Time Reset: Who Stole My Dad's Money?

After my dad has retired, I give him 5,000 dollars for his living expenses every month. Coupled with his monthly pension of 2,000 dollars, I thought Dad would be living a great life back in our hometown. Little do I know that the hospital calls me the next day, telling me that Dad has fainted from low blood sugar due to starvation, which leads to him getting sent to the ER. I'm stunned, to say the least. How can Dad starve to the point of getting hospitalized when he's living off 7,000 dollars per month? So, I rush back to my hometown overnight. In the ward, Dad is all skin and bones. He's lost so much weight that his cheekbones can be seen protruding. The moment he sees me entering the ward, he tries to get out of bed. "I want to get discharged! I'm not staying in the hospital! I don't have any money to get hospitalized!" I quickly stop Dad. "Dad, you get 7,000 dollars per month! Why don't you have any money at all?" He glares at me hatefully. "I don't have 7,000 dollars per month! Every month, you give me 200 dollars! You even stole my pension from me! As if I have any money to get hospitalized right now! "If not for the fact that I got up early just to rummage for junk over the past few years, I'd have died of starvation a long time ago!" Everyone in the ward turns to look at me. Meanwhile, my mind goes blank. The thing is, I do give Dad 5,000 dollars every month. I really want to explain the truth to Dad, but he's already crying about how I've kept his money for myself. He also claims that I don't care about him when he gets sick, and that I'm a total ingrate. Someone has recorded the whole outburst. Naturally, the tagline "Ungrateful Son Keeps Father's Money All to Himself" goes viral the next day. My name, my workplace, and my address are quickly dug up by the angry Internet users. Someone even goes so far to splash red paint onto my front door. Because of that, I get fired from my workplace. My landlord doesn't hesitate to kick me out as well. Feeling very dazed, I walk on the street, only to get hit by an incoming truck. When I open my eyes again, I've returned to the day I transfer the 5,000 dollars to Dad. Chapter 1 The words "Funds Successfully transferred" popped up on the screen, just like how it did in my past life. I stared at the screen for a long time. Then, I dialed Dad's number. "Dad? Did you receive the money I just transferred to you?" "Yeah, I did," he replied, his voice low and muffled. I couldn't tell how he was feeling at that moment. I pressed on. "How much did you receive?" Dad's voice turned cold. "You're the one who transferred the money to me. What's the point of asking me about it?" "I just want to know exactly how much was transferred," I replied, gripping the phone tightly in my hands. I said cautiously, "I transferred 5,000 dollars to you. Did you also receive that much?" There were at least five seconds of silence on the other end of the line. "So, that's what you mean." Dad laughed for a very long time. Finally, he said, "It's 5,000 dollars." I wanted to ask him even more, but he interrupted me and said, "I've got other things to do. Talk to you later." Then, the phone went dead. I gripped the phone in my hand, feeling a wave of unease washing over me. I tapped into my bank app and pulled out the bank transfer records over the past three years, and it was stated there that I had successfully transferred 5,000 dollars to Dad, Dan Hudson, on the 15th of every month. I had never skipped a month for that long. I also thought about going to the bank to double-check the records there, but the bank was already closed by now. So, I could only go and check there tomorrow. The next day, my phone rang as soon as I woke up. "Hello? Is this Mr. Gavin Hudson? Your father just passed out from severe hypoglycemia. Please come to the hospital as quickly as possible." My mind went completely blank. Hypoglycemia? Passed out? Things were still happening the same way as they did in my past life. "What's the matter with my father?" "He's currently out of critical condition, but things aren't looking too well for him." Then, the doctor's tone turned stern. "I'm asking you, how exactly have you been taking care of your elderly father as his son? "Do you even know just how malnourished he is? He's 5'3", and yet, he weighs only a little over 70 pounds! He's literally starving to death!" Starving to death? Those words struck me in the chest like a sledgehammer. "No, how's that even possible? I just transferred 5,000 dollars to him yesterday…" Chapter 2 "5,000 dollars?" The doctor echoed with a scoff. "This old man only had 200 bucks on him! He can't even afford the hospital deposit, and you're telling me you gave him 5,000 dollars? "Whatever. Just come over as quickly as you can." The phone went silent. I remained rooted to the ground, trembling in shock. I hurriedly took an emergency leave from work, packed up my things, and bought the first train ticket back to my hometown village. While on the train, I looked through all the transfer records on my phone, one by one. Hadn't I just transferred 5,000 dollars to Dad? Why did the doctor say that Dad only had 200 dollars on him? What had gone wrong? … I rushed to the hospital and pushed the door to the general ward open, seeing Dad there at once. He was lying on the hospital bed, his bones protruding from his thin, frail body, so skinny that he looked like a bare, dying tree branch. I couldn't believe that this was my dad. He might not have been the stockiest person I knew when I left home three years ago, but he had a healthy, rosy color to his plump cheeks, and his eyes always crinkled whenever he smiled. But now, he looked like an old man in