Chapter 2

Having said her piece, Mom didn't even give me a chance to refuse. She let go of my hand, turned around, pulled out a wet wipe, and lovingly wiped away the cream from the corner of Winona's mouth.

It was as though sending me to slave away on an assembly line was nothing more than a trivial matter.

Noticing I was still frozen in place, Dad frowned and urged me, "Why are you still standing there? Go pack up your belongings and get ready for the factory. They provide food and accommodation there. Work hard and don't embarrass us."

Winona was still beside them, clutching her iPad and fussing over which designer bag, worth tens of thousands of dollars, she should get for her enrollment.

I lowered my head to look at the white canvas shoes on my feet.

Winona had worn them until she no longer wanted them. The edges were already worn through with holes, and I could even vaguely see my toes, which had turned red from being squeezed inside.

I looked at the three of them, basking in their happy family moment, and my vision started to blur. Before the waterworks could begin, I spun on my heel and rushed back to my room.

It was a cramped storage room without even a window. Aside from a hard bed and a peeling, chipped desk, there was barely enough space to fit anything else.

The moment I closed the door, my phone, which was in my pocket, vibrated. I had received a text message.

"Dear Hannah, this is the Admissions Office for Project Pyre, the highest-level confidential program at Pennington College. Your special admissions dossier has been reviewed, approved, and secured. Please remain reachable.

"A private vehicle will be dispatched to pick you up and escort you to the program at the end of the month."

Staring at the message, my heart missed a beat.

Just then, my phone's screen suddenly lit up. That familiar video call connected once again.

My future self was sitting in a dimly lit basement on the screen. Without uttering a word, she slowly raised her hands.

They were a pair of calloused hands with swollen joints. The index and middle fingers of her right hand had even been severed from the base.

"Do you see this?" she rasped. "If you back down this time, this will be your fate. Back then, you were soft-hearted. You told yourself, at the end of the day, they were still your biological parents.

"Thus, when they cried, made a scene, and threatened to take their own lives, you yielded your college admission to Winona.

"They didn't give you a single dime. Winona, on the other hand, took your test scores, assumed your identity, and shone brilliantly at Pennington College. Meanwhile, you spent your days tightening screws on the assembly line and your nights pulling all-nighters to help Winona write her thesis.

"Hannah, you thought compromising would earn you their love, yet all they ever did was bleed you dry! Even the compensation you received for losing your fingers was snatched by them to buy Winona a limited-edition bag."

The video abruptly cut off.

I collapsed onto the rigid wooden plank bed, completely snuffing out the last trace of hope I had held onto for this family.

…

Early the next morning, I left home at first light to go to school to confirm my college choices and sign the confidentiality agreement.

The moment I left, Winona snuck into my room. Initially, she wanted to rifle through my belongings to see if I had stashed away some money, yet she stumbled upon my report card for the last mock exam.

I'd come close to a perfect score on every single subject.

Winona panicked because she was well aware of what this meant.

If I'd actually made something of myself —if I genuinely got accepted into a prestigious university, our parents' scale would tilt sooner or later. The position she had held as the family's golden child for ten years would collapse like a house of cards.

Gritting her teeth, she picked up a utility knife from the desk and made a razor-thin cut on her finger.

She smeared the blood onto the back of my exam paper and wrote a bloody letter.

"Hannah had such good grades, yet she deliberately pretended to get into community college just to mock me. I know I don't deserve to be Mom and Dad's daughter. I'll give my place back to her. I'll leave…"

Once she was done, she lay weakly on the floor and began wailing at the top of her lungs.