Dying for My Adopted Brother's Sake

The air was thick with a foul odor. A plaster cast of me stood in the middle of the living room; the face looked anguished and painful;the features were disturbingly lifelike.

The cast stood next to a trophy.

As I took in the scene, it finally dawned on me that I was dead. I had died from the moment they sealed me into the plaster.

"Mom, is John upset with me? He's glaring at me. I'm scared." Suddenly, my brother, Julian Gomez, spoke as he shrunk into our mother's arms in fear. "I've been having nightmares for days. I dreamed that he was trying to strangle me to death!"

"He wouldn't dare!" Mom's doting expression twisted into loathing at the sound of my name. "You lot, take that cast out of here. I don't want it scaring Jules."

She glared at the plaster cast coldly. "I was going to let you out today, but since you're still being vicious by scaring Jules, you can stay in there for a few more days. The fortune teller said a few days in there won't kill you. Use this time to think about your actions!"

I was stunned for a moment. Her disdain pierced me like a dagger.

How laughable—I was trapped within the plaster cast, unable to move or speak. How was I supposed to scare her precious son?

So this was the difference between a loved child and an unloved one.

Mom snorted. "I should've known. I didn't raise him myself, so he turned out to be lacking in morals. If only he were as sensible as you are, Jules."

As she spoke, she stroked Julian's head lovingly.

The two of them played out their affection right in front of my smelly, decomposing corpse.

I stared at the plaster blankly as her disappointed tone pierced through my eardrums. Unknowingly, tears began to fall.

When I was five, I was snatched by human traffickers and sold to a rural village in the mountains.

I suffered a lot there. I endured torment after torment, even getting both my legs broken, yet I still prayed every day that my parents would save me and bring me home. However, they had already gotten a new son by the time they found me.

Out of guilt for me, the entire family had poured all their love into him.

Even though he wasn't biologically theirs, they still loved him to bits. They even gave him my name.

He was Julian, and I was simply John—taken straight from John Doe, the placeholder that the police had used for me when I was first rescued.

My return was unwelcome. Instead, it brought only unease for Julian, so much so that he broke an arm just to frame me.

Dad pushed me down the stairs and glared down at me. "You've only just come back, and you're already bullying Julian. You should've just died out there!"

My sister, Jessica Gomez, helped Julian up tenderly while berating me with a cold expression. "You're just a cripple. How could you belong in our family?"

Mom just looked at me in disappointment. "I should've known. I didn't raise you. No wonder you're so evil."

I saw red. My explanations died in my throat as my family's cruel words pierced through my heart like daggers. It hurt a lot.

That day was a warm, midsummer afternoon, but all I felt was a bone-chilling coldness, like I had fallen into an icy abyss.

When I met Julian's provocative gaze, I finally understood—my family no longer loved me.

It took only one offhand comment from Julian—that he wanted to win a prize—for them to get the advice of a fortune teller. Following the fortune teller's advice, they sealed me into plaster and made me into a grotesque statue.

They claimed that sealing a living person into plaster would give life to the statue and fortune to its owner.

This way, Julian would be able to win the first prize.