Chapter 4

Just as she had greedily drained my nourishment in the womb, after birth she had made everyone submit to her wishes.

Now she was beginning to take from other people.

She…

Frightened me.

Throughout her years at kindergarten, I lived in constant anxiety, always afraid she would cause trouble again.

Perhaps because she had pushed that child, the others no longer wanted to play with her.

She became much quieter.

At least, that was what I thought.

Because she had learned to lie.

To hide her feelings.

To do bad things more discreetly.

Ordinary children felt guilty after doing something wrong. They changed when they were taught better.

My daughter…

Learned to conceal her wrongdoing.

To leave no evidence anyone could use against her.

At first, her behavior was excellent.

I thought she had changed and rewarded her with a dress she particularly liked.

After she started primary school, my husband was promoted.

Our finances improved.

After the pencil-case incident, we tried to meet her material needs as far as we could afford.

As the saying went:

“Raise a boy in hardship, a girl in plenty.”

We signed her up for Latin dance classes, both to occupy her time and energy and to help her develop poise.

She was very pretty.

Her teacher liked her and said she danced well.

My daughter loved dancing. She was eager to learn and practiced hard every day.

As National Day approached, she grew especially excited.

For holidays, the teachers at the extracurricular classes arranged performances at shopping centers or schools.

Standing before a crowd.

Winning prizes.

To adults, it was nothing special.

To children, it meant a great deal.

Naturally, the parents indulged their excitement.

My daughter kept insisting she would be the lead dancer.

But another girl danced better, and the teacher intended to choose her instead.

My daughter was furious.

Every day, she spoke badly of that girl to me.

I always tried to be her friend and avoid lecturing her from above.

But her remarks were so cruel that I couldn’t hold back.

Jealousy filled her face.

I had to admonish her.

She seemed to realize something.

Immediately, she gave me a bright smile.

“Mommy, I know I was wrong.”

From that day on, she never confided in me again.

In front of me, she was always cheerful and positive.

Before long, I began to feel she was being secretive.

She had Latin dance lessons three times a week.

One day, I arrived to collect her and found she had left early.

I asked the teacher.

“Didn’t you tell her to go home ahead of you?”

Panic seized me.

I hurried out to look for her.

Not far from the dance center, a crowd had gathered in the road.

There seemed to have been a traffic accident.

My heart tightened.

I ran over.

There was my daughter, standing at the roadside.

Trembling all over.

After learning the truth from my husband, I sank into gloom. I could no longer look at my daughter with the love I once had.

For the past two years, Mục Âm had behaved very well. Her grades were always at the top of her class. With her extraordinary beauty, she was already a prominent figure at school despite her age.

I had thought she was growing up, learning better.

Now I suspected it had all been a disguise.

To test that suspicion, I quietly went to investigate at school.

It didn’t take long to find signs that something was wrong.

She was a little tyrant there.

If anyone crossed her, she gathered a small group to bully them.

The frightening part was that she no longer acted herself. She directed other children to do the bad things for her while keeping her own image innocent and spotless.

Wherever she went, one rule seemed to apply:

“Obey me and live. Oppose me and die.”

No wonder no parents had come to complain for so long.

My daughter wasn’t laying a hand on anyone herself.

Learning this left me utterly hopeless.

I felt she would never become a better person.

That night, I argued with my husband about Mục Âm again.

Overwhelmed, I broke down and screamed:

“I don’t want a child like this anymore!”

He held me and tried to soothe me.

Then, suddenly, he said:

“Why don’t we have a second child?”

I fell silent.

My husband had always preferred life with just the two of us.

If I hadn’t wanted a child, perhaps he would never have wanted to become a father.

I had never considered having two either.

Yet now…

I truly began to want another baby.

After the argument, we noticed the bedroom door was ajar.

My husband went out to check and frowned.

“Mục Âm was standing here listening.”

I didn’t know how he had reached that conclusion.

He and our daughter were both intelligent, always able to work out the truth from the tiniest details.

Alarmed, I called her name.

