My Life is Based on Lottery Winnings のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 1 - チャプター 10

I stood in front of the counter for a long time without moving. When the convenience store owner saw the upset look on my face, he flipped the lottery ticket over and pointed at the number behind it. "Real lottery tickets have the tickets' information behind them and aren't made of flimsy material like this."This ticket looks pretty authentic. It was probably custom-made by someone online. Were your classmates playing a trick on you?" I stared at the images on the scratched card and felt my hands go cold. It was not my classmates who did this. The ticket was dug out from a cupboard at home. The cupboard was always locked, and the key was kept with a ring of other keys that belonged to my mother. This morning, my parents took my younger sister out to get a new phone, and my mother left the key near the entrance. It was the first time I had opened the cupboard, and inside were two stacks of lottery tickets placed tidily next to each other.The stack on the left had my name, Nina

When I got back to school, I put my three dollars away.Chelsea Sanders, who sat next to me in class, glanced over. "Is that all you have for today?"I put the money away and shook my head. "That's for the week.""How is three dollars supposed to last a week at school?""I still have food left in my dorm room," I lied. All I had left in the cupboard of my dormitory was half a packet of stale cookies.That night, Elena bought dinner for her roommates. She shared a picture of the feast they enjoyed that night on her social media account. The entire table was filled with food, and in the middle of it was a birthday cake.Her caption read: [This has been a lucky week. Thank you for shining a light on me, Goddess of Luck.]Comments from envious classmates flooded her post. Someone asked how she was lucky enough to strike the lottery so many times.She replied: [Maybe it's because I'm a good person.]I stared at her picture and post for a long time before turning off my phone.The

I thought I had heard wrong. "But I'm still in school.""So what if you are? Aren't you capable enough of making your own money?" My mother took out her phone to show me an accounting sheet she had just drawn up. It stated that it cost 12 dollars for water and utilities, 60 dollars for my room, and 28 dollars for my meals at home during the weekend. The total came up to a hundred dollars.She pushed her phone into my face. "We treat both of you the same. Elena is not making any money right now, which means she doesn't need to pay anything to us. Since you've started making money, you should learn to take responsibility for your family."Here she was again, talking about how they were treating me the same. Every time they played favorites, they would always make it sound like they were being fair. I pushed her phone away. "I'm not paying."My father's face fell. "Say that again.""I spent sleepless nights going through my classmates' work to earn that money. I'm not giving it t

When I returned to my dorm room, Eva was cleaning the table. She had placed the milk on my side of the room with a note below it: [I really can't finish all my milk. If you refuse to have it for free, give me a Math lesson the next time.]I stared at the note for a long time, and in the end, I opened the small box of milk and slowly finished it. It was the first time I had tried to believe that a box of milk would not cause me to end up in debt.The Young Sprouts Initiative was not a summer camp. On the first day, Anna placed a thick stack of papers in front of us, informing us that we would need to complete a minor research project in two months. After that, they would hold a public Q&A about it.I picked the subject of the campus water conservation system.The first research draft went well, but when I started to collect the data to support my research, I began to face problems. The sensor reading was off, and the piping blueprints did not match the actual piping.Even the data

After my parents left, the research project came to its busiest phase. I got second-to-last in the first mid-project presentation. The judges pointed out that my research topic was too general, and the data I collected was clearly deviated. My palms were sweating when the projector displaying my presentation was finally turned off.When I walked out of the room, I heard someone whispering behind me, "Didn't she come in first during the selection process? Her work turned out to be pretty mediocre.""She must have done really well in the paper exam."I paused in my steps. At that moment, my mother's text came flooding into my mind: [There are so many people out there better than you are, and you'll find out one day that you're nothing.]I did not return to my room, but hugged my laptop and sat at the staircase for a long time. When Eva found me, I was about to delete the folder containing my entire research project. She quickly stopped me."Are you crazy?""My research direction