Author: Momo Chan

1 My fiancé asked the girl who used to bully me to be my bridesmaid. He said, “Tina knows she was wrong. Letting her be your bridesmaid can count as her apology.” I lowered my head and stared at the little burn scars on my wrist, the ones left by cigarette butts. Then I nodded. And turned around to invite Nathan’s worst enemies to be his groomsmen. The wedding was getting close, but I still didn’t have bridesmaids. The few close friends I had were either overseas or already married with kids. Just as I was wondering whether I should hire professional bridesmaids, Nathan said he had the perfect candidate. Tina Walsh. When I heard that name, my heart clenched hard. It sounded so sharp in my ears that I instinctively asked, “Which Tina Walsh?” Nathan sounded casual. “The one from our high school. You forgot?” “She started working as a receptionist at our company a few days ago. When she heard we were getting married, she asked if you still needed a bridesmaid.” Old memories rushed back at once. Cockroaches in my desk. Hair in my thermos. Water poured all over my bedding. Scene after scene surged into my mind. My stomach turned. I bit down hard on my lower lip to swallow the nausea. I looked at Nathan through clenched teeth. “You know I’m not on good terms with her. And you still want her to be my bridesmaid?” “Are you trying to disgust me?” Nathan and I had been in the same class in high school. He knew exactly what Tina meant to me. I transferred there in sophomore year. In my first monthly exam, I placed first in class. My total score beat the original first-place student by more than twenty points. That student was Tina. She was not happy. At first, she made sarcastic comments and encouraged the other girls to isolate me. Then she began bullying me outright. She threw cockroaches under my desk and laughed when I screamed. She spat in my thermos and dropped hair and nail clippings inside, giving me a lifelong disgust toward thermoses. Once, she poured water over my bedding. I cried and reported it to the dorm supervisor. The next day, Tina was called to the office. That night, she blocked me in the bathroom. She brought several girls with her. They pressed lit cigarette butts into my wrist, leaving blisters that scarred over and never fully faded. Nathan knew all of this. Back then, he protected me. When Tina bullied me, he would stand up for me. When everyone isolated me, he ignored their strange looks and talked to me anyway. Yet now, he was saying Tina should be my bridesmaid. Seeing my anger, Nathan sat beside me and pulled me into his arms. “Gia, it’s been so many years. Don’t keep holding onto it.” “We were all young back then. Nobody understood these things. She knows she was wrong now.” “She’s coming to be your bridesmaid as an apology. Isn’t that enough?” “Be the bigger person, okay?” “Do it for me.” Hearing the person I loved most ask me to forgive the person who had tormented me, hearing him comfort me by telling me to be generous, made me feel sick. He suddenly felt like a stranger. I shoved Nathan away. “Nathan, even if I have no bridesmaids, I will not let Tina Walsh stand beside me.” If she became my bridesmaid, this marriage would sooner or later end. Seeing that I wouldn’t listen, Nathan got angry too. “Gia Morgan, I’m doing this for your own good. Don’t reject help when it’s handed to you.” “If you had friends around you and could find bridesmaids, would I need to help?” “I found someone for you, and now you’re picky? People like you deserve not to have friends.” After saying that, he grabbed his jacket from the sofa and slammed the door behind him. 2 Watching Nathan leave, I felt my chest clog with pain. Nathan knew everything. My fears. My grievances. My resentment. Every single thing. He knew. Our homeroom teacher in high school was a woman in her forties. When it came to bullying between girls, she always turned a blind eye. As long as the bully had good grades and things didn’t get too big, she pretended not to know. I went to her more than once to report Tina. She didn’t even lift her eyelids. “Tina is only joking with you. Don’t be so petty. Learn to take a joke.” I told my parents. They only said, “Why don’t they bully other people? Why only you? You should reflect on yourself.” No one believed me. No one stood on my side. Being so helpless back then made me afraid of getting close to people even now. I thought Nathan would stand beside me for the rest of my life. But now, even he said I deserved it. Nathan came home around noon the next day. I was cooking in the kitchen when the front door opened. Laughter floated in from outside. Nathan said, “Gia, look who’s here.” I looked out and saw Tina’s smiling face. She was holding a carton of milk. When she saw me, she greeted me warmly. “Gia, long time no see.” Seeing that face I had hated for ten years, my hand holding the spatula began to tremble. Nathan had actually brought her into our home. Tina sat on the sofa. Nathan poured her water, then came into the kitchen. He said, “Gia, I invited Tina over for lunch today. Whatever misunderstandings you two had, just talk them out.” “You don’t have many friends here. Tina was our high school classmate, and she works at my company now. We can all hang out together when we have time.” “All you do is stay home and write. You barely know how to socialize anymore.” I was so angry my teeth clenched. “Nathan Carter, are you sick?” “You know I hate her most, and you still brought her here. Are you doing this on purpose?” “Gia, don’t be angry. There must be misunderstandings between you two. Once you clear them up, it’ll be fine.” He untied my apron. “How about this? I’ll cook. You go out and chat with her. She really isn’t the same as before. Trust me.” Maybe the memories were too heavy. Just seeing Tina’s face triggered me. I would always remember the smile on her face as she pressed a lit cigarette into the back of my wrist. “Gia Morgan, don’t you love tattling? Go on. Keep tattling.” “Lift your wrist and show everyone. Tell them I bullied you.” She raised her brows and met my eyes. “Go ahead. See if the Ice Witch punishes me.” Tina had always been our homeroom teacher’s favorite student. Her English grades were always first in the year. Why would the teacher punish her over such a small thing? Even if I told the teacher, I would only hear, “She was just joking.” Nathan half-pushed me out of the kitchen and sat me beside Tina. The moment I sat down, my whole body felt wrong. I still hated Tina. Very, very much. So much I wanted to tear her apart. Nathan went into the kitchen to cook. Only Tina and I were left in the living room. Tina held her cup and chatted with me. “I can’t believe you and Nathan are getting married. Time really flies.” “In high school, I already thought something was going on between you two. Nobody believed you’d actually end up together, but I said you definitely would.” “I heard you started dating in college. That’s eight or nine years now, right?” “School sweethearts. So romantic.” After saying that, she looked almost nostalgic. I said nothing, head lowered, thumb scrolling across my phone. There was nothing for Tina and me to talk about. What would we discuss? How she bullied me in high school? Seeing me silent, Tina continued. “I want to apologize for what happened before. We were young and ignorant back then. I didn’t know right from wrong.” “But seeing you now, I’m happy for you.” “Nathan said you still haven’t found bridesmaids. I’m free that day. I can be one.” “No need.” I looked up at Tina, my tone firm. The air went awkward for a moment. Tina laughed dryly and took a few sips of water. 3 Dinner was ready soon. Nathan brought dish after dish to the table. They were all foods I liked. Four dishes and a soup. Very generous. During dinner, Nathan kept trying to create conversation. He talked about our college years, their company, the wedding, the future. Then he said, “Gia, it’s been so many years. Stop clinging to old grudges. People will laugh if they see you like this.” “How about this? I’ll make the decision today. You two drink this, and all past grievances are erased. How does that sound?” Tina immediately lifted her glass and held it in front of me. “Gia, I was ignorant before. I apologize.” “I’ll be your bridesmaid. You can order me to do anything at the wedding. Consider it my apology.” Under the table, Nathan kicked my leg and gave me frantic looks. In his eyes, Tina had already made the biggest concession. I should know better. One drink, and we would smile away the past. I slowly picked up the glass on the table and lightly clinked it against Tina’s. Then I drank it all. “Good,” Nathan immediately clapped. “That’s more like it.” “Then it’s settled. Tina will be your bridesmaid.” Tina said, “Bridesmaids are usually in even numbers, right? Quinn is free that day too. I’ll call her.” Quinn had been Tina’s little follower, one of the girls who bullied me alongside her. Nathan immediately praised Tina for being thoughtful, then said to me, “See? Just like that, the bridesmaid problem is solved.” I lowered my head and looked at the scars on my wrist. Ten years had passed, and they were still there. The marks were faint now, but no matter how faint, they proved that cigarette butts had once burned my skin. I nodded. “Fine.” Nathan and Tina smiled at each other, as if finally relieved. Soon, the wedding day arrived. The bride was about to go onstage, but Tina and Quinn still hadn’t arrived. Nathan looked at me apologetically. He had called Tina more than ten times. No answer. Only just now had Tina finally picked up, saying she overslept and was rushing over. Where we lived, bridesmaids played a very important role in weddings. When the bride went onstage, bridesmaids had to follow beside her. During the toasts, they helped carry things. Without bridesmaids, not only would things be inconvenient, the bride would also be laughed at. After all, having no bridesmaids meant the bride had poor relationships. People would imagine all kinds of strange stories. “Gia, wait a little longer. Tina already left. She’ll be here soon.” I smiled. “It’s fine. I found bridesmaids a long time ago.” Two bridesmaids in matching dresses came out of the dressing room. They were professional bridesmaids I had hired long ago. They had attended more than a dozen weddings and were very familiar with the process. Seeing the two bridesmaids behind me, Nathan froze. The apology on his face instantly sank. “Gia, if you found two more bridesmaids, then you’ll have four bridesmaids.” “I only have two groomsmen.” “That’s why I found two more groomsmen for you too.” As I spoke, two of Nathan’s former colleagues, Ryan Wells and Sean Brooks, stepped out in groomsmen suits. They walked to Nathan’s side and hooked their arms around his shoulders. “Nathan, that’s not cool. You’re getting married and didn’t even tell us?” “If your wife hadn’t called, we wouldn’t have known today was your wedding.” The moment Nathan saw them, his face darkened.

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1 When we were kidnapped, the kidnappers told my parents to choose one of us. They chose my younger sister. I was locked in a sealed shipping container for twenty-four hours and developed severe claustrophobia. After I was rescued, my parents were consumed by guilt. From then on, the lights in our house were never turned off. To ease my fear, my mother quit her job and slept beside me every night. She was even afraid my sister would trigger me, so she sent her to the countryside and did not bring her back until she started high school. But on the day of my sister’s school admission banquet, they wanted to turn off the lights to surprise her. Panic rose in me. “Mom, I’m scared of the dark. Can I go back to my room?” My mother suddenly broke down. Her face twisted with anger. She grabbed my wrist hard and threw me into the bedroom. “Scared of the dark? How many years has it been? You’re still scared of the dark? Will you die if the lights are off for a few minutes?” “Hasn’t your sister paid enough? Today is her banquet. What else do you want? Will you only be satisfied if she stays in the countryside forever?” I shook my head in terror, wanting to say I had never hated my sister. But my mother had already slammed the door shut, cutting off my voice. In the darkness, my breathing turned rapid. My trembling hand reached for the light switch. Click. The switch sounded. But the room remained pitch black. My eyes widened in the dark. My hand kept pressing the switch again and again. Click. Click. Still, no light came. The black space around me seemed ready to swallow me whole. My breathing grew frantic. Why? Why wasn’t the light turning on? Was there a power outage? I searched my clothes and realized my phone was still in the living room. There was not a single source of light in the room. “Mom! Mommy!” I cried out twice in terror, but my voice suddenly stopped. I remembered the last time the power went out at home. My whole family had found every usable candle and flashlight and stayed beside me. My mother had held me gently in her arms, patting my back over and over. “Celine, my sweet Celine, don’t be afraid. There won’t be bad people again. Mom and Dad will always stay by your side.” But just a moment ago, the gentleness that once filled her face was gone. She had looked tortured and furious. Maybe I should learn to be independent. I shouldn’t trouble Mom anymore. I could not trouble her anymore. Even so, facing the darkness in front of me, my whole body still shook. My blood seemed to turn cold inch by inch. The scene from ten years ago remained painfully vivid. After my parents exchanged the ransom for my sister, the kidnappers originally wanted to get rid of me at once. Then the police arrived. In their panic, the kidnappers stuffed me into a box in the cellar and fled. They had drugged me. I couldn’t move. I didn’t even have the strength to scream. Children are already afraid of the dark, let alone in a sealed, damp space like that. My empty stomach burned after a day and a night without food. I breathed in tiny sips, feeling the air grow thinner and thinner. Would the oxygen run out? I was so terrified I barely dared to breathe loudly. Tears kept falling. I heard the rustling of rats moving near me. Some unknown insect crawled onto my ear. Fear froze my entire body. I prayed for it to leave, begged silently for it to get off me. But it crawled into my collar instead, cold and slick against my spine. “So scary… so scary…” I cried and muttered to myself. In the darkness, my hollow eyes stared into nothing. My consciousness sank into chaos. Now, I was trapped in complete darkness again. This time, there were no terrifying insects. No damp, suffocating cellar. No oxygen running out. But I was still so scared I could barely breathe. My eyes fixed ahead. That was where the curtains were. If I opened them, would moonlight come in? Using all my strength, I pushed up my limp body and stumbled to the window. But heaven had not heard my prayers. Outside, there was only more darkness. It was cloudy tonight. I pressed myself against the window, head lowered, looking at the ground below as my mind grew heavy. My parents had wanted to give me as much sunlight as possible. Across from my room was an entire beautiful garden. During the day, sunlight would pour through this huge glass window and brighten the space before it. I loved sitting on the garden swing to bask in the sun. Now that night had fallen, I seemed to see the garden’s beautiful scenery anyway. My body couldn’t help leaning forward. Light. If I moved just one more step forward, would I see light? With that thought, I finally leaned my whole body out. 2 Thud. It hurt. It hurt so much. I gasped weakly. The smell of blood mixed with damp earth filled my nose. The back of my head was wet. When I fell, my skull struck one of the decorative landscape stones. A sharp edge had cut into the back of my head. “Mom…” My voice was faint. I wanted to call for someone. Suddenly, a room upstairs lit up again. That small light pulled at my fading awareness. I knew I should call for help now. Otherwise… maybe I would die. But as that room lit up, I heard faint cheers. Then came the sound of several people singing a birthday song together. Mom was there. Dad was there. My sister’s moved sobs were mixed in. They sounded so happy. How long had it been since I had seen my parents so happy? After I was rescued, I spent three whole months trapped in my own world. I feared everything around me and every unfamiliar person who came close. Because of that, my mother quit her job and slept beside me every night. Every night, the lights stayed on. During the days when I screamed constantly, my parents made a decision. They sent my sister, Ava, to the countryside. That night, my mother held me, her eyes full of pain and determination. “Celine, we wronged you. Back then, we chose your sister. Now we can’t let her stay at home and trigger you.” “Sending Ava to the countryside is our joint decision. It’s what she should do. She needs to atone.” At that time, my mind was too broken to understand what it meant. I only burrowed deeper into her arms, trying to absorb a little warmth. Later, I gradually became clearheaded again. The first thing I wanted was to bring Ava home. What happened back then was not her fault. But my parents refused to listen. “Celine, this is what your sister owes you. Don’t bring it up again.” “She owes you a life. So what if she studies in the countryside? Your grandparents will take good care of her.” I wanted to speak again. I wanted to say it had nothing to do with Ava. But the moment I opened my mouth, I had to think of the kidnappers, and my voice got stuck in my throat. Later, I discovered Dad often secretly went to the countryside. The company was family-owned, yet Monday through Friday, Dad told me he had to go to work. Then I overheard Mom on the phone. Her tone was full of regret. “I want to see Ava too. She was so little when she went to the countryside alone. How could I not worry?” “Next time you go, I’ll say I’m buying groceries and go with you. I feel awful when I can’t see her. She was so young when she was kidnapped too. Even though we rescued her, she was frightened badly.” “Sigh… but in the end, we owe Celine.” So on the days Dad claimed to be working, he actually drove two hours to the countryside to spend time with Ava. No wonder Dad was busy until nine every night. Thinking of Dad’s exhausted face from traveling back and forth, and the sorrow in Mom’s eyes whenever Ava was mentioned, I suddenly didn’t want to call for help. Today was Ava’s banquet. They were finally so happy. Was I supposed to disturb them again? Instead of caring for a useless person like me, someone with a psychological illness, they were better off with a healthy, normal daughter like Ava. I silently closed my mouth. My eyes stayed fixed on the lit room as my body grew colder and colder. The light in my eyes slowly faded. 3 Suddenly, I felt light. My vision lifted. The dark world became clear before me. I looked down at my body below and realized that I had died. So people really did become spirits after death. I floated and drifted through the wall, entering Ava’s room. My parents had prepared a school admission celebration for her, and it was now near the end. They were happily cutting cake, their faces more relaxed than I had ever seen. In front of Ava, my parents did not have to be cautious. They did not have to worry about her emotions every second. My usually composed father had been smeared with cream by Ava, but he only smiled indulgently. My mother watched everything gently, her eyes full of happiness. Compared to their time with me, this looked more like a real family. Looking at the scene before me, my now weightless body suddenly filled with sour pain. My mother’s smile paused. As if remembering something, she picked up a slice of cake and pushed the door open. Curious, I followed her. She came to my room. She knocked twice. No answer. Her brows tightened. She did not call me “Celine” affectionately this time. She called my full name. “Celine Hale, today is the day your sister comes home. I’ve thought about it. We can’t keep indulging you.” “Tonight, I won’t sleep with you.” She bit her lip, expression firm. “The whole family has accommodated your illness, but this can’t go on forever. You need to learn independence. Tomorrow, I’ll go back to the company. I won’t stay with you every day anymore.” After saying that, she took a deep breath. “Don’t blame me either. Even if your sister owed you, she has paid enough all these years.” She placed the cake at the door and left. I crouched there and looked at the slice of cake. A pretty strawberry sat on top. It looked delicious. What a pity. I could no longer eat it. I returned to Ava’s room. It was late. My parents looked tired, but their joy and relief were impossible to hide. My mother gently held Ava in her arms, tears glimmering. “Ava, from now on, Mom won’t leave you alone again.” In the years she spent with me, my mother had said the same thing to me countless times. Now, she held Ava and said it again. Maybe in her heart, leaving me to face the kidnappers and sending Ava away to the countryside were the same kind of sin. That was why she had refused to bring Ava back. It was the atonement she had decided on. Now, she believed Ava’s punishment was over. Ava’s eyes reddened. She hugged Mom gently. “Mom… can you sleep with me tonight?” My mother agreed at once without hesitation. My father looked confused. “What about Celine… won’t she be afraid?” My mother said coldly, “Don’t worry. I already talked to her. From now on, I won’t sleep with her anymore. She was being stubborn too, didn’t say a word to me. After all these years, she should overcome her fear.” Seeing that, Dad couldn’t say more. My heart ached dully. Mom, I wasn’t being stubborn. I just couldn’t answer you anymore. If you wanted me to be independent, as long as the lights were on, I could have stayed alone. Unfortunately, I no longer had that chance. The next morning, I watched my parents and Ava sit at the dining table. The atmosphere was tense and oppressive. 4 After a long silence, Ava spoke. “Should we call my sister to get up? She hasn’t eaten anything since last night…” “Hmph. This is all because we spoiled her.” My mother slammed her chopsticks onto the table, her face angry. “The first day you came home, she refused to come down to eat. Is she trying to teach you a lesson?” “In my opinion, you’ve long since repaid what you owed her. If she insists on being unreasonable, then let her starve.” After saying that, my mother picked up her chopsticks first. Dad and Ava couldn’t say anything, so they silently began eating. I watched from the side, my heart aching. Mom, don’t worry. From now on, you will no longer have this disobedient daughter. You won’t have to worry about me anymore. Though my mother had spoken harshly, after Dad sent Ava to school, she still stood and came to my room. This time, after knocking with no answer, she opened my door. The curtains swayed. The room was dim, with no lights on. My mother froze. “Celine… you didn’t turn on the lights?” I looked at her expectantly from the side, hoping she would realize something was wrong and collect my body. The back garden was full of plants. If she didn’t find me soon, many terrifying insects might crawl onto my body. Because of the kidnapping, I was terrified of insects. I didn’t want my corpse to be defiled by them. But my mother didn’t notice anything wrong. Instead, she looked delighted. “Celine, see? You can overcome the dark. We spoiled you too much. After sleeping alone once, you realize darkness isn’t that big a deal.” She came over happily and sat by my bed. Looking at the raised blanket, she couldn’t help sighing. “You. Still being stubborn, still refusing to answer Mom.” After saying that, she lifted a corner of the blanket. At last, she realized there was no one in the bed. Mom froze, then panic filled her face. Since the kidnapping, she had quit her job and stayed beside me day and night. Because of fear and avoidance, I had not stepped out of the house once. Seeing me gone, Mom finally sensed something was wrong. She searched everywhere in a panic, even opening the wardrobe. But I wasn’t there. Nowhere. After searching the whole villa from top to bottom, my mother’s expression became frantic. Then she suddenly exhaled. “I was too anxious. How could I forget? Celine must be on the garden swing. The sun is so good today, and she loves sunbathing.” Yet her steps grew faster and faster. A strange panic rose in her heart. The words she said were only to comfort herself. “Celine! Celine!” My mother called loudly, desperately hoping I would answer. Even though she had expected it, when she saw the empty swing, her eyes still reddened. “Celine… where did you go? Mom can’t find you.” For years, she cared for me, stayed with me, and let me withdraw from the normal world, placing me inside a private Eden at home. She allowed me to hide and kept me under her wings. Though she had grown tired of caring for me, now that I had left her first, she panicked. Her calls gradually turned tearful. She looked around, tears blurring her vision. Suddenly, her foot stepped into something sticky. Mom looked down. Dark brown blood had dried along the stone path. Her vision swayed. She staggered and fell to her knees. She pulled aside the bushes. My body was there, back turned toward her, eyes still staring at the distant window.

