Chapter 3

Mom didn't come to find me. I knew this was another punishment.

It wasn't until midnight that the property management lady found me frozen unconscious on the floor and carried me to her duty room.

I'd just taken a sip of hot water when the door was pounded loud enough to shake the building.

"Joy, you've really got guts now! Running away from home!"

Mom burst through the door cursing at me.

"You ungrateful brat! I worked so hard to make you soup and I did it wrong?"

The property manager quickly tried to stop Mom. "The child was frozen unconscious outside. I brought her here on my own initiative. It's not the child's fault."

"You don't need to speak for her. I know exactly what kind of daughter I have."

"She's so manipulative, pretending to faint to get your attention. Her tricks are pathetically obvious!"

I felt ashamed and humiliated, trying to explain. "Mom, I really did faint."

The next second, a slap came whistling down and crashed into my face.

My ears rang.

"You dare talk back! You didn't faint earlier, you didn't faint later, but the moment someone could see you, you fainted?"

The property manager looked flustered and tried to intervene, but Mom ruthlessly pushed her aside.

Mom's endless nagging mixed with the ringing in my ears, piercing sharply into my eardrums.

"She's been bad since she was little. When she was young, she'd run away from home and team up with her desk mate's family to deceive me."

"In middle school she'd steal things—a pen here, an eraser there. When I caught her, she'd refuse to admit it and claim she'd borrowed them."

"At such a young age, she was already flirting with boys, throwing herself at men everywhere. She had no self-respect from the start."

...

That's not true.

Mom, I'm not like that.

I never did those things. That's not what really happened.

Ever since Dad and Mom got divorced, I'd been careful every day, always obedient to Mom.

But why, no matter what I did.

Mom always thought I was a thoroughly bad child.

In the end, Mom forcibly dragged me out of the duty room.

The property manager looked at me with pity in her eyes. That look ruthlessly shattered my self-respect.

When we got home, Mom pointed darkly at the floor.

Like I had countless times before, I mechanically knelt down.

Mom looked at me with disgust. "You like pretending to faint? Then kneel there today until you really do faint."

"Joy, don't think that just because you're an adult I can't control you anymore."

What hurt more than kneeling on the floor was the cold, disgusted tone in Mom's voice when she said my name.

It seemed like ever since Dad had his affair and they divorced, Mom had changed.

I raised my head, my eyes brimming with tears. "Mom, don't you love me?"

"Love?" She acted like she'd heard the biggest joke in the world. "Love is the most fake, most disgusting thing in the world."

"You have half your father's face. Looking at you makes me sick."

"If you weren't my biological daughter."

"I'd rather you were dead."