Chapter 3

Mom and Dad locked me in my room and punished me by not letting me eat. They even demanded that I apologize to Seth.

I had no desire to explain myself to them. I knew that they didn't care about the truth. Even breathing was a crime for the child who wasn't loved.

…

I was jolted awake by the sounds of coughing in the middle of the night.

I snuck to Mom's and Dad's bedroom and stood outside the door. I could hear the sounds of conversation coming from within.

"Are you having a headache again?" Mom asked.

"I dreamed about Kevin when he was a child," Dad replied. "He kept chasing after me, and I couldn't get away no matter how hard I tried. My head started hurting then. It's like an incessant throbbing…"

Mom sighed. "That's all in the past now. You were under a lot of pressure then, so we had no choice but to lie to Kevin and send him away. That's the only reason why we have Seth now. We did what was best for everyone."

"I get irritated just looking at his gloomy face!" Dad exclaimed in frustration. "Having him was a mistake from the start!"

I stood rooted to the spot, feeling stunned.

It turned out that Dad didn't actually have an allergy. They just simply wanted to get rid of me.

The overwhelming despair made my knees buckle, and I accidentally knocked over the vase that was on a table in the hallway.

The conversation within the room abruptly came to an end.

"Who's there?"

The bedroom door swung open in the next second.

Mom and Dad were briefly stunned when they saw my deathly pale face. A few seconds later, Mom's expression twisted into fury.

"Were you eavesdropping on us?" she demanded. "Where are your manners, Kevin?"

I couldn't help but feel how ridiculous the entire situation was. Wasn't I supposed to be the furious one?

I was the one who had been lied to for the past six years. I was the one who was abandoned in the countryside as if I was nothing but a piece of trash!

"So, you were lying to me this whole time?" I demanded. "Dad didn't have an allergy at all. You just wanted to get rid of me because I was too noisy and irritating?"

Dad didn't show a shred of remorse even when I questioned him. Instead, he became even more impatient and snapped, "Just look at you. You're stubborn, gloomy, and utterly immature! I have no idea how your grandfather raised you when you were living with him in the countryside."

At the mention of Grandpa, the tightly strung rope within me snapped.

"Don't you dare insult Grandpa!" I shouted. "He's ten thousand times better than you! He's nothing like the two of you who abandoned your own son and left him to fend for himself!"

Grandpa started getting weak one winter day. He was constantly slipping in and out of consciousness as he lay in bed. When he was lucid, he would hold my hand and tell me the same thing over and over again.

"You're a good kid, Kevin. Don't hate your parents. They just don't know how to love you."

My heart had felt incredibly hollow as I kneeled by his bedside and listened to his weak breathing.

Grandpa and I were fools. We had made up flimsy excuses for a love that didn't exist.

I used to believe that Mom and Dad did love me. It was just that their love came with a condition. I had to be well-behaved to earn it.

Only then did I understand that their love had so many conditions because they never loved me.

Mom and Dad trembled with rage at my defiance.

"Just look at you! You picked up so many bad habits during your time in the countryside!"

Just then, Seth came out of his room. He tilted his head to the side when he saw what was going on.

"Aunt Wendy always complained about you being very disobedient, Kevin," he said. "She also said that you refused to study properly and spent all day catching fish in the river and climbing trees to look for bird nests with the other unruly kids in the village."

"You're lying!" I exclaimed. "You've never been to the village. How would you know any of that?"

"Of course, I do. Lots of our relatives visit us during the New Year. They always praise me for being well-behaved and mature. They also tell me about all the things that happen in the village."

Mom immediately jumped in to defend him. "Seth's right! All our relatives love him because he's so well-behaved. He's nothing like you, who only knows how to stir up trouble."

Mom and Dad continued to defend Seth.

I could see their mouths opening and closing, but I couldn't hear a single word that they were saying.

It turned out that everyone knew the truth. They knew that Mom and Dad had a perfect son by their side.

I was the only idiot who counted the days on my fingers that were covered with chilblains, foolishly waiting for them to take me home.