“Please don’t say bad things about her. She’s really nice to me. She asks me to do chores and serve her tea, but she’s never bullied me.”
I stood frozen, stunned by the lies.
The burn on her hand wasn’t my doing. She’d wanted to make coffee for Dad but claimed I had forced her to serve me hot tea.
Dad had already punished me for her injury, yet I hadn’t blamed her. I felt guilty for letting her into the kitchen in the first place.
After hearing her lies, I confronted her at school.
That day marked a turning point in my life—or maybe the change had started long before.
Dad stopped doting on me. Ian no longer followed me around like my little shadow.
I became an outsider in my own home, the person everyone vented their frustrations on.
As I recalled the past three years, my body shuddered. Perhaps it was because the spirit itself was numb, but it felt like I had returned to the storage closet again.
