Notenoughmilk

For three years, I was nothing but a replacement. After my hundredth blood donation to my three wives' true love, I vanished from their lives. They bombarded my phones with thousands of phone calls and ten times that number of text messages. 'I'm sorry, I'm really sorry, honey! I know I let our mom down. You can do anything to me, but please don't leave me!' 'Please, honey, I'm sorry. I'll do anything. I won't do it again, I swear! Just come back!' 'You can't leave me, honey! You're going to drive me mad! I can't live without you!' 'Please, just tell me where you are! Take my call, please!' … I changed my SIM card once I went back to Imperia and blocked all my wives' contacts. Peace and quiet came back to me. Three months later, I was told that my wives' companies went bust, and the love of their lives swindled them out of every single cent they had. And now they were scouring the land for me. That was a joke. They did not panic when they still had everything. They should never have done what they did. Too late for regrets.

Mom is very biased. Every night, she will pour me a glass of milk before bedtime, simply because my grades are the best. My twin sister, Melody York, and my younger brother, Jason York, have never received this treatment before. On the night before my college entrance exam, Mom brings me a glass of milk before my bedtime as usual. But the next day, I end up collapsing in the exam venue even though I've always been healthy. Because of that, I miss out on the college entrance exam, causing me to fail. Meanwhile, Melody, whose grades have always been terrible, miraculously gets into an outstanding university. Mom consoles me, telling me that it's fine to just repeat the senior year. Every night, she prepares the same glass of milk for me as usual. Before the second college entrance exam, my cousin, Annie Wood, is staying over at my place temporarily. She wants to have a taste of my nighttime milk, only to get berated by Mom for being shameless. But halfway through the exam, I suffer from an intense stomachache all of a sudden. After that, I get sent to the hospital for emergency treatment. That year, I end up failing the exam again. But Annie, who comes from a vocational high school, gets into a pretty good university thanks to her scores. The entire family is elated, to say the least. But the fact that I have to repeat my senior year for the third time makes me the butt of everyone's jokes. I don't understand why all sorts of health problems will plague my body when it's time for my college entrance exam. When I'm taking the exam for the third time, I tell myself that this is my final chance, so I mustn't slack off no matter what. Three days before the exam, the only food I've ingested is the food offered by the school's cafeteria, just in case I run into more health problems on the day of the exam. But on the night before the exam, Mom brings me yet another glass of milk before bedtime.

I'm at the amusement park with my husband and our daughter when my blouse—still damp from breastfeeding—catches the eye of a father from my daughter's kindergarten class. He secretly takes pictures of me and starts blackmailing me, demanding a taste. My husband and our daughter are close by, but he grows bolder by the minute and orders me to undo his belt.

In the bedroom, I am being manipulated into various positions. A strange man reaches out toward me and fondles my body roughly with his callused hands. He leans in closer and tells me to relax because it will help release the milk quickly. The man before me is my husband's best friend. He was hired to be my lactation therapist. His hands roam across my waist slowly and pause right at my chest. I can hear him saying in a hoarse voice, "I'm going to start massaging here." I can't help but shudder before closing my eyes tightly.

On the day of my son's one-month celebration, my notoriously stingy sister-in-law surprised me with a branded baby bottle. But instead of accepting it, I turned away and gave it to the neighbor's cruel son who had XYY syndrome. In my previous life, I had accepted that bottle with genuine gratitude, using it day and night to feed my son. I never imagined that a month later, in the dead of night, my son would suddenly suffer a heart attack and die in my arms. Strangely enough, the very next day after my son passed, my sister-in-law's sickly child—who had been confined to the neonatal intensive care unit since birth—was miraculously discharged in perfect health. Losing my son shattered me completely. I spent my days drowning in tears. My husband called me a cursed woman, claimed I brought nothing but disaster, and demanded a divorce. Not only that, but he insisted I leave with nothing. When I refused, he and my sister-in-law joined forces and accidentally beat me to death. It wasn't until after I died that I learned the truth. The woman I had thought was my husband's younger sister wasn't his blood relative at all. She had been adopted by his mother years ago to be raised as his future wife. Together, they had plotted to destroy me. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the very day my sister-in-law handed me that baby bottle.

While I was on vacation with my parents, we stood on the deck overlooking the sea when my father suddenly asked, "Mother duck says quack, quack, quack, quack. But?" I was about to reply, "Only four little ducks came back," when he kicked me into the water. "What's taking you so long to finish a song? Are you cognitively arrested or what?" he barked. Cold water filled my lungs like lead as I bobbed in the waves. "Help me, Dad! I can't swim!" My mother told the captain to steer the superyacht away instead. "Then stay in the water a little longer. Self-preservation may finally make you learn to swim. That's what you need. Real grit and adversity to unlock your potential." I flailed my arms and fought to stay afloat, but panic took over. My right leg cramped and refused to move. I could only watch the superyacht fade into the horizon. I drifted for a while before I could catch up with my parents' superyacht. I wished I could tell them how many ducks came back, but they would never hear my voice again.