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1 On the smoke-choked balcony, I gripped the taut rescue rope with everything I had left. I turned and shouted at the crowd gathered behind me. “Someone help me pull! They’re about to fall!” “That’s the cheap nylon rope my wife bought because she wanted to save money,” my husband yelled. “If anyone pulls too hard, that’s basically murder.” “Don’t help her, everyone. If it snaps, who takes responsibility? We’re not getting dragged into this.” Ryan stood by the door, filming my back while I fought to save a life. His loud voice drowned out my pleas. The crowd, stirred up by him, stepped back again and again. A few men who had been about to help hesitated and withdrew their hands. My strength was nearly gone. The rope scraped little by little against the balcony edge. If everyone worked together, the person below could be saved. But my husband, a man who never knew when to shut up and always thought cruelty was a joke, stomped beside me on purpose to scare people away. Watching him stare smugly at the soaring livestream numbers, I suddenly felt my strength drain. He must have been secretly delighted. He thought the person hanging below was my elderly, paralyzed grandmother. How could I bear to tell him that the illegitimate son he treasured like a precious jewel had never gone to kindergarten today? The fire roared from the windows below. Black smoke climbed the outer wall. The nylon rope cut deep red marks into my palms. Blood ran down along the fibers. “Help me! Please, just pull!” My voice echoed on the top floor, then scattered in the wind. Ryan held up his phone, the camera almost pressed against my face. “Everyone, look. This is my penny-pinching wife. To save a few bucks, she bought some junk rope from a street stall. Now that something’s happened, she wants to drag everyone else down with her.” He smiled at the camera, teeth flashing. Several neighbors who had been about to step forward stopped, hesitant. “Is the rope really no good?” A man in a tank top stopped three yards away, rubbing his palms against his pants. Ryan stomped hard. The concrete floor gave a dull thud. “Don’t be stupid, man. The rope’s already fraying. If you touch it and it snaps, that’s on you.” “My wife is looking for a scapegoat. Her grandma’s been paralyzed for years. She’s been a burden for ages.” Then he leaned close to my ear and lowered his voice. “Elise Morgan, stop acting. That old woman should have died long ago. This fire came at the perfect time.” “Let go. I’ll cover for you. We split the insurance payout fifty-fifty.” I stared at him, teeth grinding. “Ryan Cole, this isn’t Grandma. Come here and see who it is.” Ryan sneered and took two steps back, adjusting the livestream angle. “Still pretending? I saw that old woman wearing black before I left this morning.” “You want me to go over there and take the blame? Not happening.” The rope made a sharp, grating sound. The balcony tile edge was cutting through the fibers. My arms burned. There was blood and dirt beneath my nails. From below came faint crying. It was the person hanging in midair. The voice was young, terrified. “Help… Daddy… save me…” The wind was too strong. The sound disappeared into the fire and smoke. Ryan didn’t hear it. He was staring at the gift animations on his livestream, laughing. “Thanks for the sports car, Justice Warrior. Don’t worry, everyone. I’ll supervise this closely. I won’t let this murder attempt succeed.” “We have to talk law here. Using bad rope to save someone is the same as killing them.” As he spoke, he kicked my tense ankle with the tip of his shoe. I staggered, my body pitching forward, one shoulder leaning over the railing. “Ryan! Are you insane?” I screamed and braced my legs hard against the base of the wall. He shrugged and made a helpless face at the camera. “See? She’s panicking. That’s guilt. She wants to drag me down with her.” The wavering crowd retreated to the stairwell. The man in the tank top shook his head and turned away. “Forget it. It’s a fight between husband and wife. Outsiders shouldn’t get involved. If they really blame us, we can’t afford it.” The crowd dispersed. Only Ryan’s voice remained in the hallway. Then I felt the rope drop suddenly. The fibers were breaking. Thin nylon strands snapped apart in the air. I looked back at Ryan. He was still demonstrating “risk avoidance” to the camera. “Ryan, I’m begging you one last time. Help me pull. You know the person below.” Every word tasted like blood. Ryan snorted, eyes full of contempt. “Elise, are you losing it?” “Besides that useless old woman, who else could be down there? Your secret lover?” He walked closer and looked down at me. Because of the angle, he could only see my tense back, not the figure hanging outside the railing. 2 He lifted his foot and stepped on my bloodied hand. “Let go. Stop struggling. Look at the livestream. A hundred thousand people are watching your performance.” “If you don’t let go, the rope snaps and you’ll fall too. Then all your secret savings will be mine.” His shoe ground down hard. Pain exploded. I didn’t let go. Instead, I wrapped the rope around my wrist one more time. “Ryan, did Charlie really go to kindergarten today?” My voice was suddenly cold. Ryan froze, then spat impatiently. “Of course. I put him on the school bus myself. Why are you bringing Charlie up? I’m warning you, don’t you dare target my son.” Charlie was the child he claimed belonged to a distant relative. In truth, he was the illegitimate son Ryan had hidden for five years. Half a month ago, Ryan used the excuse that the child’s parents had been in a car accident and brought him home temporarily. Looking at Ryan’s malicious face, I almost laughed. “Really? Then look at this.” I released one hand, pulled something from my pocket, and threw it at his feet. It was half of a burned superhero watch. Ryan’s face stiffened. He stared at the watch, his breath stopping for a moment. It was a limited-edition watch Ryan had secretly bought for Charlie’s fifth birthday. He told Charlie every day to wear it carefully, saying it was Daddy’s love. “How… how do you have this?” Ryan bent to pick it up, fingers trembling. Before he touched it, the livestream comments flooded the screen. “Why did the host stop? Look at his wife. Her hand is about to snap.” “That rope is so thin, and it still hasn’t broken. His wife is strong.” Ryan glanced at the screen, and his face darkened again. He straightened and kicked the watch away. It hit the corner, the casing cracking apart. “Elise, stop playing mind games.” “Charlie is fine at kindergarten. You grabbed some cheap fake watch and think you can trick me? Are you trying to push me when I lower my head?” He backed up three steps, aiming the phone at my back again. “Everyone, look closely. This woman not only wants to kill her grandmother, now she’s making up lies to fool me.” “She just tried to scare me with a fake watch. This is terrifying behavior.” My wrist had gone numb. Blood ran down my sleeve. The sound of the rope snapping grew more frequent. “Help… help… hurts…” The crying below weakened. Smoke had damaged the child’s throat. I gritted my teeth and shouted with all my strength. “Charlie! Hold tight! Don’t let go!” Ryan’s face shifted. But soon, he burst into wild laughter. “Elise, are you addicted to acting? Charlie?” “Why not shout for angels while you’re at it? You think if you yell Charlie’s name, I’ll help you pull up that old woman?” He waved at the camera, tone light. “Don’t believe her, everyone. She’s desperate.” “To get me blamed, she’ll even use a child’s name. Everyone, be careful of women like this.” The livestream count broke one hundred and fifty thousand. Abuse and doubt filled the screen. “This wife is terrifying.” “Host, run. If she pulls you down with her, you’re done.” Ryan watched his follower count soar, his face flushed with excitement. He danced strangely on the balcony, stomping deliberately. Every stomp made my body sway. The rope scraped against the railing edge. “Ryan, come look. Just look once, and I’ll give you the deed to the house.” I spoke softly. Ryan stopped. Greed flashed in his eyes. “The deed? You’d give it up?” “As long as you come here and help me pull.” I buried my face in my arm so he wouldn’t see the impatience in my eyes. Ryan hesitated. He took two steps forward, the camera moving with him. But when he was still three feet from the railing, he stopped. “No. You’re a wicked woman.” “You must be waiting for me to get close so you can drag me down with you to die with that old woman. Nice try.” He retreated to a safe distance and shut the sliding glass door. Through the glass, he pointed at me. “Elise, give up. When the rope snaps, I’ll call the police for you.” “When the cops come, I’ll say you insisted on saving someone and wouldn’t listen.” “I’m a witness. The hundreds of thousands in this livestream are witnesses too.” I turned and looked at him through the glass. He was greeting the camera with a grin like a madman. He didn’t know that Charlie had never gone to kindergarten. This morning, Charlie had demanded sticky rice cakes from downstairs. Ryan found him annoying, dumped the boy on Grandma while she napped at home, and ran off to meet Sabrina. And Sabrina was hiding right now in the storage room downstairs. The fire started from that storage room. To escape, Sabrina had used Charlie as a stepping stone. Now Charlie was holding onto the rescue rope I had lowered, hanging outside the fourteenth-floor window. And his biological father was celebrating on the balcony. “Look! The rope is about to snap.” Ryan suddenly screamed. He yanked open the glass door and shoved his phone over the railing. “Everyone, time to witness the truth.” He even reached out, trying to flick the cracked rope. “Let me help it finish the job.” Before Ryan’s fingers touched the rope, I turned my head sharply and bit into his wrist. The taste of blood filled my mouth. “Ah! You psycho!” Ryan screamed. His phone dropped onto the balcony floor. He ignored it and struck my shoulder with his other hand. “Let go! Let go!” I didn’t. My teeth sank into his flesh. I could almost feel bone. The rope, still clutched in my hands, made its final breaking sound. The livestream camera faced the sky. It only picked up crashing sounds and Ryan’s curses. “Elise Morgan, you’re dead.” He grabbed my hair and yanked backward. My scalp screamed with pain, forcing my head up. But I still did not release the rope. Instead, I slid closer toward him. “Ryan… look… look down…” I released my bite and spat out blood. Then I suddenly let my strength go, my body sliding strangely to the side. Ryan, who had been pushing me from behind, lurched forward with his own momentum. His phone camera happened to point downward. “Everyone, look closely. The rope is about to break… Char… Charlie?” Ryan’s voice changed instantly. His hands began to shake. I wiped blood from my face, stepped hard on the back of his hand, and leaned close to his ear. “Ryan, you guessed right. This rope really is street-stall junk. But I didn’t buy it for your grandma. I bought it for your son.” “Every stomp you made just now landed on Charlie’s life. Was it fun?” He collapsed against the railing. His phone continued livestreaming on the floor. The viewers heard that name too. “Who’s Charlie? Didn’t he say it was the grandma?” “The host’s face is wrong. He looks like he’s about to lose his mind.” Ryan snapped back to himself and reached for the rope. “Charlie! Daddy’s here. Daddy will pull you up.” His movements were frantic. He nearly pushed me down with him. I looked at him and shifted slightly to the side. “Ryan, didn’t you say the rope was defective?” My voice was clear. Ryan didn’t hear me. He was desperately pulling upward. But he had never done hard labor in his life. After only two pulls, he began gasping, arms shaking violently. “Help me… Elise, help me pull! That’s Charlie. That’s my son!” He turned and screamed at me. Tears and snot covered his face. I slowly rubbed my swollen wrist and stood aside. “Don’t help him, everyone. If it snaps, who takes responsibility? We’re not taking the blame.” I repeated what he had said earlier, calm and steady. Ryan froze. He looked at me, eyes full of terror. “Elise Morgan, are you even human? That’s Charlie. He’s only five.” “Oh. Five.” I nodded and walked to the balcony edge. “When you were stomping to scare people earlier, did you think about the fact that the person below was only five?” Ryan opened his mouth but couldn’t speak. He turned back and clawed at the rope with all his strength. “Charlie! Hold on! Daddy is going to…” A crisp snap. The last few nylon fibers broke under Ryan’s stare. Because he had pulled too violently, the friction against the railing had worsened. “No!” Ryan let out a scream.

