Chapter 1
Edward Quan ·
01
My brother’s voice came through the partly open door.
The sound brought me back to myself.
I had been reborn.
In my previous life, it had been just such a sweltering afternoon. I was taking out the rubbish when I heard something strange in the apartment next door.
Something made me go closer.
Through the gap in the door, I saw our neighbor Wang with my brother. I thought my brother was being assaulted.
Fury rushed to my head.
Wang had been Dad’s best friend for more than twenty years.
I screamed and pushed my way in. Mum heard me and came running. When she saw them, she lost control.
She struck Wang with a chair. His screams filled the room; the injury left him permanently impotent.
That was when my nightmare began.
Mum blamed everything on me.
“If you’d kept a proper eye on your brother, would that monster ever have got near him?”
They took me out of school and made me accompany him to psychological treatment. After the program intervened, he eventually began showing interest in women.
To my family, that meant everything was back on track.
But my brother hated me.
He drugged my water, bundled me into a sack and dumped me at an abandoned construction site.
I was assaulted and tortured there until I died.
As my consciousness faded, I saw him standing a short distance away, filming on his phone.
“You bitch. You ruined my happiness. You deserve to die!”
Afterward, Mum shed a few tears.
Then she sighed.
“Such an unlucky girl.
“I’ve already lost my daughter. I can’t lose my son too.”
They said the way I’d died had disgraced the family. I wasn’t even allowed a place in the ancestral burial ground.
Instead, Mum sold my remains for a ghost marriage to a man who had died a bachelor. She settled for thirty percent of the usual price.
It bought my brother a place at a dubious university.
Voices from inside the apartment dragged me out of the memory.
I stepped forward quietly and shut the door.
This time, I would leave them to it.
02
The moment I got home, Mum seized my ear and twisted.
“You useless girl! What took you so long? Were you planning to die out there? Always dragging your feet. Always lazy!”
Disgust filled her eyes.
“What are you standing there for?”
She shoved me hard.
“Get dinner started! My boy’s still growing. If you let him go hungry, I’ll skin you!”
Dad sat on the sofa, smoking with one leg crossed over the other.
As I passed, he blew smoke into my face.
“I told you there’s no point sending a girl to school. It only gives her ideas.
“Old Li at the factory has a daughter who went straight to work after middle school. Sends her father three thousand a month! He’s found her a husband now. Two hundred thousand in bride-price, just like that!”
I went into the kitchen without listening to the rest.
A heap of bright red bird’s-eye chilies covered the chopping board.
My brother could never get enough spice.
I was severely allergic to chilies. Even a little juice on my skin left it swollen and raw.
Yet as far back as I could remember, there had never been anything on our dinner table that I could eat.
I had tried protesting.
Mum had only sneered.
“Oh, an allergy now, is it? Stop pretending. Don’t eat, then. You’re as fat as a pig anyway.”
I looked down at my arms.
My wrist bones jutted out.
I was 155 centimeters tall and weighed thirty-five kilograms.
I thought of what I’d just witnessed.
Wang was a PE teacher, muscular and strong. My brother was slight.
He might already be hurt.
A reckless idea took root.
I couldn’t help smiling.
You like spicy food, don’t you, little brother?
Then let your big sister make you a feast.
Eat your fill. Make it a meal you’ll remember for the rest of your life.
I turned on the tap, put on gloves and took three times the usual quantity of chilies.
Their pungent heat filled the kitchen.
03
With nobody interrupting him this time, my brother didn’t come home until seven.
We were all at the table, waiting for him before we ate.
He walked stiffly, each step an effort, sweat beading on his forehead.
Mum sprang out of her chair.
“My darling! What happened? Are you feeling ill?”
“N-no. I’m fine.”
He waved weakly.
“I just… fell.”
“Fell?”
Her voice shot up.
“Where? Let me see how badly you’re hurt!”
She reached for him to check. He recoiled, then flinched in pain, sweating harder.
“Mum! I’m not a little kid anymore! Stop trying to undress me!”
She stared at him, taken aback by his outburst.
“You’ll always be my child! There’s nothing I haven’t seen. Be good and let me check your injury. How am I supposed to stop worrying?”
He forced himself to look normal.
“I really am fine! It doesn’t hurt now!”
“Really?”
She was plainly unconvinced.
“Really, Mum. Look. Perfectly fine.”
To prove it, he gritted his teeth and jumped twice on the spot.
Each landing made his mouth twitch.
He hastily changed the subject.
“I’m starving. Can we eat?”
The word was enough to distract her.
“Yes, yes, dinner! We can’t have my boy going hungry!”
She hurried him to the table and pushed him onto a hard wooden chair.
I watched silently as he flinched, then shifted awkwardly to take his weight off the injury, bracing his feet against the floor.
Mum noticed nothing.
Her chopsticks flew. Before long, his bowl was piled high.
“Here, your favorite hot-and-sour chicken gizzards! Extra chilies, just the way you like them.
“And crispy stir-fried pork intestines. Smell that!
“Eat up. Everything’s so spicy it’ll make your tongue go numb!”
He stared at the volcano in his bowl, his chopsticks trembling.
Slowly, he lifted a piece to his mouth.
He struggled to swallow. Cold sweat still dotted his forehead.
The more slowly he ate, the more food she added.
“What’s wrong, darling? Don’t you like it? Is that fall hurting again?”
He could only shake his head, force out an “I’m fine,” and keep eating.
Across the table, I lowered my head over my greens.
The rim of my bowl hid my smile.
04
That evening, just after I finished washing the dishes, an impatient knock came at the door.
A delivery.
Curious, I opened the package. Inside were ointment and intimate items, with a note promising that next time would be less painful.
How considerate of Wang.
I had barely put it back when my brother emerged from his room, moving gingerly.
He glared at me.
“Li Phan Nhi! Who said you could touch my things, you bitch?”
Clutching the package, he limped back into his room.
The door slammed.
The ointment must have worked. Before long, he was no longer in pain.
He began going next door every day, supposedly to do “core training with Uncle Wang.”
Everyone believed him.
When Mum noticed faint red marks on his neck, she only worried about how hard he was working. Every day she found some new nourishing soup to make him.
That ridiculous routine lasted nearly a month.
Then Mum finally noticed something wrong.
Hidden at the back of the bathroom cupboard, she found the partly used intimate items.
She exploded.