Chapter 1

Let me tell you a little about myself.

I am Hua Jia Lin, or Jia Lin for short, a 19-year-old recently unemployed college dropout.

A member of an average family, have average looks, and an average physique, with below-average grades and intelligence. Just as average as anyone could be, or so I’d like to think.

The last two traits, however, stand out like a sore thumb, don’t they?

Honestly, I guess I do stand out, but not in a good way.

I said I have below-average intelligence, right?

Well, that’s a bit of a lie. I don’t have below-average intellect, I am a total idiot.

I think it was in primary school, or maybe ever since I could think for myself, but I’ve always been labeled as the dumb one in every friend group I’ve been part of.

Sometimes it was more direct, like teasing or tricking me, and other times it was more subtle, like talking behind my back.

You can probably guess what happened next. If you did, well… congrats on guessing the obvious.

Either way, these ‘silly pranks’ eventually became more provocative and harmful, escalating from teasing to outright insults, or from tricks to ordering me around like a slave under the guise of friendship.

Of course, back then, I didn’t understand that and just thought it was a new trend among the popular kids, so I went along with it.

Even when it eventually escalated to ‘physical altercations’ that weren’t so different from bullying (due to me messing up errand orders), I was too stupid to even realize that we never had a normal ‘friendship’.

Luckily (unluckily for me back then), we eventually parted ways due to different study paths. I still remember desperately wanting to stay in the same class as them. How foolish of me… is that what they call Stockholm Syndrome?

But even so, the victim would’ve at least been hostile to the perpetrator at one point, wouldn’t they? So wouldn’t that make me worse?

As you can expect, they cut me off as if I were some disgusting bug that was stuck on their shoe. Not that it would change much since they got into the better classes while I was stuck in the lowest one for obvious reasons.

Oh right, I should also mention this, but despite being your stereotypical bullies, they were actually quite bright and diligent students. So they were able to get good grades while the dumb me struggled to even pass.

Not so much of a stereotype now, is it? Imagine your bully getting better grades than you in class. At that point, isn’t it justified for them to bully you?

No? Ah, I guess hurting others is still wrong despite them being failures…

I’m totally not trying to justify the bullying of my past self. Not that it matters much.

Anyway, I’ve been rambling on and on about this for far too long, so I’ll just sum up the important part.

I am not exactly the smartest.

Hmm, saying it like that feels like I’m trying too hard to protect my non-existent ego…

I’ll rephrase it.

I’m dumb.

Dumb enough to the point that it could be considered a mental illness.

So what exactly is the problem here? Dumb people are usually more naive and happy aren’t they?

That’s true to an extent, I definitely was a happy-go-lucky idiot back then.

But…

Just because I am dumb, doesn’t mean I wouldn’t get hints.

And as for dumb people being portrayed as cute and clumsy in shows…

I wish that were true.

Actually, maybe it was true and I was just unlucky, but that didn’t matter.

When you are repeatedly scolded, punished, reprimanded, and screamed at for every failure you do, you’ll eventually realize how much of a problem you are.

Whether you like it or not.

It’s not that I never tried to improve, I did, a lot actually, at least by my standards…

I tried to learn from past failures and even tried to make up for my shortcomings in various ways, just so I can be as useful as any normal person.

But in the end, all that effort never paid off.

If anything, all it did was lead to more scoldings and being told how I should never do this or never do that.

Ah yeah, ‘never do’. That’s a phrase I’ve probably heard more than anything else in my life. It’s a bit sad, but oh well.

The moral of the story is, give up.

…Actually, that’s not even a moral at all. Way to go, me, telling the non-existent readers to do something stupid.

Ugh…

Anyways, this is the second ‘anyways’ that I’ve used, but bear with me please… changing the subject is hard enough, but doing it either subtly or smoothly is too much for an idiot like me.

As for what I was about to say… Everyone has a family, right?

Naturally, even someone like me has a family. Though, our relationship… not exactly the best or worst?

To put it nicely, my family lowered their expectations of me, and to put it bluntly, they gave up on me.

They wouldn't jump in joy whenever I achieved something like those stories of idiots doing something normal and being praised for being able to do that same ‘normal thing’.

No, I was just ignored, as if I never existed. Though I guess in a way, that in itself was their way of showing me that they cared.

Actually, it wasn’t always like this. Back when I was young, I used to hear my mom crying alone in another room, calling herself a bad mother and that it was her fault I was born as a dumb person.

I didn’t really understand back then, but now, I feel sick thinking about it.

It wasn’t her fault that her son was a total failure. It was all my fault. My fault for not trying harder and giving up on my pathetic self.

Hearing that ironically hurt me more than any other abuse I’ve suffered in my life. As such, it was the final nail in the coffin for my efforts, and since then, I’ve been something you could call a ‘shut-in’.

Ah, not to that extent though, I still go out and converse just fine. Self confidence on the other hand… yeah at exactly zero, maybe even in the negatives.

As for my father, he follows your typical Asian parent stereotype, and is the more distant one between my two parents.

If I remember correctly, it’s because he had grown up under hardships or whatever, but he values hard work and diligence over everything else, so that his children could do well in the future.

Well, unfortunately for him, his son is a dumb idiot who dropped out of his only future, and came back to live with his family like a useless parasite.

At first, he helped me to find simple jobs that even I (in theory) could do, and I readily accepted them.

Just because I’m dumb doesn’t mean I don’t have a conscience, you know?

But, as you can expect, with someone as astonishingly dumb as me, I somehow failed at every job and was quickly fired from

Every.

Single.

One.

Although it seemed like I suffered the most here, the one who actually suffered the most was my dad.

