Chapter 2

“Melanie, where are you going?”

“Boarding high school,” I replied to him flatly without even lifting my head as I continued folding my clothes.

Justin furrowed his brows, confused.

“Just because of Jenny?”

I stuffed my last T-shirt into my suitcase.

“Building a strong foundation in my freshman year of high school matters a lot. I want to focus on my studies.”

I paused for a moment before adding, “I’ll let Jenny have this room after I leave.”

In my past lifetime, Jenny had made up plenty of shoddy excuses just to take my room from me.

First, she claimed to be scared of the dark and that the guest room was too far away.

Next, she claimed she wanted to stay closer to Dad and Mom so that their bond could grow stronger.

After that, she decided to just say in between tears that the lighting in my room was good and she needed the sunlight to regulate her emotions.

Each time I rejected her, Mom and Dad would scold me for being petty, insensible, and selfish.

Since the outcome was predestined, why waste my energy resisting them?

Staying anywhere was no different for me.

Justin fell silent for a few seconds.

“Melanie, do you not like Jenny?”

I stopped what I was doing to look up at him.

“I neither like nor dislike her. I just think that this makes things easier.”

Justin stared at me for a long time before rubbing my head affectionately.

“Melanie, I know you might need some time to adjust to having one more person in the house. But believe me when I say that even with our new sister, Dad's, Mom's, and my love for you will never change.”

Never change?

I was in a daze for a moment.

When I finished top of my class, Dad merely said, “Not bad. Keep it up.”

When Jenny had climbed from fifth from bottom in the class rankings to tenth from bottom, the entire family celebrated like it was a festival, praising her for improving by leaps and bounds.

When I got injured and had to be hospitalized, Dad and Mom got the nanny to take care of me, saying that they were busy with work and couldn’t leave.

When Jenny caught a cold and had a fever, Dad and Mom took turns to take time off from work just to stay by her bedside. Mom even said with red-rimmed eyes that Jenny had suffered much since she was young and swore to treat her doubly well in the future.

I pulled myself back to reality from my memories and smirked.

“Yeah, got it.”

After Justin left, I dug out an exquisite wooden box from the depths of my wardrobe.

It was a music box that Grandpa had made me with his own hands.

It was a pity that Jenny smashed it to pieces in my past lifetime.

For the first time, I was so mad that I hit her.

She went crying to Dad and Mom, telling them how aggrieved she felt.

“I… I’ve never seen such a beautiful music box and wanted to play it, but Melanie shouted at me to not touch it. I jumped up in fright and it smashed to the floor.

“Mom, I really didn’t mean it…”

Mom jumped down my throat even before asking me about it.

“Melanie, how could you treat your sister like this? It’s just a music box. Can’t you just give in to her?”

Yeah.

It was just a music box.

But they had forgotten that I treasured it greatly because it was the last memento of Grandpa that he had left behind for me.

I shut the lid and placed it gently in the deepest corner of my suitcase.

I was going to take away this final, most precious memento.

-

At six in the evening, Mom knocked on my door.

“Melanie, come downstairs for dinner.”

There was a deliberate lightheartedness in her voice, as though she was trying very hard to create a warm atmosphere.

“This is Jenny’s first meal with us. Let’s have it together as a family.”

I shut the book in my hands and went downstairs.

The table was filled with expensive delicacies.

But as I walked to the dining table, I stopped in my tracks.

The seat that belonged to me, in between Mom and Justin, was taken by Jenny.

She was wearing a new floral dress, sitting there obediently, looking like a delicate flower.

All the food on the dining table was pushed toward her.