Chapter 1

"Why are you still standing there? Call the doctor, now!" Mom let out a heart-rending scream, almost choking on her own breath.

She stumbled over to me and dropped to her knees, cradling me and sobbing like her world had ended. "Ben, my poor boy… You just got home and haven't even had a chance to enjoy the good life yet. You can't die on me now!"

She was loud—so loud I was impressed, actually. After all, for someone like me, whose energy was chronically low, saying even one more word than necessary was exhausting, much less screaming and shouting the way she was.

Ethan Ziegler, the fake heir, stood frozen to the spot. After a while, he snapped out of it and picked up the empty bowl from the floor. He stammered, "I-I don't know why things ended up like this. I was just afraid Ben would be hungry and wanted him to have some soup first…"

Before he could finish, my elder sister, Felicia Ziegler, burst into the house with the family doctor and shoved Ethan out of the way. "Quick, check on Ben!"

I'd been playing dead for over ten years now and had it down to an art.

The family doctor pried open my eyelids with shaking hands. When he saw that my pupils were unfocused, he said shakily, "He's on the brink. He has to be taken to the hospital now."

The whole family immediately launched into another round of sobbing and wailing.

I actually wanted to open my eyes and tell them I was fine, but then I thought about how much effort it would take to explain everything.

Forget it. I was better off continuing to play dead.

Felicia and the family doctor carried me into the car. After a long, bumpy ride, we finally reached the hospital.

A doctor hurried over with some equipment, saying he needed to run an EKG first. He frowned as he stared at the slow, rolling waves on the monitor. "Your son's heart rate is only 30 beats per minute. This is bad."

In truth, I'd learned how to make my heart beat that slowly when I was five, mainly because I found even breathing exhausting.

After all these years, I suddenly wondered if I could make it beat even slower. So I deliberately slowed my breathing.

With a loud beep, the line on the monitor flattened out, almost turning into a straight line. Felicia shrieked, "Ben's dying!"

The doctor panicked, fumbling with the defibrillator paddles and moving to slap them onto my chest.

I had no choice but to finally open my eyes. "Don't. It hurts."

As my heartbeat gradually returned to normal, the doctor let out a sigh of relief. He was still shaken as he said, "His heart rate is naturally slower than an ordinary person's. You can't let him get worked up."

"Got it. We'll make sure to keep him safe," Mom said, holding me close.

Dad hovered beside me, fussing over me like I was the most precious thing on earth.

Felicia smacked her thigh in frustration. "God, this is all my fault. Ben's been home a whole day and hasn't had anything to eat—I didn't even think about getting him something light to tide him over."

Everyone's attention was on me. Ethan was pushed into a corner, practically invisible. A flash of resentment crossed his eyes before he put on a pitiful look.

"I'm sorry, Ben. I swear what happened earlier was an accident. I really envy you, you know. You just got home, and you're already so close with Mom and Dad. You're not like me—I've always felt like an outsider in this family."

Logically, I should have said something to comfort him. But the thought of having to string together a few sentences already made me feel exhausted.

So I simply shut my eyes and lay back down, stiff as a board. As I slipped back into standby mode, my heartbeat started plummeting again.

Mom noticed and immediately shot Ethan a furious glare. "The doctor just said Ben can't be aggravated, and you're dumping all this nonsense on him! Are you trying to make him feel bad?"

Ethan's face turned red with humiliation. In the end, he could only grit his teeth and force out an ugly grimace.

When we finally got home, he watched as everyone orbited around me like I was the sun. The jealousy ate away at him.

Waiting until the kitchen was empty, he snuck over to my bowl of soup and dumped in a lethal amount of salt, muttering under his breath as he poured, "May the saltiness kill you!"

The Ziegler family prided themselves on perfect table manners. If I took a sip later and immediately spat it back out because it was so salty, Mom and Dad would definitely see me as crude and uncouth. Then they'd start to despise me.

Just picturing it made Ethan giddy with anticipation. He waited for me to make a fool of myself.

I picked up the bowl and took a sip, my face blank. I paused for half a beat, then swallowed without even batting an eye.