Chapter 5

At eleven that night, my doorbell rang.

When I opened the door, Mom was sitting in a wheelchair.

She was wearing only a thin jacket.

At her feet was a plastic bag with two adult diapers and two boxes of medicine.

The elevator doors were slowly closing.

My brother was standing inside, his hand still on the close button.

When our eyes met, he quickly turned his face away.

The elevator descended.

Mom's lips were purple with cold, but she stared straight at me.

She was still waiting for me to soften.

I didn't leave her outside.

First, I called an ambulance. Then I called the police, saved the footage from the security camera at my door, and asked the building manager to witness what had happened.

By early the next morning, a video just over ten seconds long had shot to the top of the local trending list.

In it, I stood in front of my door, refusing to let my paralyzed mother in.

My brother had started a livestream in the middle of the night.

In front of the camera, his eyes were red as he kept wiping away tears.

He claimed that I'd mistreated Mom to get at Dad's inheritance and forced him to shoulder all her medical bills alone.

My sister-in-law stood beside him, crying with their daughter in her arms.

Mom was the most infuriating of all.

To protect my brother's job, she nodded in front of the camera and, with slurred speech, confirmed that I didn't want to support her.

The story spread quickly to my family.

Chen Zheng's company received a complaint.

Some classmates blocked our son on his way home from school. They ripped his backpack and left a handprint on his face.

When he got home, he didn't tell anyone. He quietly stuffed the damaged backpack into a closet.

At dinner, he lowered his head and ate a few bites.

Only after a long while did he ask in a soft voice, “Mom, will we have to move again?”

In my previous life, my brother's creditors had come after us, too.

We'd been forced to move, and our son had to change schools.

He still remembered.

I set down my chopsticks. The last of my hesitation disappeared.

My brother's livestream had passed a million concurrent viewers.

He was crying in front of the camera. “I don't want my sister to pay a single cent. I just want her to kneel and apologize to Mom!”

Countless people were waiting for me to bow my head.

I tapped the button to join the livestream.

When my brother saw my profile picture, the corner of his mouth twitched.

He thought I was finally scared.

But he didn't know the door camera had recorded not only his abandoning Mom outside my home.

It had also captured a sentence he'd said to the content creator hiding in the stairwell.

A sentence that could destroy his future.

Once the connection went live, my brother wiped his tears first.

He didn't immediately curse at me. Instead, he pretended to be exhausted.

“Sis, just admit you were wrong to Mom, and I can let this go.”

Comments kept racing across the screen.

Some called me ungrateful. Others told me to go die.

I didn't explain. First, I showed everyone the document listing how Dad's assets had been divided.

Two houses. Eight hundred thousand yuan in savings. A shop.

Every bit of it had gone to my brother.

I hadn't taken a single cent.

Then I showed them the agreement with his signature, along with the video of him promising on camera to care for Mom.

The insults in the livestream slowed a little.

My brother stared at the screen. At last, he realized something was wrong.

He reached for the button to end the stream.

But I'd contacted the platform in advance; the livestream was already under evidence preservation.

He pressed the button several times, but the image stayed on.

“Sis, this is a family matter. We don't need to put it online.”

He stopped crying.

I played the full clip from the door camera.

In the video, my brother first took off Mom's thick coat. Then he pushed her wheelchair in front of my door.

The content creator hiding in the stairwell stuck his head out.

“Your mom looks like she's having trouble breathing. Shouldn't we call an ambulance first?”

My brother kept his hand on the elevator button, looking impatient.

“Why call an ambulance? She's not dead yet.”

“Once my sister shuts the door, run out and start filming.”

“Title it: ‘Daughter refuses to care for paralyzed mother, forces younger brother to sell his house for her treatment.’”

The other man still seemed uncertain.

“What if something really happens to her?”

My brother glanced at Mom.

There was no worry in his eyes, only disgust.

“Then it'll be even better.”

“Dead people can't change their stories. My sister will never be able to clear her name.”

The comments in the livestream suddenly stopped.

My brother's face went pale.

He lunged toward the phone, his voice changing.

“It's fake! She edited the video to frame me!”

I kept playing it.

On camera, he took a card from his pocket and slipped it to the content creator in the stairwell.

“Here's twenty thousand up front.”

“Once it goes viral, I'll give you another eighty thousand.”

“As long as we force her to take Mom in, a hundred thousand is worth it.”

The video ended.

The comments flooded the screen again.

Somebody asked how he could receive millions in assets and still refuse to pay for his mother's care.