They Swapped Me Away, Then Begged Me to Return Chapter 05

They Swapped Me Away, Then Begged Me to Return Chapter 05

I woke up clutching the old tablet tight in my palm, its screen dead black.

A soft breeze drifted through thin sheer curtains, sunlight spilling across the foot of an unfamiliar bed.

I sat up slowly, my body drained of all energy, the faint red bracelet indent still visible on my wrist. A glass of warm water sat on the nightstand beside me, a handwritten note tucked underneath.

[Drink water first when you wake up.]

Voices filtered in from outside the bedroom door.

“Is she awake yet?”

“Don’t rush in—Lucy’s always been a master at playing the victim.”

Lucy. Not Leah.

I flinched backward against the headboard instinctively.

A man in a muted gray button-down stepped through the door, his gaze cold and sharp. “You’re awake.”

I shrank away from him, and his brows lifted slightly at the gesture. “You’re scared of me?”

My throat felt raw and scratchy as I spoke. “Where am I?”

He studied my face for several long beats, then crossed the room to snatch a bag of mango chips off the nightstand and set it out of sight.

“You really don’t remember anything?”

I shook my head. He slid a thick stack of paperwork onto the bed in front of me.

“Your name’s Lucy. At least, that’s what everyone here calls you.”

The top page was a formal compensation notice. I scanned the lines, cold sweat breaking out across my palms instantly.

This Lucy had exploited her consulting position to steal coworkers’ project blueprints, pushed rival employees out of the company, and siphoned client payment funds straight into her personal bank account.

Pages upon pages of witness signatures filled the rest of the file.

My throat constricted tight. “I didn’t do any of this.”

He didn’t snap or yell at me right away. He just kept his eyes fixed on mine.

“Every time she got caught messing up, she said the exact same thing.”

I dropped my gaze and held out my wrist to show him the faded hives and the bracelet mark. “I just switched over from a parallel world. My family traded me away for the other version of me.”

The room fell silent. A woman’s voice rang out from the hallway then.

“I told you she wasn’t the real Lucy.”

A girl with short cropped hair darted into the room. When she spotted the leftover rash on the back of my hand, her eyes welled up instantly.

“Lucy never once apologized for anything she did.” She knelt down beside the bed and spoke softly. “What’s your real name?”

“Leah.”

The short-haired girl froze for a split second, then pressed a steaming bowl of soup into my hands. “Eat something first.”

I stared down at the soup—shredded chicken and chopped leafy greens mixed into the broth, warm steam curling up into my face.

Tears plopped straight into the bowl, and I couldn’t hold them back any longer.

The man lingered by the window, quiet for a long time before he spoke again. “My name’s Dylan. If you’re truly not her… You can stay here. We’ll sort through every mess she left behind together.”

I ate slowly, each spoonful warming my empty stomach bit by bit.

The girl introduced herself as Tessa, Lucy’s former roommate. She explained that exactly a year prior, Lucy had undergone a drastic personality shift—suddenly able to predict industry trends, get exclusive access to unreleased design drafts, and leak other people’s private secrets to climb the corporate ladder.

“She was brilliant at everything she touched,” Tessa mumbled, staring at her shoes. “But every single thing she took credit for never belonged to her.”

My spoon froze mid-air. Dylan noticed my hands trembling and pushed the window closed to block the cold draft.

“Don’t be afraid. We won’t condemn you just because you share her face.”

His words were quiet, barely above a whisper. I clutched the warm bowl tight, my throat stuffed full of emotion.

I’d thought I’d been dumped into another endless nightmare, but the very first people I met here had told me I could stay.

In that moment, I knew I never wanted to go back to my old world again.