his 70s. Yet, he was only supposed to be 53 years old! When Dad caught sight of me, he fought to get out of bed. "I want to get out of here! I'm not staying at the hospital! I don't have any money!" I hurriedly stopped him. "Dad, you get 7,000 dollars every month. How could you say that you don't have any money?" Dad glared at me with pure hatred in his eyes. "What the hell do you mean by 7,000 dollars every month? All you give me every month is just 200 dollars! You even stole all of my pension money! Where would I ever have the money to stay at the hospital? "And yet, you insisted that you gave me 5,000 dollars every month. You're just trying to feed your ego and play the hero by pretending how generous and filial you are to me! You're just lying to the whole world!" Dad's tears wouldn't stop rolling down his cheeks. "Do you even know what kind of life I'd been living for the past few years just because of your stupid ego? "I can only afford dry bread scraps and moldy cheese that I had to beg from the bakeries and go dumpster diving behind restaurants at the end of the day! "I could only barely scrape by just by collecting junk like cardboard boxes and aluminium cans and bringing them to the recycling center so that I'd have enough money to even afford the electricity bill!" I felt as though I'd just been struck by lightning, shaking in my knees. "But Dad, I really transferred 5,000 dollars to you every month! And I never touched your pension…" "And you're still lying to me like that!" Dad got even more worked up and wasn't able to stop coughing anymore. Just then, the ward door was pushed open, and my uncle, Derek Hudson, and his wife, Emily Stuart, walked in. "Dan! Dan, are you okay?" Dad leaned against Uncle Derek and cried so hard that his shoulders wouldn't stop shaking. "Derek… I've lived such a terrible life…" Uncle Derek's eyes turned red-rimmed. "I'd been asking you time and time again in the past how you were doing, and you kept telling me that you were doing fine. You said that Gav had been giving you living expenses every month, and I believed you. "But I never thought that you'd end up living a life like this!" Uncle Derek turned around and glared at me angrily. "Gavin Hudson! Your dad had been telling me how good you'd been to him all this time, and he also said that he never lacked any money every time I asked him about it! He said that you loved him very much! "But if things hadn't come to this, would your dad even have said anything about his situation at all? Don't you know how much he loves you and how strong a front he tries to keep up every time? "The only thing he could do was to bottle everything up within himself in hopes that you would finally come to your senses! But who would have thought that you'd turn out to be such an ingrate!" "But Uncle Derek! I've really been giving him 5,000 dollars every month! I never skipped a single month!" I showed him the records on my phone banking app. The screen clearly showed that I had been transferring 5,000 dollars to Dad every month for the past three years. Uncle Derek just glanced at the screen and sneered loudly. "With how advanced technology is, records like these can always be falsified. Did you really think that you'd be able to get us just by showing us a doctored screenshot like that?" Even Aunt Emily began berating me in a sarcastic tone. "You should have just said it straight that you didn't want to give your dad a single penny in the first place." Chapter 3 "What's the point of falsifying documents like this? Did you think we were all stupid and born yesterday?" Aunt Emily chided. When Dad heard what she said, the hatred in his eyes intensified. "You really are something, Gavin Hudson. How dare you falsify transfer records! You should have just told me that you didn't want to take care of me anymore instead of going to such lengths for your lies! "I don't even care if I have to continue dumpster-diving for the rest of my life. I'll just pretend I never had a son like you!" The more he spoke, the more worked up he got, and he couched so violently that he curled up into a ball. The other patients in the shared general ward began pointing their fingers at me. "This young man looks pretty decent. How could he do such a thing? Can't he see what situation his father is in right now? And yet, he's still trying to lie to them?" "Exactly. Youngsters these days don't have a single kind bone in them anymore." "I'd die from a heart attack from how angry I was if he were my son." Every word they said felt like an arrow to my heart. I inhaled deeply and suppressed the urge to fight back against them verbally. After all, in my past life, I had gotten into a huge altercation with them, and I ended up going viral online when someone posted a video of me going berserk. I was then painted as a cold-blooded incel who yelled and shouted at his own father at the hospital, and I was then horribly cyberbullied. I couldn't possibly let the same thing happen to me again in this life. I settled my emotions down and said, "Since we can't make heads or tails of this, Dad, let's go to the bank. We'll get the bank teller to check the accounts and tell us what on earth is actually going on. We'll find out the truth." Uncle Derek frowned hard. "Your dad is still sick! And you're telling him to go to the bank with you to check the accounts? Do you even have a shred of empathy in you anymore?" My chest tightened. I knew that Dad's health was in a very poor condition now, and he shouldn't be going through so much physical trouble at all, but I also knew that if we didn't get to the bottom of this, the exact same cyberbullying incident that happened in my past life was only going to happen to me