Chapter 5

Julia's bracelet was a limited-edition piece of fine jewelry worth six figures.

The hallway fell dead silent in an instant.

Kenneth went rigid, staring at the bracelet on the floor, his face as pale as a sheet.

"I'm… I'm sorry. I didn't mean to!" he stammered, his voice trembling with fear as he teetered on the brink of tears.

Julia was taken aback for a moment, but she spoke gently anyway. "It's okay. It's just a bracelet."

The crowd around them, though, had already erupted into chatter.

"That's a limited edition," someone gasped. "There are only three in the whole country!"

"Can he even afford to pay for it?" another asked.

"He's just some bumpkin from the sticks. He's probably never even seen jewelry like that before."

Whispers buzzed from all sides, every comment jabbing at Kenneth like a needle.

I stood at the edge of the crowd, watching the spectacle with cold indifference. It was perfectly clear to me that the whole thing was a performance he'd meticulously ed.

I remembered clearly that Mom had bought him a full set of imported school supplies—a Staedtler mechanical pencil, a Pilot fountain pen, Moleskine notebooks, and a limited-edition canvas pencil case.

Altogether, they'd cost at least 800 dollars, but he'd deliberately hidden them all away, just so everyone would see how pitiful he looked on the first day of school.

He'd calculated the exact moment Julia would walk past, setting the stage so a pretty girl like her could play savior to a poor, helpless guy like him.

Julia carefully helped Kenneth to his feet, comforting him in soft tones.

From the middle of the crowd, Kenneth zeroed in on me, and a subtle flicker of satisfaction crossed his eyes.

What I hadn't expected was just how quickly his revenge would follow.

…

Evening study hall had just ended when I was summoned to the principal's office.

To my surprise, Mom and Dad were there too, their expressions grim. Kenneth stood in the corner with his head hung low, his eyes red and swollen.

My heart sank.

The moment I walked in, and before I could say a word, Mom snapped at me with a stern expression, "Jonah, how could you be so immature?"

Her tone was harsh, and her displeasure was obvious. "You saw what happened to Kenneth today. You're his older brother. Why didn't you step in and help him?"

"I…" I stammered, caught off guard.

Dad was scowling too. "Kenneth just transferred here. Everything is unfamiliar to him, and he doesn't know a soul. You're the only family he has at this school. When people were laughing at him, you just stood there and watched? Is that how an older brother behaves?"

As they took turns blaming me, I only felt annoyed. They were wasting time I could have spent on practice tests.

It had been no different in my past life. Whenever something happened to Kenneth, the first person my parents blamed wasn't whoever had bullied him—it was me.

In their eyes, because I was the older brother, I was obligated to look after him no matter what—even when he was deliberately putting on an act or when he was scheming against other people.

"Mom, Dad, don't blame Jonah…" Kenneth chimed in right then, his eyes red. "It's my own fault for being so stupid. I didn't even know how to use an automatic door."

The more reasonable and forgiving he sounded, the darker my parents' expressions grew.

Dad looked sternly from the principal to Kenneth's red and swollen eyes, his mind suddenly made up. "Mr. Lane, I'd like to—"

My heart lurched. This was bad!

In my past life, after I transferred to a regular class, I not only ended up in a worse learning environment, but I also became the laughingstock of the whole school.

Meanwhile, Kenneth had seamlessly stepped into my spot in the honors class, claiming every resource that came with it as if it were his birthright.

"I'm sorry!"

My sudden shout cut Dad off mid-sentence.

Everyone froze.

The next second, I turned to face Kenneth, bowed low at a precise 90-degree angle, and said in a loud, clear voice, "I've failed as your older brother!"