Chapter 4

Naturally, I was fired on the spot.

Mom dragged me back to their house once again.

For some reason, she stayed furious the entire drive home.

"He went to hit you! Are you too stupid to dodge?!"

The corner of my mouth twitched weakly as I opened my hands.

"I forgot."

In reality, the pain had blinded me; I simply hadn't possessed the strength to move.

"Useless," she snapped, not sparing me another glance.

Richard looked me over, his brows knitting together in concern.

"Claire, why have you gotten so terribly thin?"

Mom said flatly, "She runs around doing who knows what all day. It'd be a miracle if she weren't skin and bones."

I kept my lips pressed together, following behind them without uttering a word.

Once inside, Richard noticed my sickly, yellowish complexion and asked gently,

"Claire, did you not eat anything today?"

"I'll have the maid whip something up for you. Here, eat this pastry first to settle your stomach."

He pressed a wrapped roll into my hands.

Yet I couldn't bring myself to tear open the plastic.

It wasn't that I didn't want to eat; it was that anything I swallowed came right back up.

If I threw up in front of them, Mom would only become angrier.

I offered him a grateful smile. "Thank you, Richard. I already ate earlier, so don't worry about me."

Richard was a genuinely good man. Even though we didn't share a drop of blood, he still treated me with kindness.

A small warmth stirred in my chest—at least Mom had chosen the right person this time around.

Mom cast a suspicious glance at me, but she didn't comment.

Suddenly, my phone buzzed violently in my pocket.

When I answered, my biological father's voice came through the line.

I moved to slip into the bathroom to take it, but Mom snatched the phone from my grip in an instant.

She recognized his voice immediately.

Her entire body began to tremble with rage as she slammed the end-call button down.

I knew that look all too well. It was the calm before the storm.

She pointed a shaking finger at my face, her voice piercing the room.

"Why are you still talking to him?! After all these years, you're still on his side, aren't you?!"

My lips quivered.

"...I haven't been talking to him."

I lied.

In truth, I had reached out to him once over the past few years.

Just last week, desperate to pull together funds for my treatment, I called him to ask for back-pay child support.

He had cursed me out and blocked my number immediately.

Perhaps a sudden ping of guilt had spurred him to call me back today.

"Lies! More lies!"

"Claire, I gave birth to you! I raised you! Don't you realize how painfully obvious you are whenever you lie?!"

Her gaze was dripping with venom, sharp as blades pinning me to the wall.

For years, I had never understood. She and Dad had been divorced for over a decade, and she had built a happy new life of her own.

Yet the resentment inside her had never faded.

Looking into her bloodshot eyes today, the realization finally struck me.

It wasn't Dad she hated. It was me.

Richard placed a steady hand on her shoulder, trying to soothe her.

"Calm down. He's still her biological father, after all. A phone call isn't the end of the world."

I lowered my gaze, speaking softly into the suffocating silence.

"I only reached out to him to ask for money for medical treatment."

Mom let out a bitter, furious laugh. "Still making up stories? Couldn't you at least come up with a smarter lie?!"

"I took you to the hospital myself the other day! There wasn't a damn thing wrong with you!"

My breath shook in my chest.

Why is it that when I finally tell the truth, you can never see it?

"I'm sorry."

I dragged my feet toward the front door.

Before the door clicked shut, her lingering, furious voice echoed from inside.

"Leave! If you have the guts to walk out, don't you dare ever come back!"

She used to tell me that raising a dog would have been better than raising me.

When I was little, back in the countryside, we had a small stray dog.

When it was nearing the end of its life, it quietly crept away from the house, dug a shallow ditch in the dirt, and lay down inside to die.

Now, I was leaving home just like that little dog.

And this time, I probably wouldn't ever come back.

...

A few days later, Mom's phone suddenly rang with an unfamiliar call from the hospital.

"Hello, is this Claire's family?"

Her heart skipped a beat. "Yes. What happened?"

"Why hasn't Claire checked into the hospital yet? Her malignant tumor has already metastasized. Her life is in critical danger at any moment."

"What tumor?!"

Clatter. The phone slipped from her fingers, smashing onto the floor.

Mom's face turned completely, horrifyingly pale.