again tomorrow. I gritted my teeth and looked at Dad. "Dad, don't you want to find out why you only received 200 dollars from me when I clearly transferred 5,000 dollars to you?" Dad sneered. "Sure. I'll come with you." We arrived at the bank. After explaining the situation to the bank teller, she began checking our accounts for us. The tapping on her keyboard was exceptionally loud and clear. Everyone's eyes were on her computer screen through the plexiglass. A few minutes later, the teller looked up and said, "Mr. Gavin Hudson, the system shows that you have been transferring 5,000 dollars to an account belonging to Mr. Dan Hudson monthly over the past three years without skipping a single time." "That's impossible!" Dad exclaimed out loud, grabbing hold of the counter as he took a closer look at the screen. "He transferred 5,000 dollars to me every month? Then how could I have only received 200 dollars? Where are the transfer records? Show me the transfer records!" The teller printed out a copy of the records and handed it to him through the hole in the glass. Dad snatched it from her. Uncle Derek and Aunt Emily also zeroed in for a closer look. Everything was stated clearly in the transfer records. "March 15. 5,000 dollars to Dan Hudson. Note: Dad's living expenses. "April 15. 5,000 dollars to Dan Hudson. Note: Dad's living expenses…" The same lines repeated for every month in the past three years, without a single month missing. Dad stared at the records, his voice shaky as he questioned, "But why… Why do I only have 200 dollars in my account? Where's the money? Where did the money go?" What on earth was going on? This time, Aunt Emily turned to look at me with a condescending look in her eyes. "Really, how did I not realize how capable you were in the past, Gavin Hudson? Your hacking skills are good enough that you can even fool a bank teller now? So, why are you still hoarding all the money like that?" At once, everyone's eyes turned hostile toward me. I didn't rush to explain myself. Instead, I took 1,000 dollars from my pocket and handed it over to the bank teller. "Kindly make a deposit of this 1,000 dollars into Dan Hudson's bank account." She took the money from me and began the transfer. "Transaction success," she said. I stared at her. "What's the balance?" She refreshed the page, and suddenly, her face fell. "The balance is…is still only 200 dollars." "What!" Uncle Derek rushed over to look at the number on the screen. Chapter 4 "Where's the money? Where did the money from just now go?" The bank teller refreshed the page again and again, and her forehead began beading with sweat. "The system shows that the 1,000 had indeed been deposited into Dan Hudson's account, but his balance is still showing only 200 dollars…" At this point, even Uncle Derek and Aunt Emily were beginning to panic. The teller realized that something was wrong and called her manager over. The manager rushed over and compared figures with the system for a long time. "The payer's and payee's accounts are both in normal conditions. None of them is frozen or shows any anomalies. I swear on my life and entire career that the amount was definitely deposited into the payee's account!" I inhaled deeply. "I'm calling the police." However, before I could call 911, there was a sudden thump from the back. Dad had fainted on the ground, his face as pale as a sheet. I immediately rushed over to hold him up. "Call the ambulance! Get a doctor!" The ambulance arrived soon, and the paramedics rushed up to Dad, checking his eyes and feeling for his pulse. "The patient is in shock. Get him to the hospital immediately!" … The emergency light was turned on. I sat on a bench in the hallway, trembling hard. My phone began ringing incessantly. I turned the screen on, and the first thing I noticed on my socials was that the online search was trending with news of me stealing Dad's money and Dad passing out from the knowledge of it all, just like how it happened in my past life. My full name, my job, my company, and even my home address were all doxxed and published online. There were hundreds and thousands of malicious comments throwing hate at me. "Why is he even still alive?" "How dare he steal his own dad's pension and house and force the dad to go dumpster-diving to survive? He's such an animal!" "Doxx him! People like him have no place in society!" My phone rang again. This time, it was from my landlord. "Get back here at once, Gavin Hudson! Someone just splashed red paint all over the front door! And words like 'incel' and 'rat' have been painted all over the walls! "Every neighbor has called the police on you, and management has also said that you must move out immediately! "I don't care what is going on with your family, but you'd better not be dragging me down with you! I'm not renting the place to you anymore. You will move out tonight, or else!" "But my dad's still at the hospital—" "That's your own fucking problem, not mine! If you don't move out tonight, I'm getting someone to throw out all your stuff into the streets!" The phone then went dead. Just then, the emergency room light went off, and the doctor walked out with a grave face. "The patient's condition is worsening. He's severely malnourished, and most of his organs are failing. He must undergo an operation at once, or he won't even make it through the night." "What operation?" "He needs a heart bypass, and his damaged organs must also be repaired. It will be 500,000 dollars." 