Chapter 2

In the middle of the night, someone stealthily pushed open the greenhouse door.

I lay in the soil, half-asleep. I heard the noise, but I didn't move a muscle.

Then, a pungent, acrid smell of herbicide began to permeate the air.

Kevin trampled the orchids Mom had been growing in the greenhouse. He then sprayed the entire space with two bottles of herbicide. And finally, he locked the greenhouse door from the outside.

The toxic fumes spread.

My throat tightened, and breathing became difficult. Based on my experiences across my previous ten lifetimes, death by pesticide was a fairly standard affair. It didn't even faze me anymore.

I shifted into a more comfortable position and took a deep, long breath of the toxic air.

Perfect. This time, I should finally be able to die for good, right?

Just as my consciousness began to slip away, a loud crash echoed from outside, and a security guard on his rounds forced open the greenhouse's glass door.

Fresh air rushed in, and I was hauled out forcefully.

The lights throughout the villa flickered on all at once.

Mom, Dad, and Kathy burst into the greenhouse. Seeing the devastation, Mom clutched her chest in anguish and wailed, "My orchids! I've been growing them for three years!"

Dad turned, grabbed me by the collar, and delivered a stinging slap across my face.

"Kenneth! Your mother worked so hard to get these to bloom, and you—you've gone and ripped them all out!"

My cheek burned with intense pain. I rubbed my face, sighed in regret, and pointed toward the corner of the ceiling.

"It wasn't me. There's a security camera up there. You can check the footage."

Kevin's face turned deathly pale. He gripped the hem of his shirt tightly.

Kathy let out a cold sneer and strode over, exclaiming, "Fine, let's check it! That way, you can stop putting on this act as if you've been so terribly wronged!"

Kevin tried to intervene, but the butler had already pulled up the surveillance footage.

In the footage, Kevin glanced around, stomping on and tearing at the orchids before finally spraying them manically with pesticide.

The truth was laid bare.

Kevin dropped to his knees with a thud, on the verge of tears as he whimpered, "Mom, I didn't mean to… I saw Kenneth sleeping in a planter box. It was clearly an attempt to humiliate the Cortez family!

"I was so furious that I lost control… My hands just acted on their own…"

Not a single person stopped to consider that such a high concentration of herbicide in an enclosed space could have killed me.

Instead, Kathy pulled Kevin up to his feet, her heart aching for him. Then, she turned and pointed an accusatory finger at me.

"Did you hear that? This is all your fault for choosing to sleep in a place not even a dog would touch! Kevin has always cared deeply about the Cortez family's reputation. If you hadn't provoked him to the point of losing control, why would he have destroyed the orchids?"

I looked at them, my voice lifeless. "There's no room for me in this house. Where am I supposed to sleep if not there?"

Mom and Dad froze at these words.

Mom looked at Dad and asked, "Didn't you arrange a room for him?"

Dad frowned. "Wasn't that your job?"

Kathy's face flushed red. She looked absolutely incensed.

"If you didn't have a room, didn't you know how to open your mouth and say something? Why did you insist on stuffing yourself into a pipe or a planter box?

"Aren't you just trying to make outsiders laugh at us, claiming the Cortez family was mistreating or abusing you?"

I shut my mouth, not bothering to respond. I didn't really care where I was as long as I could lie down and wait for death.

Kathy snapped when she saw my utter indifference, like a corpse that couldn't care less about anything. She screamed, "Well, since you love acting like a corpse so much, playing dead to garner sympathy, I'll just grant you your wish!"

She turned and gave an order to the bodyguards. Moments later, a wooden crate was brought in and slammed onto the living room floor.

"From today on, you're sleeping in here! Let's see how long you can keep up this act of yours!"

"Thank you."

Without hesitation, I stepped into the wooden crate and lay down flat.

Kathy, seething with rage, delivered a vicious kick to the crate. She snarled, "Aren't you just clever! Always pulling these low, disgusting stunts! You'd better die in there without making a sound! Lock it up!"

The crate was then locked from the outside, and everything plunged into absolute darkness for me.

The lid fitted snugly, and its dimensions just right as if it had been custom-made for me.

The way it enclosed me felt so comfortable, in fact, that it was truly like I was being laid to rest in a coffin.

A satisfied smile tugged at the corners of my lips, and I closed my eyes, feeling completely at ease.