The Past Life of the Bad Boy Riley

As mentioned briefly before.

Before his time travel, Riley was a frontline narcotics officer.

But what Riley never mentioned was...

Before traveling through time, Riley had a warm childhood, just like the Riley Parker in this universe.

Although Riley doesn't seem to have ever met her father since she can remember, only her mother was by her side.

But Riley's mother was a great woman.

She did everything she could to raise Riley.

To prevent Riley from developing personality flaws due to a lack of paternal love during his childhood, his parents poured double the effort and love into his upbringing.

It can be said that Riley's childhood was the most beautiful and precious memory in her past life.

Until that unexpected event occurred...

As usual, after returning home from school, I was excitedly waiting to put on a paper crown and wait for my mother to bring out the cake so we could blow out the candles and celebrate growing another year older.

Just then, the tightly closed door made an untimely noise.

At first, Riley assumed they were just friends of her mother's who had come to celebrate her birthday and didn't think much of it.

After getting up and peeking through the peephole, Mom quickly returned to Riley's side. Taking Riley's hand and smiling, she said she wanted to play hide-and-seek before blowing out the candles. Riley could only come out and look for her after counting from one to one thousand.

After she finished speaking, Mom tapped and knocked on the wall, and in the seemingly perfectly sealed wall, she opened a small hidden door.

This excited young Riley, who thought it was a secret hideout her mother had prepared especially for her birthday. Before her mother could finish speaking, she excitedly crawled inside.

He didn't notice how reluctant and guilty his mother was looking at his back.

After that...

Because he was still young, Riley struggled to count from one to one thousand, and it took him a very long time.

Many times, Riley, feeling increasingly scared and bored because it was dark and cramped inside and she couldn't hear anything, wanted to simply stop counting and go out to find her mother.

However, thanks to his mother's good upbringing, Riley believed that as a little man, he should keep his promises and not cheat, so he persevered.

When Riley counted to 372, he vaguely felt that he could smell the diesel fuel that was emitted when Uncle Li next door used his chainsaw to cut down trees on the mountain.

When he counted to 509, it was as if he had been there too long and was having a psychological illusion; Riley felt that the place was getting hotter and hotter. Even though he was only wearing a short-sleeved shirt and shorts, he was sweating profusely.

As I kept counting, it was probably because I kept counting numbers, which was really hypnotic.

Before he could count to one thousand, Riley fell into a deep sleep.

In his dream, he saw his mother smiling and waving at him.

Moreover, there was another stranger by her mother's side. She didn't have much of an impression of him, but she felt he was very important, and Riley liked him at first sight.

But when Riley tried to get to them, he found that no matter how fast he ran, the distance between them didn't shorten; instead, it got farther and farther away.

Even her mother, who had always doted on her, seemed like a different person. After waving for Riley to turn around, she took the hand of the man beside her and left on her own.

This startled Riley awake.

But what came into view was no longer that strange, dark, small, and narrow interlayer.

Instead, it was a spacious and bright hospital, but filled with a strange medicinal smell, which always made Riley feel resistant to it from the bottom of his heart.

Riley had no idea how she, who was playing hide-and-seek with her mother at home, ended up in this place.

I don't know why I was wrapped up like a mummy and was in so much pain all over my body.

All I remember is that after I woke up, an uncle I had never met before was so excited, like a child, that he rushed out of the ward and summoned a whole bunch of people.

After that, Riley and her mother's game of hide-and-seek ended.

Riley, who is good at playing games, easily found her mother.

However, just like in the dream, Mom became very stingy.

He was so stingy that he hid in a small, heavy, and ugly box. No matter how much Riley begged or cried, he refused to come out and meet Riley.

Riley really thought it was so strange back then...

How did my own mother, who is so tall, manage to hide in this little box?

However, when she thought of her mother, who was an all-powerful superwoman who could handle anything, she felt a pang of sadness.

Hiding in this little box doesn't seem like such a problem anymore...

Perhaps Riley fell asleep before counting to one thousand while playing hide-and-seek, which angered his mother, who then hid inside and refused to see him.

Thinking about it this way, Riley felt that she had really gone too far by not keeping her promise to her mother.

After that, Riley grew from an ignorant child into an independent little adult.

Even if her mother kept hiding and refused to see her, Riley was able to eat well and grow up well on her own.

Moreover, Riley was surrounded by many more serious and unfamiliar uncles whom she had met at the hospital that day.

They will take the place of the stingy mother and stay by Riley's side, carefully nurturing her as she grows up.

Riley had always thought that his uncles were all nice guys who would never get angry.

Until Riley, after transferring schools, came home one day with her head hanging low, covered in dirty shoe prints and sewage stains.

