Chapter 2

The next morning, my uncle, aunt, and grandparents went to my aunt’s house as usual.

I arrived at my mother’s place early, carrying a bag of fruit.

It was the only day of the year I ever went to her house.

She was still wearing pajamas, lounging lazily on the couch while watching TV. Her boyfriend had probably gone out.

I stared at her and finally couldn’t hold it in anymore.

“Mom, could you and your boyfriend at least get married? People say horrible things behind your back.”

She looked at me as if I were stupid.

“Who gets married these days? You shouldn’t care so much about what other people think.”

The calm, hypocritical look on her face made me sick.

Of course she didn’t care. She had moved out long ago.

I was different. She had dumped me at Grandma and Grandpa’s house, leaving me to endure the whispers and ridicule alone.

I didn’t even know who my biological father was. My mother had gotten pregnant by one of her boyfriends by accident. She wanted a child without the father, so she never told him and secretly gave birth to me alone.

After I was born, she decided I was too troublesome and restricted her freedom. So she abandoned me at my grandparents’ house without giving them a single cent.

Grandma and Grandpa had to work to support me. That meant they couldn’t help my aunt raise her son, so my aunt often took her resentment out on me.

I still wasn’t ready to give up.

“But Mom, my aunt says what you’re doing is wrong. She says it’s embarrassing.”

My mother slapped me across the face.

“What does that old housewife know? All she does is nag. If I’d been thinking clearly back then, I wouldn’t have had a child at all. I’m not going to need you to take care of me when I’m old.”

The slap left me dazed.

“You never took care of me in the first place,” I shot back. “Having me didn’t stop you from running around with men.”

She froze for a moment.

Then she kicked me hard in the chest.

A sharp, metallic taste filled my mouth.

Just as the tension between us reached its breaking point, her boyfriend came home.

The moment my mother saw him, she acted as if she had found an ally.

“You ungrateful little animal.”

That day, while other children were still enjoying the holiday, my mother and her boyfriend beat me brutally.

A solid wooden dining chair smashed into my back. Pain exploded through me, and I felt as if my bones had broken.

I cried and begged her to stop.

“Mom, please don’t hit me! I’m your daughter!”

But they acted as if they couldn’t hear me. They kicked me again and again until they had finally vented their anger.

Then they ordered me to take the fruit I had bought and get out.

This wasn’t the first time I had been beaten.

I hadn’t had any friends since elementary school.

My cousin had always resented me for taking away his grandparents’ attention, so he spread stories about my mother everywhere at school. He told everyone I was an unwanted bastard.

Children couldn’t tell right from wrong. They only knew that I must be a bad person.

So they isolated me and insulted me.

During the freezing winter, they held my head under the water in the school bathroom.

Whenever I stood up in class, they deliberately poured red ink all over my chair.

They even went to the teachers and accused me of things I had never done.

No one wanted to play with me.

I didn’t dare tell Grandma. I didn’t dare tell my teachers.

I was terrified of getting close to anyone. I was afraid that if people discovered what my family was really like, they would despise me.

Nothing changed even after I went to college.

That was why I could never agree with my mother’s casual statement that I shouldn’t care what people thought.

People’s words could be terrifying. Rumors could destroy someone.

I had only been carrying the rumors she created.