Washing Wheat
I was the biological son the Rhodes family had spent years searching for.
Upon our reunion, all I wanted was to feel accepted. I learned to agree with everything they asked of me, no matter how unreasonable it sounded.
Whenever they gave me an order, I followed it.
I never questioned them.
One afternoon, Reagan Rhodes, the boy who had lived as the Rhodes family's son in my absence, glanced at me and snarled in disgust. "You smell awful. Why don't you get inside the sterilization chamber and disinfect yourself?"
I turned toward the industrial machine without hesitation.
I stepped inside the chamber, closed the door behind me, and started the machine.
My mom discovered me before it was too late.
In a panic, she forced the door open and pulled me out herself. My entire body was burning, and my skin had turned an alarming shade of red.
Jasmin Rhodes, my older sister, showed no sympathy when she saw me. Instead, she was visibly irritated. "Who are you trying to fool with this act? If you're serious about dying, just take an entire bottle of sleeping pills."
I remembered every word.
That night, I found a bottle of sleeping pills and swallowed it whole.
Jasmin eventually kicked open my bedroom door.
By then, I was no longer breathing.
She stood frozen beside the bed, staring at my cold body while her hands shook uncontrollably.
Some time later, Reagan slipped and scraped his leg.
It was a minor injury, yet Jasmin immediately lost her temper with me. "If that leaves a scar on Reagan's leg, you'd better be ready to cut a piece of flesh off your own thigh to make up for it!"
I grabbed a shard of broken glass nearby, pressed its sharp edge against my thigh, and cut into my flesh.
My parents rushed inside moments later, screaming in horror at the sight of this.
Jasmin threw herself at me and snatched the glass shard from my hand before I could continue. "I spoke in a fit of anger! I didn't actually mean it! Why would you even listen to me?"
None of them understood what seven years in the mountains had done to me.
Back then, defying an order never meant getting scolded or losing a few privileges.
Disobedience had only one consequence: death.