The uncles, who were always so kind and gentle to Riley, suddenly turned into furious beasts.

They found a wet, dead mouse in Riley's schoolbag.

When you lift Riley's clothes, you can see bruises and welts.

The uncles, their faces growing increasingly ashen and grim, stared intently at Riley with murderous glares, their teeth clenched, looking particularly frightening.

From that day on, Riley never had those dirty shoe prints and sewage stains on him again.

The bad kids who used to mock Riley, saying that Riley's mother abandoned her because Riley was disobedient and too ugly, suddenly transferred schools and left one by one.

The teacher who thought Riley's scars would frighten the other students, and who deliberately arranged for Riley to sit alone in a corner near the trash can, and who always spoke sarcastically to Riley, also seemed to have disappeared.

And so, time passed day by day.

In the blink of an eye, the little boy who was once covered in scars has gradually grown into a tall and strong young man.

So, it's perfectly normal for boys to go through a rebellious phase as they grow up, right?

So, Riley secretly changed his college application to the police academy, which his uncles had all attended, without telling them.

On the day of the graduation exercise, he even deviated from the planned exercise area and sneaked into the back mountain alone. He hid on a secluded animal trail and waited there for a day and a night.

When the fierce-looking uncles came looking for them in a menacing manner.

Riley, covered in red stains, still couldn't find the prop that the examiner had placed beforehand to indicate that he had passed the test.

I only managed to collect a dozen or so cute bear plush toys, which were all stained with dark black dirt.

And after roughly gutting the doll, packets of small white powder were found inside the cotton balls stuffed into the doll's belly.

There were also several strange men, the owners of the dolls, whose limbs had been cruelly broken, lying next to Riley, emitting screams like pigs being slaughtered.

So it turns out, Riley wasn't a good kid at all.

He never told anyone...

The secret compartment where Riley crawled into her mother's house actually had a tiny, tiny gap. This allowed Riley to witness firsthand how her all-powerful Supergirl mother, with the help of the strange uncles who had come to visit and removed the dilapidated door, used her magic to split herself into tiny pieces.

So even before Riley had counted to a thousand, he already knew why his mother had hidden in that little box.

This is cheating.

That's why, for so many years, her mother has refused to see Riley or hug him anymore. Listen to Riley tell her firsthand how much he misses her every single day and night.

It's all Riley's fault.

So, Riley has kept this secret all these years, trying his best to be a good boy in everyone's eyes.

But now, having grown stronger and made such a serious mistake, Riley, revealing his bad-boy nature, can only end up like the villains in TV dramas...

He inherited the "scumbag" label of "abandoning his wife and children." From now on, he's exiled to the frontier, enduring the daily torment of being bitten by mosquitoes.

Until this day, Riley, whose body gradually became heavy and who could no longer feel his hands and feet, was roughly stuffed into a black plastic bag and thrown into a swamp deep in the jungle like a piece of trash that was despised.

See, I told you bad kids would get their comeuppance.

He lied to his "friends," deceived their feelings, betrayed their trust, and sold out their whereabouts. When his "friends" finally discovered they had been fooled, they tortured him with the most vicious methods. Until Riley's throat was shattered, unable to utter a sound, and his body was twisted beyond recognition, he was abandoned and buried there, becoming one of the fertilizers for this land.

In a daze, Riley finally met his end. Just like the previous guy, who had Riley's number but whom Riley had no recollection of—not even what he looked like—he was a complete jerk.

It seems that after all these years, Riley, who inherited this number, has transformed from a well-behaved and obedient boy into a scumbag full of lies.

However, Riley was different from him in one way.

Nobody respects this foul-mouthed, unemployed, and troublemaking brat. He even dreams about how to betray his friends.

Aside from fearing that his uncles, who had taken care of him, would be unhappy that Riley couldn't come home for the Lunar New Year again, Riley was carefree, all alone, and perfectly content as a bachelor.

This means that the serial number, which was passed from one "scumbag" to another "little scumbag," will be sealed away forever as Riley falls asleep.

Of course, this time, the grown-up Riley counted to one thousand very seriously...

So, after fulfilling this promise that was many years overdue, Riley fell into a deep sleep with a great sense of relief, finally able to get some rest.

Shortly afterward, several armored vehicles roared past the swamp where Riley lay in slumber.

Before long, the sounds of gunfire and artillery booming echoed throughout the land.

Because of Riley's betrayal, the "friends" didn't have time to escape and were all captured.

From now on, there will never be another "Riley" who follows in the footsteps of this bad kid.

So...

Goodnight, Riley.

May you be reunited with the one you miss in your dreams.

May you wake up to a completely new and different life.