500,000 dollars? My mind went blank. I opened my banking app, and I only had a balance of 200,000 dollars. This was all the savings I had. However, I was still short by 300,000 dollars. "Go and make the payment before we proceed with the surgery," the doctor said, turning to leave. I grabbed the doctor by the sleeves and begged, "Doctor, can you please perform the operation on my dad first? I promise that I will make the payment after I've managed to raise the money for it! I'll sign a guarantee!" The doctor shook his head. "No. Hospital policy states that we cannot schedule an operating room unless the fees have been paid in full." "Please…" I was about to fall to my knees to beg. The doctor just sighed and said in a low voice, "All I can do is postpone the surgery for a while for you. But only for two hours at most. If you still aren't able to raise the money in two hours, then there's really nothing that I can do." Two hours to raise 300,000 dollars? I gritted my teeth and made a call to my boss. "Sir, can you please give me a year's advance on my salary?" There was a few seconds of silence on the phone. Then, my boss replied, "You've read the things online, haven't you, Gavin?" "It's all just a misunderstanding—" "I don't care whether it was a misunderstanding or not. The company's reputation has been in shambles ever since the news broke out, and the PR team said that it's affecting our sales too much. "So, the management has decided to terminate you." "Please, sir, I promise that I will resolve this issue properly." Chapter 5 I continued, "My dad needs surgery now, and I need another 300,000 dollars. I was thinking—" "The company is not a charity, Gavin Hudson!" my boss cut in firmly. "Your things will be sent back to your address. That's that." I stared at the call ending screen on my phone and felt completely drained. I went through my contacts, calling the people I knew one by one, whether my friends, my old classmates, or my relatives. "I'm sorry, Gav, but I've been a little tight recently…" "It's not that I don't want to help you, but everyone says that you're a scammer…" "You can't even tell where your money's gone, and you're asking me to lend some more to you? Why should I trust you?" Not a single person was willing to help me. I crouched over in the hospital hallway, feeling abandoned by the entire world. 300,000 dollars. I need a whopping 300,000 dollars more. I still had one last resort—Dad's old house. His old house was located in the suburbs, and lately, there had been talks of a project development site being built there, which would greatly increase the real estate pricing for the houses and other properties already there. One of our neighbors, Julian Barber, wanted to buy Dad's house at a lowball price before the commencement of the project, but I'd been refusing it ever since. But now, I couldn't afford to wait for property prices to go up anymore. I flew out of the hospital and rushed all the way back to Dad's old house. While on the way there, I made a call to Julian. "Hello, Julian? I'll sell you the house for 300,000 dollars! But the only condition is that you must buy it in cash, and I need the cash at once!" There was a shocked silence on the phone. Then, Julian's laughter could be heard. "Sure. I'll go and get the contract now." When I reached the old house, Julian was already waiting for me there. He came up to greet me with a huge smile on his face. "Hey, Gav! You finally thought it through, huh? 300,000 is not a low price, you know?" I couldn't be bothered to waste any more time or breath on him. "Where's the contract?" "It's all here." He reached into his bag and pulled it out, handing it to me. I read through the pages and signed it in the end. Julian also signed the contract. He was smiling so hard that even his eyes were beginning to wrinkle. "I've already transferred the money to you." I felt relieved. However, when I opened my banking app on my phone and refreshed it, I realized that I still hadn't received the amount yet. I refreshed the app again, but there was still no movement whatsoever. After refreshing it a few more times and realizing that my balance was still the same, I demanded, "Where's the money!" Julian grinned and said, "I only have your dad's bank account number. Naturally, I transferred the money to his account. "After all, you're selling it to me in such a hurry, and I'm just worried that you might go back on your word. That's why I transferred it to your dad instead." I felt all the blood rush to my head at once. "You!" "Come on, it's not that big of a deal. You're both family—" I didn't bother listening to him anymore and ran out of the place. I hailed a cab to the bank. "Please check the total amount in my dad's bank balance!" The bank teller checked the account and said, "The amount is 200 dollars." "That's impossible! He just got a transfer of 300,000 dollars just now! You have to check it again!" He refreshed the page and said, "Sir, there really is only 200 dollars in the bank account." I shoved him aside and glared at his computer screen from outside the counter. "Balance: $200." I refreshed the page again and again, and the total amount on the screen remained the same. I felt my heart grow cold. I was utterly devastated. I had sold Dad's old house for his life-saving surgery! I'd done everything right, and yet, I still wasn't able to rewrite history or change the outcome. I went back home dejectedly, falling to my knees as tears surged from my eyes. I felt as though I could hear Dad's voice as he spoke to me before I left to work in the city three years ago. "Gav, make sure you take care of yourself in the city. Don't keep working overtime or staying up the whole night. "Here, take this lucky amulet with you. It'll keep you safe from harm." I gripped the amulet I'd always worn around my neck. Suddenly, a thought flashed through my head. So, that's what it was! I finally knew where all of the money had gone!