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1 The midday sun beat down relentlessly on the main gates of Westbrook University. Tristan, the reigning bad boy of the campus, had his fists twisted tightly into the collar of my shirt. His eyes were bloodshot as he screamed at the reigning campus queen, Serena. “Keep running your mouth and see if I don’t punch her lights out! If she calls the cops, the fine is five hundred bucks tops. That’s enough for you to buy a whole mountain of snacks!” Serena’s hands visibly trembled as she unzipped her designer handbag. She pulled out five crisp hundred dollar bills and shoved them directly into my hand. “Let him hit you. Keep the cash. I want to see if he actually has the guts to do it.” When that five hundred dollars hit my palm, I was still dangling in the air like a captured kitten. My name is Harper. I am a sophomore, tragically single since birth, and my bank account rarely sees a balance over fifty dollars. The physical texture of those five hundred dollar bills was infinitely more thrilling than an underwear model’s abs. Serena stared at the money in my hand and swallowed hard. “Not enough? Fine, I will add two hundred. But that is my absolute limit. I need the rest of my allowance for junk food.” Tristan’s face instantly turned the color of spoiled spinach. He was the untouchable campus tyrant. The guy who drove a cherry red Ferrari to his morning lectures. “Are you an actual psychopath, Serena? I am trying to threaten you!” The veins on the back of Tristan’s hands popped. In a fit of absolute rage, he violently shook me back and forth. My vision blurred into a dizzying mess. No. I had to earn this money. I wrapped both of my arms around Tristan’s forearm and screamed at the top of my lungs. “Hit me! Right here in the face! If you don’t swing, you’re a absolute coward!” That completely spooked him. Tristan ripped his hands away from my shirt and stumbled three steps backward. I took the opportunity to throw myself onto the scorching concrete. I clutched my chest and started violently twitching. “Oh my god! My ribs are completely shattered! I cannot physically stand up unless I am compensated with ten thousand dollars!” A massive crowd of students immediately formed a tight circle around us. Whispers and pointed fingers rained down on Tristan. “That is so messed up. A grown guy beating up a girl.” “Seriously. Look at her. She is literally foaming at the mouth.” Hearing that, I quickly swallowed my chewing gum and rolled my eyes back into my skull for dramatic effect. Tristan couldn’t defend himself. His face flushed a brilliant, panicked red. “I barely touched her! She threw herself on the ground!” Serena crouched down next to me and poked my shoulder. “Ten thousand is way out of my budget. I can’t afford that. How about you just let him actually beat you up, and I will bump my offer to eight hundred?” How was the campus beauty queen’s brain even more twisted than mine? Right at that moment, someone aggressively shoved their way through the crowd. A pair of limited edition Jordans stopped inches from my head. It was Jaxon, the star athlete of the sports management program, completely infamous for his explosive temper. “You really think you’re tough, Tristan? Picking on someone half your size makes you a man?” Jaxon pointed an accusing finger at Tristan, radiating absolute righteous justice. But in his sheer excitement, his foot slipped. That massive size twelve Jordan slammed squarely onto the back of my right hand. A bloodcurdling scream ripped out of my throat. Jaxon jumped out of his skin and scrambled backward. He stared in pure horror at my hand, which was rapidly swelling into the shape of a red balloon. He whipped his head around and glared at Tristan. “You are a monster! You completely broke her bones!” Tristan let out a hysterical, manic laugh and pointed right back at Jaxon. “Are you legally blind? You are the one who just stomped on her!” One word led to another, and the two of them instantly tackled each other to the ground. Ferrari keys and limited edition sneakers flew through the air in a chaotic blur. Taking advantage of the total anarchy, Serena subtly pinched the five hundred dollars right out of my hand. “Since you didn’t technically take a hit from him, I am reclaiming my investment.” Ignoring the throbbing pain in my hand, I lunged forward and wrapped my arms around her leg. “Absolutely not! Emotional distress damages! If you don’t pay up, I am suing you too!” The scene spiraled into complete madness. The campus security guard suddenly appeared on a golf cart, a megaphone blaring loud enough to shake the trees. “Break it up! Public brawl on university property! All of you, straight to the disciplinary office!” Thirty minutes later, the four of us were lined up shoulder to shoulder against the wall of the security office. 2 Dean Higgins gripped his thermos, his mustache twitching with pure irritation. “Getting into a massive brawl at the front gates on the very first day of the semester! Call your parents! Now!” Tristan let out a cold scoff, pulled out his phone, and dialed a number. “Dad. I got detained on campus. Bring the checkbook and bail me out.” Serena pulled out her phone right on cue. “Dad. Tristan is causing trouble again. You need to get down here.” My brain immediately caught the massive blind spot. Why did their tone of voice sound exactly like they were calling the same household? Half an hour later, a sleek black Rolls Royce pulled up outside the administration building. A wealthy, heavy set man wearing a tailored suit marched through the double doors. Tristan pointed straight at Serena and started whining. “Dad, she tried to steal my VIP parking spot this morning and cursed me out.” Serena grabbed the wealthy man’s arm and put on a spectacular crying face. “Dad, my brother stole my spot and then beat up a random pedestrian to vent his anger.” Case closed. They were step-siblings. Dean Higgins cleared his throat and looked over at Jaxon and me. “Where are your guardians?” Jaxon kept his chin raised high in defiance. “I don’t have any parents. I’m an orphan.” Dean Higgins slammed his hand on the desk. “You literally filled out ‘both parents living’ on your registration forms last month! Cut the crap!” I quietly pulled out my ancient, shatter screen phone. “My mom guts fish at the seafood market down the street. She is on her way.” The second the words left my mouth, my mother kicked the office door open. She was wearing heavy waterproof rubber overalls completely coated in fish scales, and she was gripping a massive, razor sharp butcher cleaver. “Who did it! Who dared to lay a hand on my baby girl!” The air inside the security office turned instantly to ice. Tristan’s dad stumbled a full step backward in sheer terror. But when he looked up and caught a glimpse of my mother’s fierce, fiery energy, a weird, fascinated sparkle flashed in his eyes. Dean Higgins frantically waved his hands. “Mrs. Harper, please put the weapon down. Let us use our words.” My mom slammed the heavy meat cleaver directly onto the dean’s desk. She pointed a stained finger at my swollen, purple hand. “What happened to her hand? My daughter is on a full ride academic scholarship! How the hell is she supposed to take notes with a broken hand?” Jaxon guiltily averted his gaze to the ceiling. Mr. Sinclair waved his hand with the absolute arrogance of a billionaire. “It is just a matter of money. Spit it out. How much compensation do you want?” My mother’s eyes lit up like casino slot machines. She instantly switched into fish market haggling mode. “Medical bills, lost wages, and severe emotional distress. Add it all up, it is a flat fifty thousand dollars!” Mr. Sinclair let out a dry laugh. “Fifty thousand? Is her hand made of solid gold? Five thousand. Max.” “Forty five thousand! Not a penny less!” “Ten thousand! Take it or leave it!” “Deal!” My mom grabbed Mr. Sinclair’s hand and pumped it up and down. “You are a straightforward guy, boss. You wanna Venmo me or do you have cash on hand?” Mr. Sinclair totally froze. He clearly had not expected my mom to drop her price that violently, and he suddenly looked like a man who realized he just got scammed. But as he looked down at my mom’s calloused hand gripping his, the corners of his mouth twitched up into a tiny smile. “I will… use Venmo.” He gritted his teeth and scanned her QR code, but his eyes never left my mother’s face. My mom was entirely oblivious. She was busy counting the zeros on her screen. Once she verified the transfer, she flashed him a brilliant grin. “You are a good guy, boss. Next time you come to the market, I will give you a major discount on salmon!” The tips of Mr. Sinclair’s ears turned inexplicably red. He cleared his throat. “Sure.” Jaxon let out a massive sigh of relief, clearly thinking he had dodged a bullet. My mom slowly turned her head and locked eyes with him. “Kid. I watched the security footage. You were the one who stomped on her foot. You owe us ten thousand too.” Jaxon desperately patted down his pockets, pulling out two crumpled twenty dollar bills. “Ma’am, I am totally broke. Can I pay off my debt in physical labor?” 3 Because Jaxon couldn’t cough up the cash, Dean Higgins sentenced him to scrub the men’s restrooms for a solid month. I was walking around campus feeling like a millionaire with my ten thousand dollar payout, heading straight to the dining hall for a feast. Just as I passed the third floor men’s restroom, a foul, eye watering stench hit my nose. It wasn’t a bathroom smell. It was the smell of fermented garlic, ghost peppers, and canned anchovies. I peeked my head inside. Jaxon was sitting cross legged on the marble bathroom counter, viciously slurping down a massive container of the spiciest, smelliest seafood pasta on the planet. Right next to his food was a dripping mop he had just used to clean the toilets. The visual was just too powerful to ignore. I quietly pulled out my phone and started recording in stunning 4K. “Star athlete eats garbage in the campus restroom. I bet this hits the top of the university Reddit page in ten minutes.” Jaxon heard my voice and choked, spraying spicy noodles everywhere. He frantically scrambled off the counter, wiping his mouth and glaring at me like a cornered animal. “Harper! Delete that video right now!” I casually wiggled the phone in the air. “I will delete it, but it comes at a price. You are buying my lunch at the dining hall for a month. And I want meat. Real meat.” Jaxon ground his teeth together and agreed. The next day at noon, I sat at a cafeteria table like royalty, waiting for my meal to be served. Jaxon walked over with a plastic tray and slammed it down in front of me. I looked down. Boiled bitter melon, a pile of soggy carrots, wilted cilantro, and a bowl of unpeeled, boiled potatoes. “You call this meat?” Jaxon sneered. “There was a dead caterpillar in the bitter melon. Protein is protein. Eat it or starve.” I was so furious I slammed my fork down, grabbed the tray, and marched straight to the serving station to chew out the lunch lady. As I stormed up to the glass sneezeguard, I saw Serena standing there. She was holding a tiny leather notebook, actively debating the cafeteria worker. “Ma’am, this portion of braised pork costs fifteen dollars. There are exactly three pieces of meat in this scoop, and two of them are pure fat. Based on the current wholesale market price of pork belly, your profit margin is sitting at three hundred percent. That is illegal price gouging.” The metal serving spoon in the lunch lady’s hand shook violently. “Listen here, little girl. The university sets the portion rules. I just follow them.” Serena was absolutely relentless. “Show me the written policy. Pull up the binder. Otherwise, I am calling the state pricing commission to report you for fraud.” I was completely stunned. Was this the same girl who got chauffeured in a Ferrari and carried a ten thousand dollar bag? How was she cheaper than me? The lunch lady finally broke under the pressure. She aggressively scooped up a massive, perfect chunk of lean pork and dumped it onto Serena’s plate. “Fine! Take it! Just get out of my line!” Serena looked incredibly satisfied. As she walked past me with her prize, she leaned in to share her wisdom. “When dealing with these stingy servers, you just have to crush them with raw data.” I decided to copy her strategy. I stepped up to the glass and launched a verbal assault at the lunch lady. “Ma’am, the insect protein levels in this bitter melon are a serious health hazard. It could trigger an allergic reaction. Swap this garbage out for the BBQ ribs.” The lunch lady completely lost her mind. She threw her metal spoon straight into the vat of mashed potatoes. “I quit! You kids are a nightmare!” She ripped off her apron and walked out the back door. The massive line of hungry students groaned in despair. My brain short circuited. I practically vaulted over the glass counter, grabbed the heavy metal spoon, and yelled to the crowd. “Don’t panic! I got you guys! Step right up!” I served with absolute integrity. Massive, overflowing scoops of ribs and chicken. Not a single shake of the spoon. The students cheered like I was a superhero. The line wrapped completely out the doors of the building. Just as I was really getting into the rhythm, a middle aged man in a sharp business suit stormed into the kitchen, his face dark with fury. “Who the hell authorized you to serve food! You emptied an entire tray of ribs in ten minutes! You are bankrupting my dining hall!” The man aggressively snatched the spoon out of my hand. I took a good look at his face. Around the eyes, he looked remarkably like Tristan. “You are the owner of the cafeteria?” The man scoffed. “I am Tristan’s uncle. Arthur Sinclair. You must be Harper, the little scammer who extorted ten grand out of my older brother.” Crap. I walked right into the lion’s den. Arthur pointed a rigid finger at the exit doors. “You are blacklisted! You are never eating at any dining hall or restaurant I own ever again!” I was kicked to the curb, my stomach practically screaming in hunger. Jaxon stood on the sidewalk, laughing so hard he was gasping for air. “Karma is real. You got greedy, and now you don’t even get the bitter melon.” 4 Refusing to serve me food? The word “starve” does not exist in my dictionary. I turned right around and walked straight to an upscale, Michelin star French restaurant just off campus. A restaurant completely owned by Arthur Sinclair. I walked in and applied to be a waitress. If you won’t let me eat your cheap cafeteria food, I will infiltrate your high end establishment and eat you out of business from the inside. The general manager interviewed me. He saw how fast I moved and hired me on the spot for the dinner shift. That evening, Arthur brought a massive corporate client into the VIP dining room. Within twenty minutes, he was throwing an absolute tantrum. “This Wagyu steak tastes like wet cardboard! Get the chef out here!” The manager was sweating profusely as he sprinted into the back kitchen. “The boss’s condition is acting up again. He lost his sense of taste due to stress. Everything tastes like ash to him. What are we going to do?” I immediately volunteered. “Let me whip up a custom sauce. I guarantee it will wake up his tastebuds.” I grabbed the salt shaker, unscrewed the lid, and dumped half the container directly into the peppercorn demi glace. Then, I grabbed a bottle of pure habanero chili extract and dumped half of it in. If he couldn’t taste this, he might as well cut his tongue out. I proudly carried the heavily doctored steak into the VIP room. Arthur aggressively sliced off a piece and shoved it into his mouth. His face instantly turned paper white. Then beet red. Then a deep, alarming shade of purple. He violently jumped out of his chair, clutching his throat and frantically looking around. “Water! Get me water!” I helpfully handed him an ice cold glass of lemon water. Spiked heavily with white vinegar. Arthur chugged the entire glass. Tears exploded from his eyes. The corporate client was terrified. “Arthur! Are you having a medical emergency?” Arthur gasped for air, his chest heaving heavily. Suddenly, he threw his head back and burst into hysterical laughter. “Ha! I can taste it! It’s salty! It’s sour! My taste is back!” He lunged forward and grabbed both of my hands in pure gratitude. “Kid, what on earth did you put in that sauce? It’s a miracle cure!” I awkwardly pulled my hands away. “I just… added a little extra seasoning.” Arthur waved his hand grandly in the air. “From this day forward, any meal you eat at this establishment is entirely on the house!” To show his gratitude, Arthur insisted on making me an honorary VIP of the restaurant. He threw a massive dinner party and forced Tristan and Serena to attend. When Tristan walked in and saw me standing next to his uncle, his eyes practically bugged out of his skull. “Uncle Arthur, are you insane? She is a professional scam artist!” Arthur smacked Tristan right on the back of his head. “Show some respect! She is practically family now! Call her Auntie Harper!” Tristan clutched his head, his jaw clamped shut. He refused to speak. Serena, however, adapted immediately. She grabbed a champagne flute and slid right next to me. “Auntie Harper. If I come eat here, can I use your family discount?” I waved my hand like a mob boss. “I’ll get you eighty percent off.” Tristan was so angry he kicked a chair and stormed out. The next morning, a viral post exploded on the university’s anonymous gossip forum. Exposed: Local Ag-Science Major Sells Her Soul To Cafeteria Boss For Free Meals! The post painted me as a manipulative, gold digging psycho who would do absolutely anything for a free lunch. Every single comment was trashing me. I didn’t even need to use my brain to know exactly who posted it. I hunted down Arthur and managed to sweet talk him into giving me a specific old photograph. It was a picture of a ten year old Tristan, standing in the backyard butt naked and crying after wetting his bed. I pixelated the sensitive areas and uploaded it straight to the top of the forum. Headline: The Dark, Humiliating Childhood Secrets Of Our Ferrari Driving Bad Boy. The post broke the school servers. Tristan was sitting in his morning lecture when he saw the post. He literally passed out from sheer rage. When he regained consciousness, he marched straight to the agricultural greenhouse to hunt me down. “Harper! I challenge you to a duel!” I was busy tilling the soil with a heavy metal hoe. I didn’t even look up. “A duel in what? Farming? Because I will destroy you.” Tristan ground his teeth. “A panhandling contest! Whoever can beg for the most money at the front gates wins. The loser has to get on the campus radio and bark like a dog!” Begging for money? He was literally stepping into my professional arena. That weekend, outside the main university gates. Tristan was wearing artificially distressed designer jeans. He purposefully messed up his hair and placed a cracked ceramic bowl on the sidewalk in front of him. But his ego was too massive. He couldn’t bring himself to say a single word. He just sat there, glaring at people. Nobody gave him a dime. I, on the other hand, went full method actor. I wore my mom’s old rubber boots. I smeared charcoal dust across my cheeks. I brought a cheap plastic megaphone. “Ladies and gentlemen! Please have mercy! I have a rare, incurable disease, and my final wish is just to afford one last hot meal!” I was sobbing, tears streaming down my face. An absolute Oscar winning performance. Passersby were incredibly moved. Dollar bills kept raining into my bucket. Suddenly, Serena appeared out of nowhere. She tossed a crisp hundred dollar bill directly into my bucket. “Honestly, it’s a crime you aren’t a theater major. Here is a hundred. Teach me how to cry on command like that.” Seeing his own sister commit treason, Tristan furiously kicked his ceramic bowl into the street. “Serena! Whose side are you even on?!” Serena crossed her arms, completely unbothered. “I am on the side of high art, obviously.”

