Part 1Auntie’s Remorse

On my eighteenth birthday, I confessed my love to Eleanor, my aunt by title but not by blood. She responded by shipping me off to a university abroad.

Years later, when the brain cancer I developed became a torment of unbearable headaches, I had no choice but to call her for help.

But her beloved Julian slandered me, claiming I’d fallen into a life of hard drugs overseas, that my pain was nothing more than withdrawal.

Eleanor had me brought back immediately and locked away in the family’s desolate, cliffside estate to “detox,” with guards ordered to watch my every move.

Without treatment, the pain in my head escalated into an agony beyond endurance.

In the dead of one night, unable to bear it any longer, I slipped out of a window and threw myself from the cliff’s edge.

A year after my death, Eleanor Brown finally remembered me.

* * *

Eleanor came to the estate to bring me home herself, only to find the vast, sprawling villa utterly empty.

With a furious kick, she sent a decorative screen in the grand hall crashing to the floor.

“Leo, I don’t have time to play your childish games of hide-and-seek! Get out here now!”

The screen fell, stirring up clouds of thick dust. The only answer was the hollow echo of her own voice.

Eleanor covered her nose, backing away toward the door. After a moment, she began to shout again, her voice laced with venom.

“You’re a grown man, how can you have so little self-respect! Just think of the state you were in when you came back last year. Even I, your aunt, found you filthy. It was utterly disgusting!”

“If Julian hadn’t begged me, I would have washed my hands of you for good. I would have let you rot!”

My soul stood just a few feet in front of her. I couldn’t help but let out a bitter, silent laugh.

“Let me be perfectly clear, Leo,” she continued, her voice sharp as glass. “If you don’t clean up your act after I let you out this time, I won’t hesitate to lock you up for another ten years. I’ll make sure you learn your lesson for good!”

She vented her fury, but I still didn’t appear. Annoyed, she waved a hand, ordering her staff to search the rooms and drag me out.

A few of them went upstairs, but moments later they came screaming back down, their faces pale with terror as if they’d seen a ghost.

Her assistant leaned in close, whispering in a trembling voice, “Ms. Brown… that phone call from a few days ago… I think it was real. I think… Leo is dead.”

Eleanor’s brow furrowed. “Don’t be ridiculous. He’d never have the guts to kill himself. He just loves hurting himself to get my attention. He’s been pulling that trick since he was a child!”

She strode past them and went up the stairs herself. Only then did she notice the long, dark streaks staining the hallway walls. They were dried blood.

Her elegant eyebrows pinched together as she threw open the doors to the guest rooms, one by one.

“Leo, what kind of sick game are you playing now! Have I been too soft on you all these years? Do you really think I won’t do something you’ll regret?!”

My soul drifted up the stairs behind her. I watched her stop in front of a locked room. A large, dark pool of dried blood had seeped out from under the door.

When she first had me locked away here to “detox,” she was afraid I’d escape, so they only gave me a few sets of pajamas. In the beginning, I could wander the empty villa. When the headaches came, I would pace the long hallways. When the pain became unbearable, I would slam my head against the walls, desperately trying to find a moment’s relief.

But my guards grew tired of my agonized cries. They saw that Eleanor never once visited, never even called to check on me. It was as if she had forgotten I existed.

So they locked me in that one room on the second floor. To make sure I couldn’t escape, they fitted the door with a heavy, solid lock from the outside. From then on, my entire world was confined to that small space.

Every time a wave of pain hit, I would writhe on the small bed. When it became too much, I would kneel by the door and bash my head against the wood until blood streamed down my face. But I never dared to scream out loud. That would only earn me a beating.

When the agony was at its peak, I would grip the bedsheets, tearing them into strips and stuffing them in my mouth to bite down on, to stifle the sounds.

I begged one of the guards, pleaded with him to call Eleanor.

He just sneered and kicked me to the floor, telling me Ms. Brown was busy with her engagement plans for Mr. Julian. She had no time for a degenerate lowlife like me.

I refused to believe she could be so heartless. I kept begging him to call.

Finally, annoyed beyond measure, he dialed the number—a number I knew by heart—right in front of me.

The moment the call connected, I spoke in a trembling voice, telling Eleanor I had brain cancer, that the pain was killing me, and I begged her to save me. I told her the doctor’s official diagnosis was in my suitcase. All she had to do was open it.

But she cut me off.

“Leo, Julian was right about you. You’re a pathological liar. You’ll never change.”

“Even now, you’re not thinking about getting better. You’re still trying to trick me with stories about being sick just so I’ll let you out! Honestly, if you actually died, I might even respect you for having some backbone.”

She hung up. I was beaten again and locked back in the room.

Now, Eleanor’s gaze fell upon that very lock. She had someone open it and stood in the doorway, her face a cold mask.

“Leo, how long are you going to keep this up? You’ve been targeting Julian ever since we started dating. You’ve said so many horrible things about him to me, but he never once held it against you.”

“If Julian hadn’t found out you were on drugs, you would have overdosed and died in some foreign gutter by now!”

“Leo, you know my patience has its limits. Get your ass out here and come home with me!”

She waited only a few seconds before her anger boiled over. She shoved the door open with a furious cry.