After my family abandoned me—I sold my emotions for 800,000 Chapter 02
Every day that followed was a new nightmare.
Mom and Dad had been eager for me to come home at first, but when I finally walked through the door, all they felt was alienation and disappointment.
I was a terrible child.
I couldn’t keep up with my coursework, and always ranked dead last in exams.
When I was called on to answer questions in English class, my thick accent sent the whole class into fits of laughter.
If that had been all, it could have been written off as me being slow-witted.
But as far as my family was concerned, I also had a vile character.
Ever since I moved back home, Yvonne had been plagued by one mishap after another.
The night before an exam, she ate something bad and came down with a high fever.
The day before her ballet competition, she fell down the stairs and sprained her ankle.
Right before her piano recital, she found her performance dress had been torn to shreds.
Every time, Yvonne would speak in that soft, sweet tone of hers:
“This is just an accident. It has nothing to do with my sister.”
The more she said that, the less anyone believed I was innocent.
After reprimanding me countless times, only to see these incidents keep piling up, Father shook his head and said to Mother:
“I have nothing left to say. This child is a lost cause.”
Mom sobbed as she pulled Yvonne into her arms, “My poor Yvonne, you’ve done nothing wrong, yet you keep suffering all these unfair hurts.”
Yvonne comforted everyone sensibly, “It doesn’t matter if I’m wronged, as long as my sister can get better in the future…”
My brother cut her off angrily, “Get better my ass! This hopeless piece of trash should have died in the Blackpine Mountains!”
…
Right now, my phone screen showed the recently ended call, and the final message my brother had sent on behalf of the entire family:
Eliot: [You’ll croak if I don’t send you money, huh? Do us all a favor and just die already.]
I squeezed my eyes shut in despair.
You have to give up, Hazel.
You fought with everything you had to stay alive, but the only option fate ever left you was death.
No money for the surgery, you’d die slow, screaming in agony from the illness.
If that’s how it’s going to be, I might as well end it right now.
I grabbed my phone and stumbled forward on unsteady feet.
I could take the bus to Silverstone Coast.
That works. I’ll just walk into the ocean, and spare myself the rest of the lifetime of pain ahead.
None of the people at the bus stop had any clue I was heading there to kill myself.
People got on and off passing buses, but the route I was waiting for never showed up.
I waited for ages, and just as I was starting to grow frantic, I heard voices talking behind the bus stop sign.
“I’ll pay you a million dollars to buy your normal human emotions. What do you say?”
I turned around.
The speaker wore a baseball cap pulled low over their face, so I couldn’t make out their features.
The girl they were addressing was young, her face tight with suspicion.
“Is this some new type of scam? Leave right now, or I’m calling the cops.”
“I’m not scamming you. If you agree, I can transfer the funds to your account immediately.”
On any other normal day, I would have just walked right past this bizarre interaction.
But at that moment, driven by a reckless, unthinking impulse, I stepped forward.
“Why don’t you buy mine instead? I only need 800,000 dollars.”