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My brother was in a brutal crash and rushed to the ICU. Desperate to save my bonus for his surgery, I sprinted to Director Carter’s office to approve my emergency leave. She deliberately stalled. “No ER certificate attached. Denied.” I texted Dad. He sent a photo of the admission slip, but she sneered. “Video call me. I want to see him holding the family registry and certificate.” Dad stood trembling outside the ICU, awkwardly holding the papers to the lens while I begged her to look. She glanced for two seconds and rejected it. “Policy deducts three months’ bonus. The ER isn’t a crematorium. Finish your reports.” Staring at the rejection, I laughed dryly. Without screaming, I pressed voice memo and spoke clearly: “Dad, stop waiting. Police confirmed Carter’s son stole the car for a joyride and totaled it. He had no ID, his face was shredded, so they misidentified him as my brother. Tell Director Carter to sign the critical condition waiver herself.” 1 The second I sent the voice message, Director Carter let out a sharp, mocking laugh. She picked up the ceramic coffee mug on her desk and hurled it directly at my head. “Chloe, have you completely lost your mind?!” “You’re using cheap, disgusting curses against my son just to fake a day off?!” I dodged the flying mug. It shattered against the wall, hot coffee splattering everywhere. “Director Carter, I am not lying to you.” “The traffic police already confirmed the identity. The driver in the crash is your son, Jackson.” “Call them and verify it yourself.” Director Carter slammed both hands onto her desk and shot up from her leather chair. “Shut your mouth!” “My son drove his brand new Porsche to a resort resort this morning!” “Why the hell would he ever touch your pathetic, cheap sedan?” “Do you honestly think someone as poor and miserable as you is worthy of having her car stolen by my son?” I pulled up the text message from the police dispatcher, intending to show her the official notice. She lunged forward, violently snatching the phone out of my hand. She threw it onto the marble floor with everything she had. The screen instantly shattered into a spiderweb of glass. “Chloe, you are a pathological liar, and you viciously curse the families of your superiors.” “I am officially notifying you. You are fired.” “Your salary for this month, along with your entire performance bonus, is being withheld to compensate for the company’s reputational damage.” “Pack your trash and get out of my building. Now!” I slowly crouched down and picked up my ruined phone. “You don’t have the legal authority to fire me without cause.” “Withholding my earned wages is a federal crime.” Director Carter stepped around her desk and viciously kicked my hand with the pointed toe of her designer heel. “In this department, my word is the law!” “Your brother is dying in the ICU, isn’t he?” “I am going to make sure you don’t get a single dime.” “I want you to watch him take his last breath!” The coworkers gathered outside the glass walls didn’t dare make a sound. Director Carter picked up her desk phone and dialed Human Resources. “Chloe has severely violated company conduct. Draft her termination papers immediately.” “Notify Payroll. Freeze all of her reimbursements and direct deposits.” She slammed the phone down and pointed a perfectly manicured finger at the door. “Security!” Two heavy set security guards rushed into the office. “Throw this garbage out.” “She is not allowed to take a single piece of company property with her.” The guards stepped forward, grabbing me roughly by both arms. I struggled against their grip, shouting as loud as I could. “Director Carter, the boy lying in the ICU is Jackson!” “He didn’t have his wallet, and his face was completely ripped apart by the windshield!” “If you don’t go down there and pay the deposit for his surgery, he is going to die!” She marched right up to me and raised her hand high. Smack. She slapped me directly across the face. “Still running your mouth!” “Throw her out!” The guards dragged me out of the executive suite. They hauled me through the lobby and out the front doors of the corporate tower. They shoved me hard, sending me tumbling down the concrete steps. My shattered phone screen suddenly lit up. It was my dad calling. “Chloe, the doctors said his pupils are dilating!” “They need a family member to sign the consent form for the experimental drugs immediately!” “The deposit is ten thousand dollars!” I gritted my teeth and pulled myself up from the concrete. “Dad, the patient is not my brother!” “Leave him alone. Let his own family deal with the consequences!” My dad’s voice was panicked. “But the hospital registered him under your brother’s name!” “If we don’t pay, they are legally required to stop treatment.” “And the police said you are the registered owner of the vehicle. Procedure requires the family to be present.” I let out a cold, hollow laugh. “Then let them stop treatment.” “The person dying on that table is Director Carter’s son.” “I’ll catch a cab to the hospital right now.” I flagged down a yellow taxi. From the top of the stairs, Director Carter’s shrill voice rang out. “Chloe, you think running to the hospital is going to save you?” She clicked down the steps in her stilettos, looking at me like I was an insect. “Let me make this perfectly clear. You crossed me. I will have you blacklisted across this entire industry.” “Not only am I freezing your paychecks, I am going to make sure your brother rots in that hospital bed, and you won’t even have the cash to cremate him!” I rolled down the taxi window. “Director Carter, you should really call the resort and see what car your son is actually driving today.” 2 The taxi pulled away from the curb. I glanced back and saw Director Carter turning around, her face twisted in absolute disgust as she walked back into the corporate tower. When I rushed into the hospital’s emergency lobby, my dad was pacing frantically, clutching a stack of urgent medical bills. “Chloe, the administration says if we don’t pay the deposit right now, they have to pull the plug.” I snatched the bills out of his trembling hands and ripped them in half. I tossed the pieces into the nearest trash can. “Pull it.” “Tell them to pull it right now.” My dad completely froze. “Chloe… that’s a human life!” “I know it’s not our boy, but…” I cut him off immediately. “Dad. The person bleeding out in that room is my boss’s son. Director Carter.” “He stole my brother’s car, took it joyriding, and completely totaled it.” “His mother just froze my paychecks, fired me illegally, and promised to blacklist me so I can never work again.” “She literally told me she wanted to watch my brother die.” “Why in God’s name would I save her son?” The ER attending physician hurried out of the double doors, holding a critical condition waiver on a clipboard. “Family of the patient? Are you here?” I stepped forward. “Doctor, the patient in that room is not my brother.” “His name is Jackson.” The doctor’s eyebrows slammed together in frustration. “We verified the vehicle registration found inside the wreckage. The vehicle belongs to your family.” “The patient is suffering from a massive intracranial hemorrhage.” “He needs an emergency craniotomy immediately. If we delay by another ten minutes, he is dead.” “Who is signing the consent? Who is paying the deposit?” I pulled my driver’s license out of my wallet and held it up. “My name is Chloe. I am the registered owner of the car.” “But the person inside that room is not related to me. I absolutely refuse to sign any medical waivers.” “And I am not paying a single cent.” The doctor’s face darkened. “If you refuse to sign, we cannot legally perform the brain surgery.” “The patient will reach brain death very quickly.” “How can your family be this cold-blooded?” I stared at the doctor with a completely deadpan expression. “It’s not cold-blooded. You simply have the wrong family.” “I called his biological mother. She explicitly refused to come to the hospital.” “She believes we are running a scam on her.” Suddenly, a loud commotion erupted at the far end of the hallway. Several men in sharp black suits violently shoved through the crowd of patients. Director Carter’s husband, Richard, a wealthy local executive, marched straight up to me. Behind him was the head corporate lawyer from my company. Richard pointed a thick, heavy finger directly at my face. “Are you Chloe?” I met his furious glare without blinking. “Yes.” Richard didn’t hesitate. He swung his hand, aiming a brutal slap right at my head. I ducked to the side, and his hand hit nothing but air. He let out a furious roar. “Your worthless, trash brother!” “He drove his pathetic junk car and hit my son, didn’t he?!” I looked at him with absolute ice in my veins. “Richard, you have your facts entirely backwards.” “Your son, Jackson, broke into my brother’s car and stole it.” Richard let out a booming, arrogant laugh. “Bullshit!” “My son drives a Porsche! Why would he ever stoop so low as to steal a garbage used car?” The corporate lawyer stepped forward, adjusting his tie. “Chloe, Director Carter has authorized me to handle this matter entirely.” “We pulled the security footage from the club district. Your brother parked his car outside a nightclub.” “Later, the vehicle was found crashed into a highway barrier.” “Jackson was drinking at that exact nightclub tonight, and now his phone is completely unreachable!” “It is obvious your brother hit my client’s son and hid the body to cover up the crime!” I pulled out my phone and started dialing 911. “Since you claim you have footage, let’s have the traffic detectives settle this.” Richard lunged forward and violently snatched the phone out of my hand. He hurled it against the hospital wall. The device shattered into a dozen pieces. “Call the cops? You think the police are going to protect a nobody like you?” “Let me make this clear. My family has enough power in this city to crush you like a cockroach.” “If you don’t tell me where you hid my son right now, I will bury your entire family!” My dad stepped in front of me, throwing his arms out to shield me. “You people are completely insane!” “The police clearly stated there was only one injured driver pulled from the wreckage!” Richard raised his heavy leather shoe and viciously kicked my dad directly in the stomach. My dad let out a sharp gasp of pain and collapsed onto the linoleum floor. “Dad!” I instantly dropped to my knees, holding him tight. Richard pointed a menacing finger at the heavy doors of the ICU. “The kid lying in there is your brother, right?” “He hits my son, and now he thinks he can hide in the hospital and play the victim?” 3 Richard violently whipped his head toward the attending physician. “Doctor, my name is Richard Carter. CEO of Carter Enterprises.” “That kid inside, the one who caused the crash? Cease all medical intervention immediately.” The doctor froze, utterly bewildered. “Mr. Carter, this is a hospital, you can’t just…” Richard cut him off with a chilling sneer. “I don’t care what this is. Your Chief of Medicine is my weekly golf partner.” “That kid committed a hit and run. He is suspected of the attempted murder of my son.” “Anyone who tries to save his miserable life is making a direct enemy of the Carter family!” The doctor looked incredibly conflicted. “But sir, the patient requires emergency brain surgery to survive.” Richard waved his hand dismissively. “I don’t give a damn!” “Stop his medication and pull the ventilator right now!” “Let him die in there and pay for what he did to my boy!” I helped my dad up from the floor, easing him into a waiting room chair. I just watched Richard scream his psychotic demands. “Richard, are you absolutely certain you want the life support pulled?” Richard took a threatening step toward me. “What’s the matter? Starting to feel sorry for your trash brother?” “My son is missing and could be dead for all I know. Why should your brother get top tier medical care?” “I’m not just pulling the plug. I’m making sure your whole family rots in a federal prison!” The corporate lawyer chimed in, adjusting his glasses. “Chloe, Mr. Carter has already applied immense pressure on the police department.” “Your brother is facing charges for felony vehicular manslaughter.” “Your only way out of this is to sign a ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ order on his behalf right now.” I smiled. I actually started laughing out loud. “You want me to sign a DNR for the patient in that room?” Richard snarled, “Exactly!” “If you don’t sign it, I’ll put your old man in the ICU right next to him.” “And that’s just the start. You will never find employment in this state ever again.” “The bank will foreclose on your family home before the week is out.” I stood up straight, brushing the dust off my knees. I looked Richard dead in the eyes. “Fine.” “I’ll sign it.” The corporate lawyer immediately unzipped his leather briefcase and pulled out a standard medical waiver to cease treatment. Richard snatched it from his hands and slammed it onto the reception desk in front of me. “Smart girl.” “Sign your name, and get the hell out of my city.” I didn’t reach for the pen. “I can’t sign this document.” Richard’s face contorted in absolute rage. “Are you playing games with me?” “Do you want me to walk in there and rip his oxygen tube out with my own bare hands?!” I kept my voice perfectly, terrifyingly calm. “Because I am not his legal guardian or family member.” “The doctor just told you, only direct family can authorize a DNR.” “If you really want the patient dead, why don’t you sign the waiver yourself, Richard?” Richard was momentarily caught off guard, but then he let out a dark, arrogant laugh. “You think I won’t?” “I am the family of the victim! I am formally demanding the cessation of medical care for a violent criminal. It is entirely within my legal rights!” He turned and glared at the doctor. “Give me your hospital’s official DNR form!” “I will sign it right now!” The doctor was sweating profusely. “Mr. Carter, this completely violates medical protocol…” “The paperwork must be signed by the patient’s parents or legal spouse.” Richard shoved his finger inches from the doctor’s face. “Cut the bureaucratic garbage!” “I said I’m signing it, so I’m signing it!” “If anyone comes asking questions, I take full legal and financial responsibility!” Right as the words left his mouth, the sharp, rhythmic clicking of high heels echoed down the sterile hallway. Director Carter strode toward us, flanked by two more security guards. “Honey, why are you wasting your breath arguing with these peasants?” “I just got off the phone with the Chief of Medicine.” “All medical funds for that criminal have been completely frozen.” She stopped directly in front of me, her eyes dripping with malice. “Chloe, earlier today in my office, you fabricated a disgusting lie about my son dying.” “Now your own brother is bleeding out behind those doors. Karma is a beautiful thing, isn’t it?” I looked at her, completely unfazed. “Director Carter, have you actually managed to contact your son yet?” Her face twitched violently, but she quickly raised her voice to cover her panic. “That is none of your damn business!” “Jackson is at a luxury resort. He just forgot to charge his phone.” “Bottom feeders like you belong rotting in the gutter where you started.” Suddenly, the heavy doors of the ICU burst open. An emergency room nurse sprinted out, her face pale with terror. “The patient’s blood pressure just crashed to critical levels!” “If we don’t begin a massive blood transfusion and initiate the surgery right this second, his heart will stop in less than five minutes!” The nurse looked frantically at our group. “Who is the family?!” “Sign the consent form and pay the deposit right now!” 4 Director Carter let out a sharp, mocking laugh. “There is no family here!” The nurse was practically hyperventilating. “What do you mean there’s no family?” Director Carter pointed a manicured finger right at my chest. “She refuses to sign it. And even if she wanted to, she doesn’t have a dime to her name.” “Her brother is a rapist and a murderer.” “Why the hell is your hospital wasting resources trying to save a piece of human garbage?” The nurse stared at her in utter disbelief. “But ma’am…” Director Carter took a step forward, aggressively snatching the patient’s medical chart right out of the nurse’s hands. She slammed it forcefully onto the linoleum floor. “There are no ‘buts’!” “I am an executive board member of Carter Enterprises.” “I am ordering you to cease all resuscitation efforts immediately.” “Let him die!” I crossed my arms over my chest and tilted my head. “Director Carter, if the patient in that room dies, aren’t you worried about the legal repercussions of your actions?” Director Carter threw her head back and laughed. “The law?” “I am the law!” She pointed her finger directly at my nose, her voice dripping with venom. “Chloe, do you think you can play mind games with me?” “You think a cheap reverse psychology trick is going to work?” “I don’t care if God himself comes down from the heavens. The worthless bastard in that room dies today!” Richard grabbed a pen off the nurse’s station counter. He flipped the critical condition waiver over and scribbled violently on the back of the page. “I, Richard Carter, formally demand that this hospital immediately cease all medical intervention for the perpetrator, John Doe.” “I assume all legal and financial consequences for this action!” He violently slashed his signature across the bottom of the page. He even pressed his thumb onto an ink pad on the desk and stamped his fingerprint next to his name. Director Carter glanced at the paper and snatched the pen from his hand. “Honey, let me add my name.” “I want this little bitch to fully comprehend what happens when she crosses us.” She signed her name in bold, looping letters right below his. The two of them shoved the paper aggressively against the terrified nurse’s chest. “Read it carefully!” “Those are our signatures.” “Turn off the ventilator right now!” “Stop the blood transfusions!” The nurse was physically trembling. She looked desperately at the attending physician for help. The doctor took the paper, his face grim. “Mr. and Mrs. Carter.” “Since you are making an explicit, documented demand, and you have pressured the hospital administration to back you…” “We have no choice but to halt the surgery and withdraw the experimental medications.” Director Carter shot me a look of pure, triumphant malice. “Do you see this, Chloe?” “This is what real power looks like.” “Your brother is about to become a corpse.” “You better go buy a cheap tarp to wrap him in. It’s all you’ll be able to afford.” I stared back at her without a trace of emotion. “Director Carter. Richard.” “Are you absolutely certain you don’t want to step inside and look at the patient?” “Even just one quick glance?” Director Carter’s face twisted in pure revulsion. “Look at a dead body? I’d rather not infect my eyes with such filth.” “Do you really think I want to see you crying over a corpse?” Richard scoffed loudly. “Stop wasting your breath on her.” “Put two guards on the door. Make sure the medical staff actually pulls the plug.” With a flick of his wrist, two massive bodyguards stepped in front of the ICU doors, crossing their arms. “Nobody goes in!” The doctor and the nurse exchanged a helpless look before pushing through the doors into the emergency suite. The heavy doors clicked shut. The hallway fell into a dead, suffocating silence. My dad tightly gripped my sleeve, his knuckles white. “Chloe… someone is really going to die in there…” I gently patted his hand. “It’s okay, Dad.” “The person dying is someone who spent his whole life hurting others.” “Karma finally caught up with him.” Ten excruciating minutes passed. The ICU doors slowly pushed open. The doctor walked out. He slowly shook his head. “Because we withdrew the experimental medications and disconnected the ventilator…” “The patient slipped into a deep coma.” “Brain stem reflexes have entirely vanished. Spontaneous respiration has ceased.” “Clinically speaking, the patient is brain dead.” Director Carter clapped her hands together in sheer delight. “Fantastic!” “Good riddance!” Richard let out a booming, victorious laugh. “This is exactly what happens when you mess with the Carter family!” The corporate lawyer stepped forward, pulling a document from his briefcase. “Now that the perpetrator is officially deceased…” “We will immediately file a civil lawsuit against Chloe, demanding massive financial compensation for the emotional distress caused to my clients.” Director Carter strutted right up into my personal space. “Chloe, your brother is dead.” “Are you satisfied now?” “Tomorrow morning, your industry-wide blacklist goes into effect.” “You better prepare to spend the rest of your life begging for scraps on the street.” I quietly watched the absolute ecstasy radiating from her face. Then, I turned my head to look at the doctor. “Doctor, since the patient has officially been declared brain dead…” “Have you cleaned him up so the family can identify the body?”

