Chapter 4

I was dragged along by an invisible force. It forced me to follow the three of them to the hot spring resort.

I watched them check into a luxury suite that cost hundreds a night. I watched Rosie frolic in the hot spring pool in her bikini.

Mom and Dad stayed nearby while handing her fruit and taking pictures of her.

They ate expensive food, drank wine, and talked about their plans for the future.

"Next year, we'll go on a trip abroad. As for that brat, we'll force her to hand over her paycheck when we get back.

"From now on, we'll only leave her twenty bucks a month for living expenses. That way, she won't have money to cause trouble!"

I floated beside them. Looking at their horrifically greedy expressions, I felt like an outsider spying on their time together as a happy family.

I'd never experienced happiness like this even once when I was alive.

During the day, I was nothing but a workhorse. At night, I was Rosie's servant.

Sometimes, I even felt like I wasn't living like a human being at all.

When death finally came for me, all I felt was an unprecedented sense of relief.

At noon on the fifth day, Dad was eating at the buffet when he received a call from our neighbor, Wanda Thompson.

"Hello? Jonah, what's going on with your family?" Wanda's voice sounded especially shrill through the speaker.

"There's such a terrible smell coming from your place these past few days! It smells like a dead rat, and it's coming straight out through the cracks under your door! The whole hallway stinks! Did you forget to take out the trash or something?"

Dad's expression instantly darkened.

He hung up and slammed his hand onto the table.

"Sophie really has gone too far! We're out here enjoying ourselves, and she can't even take out the trash at home! She's turned the whole place into a dump! She's hopeless!"

Mom looked disgusted too. "Let's go back! I'm going to teach her a lesson she'll never forget!"

They quickly checked out, got in the car, and sped all the way home.

The moment they stepped into the hallway, a thick, nauseating stench of decay hit them.

It was the smell of severely decomposed flesh.

It was the smell of death.

"Ugh!" Rosie covered her nose and gagged. "It smells awful! What on earth has Sophie been doing at home?"

Dad's expression turned livid. He charged up the stairs three steps at a time, pulled out his key, and unlocked the front door.

"Sophie! What the hell have you been doing at home?" He roared as he stormed inside and kicked the storage room door open. "Get out here!"

The moment the door opened, the stench became ten times stronger. Like a poisonous gas, it was so overpowering that they could barely keep their eyes open.

I looked at my disfigured corpse and finally let out a sigh of relief.

At last, I could be laid to rest.

With the light from the hallway spilling in, they saw me curled up on the floor and already badly decomposed.

Decomposition fluids had spread across the floor, while flies buzzed wildly around the room.

For a moment, Mom and Dad froze.

Fear instinctively made them gasp.

Mom's legs went weak, and she nearly collapsed to her knees. "I-Is that–"