He never told me about it, but most of the job opportunities either came from his distant relatives or friends, and because I was such an idiot, I severed those relations that he had.

In that regard, it wouldn’t be strange for someone like me to get beaten up or even disowned, but my dad never did that or even scolded me, he just quietly and slowly distanced himself from me.

In a way, that was his mercy. To act as if I never existed.

As such, I never thought that he was a bad person, but instead a great father.

What, a great father wouldn’t abandon their son? Well, someone like me is beyond saving, so I didn’t expect much.

And while it might seem cruel, it wasn’t actually that bad for our family.

I’m not an only child, you see? I have a little sister too, and fortunately, she’s very bright unlike me.

Her name is Hua Jia Xia and she’s 2 years younger than me, but has already achieved a lot more than her incompetent brother.

Thanks to her, our family was not seen as totally hopeless in family gatherings, and again, thanks to her, my parents weren’t entirely devastated.

As for my relationship with her? Surprisingly not that bad.

I doted on her even before realizing those facts. Because back then, I had thought that having a younger sister was really awesome and her being a total genius was just a bonus.

Besides, I don’t exactly have the qualities to build an inferiority complex around my younger sibling now, do I? Even if I did, that would be really low of me.

Yes, even I can realize just how low it would be to antagonize and be jealous of your sibling, and a younger sibling no less…

As such, the image that she had of me was that of a clumsy but supportive older brother… At least that’s from my perspective.

Though nowadays, just like dad, she has been distancing herself a bit. Probably to make sure that her friends don’t find out she has such an idiotic brother and make fun of her for it.

I understood that, so I quietly left her too.

That was my family.

On the outside, it seems like they never cared much about it and had finally decided to cut out the rotten branch of the family tree, but in reality, I knew that they had tried their hardest to help me function like a normal person.

I was happy and I did my best to try and fulfill their expectations, but…

Deep down, I knew.

I knew that no matter how much effort I put in, nothing would change.

Not because of the excuses of me being dumb or because I can’t do it.

But because I eventually lost the spark that no one should lose.

I lost my motivation and drive to go on.

I am only human after all.

Failure after failure, I eventually got tired and instinctively gave up.

No matter how hard I tried to force myself, even threatening myself with my family’s expectations, it was all futile.

Or at least that’s what I’d hoped, just to make myself feel better.

Thanks to that, I was quite happy to see my family giving up on me.

In a sense, it was like being free from a heavy chain called ‘expectation’.

I know it’s ugly and selfish of me to think like that, but I was just tired.

I no longer wanted to do anything.

I no longer wanted to get hurt.

I just wanted to sleep…

Ah yeah, speaking of that ‘last part’, I used to think about ‘sleeping forever’ so everyone wouldn’t have to deal with such a loser like me.

But unfortunately, even if I wasn’t exactly the sharpest tool in the shed, I still knew that it would bring nothing but sorrow to my loved ones. That it was just an illusion of an escape that truly does nothing but hurt and cause self blame.

Ah, but I did secretly hope that my fears were misplaced and that they wouldn’t care about me dying.

Haha, at the end of the day, I just wanted to die, didn’t I? Too much sugar coating.

But yeah, I still held back and lived my useless life, hoping that one day I’d die in an accident or something.

And that something did eventually come, though not exactly in a way that I had expected.

One day, my father got really sick, and it turned out that one of his kidneys had failed, so he required a kidney transplant.

This wasn’t the bad news of course, if anything, I was thrilled.

I could donate my kidney and let this useless body of mine finally somewhat provide for my family.

As for the surgery costs, we racked up enough just to afford it with insurance provided, so all was good.

Then, what exactly was that ‘something’?

Well you see, we discovered something quite shocking during my assessment as a suitable organ donor.

Turns out, not all of my failures during these past few years have been caused by my stupidity alone.

Some of it was caused by an uninvited guest known as a ‘brain tumor’ living rent-free in my head, so color me surprised when I found out.

Fortunately, since it didn’t spread too far, it didn’t affect my kidneys, and I was still eligible for organ donation. Unfortunately (or fortunately for me), I couldn’t be treated due to my family being unable to afford the surgery, even with insurance added.

And even if I could, it would only be delaying the inevitable. Brain tumors couldn’t be removed at my stage, and it would come back eventually.

So to sum it up, I was going to die young, like really young.

When I first heard it, I thought it was unbelievable, not out of anger or fear, but out of happiness.

It may seem twisted, but I was happy. In a way, a miracle was granted.

A wish was granted, no matter how late, and I was satisfied.

A perfect justification to die, and to even being able to help save my father before it, how wonderful was that?

For once within my miserable life, I was truly able to say that I felt joy.

But my family didn’t think the same, if anything, they were saddened and filled with guilt.

After the kidney donation proceeded nicely, my dad was able to make a quick and smooth recovery, which then made everyone’s focus turn to me.

My sister, who was slowly distancing herself from me, came back closer than ever and shared her stories with me.

My mother, who was very sad, visited me everyday and never stopped blaming herself for my misfortune, which honestly made me sad too.

And my father, though he hadn’t changed much from before, I could tell that he was the most guilt-ridden of the three, since he would always visit me while I was asleep (I sometimes faked it) and took care of me before leaving.

It did make me feel like trash to make my family take care of me until my death, but I was happy to still be treated as a member of the family until the end.

Yes, I was happy with this ending.

Despite how much of a tragedy it should’ve been, I never once felt that way. After all, I already told you.

I gave up.

An end like this serves as a happy end.

Which was why I was happy.

Yes, happy.

That is…

Until today,

Today, which was supposed to be the day that I die (according to the doctors).

My parents lost a son, and—

“Who… the hell are you?”

—gained another daughter.