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1 Seven years after I left Nathan Vale, I became the most authoritative hypnosis specialist in the country. Today, I received a confidential consultation request from another province. When I pushed open the door to the consultation room, a storm had just begun outside. In the dim therapy chair sat a man tormented by insomnia. It was Nathan. He slowly opened his eyes and broke the awkward silence with a dry voice. “Summer… have you been well all these years?” Holding his medical file, I smiled with polite distance. “Fortunately, yes. Everything has been fine.” He watched me calmly close the file, pain flashing through his eyes. “You’re different now. Before, whenever it thundered or rained, you never dared to be alone.” I smiled and didn’t answer. Actually, nothing had changed. I had only stopped leaving any part of my emotions for him. Putting away my pocket watch, I slowly pushed the medical file back in front of him. “Mr. Vale, I can’t perform hypnosis on you.” His fingers, resting on the armrest, trembled violently. It wasn’t emotional shaking. It was involuntary tremor caused by long-term neurasthenia. His hand knocked over the glass on the table. The glass shattered against the tile, the sound swallowed by a clap of thunder. Nathan stumbled up from the therapy chair. His hand reached across my desk, fingers spread, trying to cover my ears. Muscle memory from seven years ago. I didn’t even lift my eyelids. I pressed the intercom. “Jade, come clean this up.” His hand froze in midair. Thunder rumbled outside. I continued flipping through the next client’s file. He stared at my calm profile as I turned the pages. Slowly, the hand hovering in the air withdrew and clenched into a fist, his knuckles taut. My assistant pushed the door open and bent to pick up the broken glass. Nathan still stood there. “Summer, I can pay double.” “It isn’t about money.” “Triple.” His voice was dry and hoarse, soaked in exhaustion. “I really haven’t slept through a full night in almost three months.” I didn’t respond. I opened the drawer. My fingertips touched a metal casing. I took it out and placed it on the desk. An old pocket watch. The moment Nathan’s gaze landed on it, his breathing stopped. His throat moved, but he said nothing. I saw an unreal flicker of light ignite in his eyes. He thought I kept the watch because I was sentimental. I picked it up, turned it half a circle in my palm, and snapped it down on the desk. “If Mr. Vale really wants sleep, the psychiatric department is down the hall to the left. Ask for heavy sedatives.” I tore off a sticky note, wrote down a few numbers, and pushed it toward him. “Refusal consultation fee. Finance will send you the invoice later.” He didn’t look at the note. He stared at my fingers, at the pocket watch I had slapped casually onto the desk. His mouth twisted into an expression uglier than crying. “That watch is broken.” His voice trembled hoarsely. “I’ll buy you a new one.” I didn’t answer. I simply turned the watch over and opened the back cover with my thumb. Inside the cover was a place where words had once been engraved. Three words. Nathan loves Summer. Now those words were unrecognizable. The metal had been scraped again and again by something sharp, leaving grooves of different depths, like wounds that had failed to heal. All color drained from Nathan’s face. I knew what he had remembered. I stared into his bloodshot eyes. “It wasn’t just the watch that shattered.” My voice was very soft. “It was someone’s nerves too. You haven’t forgotten that, have you, Nathan?” It was as if someone had shoved him hard from behind. He staggered backward and hit the therapy chair. He didn’t even take an umbrella. He yanked open the door and stumbled into the rain at the end of the corridor. I picked up the pocket watch again and pressed my thumb against the scratches. Seven years. Memory was like a rusted floodgate. In that moment, it loosened with a crash. I heard Nathan’s voice again. Not the hollow, nearly begging voice from moments ago. The voice from seven years earlier. Warm, carrying the scent of mint, pressed against the top of my head. “Summer, don’t be afraid.” “I will always be your safest fortress.” Seven years ago, I was twenty-two. It was the third year Nathan had kept me by his side. Thunderstorms triggered my illness. It wasn’t ordinary fear of thunder. It was true post-traumatic stress. When I was little, my stepfather had locked me in a leaking basement for three days. Ever since, whenever lightning flashed, my limbs would spasm uncontrollably. That day, thunder struck from four in the afternoon until dawn. I curled inside the master bedroom closet, wrapped in his coat. The sound of the door lock turning came at 11:03 p.m. Nathan rushed into the bedroom, soaked from head to toe, ink stains still on the cuff of his suit. He opened the closet door and saw me shaking in the corner. Without a word, he bent and scooped me up, holding me in his arms. His chest trembled. His body heat came through his drenched shirt. “Summer.” “Look at this.” He took out a custom pocket watch from his pocket, opened the back, and held it by my ear. The second hand ticked softly and steadily, one beat after another, like another calm heart. “Listen to this. Not the storm outside.” His chin rested against the top of my head, his voice lowered. I clutched his shirt and refused to let go, nails digging into the fabric. “Never leave me.” He placed the watch into my palm and wrapped his hand around mine. “Even if I’m crushed to dust.” Only those words. I believed him. I used those words as a foundation and built every definition of safety upon them. But another thunderstorm came three months later. I held that pocket watch and sat on the living room sofa all night. The second hand ticked thirty-two thousand times. His phone had been turned off since eight in the evening. At 5:40 a.m., the door lock finally turned. He pushed the door open, collar loose, carrying a strong sandalwood scent that did not belong to him. It was the perfume used by Bianca Vale, his boss’s daughter. I had smelled it at the company banquet. I could identify it from three tables away. He saw me sitting on the sofa and paused. “Why aren’t you asleep?” His eyes swept over the watch in my hand, then quickly moved away. “The company system had issues. I spent the whole night in the server room.” He tugged at his tie and walked toward the bathroom. “The perfume rubbed off by accident. There were lots of people around.” I didn’t move. I placed the watch on my knees and pointed at the storm still churning beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows. “Do you know how I got through last night?” He stopped, but he didn’t turn around. In the past, at moments like this, he would turn back, pick me up, and cover all my panic with his warmth. This time, he stood where he was and tugged at his tie. His voice carried something it never had before. “Summer, you’re not a child anymore. You need to learn to handle these things yourself. Stop being so immature.” His phone screen lit up on the entryway cabinet. I saw the message preview. The sender was saved as a white gardenia emoji. “Thank you for staying with me last night. I felt so safe.” It was as if an invisible hand had seized my heart. “You lied to me.” I heard my own voice shaking. “Bianca, right? Are you going to abandon me and marry her?” Nathan’s expression changed. Not guilt. Not panic. It was a kind of irritated impatience I had never seen on his face before. He came back, pressed one hand onto my shoulder, and pushed me against the sofa back. His strength wasn’t great. But the gesture itself chilled my spine. “You’ve been too tense lately.” He leaned down, his gaze like he was examining a malfunctioning machine. “I think you’re hallucinating.” He went to the kitchen and poured a glass of water. When he returned, white powder was still visible at the bottom of the glass, swirling in tiny currents. He held the water to my lips. “Drink it. Sleep.” His thumb brushed the corner of my mouth. The touch was light. So was his voice. “When you wake up, we’ll get married.” I didn’t drink it. I knocked the glass away with the back of my hand. Water spilled across the carpet. The white powder dissolved into a cloudy stain. Nathan straightened and stared at the wet patch for five seconds. Then he took out his phone and dialed a number. “Seal all exits.” Within ten minutes, the villa’s security system switched modes. Door locks, window locks, garage gates, every path leading outside locked at once. He took away my phone. The reason was that I needed rest. For half a month, I did not see complete daylight once. The bedroom curtains were nailed shut. The remote was removed. But early autumn thunderstorms came like clockwork, every other day. Every time lightning pierced through the gap in the curtains, I shook uncontrollably. My nails nearly dug through my palms. During the day, Nathan was gone. When he came home at night, he sometimes brought me a slice of my favorite cheesecake. He sat by the bed, fed me with a fork, and wiped cream from the corner of my mouth with his thumb. His movements were exactly the same as before. As if nothing had happened. As if I could leave at any time. On the eleventh day, the housekeeper forgot to lock the kitchen door after bringing dinner. The living room TV was on. I saw the screen. A press conference. Nathan stood onstage. Bianca held his arm, wearing a crisply tailored white suit. Reporters shoved microphones almost into his face. Nathan turned slightly, looked at the woman beside him, then faced the camera. “In this life, I will only marry the woman standing beside me.” Flashbulbs exploded across the screen. I crouched in front of the TV cabinet. My knees hit the tile, but I felt no pain. That night, when he opened the bedroom door, I held kitchen scissors in my hand. The tip pressed against my carotid artery. “Let me go.” He stood at the door, eyes falling on the scissors. There was no fear. He approached with slow steps, bit by bit. “Let you go?” He stopped in front of the bed and tilted his head. “So you can go tell everyone?” He reached out and grasped the blade with his bare hand. Metal sank into flesh. Blood slid down the blade and fell onto the sheets. His expression did not change. “Summer, alive, you are mine.” He pulled the scissors from my hand inch by inch. “Dead, you can only die in this house.” He threw the scissors into the hallway. The sound of metal striking the floor echoed through the empty villa for a long time. Three days later, Nathan brought someone back. The man carried a black briefcase. Beneath his white coat, he wore an ordinary gray sweater. Nathan had the housekeeper help me sit up. Soft restraints were already tied around my wrists. He stood at the foot of the bed and looked down at me. “Summer, you’re in too much pain now.” He reached out and brushed aside the hair on my forehead. “I found the best doctor for you.” I shook my head desperately. Tears slid from the corners of my eyes into my ears. “I won’t fight anymore. I’ll listen to whatever you say. Please don’t do this.” Nathan’s hand stopped on my forehead. He closed his eyes. For that one second, I thought he would stop. I thought he was still the man who once canceled million-dollar negotiations for me. Then he opened his eyes, turned around, and said something to the man in English. “Erase the memories that hurt her. Rewrite love into obedience.” The man opened his briefcase and took out a syringe and a palm-sized machine. Nathan walked toward the door. I could no longer scream complete words. Only broken sounds left my throat. The door closed. As the last strip of light was cut off, the needle pierced the vein on the back of my hand. After the drug took effect, my consciousness sank like drowning. My body stopped struggling. But I was still awake. The man thought the sedative had pushed me into deep hypnosis. He began guiding me with a pendulum and words, invading my subconscious sentence by sentence. “Forget betrayal.” “Forget waiting through that thunderstorm.” “He is safe. Obey him, and you won’t hurt anymore.” Every instruction reached my mind like ten thousand needles piercing my skull. The brainwave interference device was attached to both sides of my temples. Whenever my subconscious tried to seize a memory, electric current poured in from behind my ears and burned along my nerves. I tried to hold on to the sound of the pocket watch’s second hand. To the image of Nathan crouching in front of the closet and catching me. To the words “crushed to dust.” Every time I tried, the electric shock came. It was as if someone were using a branding iron to burn away the words inside my brain, one stroke at a time. I felt my fingers move. Under the restraint, my right middle finger kept curling inward. Hidden beneath my nail was a thin piece of metal. Before I was tied to the bed, I had bitten off a clasp from the pocket watch chain, held it between my gum and cheek, and moved it into my hand. I began to scrape. While the doctor adjusted the instrument settings, I used that metal piece to scratch the back cover of the pocket watch again and again. Nathan loves Summer. I cut over those three words repeatedly. My finger tore open. Blood mixed with metal dust. My fingertip lost all feeling. But physical pain became an anchor. It pinned me to the edge of clarity and kept that machine from pushing me all the way down. The procedure lasted four hours. When it ended, I could see nothing clearly. All I heard was the hum of the machine shutting off. The door opened. Nathan walked to the bed and bent over to look at me. I knew I had to act. I emptied my gaze, stopped my eyes from focusing, and relaxed every facial muscle. His hand covered the top of my head. “Summer, you’re so good now.” There was satisfaction in his voice. His fingertips brushed over my cheekbone, as if admiring a newly acquired collectible. A deep chill crawled up my spine. But I endured it. The brainwave intervention severed part of my short-term memory. For nearly half a year, my recollections were fractured and displaced. But the core remained. My nerves had been burned raw. Pain itself became the container of memory. With my damaged consciousness, I escaped that villa through the kitchen exhaust duct at dawn on the twenty-first day while the night housekeeper dozed off. That was seven years ago. I closed the back cover of the pocket watch. The metal clasp gave a soft click. The door to the consultation room was suddenly shoved open. Nathan had come back. He was soaked through, hair plastered to his forehead. He knelt in front of my desk, knees hitting the tiles with a dull thud. “I was a bastard back then.” He held his head, his vocal cords shaking badly. “I thought if your memories were erased, you wouldn’t suffer anymore. I thought it was for your own good.” I looked at him. This man who had once said at a press conference that he would marry only one woman now looked like a rotten, rain-soaked rag. I smiled. Very lightly. Without sound. He froze and lifted his face. I leaned down, meeting his gaze at eye level. “Mr. Vale, actually, that doctor of yours wasn’t very skilled.” His lips moved. “Try imagining what it felt like to feel your brain nerves being burned one by one by electric current, while having to pretend to stare blankly as you touched my head and said I was good.” I paused, my voice steady. “In business terms, I believe you’d call that worse than death.” Nathan’s pupils expanded to the limit in an instant. He opened his mouth but made no sound. Only broken gasps squeezed from his chest. His nails dug into the seams between the floor tiles, shaking terribly. I straightened, picked up the pocket watch from the desk, and gently swung it in midair. The second hand no longer moved. “Since you like hypnosis so much.” I released my fingers and let the watch hang. “Then I’ll let you taste what it means to never wake up.”

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1 I coasted through two years at my wife’s company. I was the absolute most invisible person in the entire department. Bar none. My presence was so low that when the layoffs rolled around, my name was right at the top of the list. The HR Director slapped the termination agreement on the desk right in front of me, skipping the corporate pleasantries altogether. I did not hesitate either. I signed my name, grabbed my potted cactus, and walked right out the door. A week later, three of the company’s core projects completely derailed. By the end of the month, my wife flew back from overseas to audit the books. She flipped open the layoff roster and froze for three seconds. Then she gently closed the folder. The soft thud of that cardboard echoed louder than a thunderclap. My name is Luke. I spent exactly two years grinding at a subsidiary of Summit Enterprises. Two whole years. Seven hundred and thirty days. My overall significance to the branch roughly equaled the dusty potted ficus in the lobby corner. Actually, that is not fair. The cleaning lady at least watered the ficus. I had to pour my own coffee. At three o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon, Jenny from reception poked her head over my cubicle partition. Hey Luke, Brenda from HR wants to see you. I looked up at her. Jenny had this incredibly subtle expression on her face. Her lips were pulled down in a frown, but her eyes held this undeniable spark of excitement. It was that specific thrill people get when they are rubbernecking a car crash. I set down the spreadsheet I was reviewing and stood up. In the next cubicle over, Josh pulled out one of his AirPods and shot me a knowing look. Good luck in there, man. Watch your back. I ignored him and headed straight for the HR department. When I pushed the door open, Brenda was already sitting behind her desk. She was in her early forties, rocking a fresh blowout, with an acrylic manicure that looked far more polished than any performance review she had ever written. She was in the middle of peeling an orange. She did not even bother to stand up when I walked in. She just gestured toward the chair across from her with her chin. Sit. I sat. She took her sweet time tossing the orange peels into the trash can, wiped her hands with a wet wipe, and then pulled two sheets of paper from a folder. Luke, the company is undergoing some structural optimization. Your position falls within the adjustment scope. This is your termination agreement. Your severance package will be standard pay plus one month. She slid the paper across the desk and tapped the signature line with her manicured index finger. Take a look. If there are no issues, just sign it. From the moment I walked in, she had not made actual eye contact with me once. Her eyes were glued to her phone screen. I glanced down at the agreement. Under the section for the reason of termination, it read: Performance targets unmet, structural optimization. Performance targets unmet. I had personally built the entire financial modeling system for our three core projects from the ground up. Just last quarter, my catch in a contract saved the company a two-million-dollar penalty. Performance targets unmet. Sure. Whatever. I picked up the pen, flipped to the last page, and signed my name. Quick and clean. Took me maybe two seconds. Brenda actually paused at that. She had clearly prepared a whole corporate speech about how difficult this decision was for management and how she hoped I would understand. But I signed so fast that all her rehearsed corporate jargon got jammed in her throat. She pulled the agreement back and cleared her throat. Right. Well, your exit procedures will be completed today. Your final paycheck will hit your account at the end of the month. Got it. I stood up and turned toward the door. Just as I reached for the handle, Brenda tossed one last comment at my back. The company cannot afford to carry dead weight. I hope you put a little more effort into your next job. I stopped for a second. I did not look back. I just pushed the door open and left. Back at my desk, I started packing up. I did not have much. Just a cactus I had kept alive for two years, a Yeti thermos, and an unopened box of dental floss. Josh leaned over and patted my shoulder. Take it easy, man. Let’s grab a beer sometime. His tone was about thirty percent pity and seventy percent pure relief. With me gone, his workload was bound to shrink. I knew exactly how the office politics played out. I shoved the cactus into my cardboard box, picked it up, and walked out. Passing the breakroom, I caught the hushed voices of two coworkers. Yeah, that Luke guy. Just got the axe. Makes sense, honestly. Never really saw him do much of anything anyway. Word is Brenda personally put his name on the block. Well, he was a goner then. She’s trying to establish dominance since she got promoted. I did not break my stride. I kept walking. When I reached the lobby, Frank the security guard held the glass door open for me. Heading out, Luke? Yeah, Frank. Heading out. He hesitated for a second. Gonna need that ID badge back, buddy. I looked down and unclipped the lanyard from my neck. The plastic card displayed a very tired mugshot of me, and right next to it: Luke, Finance Department, Junior Associate. Junior Associate. I had been grinding here for two years, and that title had never budged an inch. I handed the badge to Frank, gripped my box, and stepped out the front doors. The afternoon sun felt pretty damn good. I stood on the concrete steps and glanced up at the massive corporate logo bolted to the building. Summit Enterprises, Boston Branch. Summit. I pulled out my phone and looked at the pinned contact at the very top of my messages. Victoria. My wife. And incidentally, the CEO of this entire corporation. My thumb hovered over the screen for two seconds before I typed out a quick text and hit send. What’s for dinner? Three seconds later, she texted back. You’re cooking. I shoved the phone back into my pocket, adjusted my grip on my cactus, and started walking home. 2 Day one of unemployment. I slept until eleven in the morning and woke up naturally. I had not bothered to close the blinds, so the sun was blasting me right in the face. I rolled over and spotted the cactus sitting on my nightstand. It had survived the corporate wasteland for two years and even sprouted a tiny little offshoot on its side. Now, mother and child had come home, just like me. I stretched my arms out. My joints popped like bubble wrap. I had not slept this well in two years. I threw on some gym shorts and flip-flops, then headed downstairs to grab a coffee and a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich from the corner deli. Right outside my apartment building, I bumped into Mr. Henderson, the old guy from down the hall, walking his corgi. Not at the office today, kid? Using up some PTO. You young folks have it easy. Always taking time off. I just smiled and did not argue. After I finished my breakfast back at the apartment, I booted up my PlayStation. The moment that start screen lit up the TV, a sudden realization hit me. Getting fired really was not all that bad. Day two. Woke up at eleven again. The fridge was empty, so I took a stroll down to the local farmer’s market. I spent a solid ten minutes haggling with Martha at the butcher stall, eventually getting her to knock two bucks off the price of a prime cut. She squinted at me from across the display case. Don’t you have a job to be at, kid? I do. Flexible hours. That’s a lot of flexibility right there. I carried my groceries home, packed the meat and veggies into the fridge, and stood in the middle of my kitchen. That was when it dawned on me. I finally remembered why I had gone to work at my wife’s company in the first place. Two years ago, Victoria had just taken over her family’s empire. With over a dozen subsidiaries under the Vanguard umbrella, she was practically drowning in work, flying around the clock. I told her I wanted to join the company and help her out. She looked at me with an expression that screamed: And what exactly can you do? I told her I had a finance degree. I told her to throw me in at the bottom so I could work my way up on my own merit. She could not talk me out of it, so she finally agreed. But she had one strict condition. Absolutely no one could know we were married. Her exact words were: If people find out you are the boss’s husband, do you honestly think anyone in that building is going to look at you the same way? I told her to relax. No one would ever know. So I showed up at the Boston branch, starting from the absolute bottom rung as a junior finance associate. I grinded for two years. True to my word, nobody knew. And absolutely nobody took me seriously. At eight o’clock that night, Victoria called me on FaceTime from overseas. I frantically paused my game and shoved the controller under the sofa cushion before hitting accept. When the screen connected, Victoria was looking sharp in a tailored blazer, sitting in what looked like an executive airport lounge. Why are you at the house? I rubbed the back of my neck. Working from home today. She eyed me up and down through the camera. You’re working from home in basketball shorts? Company culture is very casual. Victoria did not entertain that. She stayed quiet for a few seconds. There’s a discrepancy in your branch’s recent financial reports. I need you to keep an eye on it for me. Yeah, absolutely. I’m on it. She gave a curt nod, fired off a few more instructions, and ended the call. Once the screen went dark, I pulled the controller out from under the cushion. I stared at the paused game on my TV, then down at my recent call log. Should I tell her? And have her fly back early just to turn the office into a war zone? Forget it. I would tell her when her current trip wrapped up. I hit unpause, watched my character respawn, and charged right back into the boss fight. Meanwhile. And I mean at that exact moment. Back at the office, VP Richard’s nephew, Kyle, was staring blankly at my old monitor. He had been brought in to replace me. Today was his first day on the job. He double-clicked on my main work directory. Every single file in the folder was fully encrypted. 