No answer.

We searched the whole apartment, then went down and searched the complex.

There was no sign of her.

Just as we were beside ourselves with worry, my phone rang.

I answered at once.

Mục Âm’s voice came down the line.

“Mommy, I’ve known for ages that you don’t like me. If you want a baby brother so much, I’ll go and die.”

I nearly fell apart.

“We’re not having a baby brother! Where are you?”

She hung up.

At that moment, I felt both panic and fear.

The panic was a mother’s instinct: terror that something might happen to her child.

The fear…

Was because she was only a child, yet already knew how to threaten me with her own death.

“Mục Âm!” I screamed in despair.

My husband and I called her name frantically through the streets.

Across the road, a familiar little figure flashed past.

He immediately ran after her.

Brakes shrieked.

Then came a heavy crash.

My husband flew into the air, tumbled several meters, and hit the ground.

Blood, thick as red paint, slowly spread beneath him.

The world spun before my eyes.

My mind went blank.

All I could feel was nausea.

People crowded around.

Sounds clashed.

Lights blurred.

I scarcely remember what happened next.

My mind remained dazed, as though trapped in a nightmare.

By the time I felt a little clearer, my husband had been discharged and was home.

He took my hand and said softly:

“I’m all right.”

Tears poured down my face.

“As long as you’re all right… As long as you’re all right…”

The accident had been caused by a drunk driver.

If he hadn’t been drinking, it wouldn’t have happened.

After surgery, my husband was completely paralyzed, unable to move.

I decided to take him and our daughter to live in our old house in the countryside on the outskirts.

It was quiet there, a good place for him to recuperate.

As for our daughter…

I didn’t want her going out and hurting anyone else.

Perhaps she knew she had done wrong. Mục Âm didn’t resist.

She quietly packed her things and came with me to the old house.

It was a small villa built many years earlier.

The family had once hoped it would be demolished as part of redevelopment, bringing compensation.

But the property market had declined. We couldn’t rent it out, and the redevelopment never happened, so it had stood empty for years.

The three of us began a quiet life in that secluded courtyard house.

My husband was bedridden and unable to care for himself.

Every day, I washed him, changed his clothes, and talked to him.

To make our daughter understand what she had done, I made her learn to care for her father.

Every day, she had to feed him, pour his tea, change his clothes, and wash him.

A year passed like that.

But before long, she couldn’t bear the work.

She cried and made a scene.

“I don’t want to do it anymore!”

“You caused this!” I shouted. “Shouldn’t you bear the consequences?”

She burst into tears.

“But I didn’t know it would turn out like this!”

My husband sighed.

“All right. Don’t force her anymore.”

My heart went cold.

People said:

“Even a devoted child will tire at a long-sick parent’s bedside.”

But how long had it been?

Already, she no longer wanted to look after her father.

And he had been paralyzed because of her!

Mục Âm argued back at once.

“The accident happened because the driver was drunk! You can’t blame me!”

“Go after the person who actually did it! If you want revenge, find that driver! Why are you tormenting me?”

Her selfishness was infuriating.

At that moment…

I wanted to kill her.

Someone selfish to the bone, a child born as a seed of evil, should never have existed in this world.

We had a terrible fight.

This time, I truly lost control.

I beat her savagely.

Until her scalp split and bled.

My husband lay beside us, crying with distress, helpless in his paralysis.

“Stop hitting her! Stop!”

“An ungrateful little beast like this deserves it!”

After beating her viciously, I went back into the bedroom to care for my husband.

I ignored her.

When I came out again…

She was gone.

Ha.

Then let her go.

I thought coldly.

Better if she disappeared forever.

I could never depend on her in this life anyway.

People said you raised children to support you in old age, that a daughter was a little quilted jacket warming her parents’ hearts.

But Mục Âm had been born full of selfishness.

Her father was paralyzed, and after only a few days of caring for him, she had washed her hands of it.

Someone like that…

And I was supposed to hope she would care for me in my old age?

Daydreaming would be more realistic.