Chapter 1

I was found three years after I disappeared.

I was only nineteen, but I'd gone blind and was pregnant.

My parents held me, sobbing. "My dear daughter, you've suffered so much..."

But I asked softly, "Where's Ruth?"

Vivian quickly explained.

"She didn't mean to lose you that year. I already punished her—no snacks for a month."

"Don't blame her, okay?"

But I remember when I was little.

I just tripped once, and Mom grabbed a knife and stormed over to the neighbor's kid's house to raise hell.

Even when people spat at her and called her a shrew.

When I had a high fever that wouldn't break, Dad desperately went to church to pray. He prayed for ten days straight.

They protected me fiercely, standing firm behind me, time after time.

And then Ruth appeared.

They sent me to the countryside.

I could only see them once a year...

The wind carried my parents' anguished screams. I stood on the hospital rooftop.

Smiling, I said, "I'm going to become a little star and fly up to the sky."

That way I won't be abandoned again, right?