3 Day three of unemployment. It was the quarterly reconciliation date for Project Alpha. I knew this because the calendar alert still popped up on my phone. I glanced at the notification, swiped it away to turn it off, and rolled over to go back to sleep. Things over at the company were a lot less peaceful. Later on, Marcus from Finance called me and painted a very vivid picture of what went down that morning. Kyle sat at my desk and stared at the financial modeling system I had built for two solid hours. He did not understand a single line of the logic. He ended up running over to Marcus’s office in a panic. Marcus, I can’t figure out this reconciliation model. It doesn’t make any sense. Marcus walked over, took one look at the screen, and the color drained from his face. That model was something I had built entirely from scratch. Every cross-verification node, every supplier payment condition, every contract penalty trigger was hardcoded into that system. It was not something a rookie could just pick up by skimming a manual. Then Kyle dropped a line that sent Marcus’s blood pressure through the roof. Also, I can’t even get into the protected folders. The handover document says the password is… the cactus’s birthday. Marcus stared at him for five agonizing seconds. The cactus has a birthday? They dragged Brenda up from HR. She flipped through my exit paperwork. My handover log was meticulous. I had listed every process, every file location, and every critical deadline. I did not leave a single thing out. But the actual operational logic of that core model? That only existed in my head. Because it was not a standard company procedure. I had coded the damn thing myself to save time. A vein throbbed against Marcus’s temple. Brenda, before you went ahead and axed him, did you bother checking with any department heads about how critical his role was? Brenda looked defensive, though her voice shook a little. Marcus, he was just a junior associate. His performance review clearly stated he wasn’t meeting targets. Who gave him that review? Brenda kept her mouth shut. At four in the afternoon, my phone rang. It was Josh. I was standing in the middle of the farmer’s market, inspecting a bin of tomatoes. Luke! His voice sounded like he was reporting from the apocalypse. We can’t open the Project Alpha reconciliation model. What the hell is the password? Oh, that. I squeezed the tomato in my hand. Not ripe enough. I put it back. Tell HR to send me a formal technical consultation request. Just pay me the standard market consulting rate and I’ll unlock it. He went dead silent for three seconds. Bro, are you serious? I got fired, Josh. This literally isn’t my job anymore. Come on, man, don’t do this to me. I can go talk to Brenda, maybe we can figure out a way to… Martha yelled at me from across the aisle. Hey kid! Fresh halibut today! Gotta go, Josh. Buying fish. Click. I hung up the phone before I had to listen to him hyperventilate. That very evening, the supplier for Project Bravo sent over a formal letter of demand. Payment was overdue. If the funds did not clear within three days, they were initiating legal action. Marcus sat in his office, rubbing his temples as a headache pounded behind his eyes. He hauled Brenda into a private meeting. I do not know exactly what was said in that room. But according to Jenny at the front desk, when Brenda walked out of Marcus’s office, her face was the exact same color as printer paper. Ghost white. I did not know any of this, of course. I was at home, trying to perfect the simmering time for my braised short ribs. The cactus was soaking up the afternoon sun on the windowsill. Life was good. 4 Day five of unemployment. I finally nailed the braised short ribs. Glistening, perfectly marbled, the meat practically falling off the bone the second my fork touched it. Absolute perfection. I poured myself a glass of Coke and was just about to dig in when my phone buzzed. Unknown number. I picked it up, and immediately a middle-aged man started screaming in my ear. Is this Luke? This is Gibson from Apex Supply. Who the hell is managing the payment clauses on the Project Charlie contract? Does nobody at your company read the penalty stipulations? I slowly put my fork down. Hello, Mr. Gibson. I’ve actually left the company. You’ll need to reach out to the current project manager. What? You left? Then who’s handling the contract? I suggest calling the company’s main line. He muttered a string of curses and slammed the phone down. I looked down at my plate of ribs. I let out a heavy sigh, picked up a piece, and popped it into my mouth. Yep. Delicious. I ended up getting the full play-by-play of the office meltdown from Jenny later that evening. She sent me a massive voice memo, sounding like she was on the verge of tears. Luke, I am losing my mind over here. Project Charlie had completely exploded. There was a hidden, escalating penalty clause buried deep in that contract, triggered automatically if a payment was delayed by more than seven business days. I was the one who had spotted it during the initial review, and I built an automated alert system that warned us five days before every single payment node hit. But that alert system lived on my local machine. When Kyle took over, he had absolutely no clue the system even existed. Day seven came and went, and the penalty clause activated automatically. Three core projects, completely paralyzed. Project Alpha’s financials were gridlocked. Project Bravo’s vendors were threatening lawsuits. Project Charlie’s late fees were skyrocketing by the hour. The front desk phone was ringing so much Jenny said her ears were bleeding. Two angry suppliers actually sent representatives down in person to block the main entrance. Frank the security guard was completely overwhelmed trying to keep them out. VP Richard called an emergency executive meeting. Marcus recounted the details of that meeting to me later. Richard slammed his hand on the boardroom table. What the hell is going on? Three major projects blowing up in one week? There goes our entire monthly profit margin. Marcus looked right at him. Richard, the core financials for all three of those projects were handled exclusively by Luke. After he left… Richard cut him off. He was a low-level junior employee. How much impact could he possibly have? Marcus’s jaw tightened. Richard, he built the financial models from scratch. Right now, there isn’t a single person in this building who knows how to operate them. The boardroom plunged into dead silence. Brenda sat huddled in the corner, gripping her pen so hard her knuckles were white. Richard turned his glare on her. Brenda. Get him back here right now. Brenda swallowed hard. I tried calling him. He’s not answering. Richard narrowed his eyes. However you got rid of him, you figure out a way to drag him back. Brenda swallowed her pride and dialed my number again. I happened to be outside, walking Mr. Henderson’s corgi. When the phone rang, the dog was busy doing circles around a fire hydrant. I answered. Brenda’s voice came through the speaker. She was still trying to use her condescending HR voice. Luke, management has reviewed your file. Given your past contributions, we’ve decided to offer you an opportunity to return to— Sorry, I’m walking a dog right now. Click. I hung up. The corgi looked up at me. I crouched down and gave him a good scratch behind the ears. Nothing to do with you, buddy. Do your thing. Twenty minutes later, Brenda called again. I did not pick up. She called a third time. Ignored. Jenny told me later that when Brenda finally put her phone down, Richard demanded to know what I said. Brenda’s voice was hoarse when she answered. He said… he’s walking a dog. According to Marcus, the mood in that boardroom could be summed up in one word. Shattered. 5 Day seven of unemployment. I unlocked my phone to find seventeen missed calls. Countless text messages. Over ninety unread messages on WhatsApp. I scrolled through them one by one. Josh: Bro, I’m begging you. Just pick up the phone. Please. Jenny: Luke, the suppliers are tearing me apart. My hands are literally shaking. Marcus: Luke, name your price. Whatever you want, we can negotiate. Brenda’s messages were the most entertaining. I sorted them chronologically. First message: Luke, please cooperate with the company’s formal handover procedure. Third message: Luke, management is willing to negotiate a slight increase in your severance. Let’s talk. Fifth message: Luke, please. I know my attitude was out of line before. I apologize. Seventh message: If you have a shred of humanity left, text me back. Ninth message: I am begging you on my hands and knees. I read every single message from top to bottom. Then I picked up my PlayStation controller and queued up for another match. At eight o’clock, Victoria’s FaceTime call came through. I stared at the screen. I had to pick up. If I ghosted her two days in a row, she would definitely track my GPS. I hit accept. She was not in a hotel this time. She looked like she was sitting in a temporary office somewhere. And she looked pissed. What the hell is going on at your branch? I was mid-slurp on a bowl of takeout noodles. I mumbled around the food. Hmm? What do you mean? I just looked over the subsidiary’s monthly report. Profits tanked by sixty percent. Three core projects are totally stalled. Reception has logged over forty vendor complaints. Really? That sounds pretty rough. Victoria stared right through the camera lens. Are you not at the office? I’m… working from home today. Cooking dinner. Cooking dinner on company time? We have flexible— If you say ‘flexible hours’ to me one more time, I will buy a ticket and fly back tonight. I swallowed my noodles so fast I almost choked. Victoria’s expression shifted. I knew that exact look. It was the transition from suspicion to scrutiny, and finally, to locking onto a target. That was her rhythm in the boardroom. The second she smelled blood in the water, she hunted it down. Luke. Yeah. Are you hiding something from me? I slid my bowl out of the camera’s view, took a deep breath, and pointed my phone at the stove. Babe, look at the color on these braised short ribs. I’ve been perfecting this recipe for three days— I’m booking a flight for tomorrow. You just wait. Click. She hung up on me. I stared at the black screen, a lump of noodles suddenly very heavy in my stomach. I was dead. I was so incredibly dead. I glanced over at the cactus sitting on the windowsill. Buddy, the missus is coming home. The cactus did not say a word. But I swear it was mocking me. The next day. Right before Victoria’s plane touched down, she sent me a text. Pick me up.

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1 I locked up my adoptive brother. I broke his leg, chained him in the basement, and tried to turn him into something that needed me to survive. When I was angry, I slapped him. Before meals, I made him call me “Master.” Every bruise on him was a mark I had left. I treated him like a dog and waited for Stockholm syndrome to happen. But it never did. Every time Owen looked at me, his eyes were filled with pain and a hatred so dense it almost had weight. After three months, I finally gave up. I unlocked his shackles and smiled bitterly. “Owen, don’t hate me. I just wanted you to be unable to leave me.” After that day, I went to school, ate, slept, and disappeared from his life like he wanted. I met new people. Then one day, I opened my eyes. The moment I raised my hand, I heard the familiar clink of chains. The basement was almost airtight. Owen was chained to the bed, one ankle wrapped in thick gauze. I stood in the shadows and waited for a long time. My legs were sore. Finally losing patience, I poured a glass of water and threw it in his face. Owen flinched. Water clung to his lashes. His hair stuck damply to his forehead in messy strands. Beautiful enough to make the heart stop. At last, he woke. He tried to lift a hand to wipe the water from his eyes, only to realize something heavy was locked around his wrist. I greeted him. “Hi. Morning.” “Mor…ning?” Owen repeated it blankly. There were no windows here. No clock. The only light came from a shaky incandescent bulb overhead. Of course he couldn’t tell what time it was. Owen had lived more than twenty years as the prized young master of the family. This was probably the first time he had ever slept somewhere this shabby. He rubbed his aching, foggy head and finally realized something was wrong. “Lydia, what are you doing?” His voice was low. When he frowned slightly, he carried that natural, quiet authority. He looked good. So good it made people want to ruin him. I answered without shame. “I want you, Owen.” The impact of those words was too strong. His eyes widened. He looked down at the chain on his body and pulled hard several times. When it did not budge, he finally realized I wasn’t joking. His mind seemed to explode. “What do you mean, want me?” I moved closer step by step. “You really don’t understand?” “Then I’ll make it clearer. I want to be with you. I want you to belong to me. I want you to be my dog.” “Do you understand now, brother?” Owen was so shocked his voice shook. “Do you know what you’re saying? Are you insane? Do you remember I’m your brother?” I swallowed, a little excited. That sentence. That tone. Exactly like I had imagined. Fear, disbelief, and the shame of something forbidden. I said casually, “We’re not related by blood. What does it matter?” Owen froze. “Mom and Dad told you?” “Yeah. But even if they hadn’t, did you think I couldn’t guess?” “Everyone could see they didn’t care whether I lived or died. They only loved you.” It was funny. Owen’s leg was injured, his wrists chained, his body damp and trapped in this wreck of a room. Yet his first reaction was still to comfort me. “Lydia, that isn’t true. Mom and Dad care about you.” “You’ve lived with us for so long. Blood stopped mattering a long time ago. You know I’ve always treated you as my real sister.” He stumbled over his words. “Even if Mom and Dad are sometimes more biased toward me, that doesn’t matter.” “You know what’s mine is yours. I’ll take care of you for the rest of your life. I’ll give you the best of everything I can.” I nodded. “I believe you.” Hope flashed in Owen’s eyes. “Then…” Before he could finish, I raised my hand without warning and slapped him hard. The sound was loud and crisp. His skin was pale, so his cheek flushed red at once. His head turned to the side. His hair fell messily. Maybe he was stunned, because he didn’t come back to himself for a long while. “You’ll give me the best of everything? Fine. Then give me the part of you no one else has touched.” Owen’s pupils shrank. Whether from fear or anger, his body trembled. “Who taught you to say these things?” I tilted my head. I couldn’t explain what I was feeling. After staring at him for a few seconds, I suddenly leaned in. I bit his lip hard. It was a bite. No tenderness, no romance. Only force. It was as soft and warm as I had imagined. When it split, I tasted blood. He looked truly miserable. He struggled desperately, but the restraints held too tightly. The more he fought, the more helpless he looked. In daily life, I rarely saw him cry. He was always tough, powerful, the person who stood in front of me and handled everything. But now, as if suffering some unbearable pain, even with his eyes tightly shut, tears still leaked from the corners. Seeing him like that made irritation rise in me for no reason. I refused to retreat. “No one taught me, Owen.” “But you raised me yourself. If you hadn’t tempted me, if you hadn’t kept crossing lines without knowing it, how would I have become like this?” “You brought this on yourself.” He trembled harder. My patience ran out. I grabbed his jaw and forced medicine between his lips. Owen’s eyes filled with tears from being forced. He struggled and coughed badly, choking on water. The cruelest thing he could call me was “beast.” It only made me more excited. “Don’t be so fierce.” I smiled. “Your leg still needs regular dressing changes. What will you do if you offend me? Do you want to be permanently disabled?” Only then did Owen seem to realize something. A little terror appeared in his eyes. “My leg…” “I hit you with the car. Don’t accuse me of intentional injury when you get out, okay?” The medicine took effect quickly. Owen’s breathing grew heavy. His gaze blurred, and a thin flush spread over his skin. He still looked tormented. Strangled by that useless sense of morality. But instinct could not be suppressed. I glanced down and sneered. “So much for being noble. I really thought you were made of wood.” “Aren’t you still reacting to the sister you raised?” Owen looked like a trapped animal, cornered with nowhere to go. He dug his nails into his palm, and the chains rubbed red marks around his wrists. He murmured my childhood nickname again and again, begging me not to continue. I touched his burning face and slowly undid the first button of his shirt. Then I added calmly, “Don’t be afraid. You can tell on me.” “If you can still get out.” The day I learned I had been adopted, I wasn’t surprised at all. The woman I had called Mom for twenty years looked relieved, like she had finally set down a burden. “Lydia, we’ve raised you this long. As adoptive parents, we’ve done our duty. We have a clear conscience.” “We’ll give you one of the family properties, and you can choose any car. We’ll also keep supporting you until you graduate college.” “Media will come in three days. You should know what to say.” I smiled and nodded calmly. My adoptive mother had probably prepared for me to make a scene. Seeing me so calm, she seemed at a loss. After considering it for a moment, she softened her tone. “Of course, if you have any other requests, you can bring them up. We can discuss it.” “After all, we watched you grow up. There is still some affection…” I cut her off. “I don’t want anything.” She sighed in relief and patted her chest. “Good.” I held back a cold laugh with all my strength. My only thought was that my plan to imprison Owen had to be moved up. Ever since I could remember, I had vaguely sensed that my parents favored my brother more. This favoritism wasn’t like giving him the bigger drumstick at dinner. In small things, Owen and I received equal resources. Toys, clothes, everything. Whatever he had, I had too. Outsiders thought I was the precious daughter of the family. Only I could sense the subtle difference in their attitude. They treated me like a friend’s child. Polite. Controlled. Distant. They never cared how I was doing in kindergarten or whether I had made new friends. They didn’t care what color dresses I liked, or why I hid in my room crying at night. Yes. As adoptive parents, they were beyond reproach. But to me, a child who knew nothing, the two people I depended on most not caring about me was a very painful thing. I was jealous of Owen. For a long time, I truly hated him. I broke his toys, threw tantrums for no reason, and even pushed him hard down the stairs. Owen fell badly. His forehead split open. Mom and Dad were so heartbroken they skipped work and stayed with him for three days. Watching him in pain, I felt a twisted pleasure rise in me. But Owen didn’t ask why. He didn’t blame me at all. When Mom and Dad questioned him, he even covered for me and said he fell by accident. I froze. A little guilty. So I picked a time when Mom and Dad were asleep, padded into his bedroom in fluffy slippers, tugged his sleeve, and asked why he hadn’t told on me. Owen had been beautiful since childhood. Delicate and fine, like white porcelain in a display case. Even after I woke him, he wasn’t angry. He rubbed his eyes and smiled, pulling me into his arms. His cold, clean scent filled my nose. “Because you’re my little sister.” “Were you angry because I didn’t give you the new blocks that day? I was planning to build them and then give them to you.” “If you like making things yourself, we can build them together tomorrow, okay?” I don’t remember what he said after that. My mind was full of his bright eyes. And that indulgent yet solemn sentence. Later, when I grew older, there were things no one needed to say. I could guess from tiny clues. Muffled conversations in the study. The teasing looks relatives gave me. A few times, someone nearly slipped up, pointing at my face and laughing behind a hand. “Well, raising someone long enough does change things. Look at her eyes. They really do look a bit like yours now.” Mom shot her a look. She immediately shut up and laughed it off. That left a thorn in my heart. That night, I stood on the balcony for a long time. A wealthy family, successful parents, countless pretty clothes in my closet. If one day all of this left me, what would I do? When I thought it through, I realized the thing I couldn’t let go of most was my brother. I paced the balcony anxiously. But Owen was a living person. A person with his own thoughts and judgment. How could he ever truly belong to me? While I was worrying, Roundy came over. Roundy was my dog. No breed. I picked him up from the street. Maybe because I raised him, he was afraid of strangers but especially close to me. Now he ran to my leg with a little ball in his mouth, rubbing his forehead against me. His round eyes stared at me, clearly hoping I would play with him. I crouched and stroked his furry head. His world was so simple. Eat, sleep, play. So pure that it almost contained only me. Yes. Keeping a person’s heart was too hard. But keeping a dog was easy. I hugged Roundy tightly and buried my nose in his fur. Mm. A little smelly. The next afternoon, I went to the basement. Owen had his back to me, shoulders trembling uncontrollably. I hadn’t changed his clothes after yesterday. Red marks, some shallow and some deeper, still crossed his waist and abdomen. I had scratched them there. I licked my lips. Yesterday, Owen had tried at first to maintain his pure, principled image, holding me off with all his strength. Later, maybe the medicine took hold and he couldn’t pretend anymore. He bit his lip and endured everything in silence. It was the first time, so I hadn’t bothered correcting him. I let him get through it however he could. Today would be different. I smiled. “It’s already this late, Owen. Still pretending to sleep? That’s rude.” He ignored me, but his breathing clearly quickened. He was afraid. Afraid of the sister he had raised himself. I barely suppressed my laughter. After clearing my throat, I softened my voice to coax him. “You don’t have to talk to me. But you need water, right? How many hours has it been? Aren’t you thirsty?” Owen was silent for a few seconds, then finally turned over. He sat up, clearly unrested. His eyes were bloodshot, his face exhausted, his voice hoarse. “Lydia, unlock these. Let’s talk properly.” I raised an eyebrow and shook the bottle of mineral water in my hand. “One sentence. Do you want it or not?” He fell silent. The meaning was obvious. No. I glanced at his throat as it moved slightly. I wasn’t surprised. With a smile, I opened the cap in front of him. Then I poured more than half the cool, clear water onto the floor, not leaving a single drop. “It’s fine. I have plenty of time to waste with you.” Owen opened his mouth but said nothing. His pupils trembled. I didn’t give him another chance. I turned and left the basement. My brother couldn’t keep pretending. His throat had been dry and tight after a whole day without water. He panicked and tried to grab my clothes, but he accidentally fell from the bed with a heavy thud. As if he couldn’t feel the pain, he tried desperately to get up and reach me. But the chain was limited. He couldn’t even touch a corner of my clothes. Instead, he ended up covered in dust. I shut the door. After a little while, I heard a suppressed, wounded sound that was almost a sob. How should I put it? It felt pretty good. I didn’t leave him there for too long. Around eight that night, I returned to him right on time. I brought enough water and food. Owen was a grown man, but who knew what temper he was throwing? He remained in the exact position from when I left. Lying on the floor without moving. Hair messy. His pretty face streaked with tears. His eyes terribly red. My good brother. Did he really not know this look only excited me more? I stretched out one foot and naturally stepped on his abdomen, grinding lightly. “Still so stubborn?” “…” “Then I’ll have to use medicine again. But you know that stuff can be addictive.” “Maybe by then, before I even touch you, you’ll already react and crawl over to beg.” Owen’s teeth nearly ground together. “Filthy.” I smiled and opened the bottle cap. “Come on. Call me Master and I’ll give you water.” Even I clicked my tongue at that. Truly vile. Owen’s face alternated between red and white. Whether from shame or rage, he suddenly turned his head away and refused to look at me. I smiled and brought the bottle to his lips. “Come on. Drink.” He had been thirsty so long. Even though every part of him resisted, after struggling a little, he still reluctantly opened his mouth. I fed him a few sips. Just as I was about to keep tormenting him, my phone rang. Owen and I froze at the same time.

