Chapter 1

My family was dirt poor. To pay for my college tuition, I worked on a construction site, but I ended up getting beaten black and blue after pissing off the foreman.

To keep my parents from worrying, I went to a local Urgent Care clinic alone. But there, I saw my parents—dressed in high-end luxury brands—holding another boy, waiting to get registered.

"Doctor! Our precious Ryan just cut his finger with a fruit knife! Please save him!"

With that, my dad threw a stack of cash at me. "Get lost, you filthy beggar. Don't ruin Ryan's sight."

The boy in their arms looked at me with pure disgust, like I was piece of trash.

I looked at their expensive designer clothes, and then at the luxury Rolls-Royce parked right outside the clinic.

Then I looked at my own dirty, torn clothes. My throat tightened.

With a broken heart, I walked straight to the Army recruiting office. I never planned to see them again.

Maybe I looked too pathetic, because my parents didn't even recognize me.

I stood there, frozen, staring at the expensive designer suit on the boy in my parents' arms.

Then I looked at my own shirt. It was old, didn't fit, and had been patched up for three years because I couldn't bear to throw it away. My heart ached.

I remembered my dad giving me this shirt for my birthday three years ago.

To buy it, he worked from dawn to dusk, even fainting on the construction site a few times.

I saw how hard they worked, so I grew up fast. I never caused trouble.

Even when I was bullied at school or mocked at work, I kept it to myself and licked my wounds in secret.

Even when the girl I liked confessed to me, I smiled and rejected her out of insecurity.

I knew my family couldn't afford any mistakes. Every step of my life had to be carefully calculated.

But now, I realized my parents weren't poor at all.

The only poor one was me.

They gave that boy infinite luxury, yet they wouldn't even give me the tuition deposit I needed to change my life.

Tears streaming down my face, I walked out of the clinic like a ghost.

People on the street avoided me, terrified I would get too close.

Of course. If my own parents treated me like trash, why would strangers be any different?

I went back to our rented shack. I washed off the dirt with cold water, patched my torn clothes with old rags I found, and lay on the hard wooden bed, nursing my hurts.

After what felt like hours, my parents' voices came from outside.

"Ethan, come out quick!"

"Look what we brought you!"

My body was in pain, my lips pale. I was running a fever.

I forced myself to stand and walked out. My parents were back in their cheap, dirty worker clothes. In my mom's hands was a jacket.

"We got lucky today! Your dad and I found this jacket. It just has a little stain on it. We'll wash it and it'll be good as new. Try it on!"

My mom handed me the jacket, completely ignoring how sick I looked.

So, the clothes I had been wearing all these years were just hand-me-downs from their wealthy son?

What I cherished as treasure was just someone else's trash.

"And these white sneakers. Consider them your reward for getting into NYU."

My dad pulled out a pair of shoes from behind his back, smiling.

Yeah. Those were Ryan's too.

He loved white sneakers. The last pair my parents brought home was also white.

Maybe because I was too quiet, my mom handed the jacket to my dad and looked at me closely. She finally realized something was wrong.

"Ethan, why are your lips so pale? Do you have a fever?"

"Go lie down, honey. I'll get you some medicine right now."

My dad immediately looked panicked and carried me to my room.

Actually, my parents used to be good to me.

I remember once, I went to the mountains to harvest wild herbs to sell. I fell off a small cliff and passed out.

My dad climbed down a thirty-foot cliff with no safety gear to save me.

My mom walked fifteen miles in the dark to the next town to find a doctor.

But these same parents had lied to me for years.

The poor parents and the billionaire parents were the exact same people.

How pathetic.

My mom mixed some medicine and fed it to me. She asked anxiously why I was suddenly sick.

I looked into her worried eyes, forced a smile, and said, "I got hurt at the construction site and went to the clinic. But three rich people kicked me out."

"I came home and got a fever."