Chapter 4

I didn't die that day. At the last moment, I jumped out the window and was rushed to the hospital. The doctor said if I'd arrived any later, it could have been fatal. An aunt in the next bed, peeling an orange for her own daughter, turned to me and remarked, "Thank goodness you're okay! Your parents must have been so worried!"

I watched with aching envy as the aunt carefully separated the orange segments and fed them to her child. My own lonely reflection stared back at me from the window. As if broadcasting it to the world, I forced a bright smile and declared loudly, "Yes! My parents love me very, very much!"

Suddenly, the door to the ward slammed open. My parents burst in, faces etched with urgency. A wave of desperate relief washed over me. Struggling upright despite the pain, tears spilled down my face.

"Dad! Mom..." I was so scared... so scared I would die... Please, just hold me? Even for a second? Just one second...

Mom didn't embrace me. She grabbed me by the collar and yanked me violently off the hospital bed. The IV needle tore out of my arm, sending bright droplets of blood spattering across the floor. "You conniving bitch!" she screamed, shaking me. "Faking an allergic reaction? Jumping out the fucking window? Trying to shame us? Make everyone think we abuse you? Ruin our names? Why didn't you just die when you jumped?!"

I curled into a ball on the cold linoleum, protecting my head as kicks landed on my back and legs. I didn't want to hurt them... I just didn't want to die...

I'd gambled with my life from a third-story window and survived. But I'd never win against the sheer magnitude of my parents' hatred. My reflection in the window showed Dad leaning against the wall, watching coldly as Mom clawed at me. It showed the other aunt gathering her frightened daughter close, murmuring soothing words. Faces peered through the doorway—nurses, other patients—their expressions a mixture of pity and disgust. Look at that awful child.

The fragile illusion I'd built, the desperate lie I'd shouted—my parents love me—shattered brutally in front of everyone. I'd been lying to myself. They didn't love me. They... loved me least of all.

After that, my parents cut me off. I applied to live at school. Meals were one dollar breads, free soup. My bed was a thin mat on straw padding in a cramped sixteen-person dormitory. My scholarships barely covered the rising boarding fees each term, from middle school into high school. I studied like my life depended on it—day and night—praying each exam score would be two points higher, just enough to secure the next scholarship to survive.

I clung to a fragile hope: if I became exceptional enough, maybe my parents would love me again. The day I brought home an almost perfect exam paper, beaming under a visiting relative's praise—"She's amazing!"—Mom instantly snapped, "She's as dumb as a rock! Not half as smart as Nathan! How could she score this well?" Her hand came around in a full-armed swing that cracked against my cheek. "Confess! Who did you cheat off?"

My face burned. My heart shattered. I wished the floor would swallow me whole. Even when the homeroom teacher called later to verify my scores, Mom just glanced at the exam paper I'd pieced back together from the shredder bin and sneered. "What's there to boast about with these pitiful marks? Nathan got perfect scores in every subject! Not like this useless embarrassment, bragging about scraps!"

Along with that paper, my fragile heart finally snapped. My parents love a child like Nathan—brilliant, perfect. I redoubled my efforts to erase myself, to become his shadow. I studied until my eyes blurred. Seasons cycled, leaving their marks on my skin: prickly heat rashes in summer, angry frostbite welts in winter, itchy mosquito bites always finding me. When I walked out of the exam hall after the college entrance test, a flicker of desperate hope remained. Now, surely, I've proven I'm as smart as Nathan. Now... they'll love me?

But I died before my results could be announced. Not even death had made me that child worthy of love, that shining star like Nathan. Every night for eight years, I'd sat at that table, watching my parents heap food into the empty bowl meant for Nathan, silently placing his favorite dishes beside it. The silence was deafening. I caused this emptiness. I broke them. Didn't I truly deserve to die?

A knock echoed from the front door. A voice I hadn't heard in eight years called out, bright and impossibly real: "Mom? Dad? Open up! I'm home! And I've brought your daughter-in-law!"

I saw Dad—always so steady, so cautious—jerk back, sending a bowl shattering to the floor. Mom, usually so fierce, slid bonelessly into her chair, tears streaming down her face as she repeated, choked, to Dad, "Is it him? Is it him?"

Dad moved like a puppet toward the door, his hand gripping the knob for an eternity before finally turning it.

The door swung wide. Standing in the doorway was a tall, familiar figure. It was him. The brother I'd caused the death of eight years ago......