Chapter 1

1: 1

My sister loved to live stream, teaching her viewers how to tell a real person apart from a fake.

When we stepped into the elevator, I didn't turn to face the doors. I chose to stand looking at my fiancé instead.

That set her off. She turned to her stream.

"See that, ladies? A normal person turns around when they get in an elevator. She didn't!"

"You tell me. Isn't there something off about her?"

But they didn't know.

After I developed my emotional-expression disorder, I became terrified of people.

The only face I could bring myself to look at was the one most familiar to me.

To prove her theory, my sister locked me in the freezer again.

A test to see whether I'd break down and cry like a human being.

But even shivering in the cold, my face gave nothing away. I only called out, flat and mechanical.

"Open the door. Let me out. I'm cold."

Their voices came from the other side.

"See, Piers Gilbert? My sister really is a fake. She can't cry, she can't laugh, she doesn't have the feelings a normal person has. How could you ever be happy married to her?"

Piers let out a heavy breath.

"I've noticed that too. She's so dull. Not like you, so lively and full of life…"

I dragged a bleak smile across my face.

And cried, for the first time in a long while.

Fine, then. I'd set Piers free to go find someone interesting to spend his life with.

…

"But your sister did save my life, after all. A person can't just have no conscience about that."

The regret of a man who wanted something he couldn't have filled his voice.

"Ah, well. I'll make do."

"Peggy Pruitt, I really wish it had been you who saved me. In the next life, I hope it's you."

However cold that cellar was in that moment,

it couldn't touch the cold that had already frozen my heart through.

So it turned out that all of it, the umbrella he held over me in the rain, the shade he found for me under the sun,

walking me back to my dorm every night after evening study without a word,

being the first to step forward whenever he saw someone pushing me around,

none of it was love.

It was the debt of that one time I'd saved his life.

Back then.

He'd been reckless, throwing his weight around.

A pack of small-time thugs came looking for trouble, and in a dim alley they beat him half to death.

I was the one who rushed in to shield him.

"Go, get out of here. They've got nothing against me, they won't touch me. Go call the police."

The thirty minutes waiting for the police to come were agony.

The thugs cornered me.

Their leering eyes crawled over me.

"So you wanted to play the hero and save your man? Then don't blame us for what comes next!"

They tore at my clothes, their filthy hands landing on every inch of my skin.

Just as they were about to go further, the police finally arrived and pinned them down.

And after that day, I was left with the emotional-expression disorder.

I couldn't cry. I couldn't laugh.

Even getting a sentence out took everything I had.

Piers asked me again and again what was wrong.

But the moment I tried to speak, that night played back in my head, over and over.

The vile words, the hands reaching for me with no shame at all, replaying in front of my eyes.

The words stuck in my throat. I stammered, and could never get a whole sentence out.

After enough times, he lost his patience and stopped caring.

He simply decided I was born dull, cold by nature.

My thoughts came back to the present.

I couldn't hold on any longer. Everything went black, and I dropped straight onto the freezing floor.

When I opened my eyes again, two days had passed.

Seeing that I was awake,

my sister Peggy hurried to my bedside.

Her eyes were red, brimming with tears that trembled but wouldn't fall.

"I'm sorry, sis. I didn't mean to freeze you until you passed out."

"I just thought you were like a fake person, no joy or anger or sorrow, so I wanted to try, to see if I could force some kind of feeling out of you."

"I only meant to shut you in for a little while. How was I supposed to know your body was so weak that you'd faint right away…"