Chapter 2

I stared at Derek without blinking, trying to spot anything unusual in his expression.

Alas, he gave away nothing. He immediately nodded in agreement, turned around, and left without the slightest hesitation.

Dad kept nagging beside us, repeating the same old speech over and over. He insisted that since I was the older brother, I should help Derek out and do more of the work.

His words went in one ear and out the other.

What truly struck me as strange was Derek's attitude. Would he really let me off that easily?

Sure enough, a piercing pain shot through my palm and the web between my thumb and index finger the very next second.

It was Derek.

I immediately dropped the shoulder pole and went looking for him.

Just then, I saw a crowd gathered by the edge of the field. They chattered noisily among themselves.

"Derek is working way too hard. It's so hot that none of us even dares to go into the fields, but he's out there anyway."

"Exactly. He's not even wearing gloves. He's grabbing the wheat with his bare hands. I've been farming for decades, and even I wouldn't do that."

"I swear I just saw his hand get sliced by a sickle, but when I walked over, there wasn't a single wound on it."

"Are you sure you weren't seeing things?"

I felt my heart sink to my stomach. In an instant, I understood where the wound on my hand had come from.

I rushed over and snatched the sickle out of Derek's hand. "Didn't I tell you to go home and rest? Why are you working again?"

I tried my best to suppress my anger, but the pain made it impossible to keep a pleasant expression.

Unexpectedly, Derek shivered and looked at me with a pitiful expression.

He said softly, "Isaac, I fell behind because I was sick before. I just wanted to earn more work points to repay you…"

The moment those innocent-sounding but manipulative words left his mouth, the women sitting along the field ridge all sighed about how kind and hardworking Derek was.

I couldn't be bothered arguing with him. I simply grabbed the sickle from his hand and started cutting the grass.

Derek watched me work with a smile on his face. The coarse grass stalks rubbed my palms raw until they bled. Large beads of sweat poured down my face. Yet Derek, who stood watching under the blazing sun, didn't even look flushed.

An hour later, my hands were a bloody mess. I walked over to the edge of the field and gulped down water.

I hadn't noticed it before, but now that I was standing beside Derek, I realized my skin had become several shades darker than his.

Why? Why was he able to transfer every injury from his work onto me, while nothing I did had any effect on him?

No matter how much I thought about it, I couldn't figure it out.

Just as I was about to get back to work, an agonizing pain spread from my palm up my arm and into my heart. I collapsed heavily onto the ground.

Derek raised an eyebrow and said, "Isaac, you're meant to live like some spoiled boy from the city. How could you possibly do the kind of work we country folk do? Let me handle it."

My mom, Judith Marsden, came from a more middle-upper-class background. She had studied abroad and had been able to enjoy the finer things in life, so the village folk branded her a privileged snob and despised her.

And because I was her son, people mockingly called me "Sir Isaac".

When I first came to the countryside, everyone disliked me. It wasn't until they saw that I could endure hardship and work efficiently that they finally started treating me better. Now that Derek had brought it up again, the people around us started whispering among themselves.

I struggled to my feet, determined to prove that I wasn't the pampered, sheltered city boy he claimed I was.

But in the next instant, Derek crouched down in the field, where no one else could see him, and viciously slashed his own calf with the sickle.

I screamed as a burst of unbearable pain hit me, and I crashed to the ground.

Derek shot me a taunting look and said, "Isaac, you should just go home."

Everyone else panicked and hurriedly carried me to the village clinic. But when the doctor examined my leg, the wound had miraculously disappeared.

The blood was still there on my calf, so why had the cut vanished?

The doctor frowned and said, "If you don't want to work, you don't have to smear chicken blood on your leg and pretend you're injured."

The moment he said that, everyone looked at me even more judgmentally.

As soon as I got back, I went straight to Derek.

Grabbing him by the collar, I shouted angrily, "Derek, what exactly did you do to me?"