Chapter 3

When I got home, cheerful laughter drifted hazily from inside.

The moment the key entered the lock, all sound stopped.

I struggled to wheel myself through the door.

Despite being extremely careful, I almost fell to the floor.

I'd begged my mother so many times to have someone remove the threshold at the entrance.

She always said okay, okay, okay.

But no one ever came.

Yet the foam padding on every corner of the house was replaced within a minute if even a single piece was missing.

Thinking of what I'd just witnessed, I opened my mouth, my voice hoarse as I called out, "Mother."

No one answered.

When I looked up, I found my mother staring coldly at me.

She demanded:

"Why didn't you pick Ella up just now?"

"Do you know Ella almost got hit by a car on her way home! If I hadn't happened to be there, Ella would be in the hospital right now!"

I looked at my mother's face, flushed red with anger.

I thought inappropriately that my mother really understood me well.

Every time she said something like this, I would protect Ella even more carefully out of guilt.

Even those floating comments knew it.

[This trick of my mother's never fails. Brilliant!]

[After she says this, I feel like Anna would use her life to protect Ella next time.]

Once a habit forms, it becomes automatic.

I was stunned by my own "I'm sorry."

But my mother's lips curved with satisfaction, seeming pleased with her tactic.

"Since you know you were wrong, go bring Ella's dinner over right now!"

For the first time, I stayed rooted in place.

I opened my mouth, wanting to ask why they lied to me.

But I never dared to speak.

Finally, I said softly:

"I'm not feeling well. I want to go to my room to rest..."

My mother froze.

This was the first time I hadn't obeyed her.

After recovering, she furrowed her brow and raised her voice: "Go bring Ella's dinner over, then you can rest!"

Their eyes both fell on me, the cripple.

Various chaotic emotions tangled together.

I ignored my mother and turned my wheelchair around to head to my room.

But my mother grabbed me.

Her expression was ugly:

"Anna, what's wrong with you today!"

"You didn't pick up Ella, and now I ask you to bring Ella her dinner and you won't do it. Are you trying to kill her!"

My gaze swept across the distance from the living room to the kitchen---less than thirty feet.

Even if Ella really was a "porcelain doll," what could possibly happen?

My mother followed my gaze and said coldly:

"Have you forgotten how Ella got that scar on her head!"

I hadn't forgotten. Of course I hadn't forgotten.

That was the first time I came home in a wheelchair after breaking my leg.

Ella went to get her own dinner and tripped.

I couldn't reach her in time.

Ella's head hit the floor, bleeding profusely.

My mother and father nervously took her to the hospital.

They were gone for half a month.

I was forgotten.

I could only sit in my wheelchair, struggling to make food for myself.

I slept in my wheelchair for that entire half month.

But when they came back, the first thing my mother and father did was blame me for not protecting Ella well enough.

I raised my head, my eyes filled with a calm close to death:

"I'm really tired."