Chapter 2

I'm not someone who cries easily. Yet, leaving the hospital, I ran a hand over my face, finding it cold and damp.

In my early childhood, I thought fate had been incredibly kind to me. I had a wealthy family, loving and harmonious parents, and a mature, steady older brother who adored me. Adam was eleven years my senior. From the moment I was born, I grew up cradled in the arms of my brother, Mom, and Dad.

Then, when I was old enough to understand, everything plummeted. Adam brought his partner home. My dad had a heart condition, and the moment Adam knelt, insisting on marrying his partner, Dad suffered an attack. He didn't make it.

Why Adam didn't turn back, perhaps it was because he truly loved the other man too much, or maybe just because he could no longer face Mom and me. In any case, those years, laughter vanished from our home, and no one mentioned Adam again. Mom and Dad had known each other since youth, loving each other for decades, raising two children. After Dad died, her life, too, began to drain away uncontrollably, like a flower that could no longer draw nourishment. I cried and begged, but ultimately watched helplessly as Mom also left me.

I resented Adam, but now, seeing the cold snowflakes outside the hospital, my mind unexpectedly conjured up a childhood memory: him holding me, pinching my tear-reddened cheeks, smiling as he soothed me. It dawned on me, belatedly, that I hated him, but he was also all I had left. After his passing, there would be no one else in the world connected to me by blood. I was finally going to become an orphan, in the truest sense of the word. Just like that kid he adopted.