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1 Sloane’s gallery was celebrating its anniversary. My deaf-mute father took three Greyhound buses to get there, wearing a borrowed old suit with sleeves too short, sticking out among the elites. When he saw Sloane, his eyes lit up. He shakily unwrapped a faded flannel bundle and a mason jar of pungent homemade relish. Inside was a hand-carved wooden comb. He gestured clumsily: This brings safety. You have a weak stomach, so I made this spicy relish to help you eat. Sloane frowned and stepped back. “I have important clients. You being here is inappropriate.” She signaled her assistant with a look of disgust. “Get a trash bag. Throw those in the basement. The smell is awful.” Dad’s hands froze midair. He tugged his jacket hem and retreated into a corner. My heart ached sharply. Just then, Sloane’s first love, Paul, walked in. Her scowl vanished into a radiant smile. “Paul, I secured that two-million-dollar vintage Patek Philippe pocket watch. Your father will love it.” Paul waved it off. “You went out of your way for his little hobby.” Sloane smiled softly. “As long as he’s happy, it’s worth it.” In the corner, Dad stared, eyes bloodshot. He signed to me: I’m useless. I couldn’t bring her anything good. I embarrassed you. Looking at his hunched back, I knew. This marriage, built on my humiliation and her contempt, was finally over. I stopped Gwen in her tracks. “I will take those. Don’t touch them.” Gwen glanced at me, then back at Sloane, hesitating. Sloane had her back to me, laughing with Paul. Her voice wasn’t loud, but every word was crystal clear. “That antique sterling silver tea set for your dad arrives next week. I will deliver it to him personally.” Paul leaned against the display pedestal, looking as comfortable as if he owned the place. “You spoil him too much. He stared at that last tea service you got him for an entire week.” Sloane laughed. It was a genuine, effortless laugh. A laugh I hadn’t seen in a very long time. I bent down and picked up the mason jar and the wooden comb from the floor. The jar wasn’t big. My dad had fermented the relish in an old crock last autumn. He wrapped the lid in three layers of cling wrap and double-bagged it in plastic. He was terrified the smell would leak out. But it leaked anyway. I turned around to find him. He wasn’t in the corner anymore. I found him in the back stairwell of the gallery. He was crouching on the concrete steps, hands folded over his knees, head bowed. Sensing someone approaching, he shot up immediately. He signed to me. “It’s fine. It’s too crowded in there. Dad just came out for some fresh air.” The short sleeves of his borrowed suit rode up, exposing the jagged scar on his wrist from an old bandsaw accident. I handed the mason jar back to him. Panic flashed in his eyes. He signed. “She didn’t like it?” “She is just busy today,” I said. “I will give it to her later.” He believed me. He hugged the jar back to his chest. Then he dug into his pocket and handed me a crumpled piece of paper. It was his bus tickets. Three of them. From our rural county to the transit hub, from the hub to the city, and from the city down here. The earliest ticket had a departure time of 4:00 AM. I didn’t say a word. I just folded the tickets and slipped them into my own pocket. When I brought him back out to the gallery, the anniversary event was in full swing. Sloane stood in the center of the exhibition hall, surrounded by a crowd of wealthy patrons. Paul stood right at her right hand, adjusting the microphone stand for her. There was barely any space between them. When Paul leaned down to whisper something, his lips practically brushed her ear. Sloane didn’t pull away. I led my dad through the side entrance and found a spot against the wall. There were no chairs left. A staff member gave me a passing glance before turning back to work. My dad just stood there. He shifted the mason jar to his left arm. His right hand hung at his side, his calloused fingers nervously pinching the seam of his trousers. He couldn’t hear a single word being said on stage, but his eyes never left Sloane. Someone walked up to the stage and handed her a bouquet. It was Paul. A massive arrangement of white lisianthus. Sloane took it, smiling brightly as she thanked him. Camera flashes lit up the room. My dad tugged at my sleeve and signed. “Your wife is incredible.” He smiled. He smiled so hard his wrinkles bunched together, revealing a chipped front tooth. I nodded. “Yeah. She really is.” I didn’t tell him that the man handing her the flowers was her first love. I didn’t tell him that Sloane gladly spent two million dollars on an antique watch to impress Paul’s father. And I didn’t tell him that she couldn’t even be bothered to unwrap the flannel cloth to look at the comb he spent three months carving. During the intermission, Sloane arranged a catered reception. The long tables were lined with exquisite pastries, artisan coffee, and delicate macarons. My dad stood in front of the table, staring at the spread for a long time without reaching for anything. He didn’t recognize a single item. Eventually, he just took a paper cup of plain water, retreated to his corner, and drank it slowly. I went over and grabbed two slices of cake for him. He shook his head and signed. “Too expensive. You eat it.” I forced the plate into his hands. Only then did he take a tiny bite, chewing it with agonizing slowness. Paul’s parents arrived. I knew exactly who they were. His father dealt in high-end antiques and owned three massive showrooms upstate. His mother was a retired fine arts professor from an Ivy League university. The moment they walked in, Sloane practically flew over to greet them. She linked her arm through Paul’s mother’s arm, her tone dripping with affection. “Mary, you mentioned wanting to see that post-impressionist landscape. I kept it off the market specifically for you today.” Mary patted her hand with a warm smile. “You always know exactly how to spoil us, dear.” Sloane turned and snapped her fingers at Gwen. “Go switch the tea in the VIP lounge to the Darjeeling first flush Mary loves. And serve it in the Wedgwood fine bone china.” Gwen jogged off to get it done. Paul’s father walked through the gallery with his hands clasped behind his back, nodding in approval. “Sloane, the curation this year is leaps and bounds ahead of the last.” Sloane beamed. “I owe it all to your guidance, Arthur.” Paul stood nearby with his hands in his pockets, his expression neutral. But his eyes never left Sloane. I looked over at my dad. He was watching Sloane chat with Paul’s family. He couldn’t read lips. He had no idea what they were talking about. But he could read the expression on Sloane’s face. The smile she gave Paul’s parents was radiant and entirely genuine. Half an hour ago, she hadn’t even looked him in the eye. He slowly placed his cake down on the windowsill and didn’t touch it again. I walked over to him. He signed. “Your wife is busy. Let’s not get in her way.” His gestures were slower than usual. It was like he had to second-guess every movement before he made it. “Dad, are you hungry?” I asked. “Let me take you out to get some real food.” He shook his head. Then he looked down at his scuffed cloth shoes, and glanced at the polished leather wingtips and designer heels walking around the room. He pulled his feet further back under his chair. Right then, Gwen walked by carrying a tray of fresh fruit for Paul’s parents. As she passed my dad, she caught a whiff of the mason jar in his hands. She visibly wrinkled her nose and practically sprinted away. My dad noticed. He immediately hid the jar behind his back and lowered his head to sniff his own shirt. Then he did something that made my heart physically stop. He shoved the mason jar into the dark corner of the stairwell and covered it with his borrowed suit jacket. He was terrified the smell would offend someone. I stared at that jacket, a heavy lump forming in my throat. He had specifically borrowed that suit from old man Henderson back in our village just for today. Henderson was a size bigger than him. The sleeves were too short, and the shoulders sagged. But before he left the house, he had spent twenty minutes staring at himself in the mirror, looking so proud. And now, he had stripped it off to hide a jar of relish. Left wearing nothing but a faded, pill-covered gray crewneck in a room full of bespoke suits and evening gowns, he looked even more tragically out of place. Paul walked over with a glass of red wine and gave me a passing glance. He knew who I was. Or rather, he knew I was Sloane’s husband. But he never went out of his way to speak to me. He walked right up to Sloane and casually draped his arm over the back of her chair. Sloane didn’t pull away. My dad stared at that hand, then looked at me, his face tight with anxiety. He signed. “Who is that man?” “A business partner,” I said. He nodded and didn’t ask anything else. But his eyes stayed glued to Paul’s hand for a very long time. Sloane stood up to greet a new wave of guests, passing right by us. My dad scrambled to stand up straight. He raised his hand, wanting to wave hello. Just as his hand went up… Sloane’s phone rang. She answered it without breaking her stride, walking right past him. My dad’s hand hovered in the air for a second before he slowly let it drop. He smiled to himself. Nobody saw that smile. Nobody except me. Before the second half of the event started, I went to the restroom. On my way back, I passed the VIP lounge. The door was cracked open. Sloane was sitting inside, directly across from Paul’s mother. Mary pulled a velvet jewelry box from her purse and slid it across the table. “You mentioned you loved raw emeralds the other day. I had my jeweler set this pendant aside for you. It isn’t much, but I hope you like it.” Sloane opened the box and gasped softly. “Mary, this is way too expensive.” “Take it.” Mary patted her hand. “I see you as my own daughter. Don’t be so polite with me.” Sloane lowered her head, her voice dropping to a soft murmur. “You are always so good to me, Mary.” Mary smiled and helped her close the box. “I won’t push you about the situation with Paul. But you need to figure out what you truly want.” Sloane didn’t say a word. She didn’t deny it, either. I stood in the hallway, my fingers pressed white against the doorframe. I didn’t push it open. I knew exactly what Mary meant. And I knew exactly what Sloane’s two seconds of silence meant. I turned around and walked back to the exhibition hall. My dad wasn’t in his corner anymore. I searched the entire floor before finally finding him down in the basement storage room. He was crouching on the dusty concrete floor. He had opened the plastic bag holding the wooden comb. He couldn’t hear my footsteps. I stood behind him, watching him huddle among the discarded cardboard boxes, frantically rubbing his thumb over a wooden comb nobody wanted. I knelt down beside him. He jumped, startled, and quickly hid the comb behind his back. Then he flashed me a nervous smile and signed. “Dad was looking for the bathroom. Got lost.” He was terrified I would see how pathetic he felt. He had spent his whole life being terrified of exactly that. I reached out and gently pulled the comb from his hand. The wood was carved with a delicate, winding lotus pattern. Right in the center of the lotus was a tiny word. Peace. He signed. “The carving is ugly. It’s normal that your wife doesn’t like it.” I gripped the comb so tight my knuckles turned white. He signed again. “When I get back, Dad will carve a much better one. With better wood.” He actually thought the problem was his craftsmanship. I helped him to his feet. His legs had gone numb from crouching. He stumbled and threw a hand against the wall to catch his balance. The basement wall was coated in thick dust. He left a dirty handprint on the paint. He yanked his hand back in a panic and desperately wiped it on his trousers. I led him back upstairs. As we passed the main entrance, we ran straight into Sloane walking Mary out. Mary held Sloane’s hands, smiling warmly. “Come to the house for dinner next week. I will make that beef bourguignon you love.” Sloane nodded brightly. “I will be there. I will bring Arthur’s favorite tea.” They stood arm in arm, looking exactly like a mother and daughter. My dad watched them. He looked down at his own dust-covered hands. He hid his hands behind his back. Then he signed a single sentence to me. He signed. “Your wife is a good person. She is so respectful to her elders.” The anniversary event finally ended, and the guests slowly filtered out. My dad started helping the staff stack chairs. He carried seven or eight heavy folding chairs at a time, stacking them with more care than any of the paid employees. A young staffer shot him a weird look and whispered to her coworker. “Who is that guy?” “I think it’s the boss’s husband’s dad.” “The deaf guy?” They didn’t speak loudly, but I heard every word. My dad couldn’t hear a thing. He just kept carrying chairs. Sloane was at the reception desk, saying goodbye to Paul. “I’m heading out,” Paul said. “My old man is taking us out to dinner tonight. I’ll swing by and pick you up.” “Sounds perfect,” Sloane replied. He left. The gallery finally grew quiet. Sloane finally seemed to notice my dad. She walked over. Her tone was slightly more polite than before, but only barely. “Dad, you came all this way without giving us a heads-up. I could have arranged something.” My dad quickly dropped the chairs he was holding and rubbed his calloused hands together nervously. He looked at me to translate. “He said he didn’t want to cause any trouble,” I said. “He wanted to surprise you.” Sloane gave a tight smile and didn’t respond to that. She looked at me. “Arthur is hosting a dinner for us tonight. Take your dad somewhere nearby to grab a quick bite.” Grab a quick bite. “Can’t we all go together?” I asked. Sloane shot me a warning look. “Arthur booked a private chef’s tasting menu. It’s eight hundred a plate, and he only reserved four seats.” She paused. “Besides, look at your dad. It wouldn’t be appropriate for him to be there.” My dad saw the tension in our faces. He grew frantic and signed to me. “What is she saying?” “She said she has a business dinner tonight, and she wants me to take you out for something really delicious.” My dad looked visibly relieved and nodded enthusiastically. He signed. “Of course, of course. Your wife is an important woman. We shouldn’t get in her way.” Sloane grabbed her designer purse, ready to leave. As she walked past the front desk, she remembered something and turned to Gwen. “Those two things I told you to throw away. Did you handle it?” Gwen hesitated. “Dean took them.” Sloane glanced at me. She didn’t say another word, just pushed the glass door open and stepped out. The moment the door swung shut, I saw Paul’s sleek Mercedes parked out front. He stepped out and opened the passenger door for her. The gesture was so fluid, so natural. Like he had done it a thousand times. My dad stood behind the glass door and saw it too. He looked at Paul, and then he looked at me. He lowered his head and stood in silence for a very long time. Finally, he signed a single sentence. “Treat her better. Don’t let someone else steal her away.” I didn’t answer him. That night, I took him to a small diner for a bowl of beef stew. After he finished, he signed to me. “I’ll leave first thing in the morning. I don’t want to cause any more trouble.” “There’s no rush,” I said. He shook his head. “It’s time to go. If I stay too long, your wife will be upset.” When we got back to the apartment, I told him to take the guest bedroom. He flat-out refused and insisted on sleeping on the couch. He said the bedsheets were too white, and he was terrified of getting them dirty. I pulled the wooden comb and the mason jar out of my backpack. There was a faded piece of paper taped to the jar. He barely knew how to read or write, so he had asked the elementary school teacher back in the village to write it for him. It read: Daughter-in-law, the relish is freshly fermented. I added two scoops of salt so it won’t spoil. Good for the stomach. Right beneath that was a line of crooked, barely legible handwriting. You could tell he had written it himself. Just two words. Our family. I carefully packed the comb and the relish back into my bag. Then I took the divorce papers I had drafted weeks ago and placed them dead center on the coffee table. The house belonged to her. The car belonged to her. The savings account belonged to her. I didn’t want a single damn cent. At 4:00 AM, I woke my dad up. He sat up groggily and signed. “The sun isn’t even up.” “Let’s go, Dad,” I said. “I’m taking you home.” He froze. “You don’t have work?” “I quit,” I said. Then I added, “I’m coming back home with you.” He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. I picked up his worn canvas duffel bag and pulled the front door open. The motion-sensor light in the hallway flickered on for a brief second, then died. I led my dad down the hall, and we stepped into the elevator.

