Chapter 1

Ten days before the SAT, my grades that should have gotten me into an Ivy League school suddenly plummeted.

My mind felt foggy. I couldn't solve even the simplest formulas.

I thought it was just too much pressure, until I accidentally opened my dad's phone search history.

"How to make your daughter fail an exam?"

"Where to buy a colorless, odorless drug that makes people stupid?"

In that moment, I felt like I'd fallen into a freezing abyss.

It turned out that to keep me tethered to them forever, my control-freak parents were working together to poison me.

My grades had always been stable in the top three of my class.

My teacher said that as long as I maintained this performance, I should be able to get into Stanford.

But just two weeks before the SAT, something strange happened at home.

That weekend, both my parents were out.

A delivery person knocked on the door and handed me a small black package with no sender information. Only my dad's name written on it.

The package felt soft when I squeezed it, like some kind of powder.

I didn't think much of it and casually placed it on the living room table.

My dad's old phone happened to be on the couch charging, its screen lit up with a browser notification.

For some reason, I glanced at it.

Just one glance, and my blood instantly froze.

It was a webpage from a secret forum. My dad's account was still logged in.

In the search box were several alarming entries in the history:

"What if my daughter does too well on her exam and leaves us? Who will take care of us when we're old?"

"How to make my daughter fail her exam without it being obvious?"

"Where can I buy a real colorless, odorless drug that makes people stupid?"

I stared at the screen, breathing rapidly.

Below was a highly upvoted response from a user with the ID "Strange Doctor."

"Making her lose her ID is too obvious. It'll make her hate you forever. The best method is to drug her and make her brain sluggish so she underperforms."

"After she fails, you can brainwash her. Tell her she can't handle the pressure. Tell her she's disappointed her parents who worked so hard for her."

"Make her feel guilty for life, willingly stay local working minimum wage, and take care of you."

"I have a special drug here, colorless and odorless. If you're interested, DM me."

And my dad's reply under this post was: "Already DM'd you. Looking to buy. Money is not an issue."

I whipped my head around to look at the black unmarked package on the table.

My heart felt like it was being squeezed by an invisible hand.

How could this be possible?

They were my parents!

I desperately tried to reassure myself that this might just be junk advertising pushed by algorithms, or maybe my dad accidentally clicked on the wrong webpage.

What parents in the world would scheme against their own flesh and blood like this?

I forced myself to calm down, put the phone back where it was, and pretended nothing had happened.

But once the seed of suspicion was planted, it began to grow wildly.