Chapter 4

I lived under the same roof as my family, yet remained an unwanted outsider on the very edges of their lives.

It wasn't until I met Princess Coraline that my life finally seemed to offer a glimmer of hope.

But even Coraline changed completely after reading my mother's diary, just like everyone else. She flew into a rage and threw me into prison, looking as though she wanted nothing more than to see me dead.

Before my mother died, she'd specifically instructed me to give her diary to my father.

What on earth was written in that diary that could make people who should have loved me and sympathized with me turn against me as though I were their sworn enemy?

Could my own mother really have wanted to hurt me?

And why did my father keep showing the diary to one person after another, even at the cost of destroying the life I'd finally begun to turn around?

My unhealed wounds still ached.

Ever since my mother's death, all the abuse and contempt I'd endured over the past decade and more came flooding back to me.

Was I destined to spend the rest of my life in misery?

A prison guard kicked me. "You've been sentenced to ten years in prison. Hahaha! Let's hope you're still alive when your sentence is up.

"No, wait. Let's hope your corpse hasn't rotted away by then! Hahahahaha!"

I closed my eyes, but I wasn't overcome with sorrow.

This time, I wouldn't just endure everything passively. Even if it cost me my life, I would uncover the truth behind all of this and discover the secret of that diary.

Perhaps the guards thought I had plenty of time left to suffer in this place, because they didn't rush to torment me. Instead, they threw me into a cramped, damp solitary cell.

The damp conditions meant the guards rarely came around, either.

That gave me the perfect opportunity.

Back at boarding school, the supervisors had often taken the easy way out by locking all the students who refused to obey them in solitary confinement.

After being locked up so many times, the students had gradually figured out a few tricks of their own.

Picking locks, for example.

I deliberately broke rules and endured beatings to test the guards' shift rotations. Finally, three months after my imprisonment, I managed to escape.

I ran as fast as I could, gasping for breath as the wind roared past my ears. The bushes scratched bloody lines across my body, each wound stinging sharply, but I had no time to care.

There was only one thought in my mind: run faster, just a little faster!

By nightfall, I'd finally found a temporary place of safety.

Now I had two choices.

One, I could keep running, get as far away as possible, and go somewhere my father would never find me. As long as I stayed away from him, no one I met in the future would ever see that mysterious diary. They wouldn't suddenly turn against me for reasons I couldn't understand.

I could finally have a normal life.

But what about everything I'd suffered in the first half of my life?

Was I supposed to let all that contempt, hatred, and abuse go as though none of it had ever happened?

No.

There was another path.

I could go back and confront my father and demand to know what was written in that diary.

Even if returning meant being arrested or losing my life, I needed the truth. I needed an answer that could explain every hardship I'd endured throughout the first half of my life.

Getting home was much easier than escaping prison.

After all, this was where I'd grown up. I knew exactly when the patrol guards changed shifts and which sections of the wall were easiest to climb.

When I returned, my father was sitting in my mother's old room, holding a cross and staring blankly into space. I had no idea what he was thinking about.

With a knife clenched between my teeth, I climbed through the window and made my way inside.

"Is this how you do it?" I asked, my voice thick with anguish as I pressed the blade against my father's neck. "You destroy my life while sitting here mourning my mother?"