Chapter 2: Remembering Glory

It takes me a moment to realize I’m on the audition set for "Spring Song."

And that I’ve been given a second chance.

For a while, I’m lost—why was I brought back?

To be honest, my previous life was so perfect, I couldn’t think of any regrets.

In my career, I was a dazzling actress, even winning the Oscar Lifetime Achievement Award.

At home, though we were a DINK couple—double income, no kids—by choice, not by accident—I had a husband who loved me more than anything in the world: Matthew Carter.

We met because of "Spring Song," two nobodies in the film industry who rose together to the very top.

Everyone said we were a legendary pair: genius matched with genius, an immortal love story in Hollywood.

If there was one regret, it was that we worked too hard when we were young, and Matthew passed away at sixty.

Before he died, he held my hand and told me, "You were my muse for a lifetime."

I broke down, holding his hand tightly: "If there’s a next life, I still want to love you."

Matthew smiled, then closed his eyes forever.

Not long after he died, I too passed away, overwhelmed by grief.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back here—

This year, I’m nineteen, a sophomore at the Savannah School of the Arts, about to make my official debut as the female lead in "Spring Song"—the start of a dazzling career.

I still don’t know why I was given this second chance, but after calming down, I accept it easily.

Such a happy life—why not live it again?

The hum of fluorescent lights mixes with the faint scent of coffee and old carpeting on set, grounding me in this new-old reality. Someone’s cheap perfume mixes with the metallic tang of old camera gear. My sneakers squeak on the waxed floor. My hands tingle, not from nerves but from the memory of everything I once achieved, and lost.

"He’s coming, he’s coming! Director Carter is here!"

"He’s here to announce the audition results!"

Someone shouts, and the bustling set falls silent in an instant.

I look up, my gaze fixed on the young man approaching.

A faint breeze from the swinging studio doors brushes my hair. Everyone stands at attention, clutching headshots, trying not to fidget. The tension is thick—almost like the air before a summer storm in Georgia.