Chapter 2

The old house had thin walls.

Even with my parents keeping their voices low in the next room, if you pressed your ear to the wall you could still catch some of it.

"...why do I feel like our son's changed?"

That was my father.

"You don't know your own son's temper? She's a sensible girl. Come dinner, I cry a few times, and she falls right back in line, doesn't she?"

"Then your gambling debt, the household money, our boy's tuition, it all works out, doesn't it?"

Naked scheming, quiet as breathing.

The instructor was right after all.

They didn't deserve it.

They didn't deserve a single cent of mine, didn't deserve to bask in one bit of my light.

Dinner was the same as always, two bland vegetable dishes.

My parents ate, trading glances now and then. I pretended not to see and ate carefully.

Starting today I had to get ready to study. It burned energy, so I needed to eat more.

Halfway through the meal, my mother set down her chopsticks.

"Trudy, you're part of this family. When the family's in trouble..."

Here we go again.

Really killed my appetite.

The instructor had said:

"This kind of moral blackmail, most of the time it's the parents doing it. Remember, they live badly because they're incompetent, not because of you."

I filled myself up fast and put down the empty bowl and chopsticks.

"So you've got nothing more to say?"

"You've been saying that line since I was little. The family has no money because you two have no ability, right? Well, if you have no ability, then don't talk. Say less and do more, that's what you should be doing."

"And another thing. I'm going to repeat the year and retake the exams."

"No!"

My father was worked up.

"College takes four years, and there's no telling you'll earn much coming out of it! Son, listen to your dad, go to that trade school, you'll have a job the moment you graduate. Your dad's counting on you to start earning and pay off the debt sooner!"

My mother chimed in right behind him.

"That's right, your cousin already said she'll set you up at their factory when you graduate, four thousand a month."

"It's not that Mom doesn't want you to go to college. We just don't have the means, we really don't!"

My mother looked at me with red-rimmed eyes and, in the same motion, pinched my brother.

He wailed.

"Big brother, I'm hungry, big brother."

He wrapped his arms around my leg. I peeled him off and tossed him back onto my mother.

Then I flipped the table.

The old folding table had no weight to it in the first place.

One light shove and it went over.

The second principle:

Whoever raises a hand against you, you carve the payback into their bones.

My brother was so frightened he burst into howling sobs. My parents stared at me like I was insane.

It didn't move me.

I glared at my brother, out of patience.

"You're hungry, go to your mom. If you want to blame someone, blame her. A gambling-addict husband and a woman making two thousand a month, and she still dared to have a second kid."

"You're in grade school now, you can understand words. Remember this: every bit of your misfortune comes from your mom and dad. Don't come to me. I owe you nothing."

Full now, it was time to study.

I went back to my room and dug out my review materials.

The crying and shouting outside didn't stop, so I fished out a pair of one-dollar earplugs and pushed them in, shutting out most of the noise.

I should have done this long ago.

The moment my father picked up his gambling habit and set his sights on my savings, I should have done this.

The moment my mother used blood ties to beg me to go earn money, I should have done this.

I hadn't done anything wrong.

At home, I was a dutiful daughter to my parents and took care of my little brother; at school, I respected my teachers and helped my classmates.

I was just too soft-hearted.

I thought caring for this family was all my responsibility.

But how old was I back then? Those responsibilities were only forced on me by people who didn't want to carry them.

The family's hardship wasn't of my making. On the contrary, I was the one holding this crumbling house together the whole time.

Everything I gave, they took as their due.

To clip the wings that would carry me out of here, my parents locked me in the house on the last day of the college admissions exams.

They thought that would make me accept my fate, that I'd meekly go to a junior college and then earn money for them.

My heart ached so badly.

I hated them, but I hated myself more.

Hated that I really had almost been talked around.

What could I do?

They were my own parents, my closest kin. It wasn't that they'd never been good to me. If I listened to them, everyone would be happy.

But I saw it clearly. If I really did what they wanted, I truly would rot here.

So I went to the correction center.

I became the first person to enter voluntarily since the correction center was founded.