my old colleague, went shopping, and got my nails done. My mind and body experienced a level of relaxation I hadn't felt in years. In the past, my only thoughts were helping my son be number one and taking care of the family so my husband could focus on work. My mind was always tightly wound. The smile had long vanished from my face, replaced only by deepening wrinkles with each passing day. Tonight, doing something so simple with a friend made me feel like I had traveled back ten years in time. By the time I got home, it was almost 10:00 PM. The living room lights were blazing. Mark was sitting on the couch, his face dark as thunder, waiting for me. 4 "So you finally decided to come back?" I looked at him calmly. "I'm not lost, obviously I know how to come home." His face darkened further. He pointed at the disaster zone on the floor and yelled, "Do you see this?! Your precious son threw all this! There's sunflower seed shells trailing all the way to his bedroom door! And chip crumbs, and dirty tissues! You turned a perfectly good house into a garbage dump! "And look at the time! He ate two buckets of fried chicken before dinner, then ate an entire takeout box during dinner, and now he had his grandmother make him a huge bowl of noodles! If he keeps eating like this, he'll be over 200 pounds by tomorrow! "I'm not done! I just checked his backpack. He hasn't written a single word of his homework today! He's been playing that game since six o'clock! Is this a joke to you?" He grew more agitated the more he spoke. He turned and slapped the calendar on the wall, emphasizing, "He has midterms in ten days! And right after midterms is the parent-teacher conference! I already bragged to my coworkers that my son is a genius who always ranks in the top ten, and they're waiting for me to send them pictures from the conference! How the hell is he supposed to get top ten with this kind of studying attitude?!" I listened quietly to his rant, then let out a small laugh. "Wow, so you actually knew all of this? I assumed you were completely clueless, considering how you always accused me of being a tyrant who was driving her child insane every time I tried to discipline him." His face changed. He choked on his words for a long moment before squeezing out, "Don't play games with me! You're his mother! You know better than anyone what's good for him! Letting him do whatever he wants is absolutely not loving him!" He waved his hand dismissively, barking an order at me. "Look, I know you're just putting on a show to teach him a lesson, but time is precious. Drop the act and go rein him in!" I raised an eyebrow. "I'm not acting. Since I signed that agreement, I absolutely will not go back on my word. If you want to manage him, go right ahead. It's not like he's only my son." He puffed his chest out righteously. "I have to work and make money to provide for you!" I pulled out the employment contract I had just signed and tossed it on the table. "What a coincidence. I have a job now too. $4,000 base salary plus commission. I start tomorrow." He picked it up, skimmed it, and all the fire drained out of him. He started stammering, "Y-you're serious?" I shrugged. He hurriedly walked over, pushed me down onto the couch, and started lecturing me with faux earnestness. "Why are you doing this? You have a roof over your head and food on the table. Why do you need to go out and show your face to the world? Is the $3,000 allowance I give you every month not enough?" I sneered. "Try living on it yourself, and you'll see if it's enough." He fell silent for a moment, then pulled out his phone to show me a video of a female livestreamer. "Do you really think making $4,000 at a tutoring center is easy? What kind of 'good job' can a middle-aged married woman realistically get? They're lying to you. In the end, they just want you to do this kind of trashy, borderline-explicit livestreaming. Look at this woman—how disgusting and cheap is she? Is that what you want to become?" His words were dripping with such vile misogyny it made me sick. I glared at him coldly. "Is your brain full of actual garbage? You're filthy, so everything you look at seems filthy to you!" He scoffed, licked his lips, and tried another angle. "No, seriously, your son is at the most critical stage of his life right now. If he bombs his high school placement exams, he'll have to go to some mediocre public high school. Can a mediocre high school get him into an Ivy League? Definitely not! If he doesn't, what kind of future will he have?" I turned my head toward my son's bedroom and shouted, "Tyler! Can you get into a top prep school without my help?!" Tyler, who just happened to be walking out to use the bathroom, heard me and let out a contemptuous laugh. "You make it sound like the only reason I got top ten before was because of you. I got those grades because I'm smart! It has nothing to do with you!" Heh. Those were the exact lines his grandparents constantly fed him to stroke his ego, and he actually believed them. His IQ really was a tragedy. 5 Seeing this, Mark's face turned incredibly ugly. He had always played the role of the loving, indulgent father. He was nowhere to be found during the grueling daily grind of actual parenting, but the second Tyler got good grades, he’d rush to the parent-teacher conferences to soak up all the glory. After holding it in for a long time, he finally spat out, "Tyler, your mom is really mad." My son's face instantly darkened, and he glared at me with murderous intent. "What the fuck, are you trying to back out of the deal?!" Brenda interrupted, trying to steal my lines. "That's right! Your mom wants to back out! You've eaten enough tonight, stop eating, or she'll just nag you to death again." Look at that. The whole family knew I was right; they just didn't want to be the ones the kid hated. Tyler's rebellious streak flared up. He picked up his massive bowl of noodles and started shoveling them into his mouth right in front of my face. His cheeks puffed in and out, genuinely looking like a pig at a trough. Mark and Brenda stared at me, waiting for me to blow up. Instead, I gave a bright smile and gave my son a thumbs up. "Your dad is right. You're a growing teenager. Eat as much as you want." In that moment, I saw a flash of unprecedented panic in Mark's and Brenda's eyes. Ten days passed just like that. The midterm results were posted. Ranked 200th in his grade. A catastrophic, sheer-drop decline! The entire family was convinced I wouldn't be able to keep up the act anymore and would finally tear up the agreement.
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