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1 I’d been married to Neil for three years without ever asking him for a single favor. The only time I did was this summer, right after my brother Toby graduated high school. I asked Neil to arrange a simple internship for him at his firm. He didn’t look up from his laptop. “Tell him to report to the front desk.” Toby took a seventeen-hour overnight bus from our rural hometown, wearing his only crisp white shirt, and sat in the lobby all afternoon. By early evening, a company chat notification popped up: Who’s the country bumpkin at the front desk? His collar’s literally yellowing. Dead. Someone attached a photo. Neil had his arm slung over another young man, smiling with polished warmth. Same floor, same afternoon. Another message read: Both are little brothers, but the difference is insane. When Toby came home that night, he pulled out a bag of sun-dried peaches. “Ruby, I brought these for Neil. He was just too busy today. I’ll catch him next time.” He smiled brightly. “The girl at the front desk even poured me water. It was really good.” I smiled, ruffled his hair, then turned and called my lawyer. “Please draft a divorce agreement for me.” In the living room, Toby was sprawled out on the sofa, scribbling on a sticky note. When I walked over, he instinctively hid the note behind his back, the tips of his ears turning bright red. “What are you writing?” “N-nothing.” I reached out for it. He shrank back but wasn’t fast enough. I plucked the crumpled piece of paper from his fingers. There was only one line written on it. [ Neil, I left the sun-dried peaches on the table for you. It’s a fresh batch from this summer. Mom says they’re your favorite. ] I stared at that sentence, a heavy, suffocating weight pressing down on my chest. Five years ago, when Neil visited my hometown for the very first time, he really did love them. That autumn, he drove eleven hours straight just to accompany me back to the farm. Toby had just started middle school. Hearing that his big sister’s boyfriend was coming, he ran all the way from the edge of town to the main dirt road to meet us. When the car door opened, Toby stood there panting, his clothes stained with sweat, clutching a bag of dried peaches in his hands. Neil crouched down, untied the bag, and ate three slices right then and there. “These are amazing. Way better than all those imported snacks I buy in the city.” Toby’s eyes instantly lit up like stars. For the rest of that trip, Neil carried that bag of dried peaches everywhere he went. My mom pulled me aside and whispered nervously. “Neil is just being sweet. A cheap, rural snack like this can’t compare to the nice food he eats in the city.” I smiled with absolute certainty back then. “He isn’t just being sweet, Mom. He really likes them.” My mom beamed, and the very next day she laid out two massive trays of peaches to dry in the sun. Now, that fresh bag of sun-dried peaches was sitting on my coffee table. Toby had brought them all the way from upstate. Through a seventeen-hour bus ride, he had held the bag tightly against his chest, terrified of crushing them. It was past eleven when the front door finally clicked open. Neil walked in and casually hung his suit jacket on the rack. As he passed the coffee table, his footsteps paused. He glanced down at the bag of dried peaches. His nose wrinkled slightly. He absentmindedly shoved the bag toward the edge of the table. “Is your brother asleep?” “He’s asleep.” He loosened his tie and leaned against the dining table, typing on his phone. I watched as he opened the company group chat. [ Set up a lunch reservation for Oliver tomorrow at the steakhouse. Invite the marketing directors so he can get familiar with the team. ] After sending that, he sent a private message to his executive assistant, Rachel. [ Your brother did well today. I’ll personally take him on a site visit tomorrow to show him the ropes. ] She replied instantly with a smiley face. [ You’re too kind, Mr. Wright. I’ll thank him on your behalf. ] A faint smile touched the corner of Neil’s mouth. By the time he looked back up at me, his expression had smoothed out into his usual calm demeanor. “Ruby.” He spoke as if the thought had just crossed his mind. “HR mentioned a new face at the front desk today. Was that your brother?” I stared at him. “You’re just finding this out now?” He froze for a fraction of a second before quickly offering an excuse. “I was swamped with meetings all day. I couldn’t get away. He should be fine hanging out by the reception desk, right?” “Sophie is a nice girl. She was very welcoming.” I didn’t say anything else. He didn’t seem to care either. He picked up a glass of water and headed toward the master bedroom. As he passed the coffee table again, the hem of his slacks brushed the bag of dried peaches, knocking it straight onto the hardwood floor. He didn’t even break his stride. I picked up the bag, carefully retied the red string at the top, and placed it back on the table. My phone buzzed. It was a text from Toby. He probably hadn’t had the courage to ask me in person. [ Ruby, can I go to the office a little earlier tomorrow? ] [ Sophie said she’d find some work for me to do. I want to get there early so I don’t cause any trouble for Neil. ] The next day at noon, I brought a packed lunch to the corporate building. Sophie at the front desk offered a polite, slightly tense smile. “Hey Ruby. Mr. Wright is upstairs. Do you want me to let him know you’re here?” “No need, I’m just here to see my brother. Where is Toby?” Her smile faltered for a second. “Toby is… down in the Basement Level 2 archives. Rachel assigned him there yesterday.” She paused, lowering her voice. “Ruby, there’s no air conditioning down there, and the ventilation is pretty bad. Do you want me to mention it to Mr. Wright? Maybe we can move him somewhere else?” “I’ll go check on him first.” The elevator chimed at B2. The moment the doors opened, the heavy smell of mildew hit me. At the end of the dimly lit hallway, a heavy steel door was propped open. Old, dusty filing cabinets were stacked almost to the ceiling. Toby was crouching on the concrete floor. The sleeves of his white shirt were rolled up past his elbows, and his forehead was dripping with sweat. When he saw me, his eyes lit up entirely. “Ruby! What are you doing here? It’s not even my lunch break yet.” He flashed a massive, goofy grin, looking exactly like the carefree kid he was back home. “I brought you lunch. Is it getting too hot down here?” He took the lunchbox, wiping his dusty hands on his trousers before opening it. “It’s not bad. I’ve got a fan.” In the corner, a rusted pedestal fan rattled weakly against the wall, its blades coated in a thick layer of gray dust. “Ruby, I actually really love this job.” “Look, I’ve already organized three whole shelves. I put custom labels on the front of every single folder so people can find things easier.” I followed his pointing finger. The labels were written in his neat, careful handwriting. On the corners of a few tags, he had drawn tiny little flowers. It was a habit he had kept since elementary school. I crouched down and gently pushed a heavy binder back into place for him. “Take a break after you eat.” “Can’t.” He shoveled two bites of rice into his mouth and looked up seriously. “Rachel said I need to finish all of this by the end of the week. I can’t slack off. I’d embarrass Neil.” I looked at his sweat-drenched eyelashes, a painful lump rising in my throat. When I took the empty lunchbox and got back into the elevator, the car stopped on the seventeenth floor. The moment the doors slid open, I had a clear view of the executive dining room across the glass hallway. Neil sat at the head of the table. Oliver sat directly across from him. Several marketing directors were gathered around them, the atmosphere light and relaxed. Neil leaned over, picking up a fork to gently correct Oliver’s grip on the cutlery. The gesture was incredibly natural. It carried the patient warmth of an older brother guiding someone younger. Oliver smiled shyly, and Neil patted him on the shoulder, his eyes full of quiet approval. The elevator doors slowly slid shut. At our wedding reception three years ago, I had seen a nearly identical scene. Toby had been wearing a borrowed suit. The sleeves were a size too long, and his fingers were trembling with nerves. Neil had taken his hand, gently pressing a pair of chopsticks into his palm. “Don’t be scared, kid. You’ve got me now.” Toby had looked up at him then, his eyes brimming with tears, but he had smiled so brightly. “Okay, Neil.” “Yeah. We’re family now.” On the seventeenth floor, a table full of laughter and a curated executive lunch. Down in B2, a floor covered in dust and a rattling, broken fan. As I walked out of the corporate lobby, I ran straight into Rachel. She was carrying two iced coffees, her designer heels clicking sharply against the marble floor. “Ruby, what a surprise. Mr. Wright was just talking about you.” “Oh, by the way, how is your brother settling into the archives? If he needs anything, just let me know.” I forced a tight, empty smile and walked out the door. Toby came home very late that night. There was a dark, prominent stain right below the collar of his white dress shirt. “What happened?” He looked down, immediately trying to pull his collar up to hide it. “It’s nothing, Ruby.” “Toby.” He stayed quiet. He turned around and walked straight into the kitchen. The faucet turned on full blast. I stood in the doorway, watching him scrub frantically at the coffee stain with a bar of soap. After a long time, he finally spoke, his voice incredibly small. “I was delivering some files upstairs this afternoon, and I ran into Oliver.” “He and Neil had just walked out of the conference room. Oliver was holding a coffee. He said I was in his way.” “I stepped aside, but he still bumped into me. I mean, it probably wasn’t on purpose.” By the end of his sentence, he didn’t even sound like he believed it himself. “Did Neil say anything?” Toby’s hands stopped scrubbing. He shook his head, then quickly flashed me a reassuring smile. “Ruby, I swear it’s fine. It’ll wash out. I’ll just wear a sweater vest over it tomorrow. No one will notice.” It was the only crisp white shirt he owned that didn’t have fraying seams. Right before bed, I opened my phone. A new photo was circulating in the corporate group chat. Neil was standing at the head of a conference table, with Oliver standing right beside him. The caption read: “Mr. Wright personally mentoring the new blood. Oliver crushed his first presentation today.” Right below it, someone had forwarded a direct quote from Neil. “Oliver is young, but he has brilliant intuition. I’ve always viewed him as my own little brother.” I stared at those words until my phone screen went totally black. Toby finished reorganizing the entire B2 archive in exactly five days. When he told me, he looked a little nervous. “Ruby, I want to show Neil the master index I put together. Do you think he’d be happy?” I gently smoothed down his hair. “He will be.” At noon the next day, he made sure to wash his face in the lobby restroom. He stared at himself in the mirror for a long time. He buttoned his collar all the way to the top, unbuttoned it, and finally buttoned it back up again. Sophie told me all of this later. When Toby finally made it to the executive floor, the assistant told him the CEO was in a meeting. He nodded politely. He hugged the heavy stack of master index folders to his chest and stood completely still against the hallway wall. He waited for two straight hours. Executives walked by, throwing him weird, judgmental looks. Some whispered to each other. Sophie went upstairs to try and convince him to wait in the lobby, but he shook his head, gripping the folders tighter. “I want to hand them to him myself.” The conference room doors finally opened. Neil and Oliver walked out side by side, deep in conversation. Toby’s eyes lit up. He took a hopeful step forward. “Neil…” Neil’s gaze swept over him, pausing for less than a second. “Yeah.” He didn’t even break his stride. Toby’s outstretched hand froze in midair. The heavy folders slipped an inch down his chest. Oliver glanced back over his shoulder. His eyes landed on the faint, unwashed stain on Toby’s collar. He let out a quiet smirk, turned around, and followed Neil down the hall. Sophie said that when she finally went over to pull Toby away, he stood completely paralyzed for a long time before slowly looking down at the folders in his arms. Then he whispered, almost to himself, “I guess he really is just too busy.” That stack of master folders was eventually tossed into a storage closet by the janitorial staff. Neil never saw them. That night, Neil got home before Toby did. I set a glass of water down in front of him. “Toby went up to see you today.” His fingers paused as he unfastened his cufflinks. “Oh, right. I think I saw him when I was leaving the boardroom. What did he want?” “He finished organizing the entire archive. He wanted to show you.” Neil leaned back into the plush sofa. “He should have just handed that off to HR. Tell him next time he needs something, just send a text. Standing around the executive hallway looking lost is a bad look.” “A bad look?” “We have high-profile clients walking in and out of this office. Him standing outside the boardroom dressed like that…” He stopped himself. “Look, just tell him to wait in the lobby next time.” The living room fell dead silent. I looked at him, and my mind suddenly flashed back to the hardest year of his startup phase. Toby had secretly pawned the gold locket our parents had given him. He spent half a month doing grueling manual labor unloading cargo trucks just to scrape together a little extra cash for Neil. Toby was only thirteen back then. The skin on his hands was so cracked from the freezing cold that they bled whenever they touched water, but he just smiled and said he was happy to help his brother-in-law. That night, Neil had gotten dead drunk. He held Toby and cried like a child. He swore that the second he made it big, he would treat Toby like his own flesh and blood. “Did you forget all of that?” Neil’s expression went blank for a second. He raised a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Ruby, things are different now. Can you stop dragging up the past every single time we talk?” “Given my position now, people are watching my every move. I can’t exactly go around introducing a rural farm kid as my brother-in-law to every investor I meet.” “Look, whatever. Is he unhappy with the work? Does he want to transfer departments?” I stared at him. “I bought him a ticket home for the day after tomorrow.” Neil frowned. “I thought you said he was staying the whole summer.” “His college semester is starting.” “Doesn’t that start in September?” I didn’t answer him. When I pushed Toby’s bedroom door open, he was already packing his duffel bag. That white dress shirt was folded into a perfect, neat square, buried at the very bottom of his bag. “Ruby.” He didn’t turn around. “Is it… is it just too inconvenient for Neil to have me around?” “No. His company is just dealing with a lot right now.” Toby nodded slowly. After a long pause, he finally spoke, his voice barely a whisper. “Ruby, I know.” He turned around. He was eighteen years old. That bright, boundless excitement he used to have when he ran two miles just to hand Neil a bag of peaches was completely gone. “I saw the company group chat. I borrowed Sophie’s phone to look something up, and I saw all of it.” “They said I’m a country bumpkin. They said my shirt collar is yellow.” He let out a very soft, fragile laugh. “They aren’t wrong. It is yellow. It won’t wash out.” My throat instantly closed up. But Toby was the one trying to comfort me. “Ruby, please don’t blame Neil. He’s running a massive corporation. The fact that he even let me through the front door is more than enough.” He reached into his bag and pressed that white shirt a little deeper into the bottom. “It’s my fault. I’m just not good enough.” Before he left, Toby took a trip to the clearance section of a local department store and bought a silk tie. His internship stipend was sixteen hundred dollars a month. So far, he had only earned three hundred. The tie cost a hundred and twenty dollars. He stood in front of the display counter for a very long time before finally gritting his teeth and buying it. “Ruby, look at this. Do you think Neil can pull off this color?” The price tag was still attached. He had protected the cardboard box the entire way home so the corners wouldn’t even get slightly bent. Watching how incredibly careful he was being, my chest physically ached. “It’s gorgeous. He’s going to love it.” Toby let out a massive sigh of relief. Then he unzipped a hidden pocket in his backpack and pulled out a thick manila envelope, setting it on the coffee table. “Ruby, this is for you.” “What is this?” He rubbed the back of his neck, looking a little embarrassed. “My internship money, plus all the allowance you’ve sent me over the years. I never spent any of it. I saved it all up.” “It’s not a lot, but consider it a third-anniversary present for you and Neil.” I opened the envelope. Three thousand, two hundred dollars. I looked inside. There were only a few crisp hundred-dollar bills. The rest of it was entirely made up of crumpled fives, tens, and twenties. On the way to the bus station, Toby kept his eyes glued to the window. “Ruby, the city really is massive.” “If you get accepted here for grad school, you can look at it every single day.” He just smiled and didn’t reply. A moment later, he suddenly asked, “Ruby, do you remember that river right in front of our house?” “I remember.” “When the water flooded a few years ago, Neil carried me across on his back. The water was up to his thighs, and his pants were completely soaked. I told him to put me down, but he refused.” He looked down, a soft smile touching his lips. “He told me that when he finally got rich, he was going to build a solid bridge for our town. I honestly thought he was just flexing.” “But he actually wired the money to the town council.” Toby paused, looking back out the window. His voice dropped so low I almost couldn’t hear it. “Ruby, they finished building the bridge this summer. I don’t think he even knows.” When we arrived at the transit hub, the terminal was packed. Toby handed me the tie box. He had slipped a handwritten note inside. “You should head back, Ruby. I can handle it from here.” “It’s a seventeen-hour ride.” “It was seventeen hours getting here, and I survived just fine.” He laughed, showing the slight crook of his canine tooth. “Plus, I bought instant noodles.” After he passed the ticket gate, he turned around and waved at me. His mouth moved, but the words were drowned out by the noise of the crowd. But I read his lips perfectly. “Ruby, tell Neil I said thank you.” The automatic gates slid shut. I stood completely frozen for a very long time. My phone buzzed in my pocket. New messages in the corporate group chat. “Mr. Wright is hosting a massive farewell dinner for Oliver tonight at the Peninsula Hotel. Booked the VIP dining room. Half the executive board is there.” “Damn, going all out for an intern?” “Wait, didn’t Rachel’s brother and the CEO’s brother-in-law intern at the exact same time? Why is only one getting a send-off?” “One is a VIP, the other was basically doing charity labor. You really think they’re on the same level?” I stared at those messages, a sudden, bitter laugh escaping my lips. Same day. Toby was sitting on a cramped overnight bus for seventeen hours. He had spent half his internship money buying Neil a tie, and his dinner was a cheap cup of instant noodles. Oliver was sitting in a five-star hotel’s private dining room. He was wearing a luxury watch Neil had gifted him, surrounded by executives kissing his feet. I had seen that watch in a boutique catalog before. Twelve thousand dollars. When I got home, I placed the tie box onto the coffee table. Right next to it sat the bag of sun-dried peaches. It had been sitting there completely untouched since the day Toby arrived. I walked into the study and pulled out the divorce papers. As the pen touched the paper, a flood of memories rushed into my mind. Neil crouching by the dirt road, eating dried peaches. Toby riding on his shoulders, laughing at the top of his lungs. Neil leaning over at our wedding, carefully adjusting Toby’s grip on his chopsticks. But my hand didn’t tremble. I signed my name with absolute certainty. After I signed it, I walked into the bedroom and pulled my suitcase from the closet. The front door unlocked right as the clock struck midnight. Neil pushed the door open, the heavy smell of expensive liquor clinging to his suit. He called out as he kicked off his shoes. “Ruby? Why are the lights…” His voice cut off instantly. He saw what was sitting on the coffee table.

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