Chapter 3

I have a stupid brother. No, not stupid in the sense of sibling bond or whatever, but the literal type of stupid.

He is so stupid that it feels like he is borderline mentally disabled—or maybe that he is mentally disabled.

He is two years older than me, but he is so frustratingly dumb that sometimes I wondered if he was actually older than six years old…

Even so, that didn’t make me hate him. If anything, I cherish him.

And that doesn’t just apply to me either, everyone in the family still loves and cares about him, in one way or another…

We all just… had our own different ways to care for him.

Mom… is the overly dramatic one. She always blames herself for my brother’s condition, but honestly anyone (even my dumb brother) can tell that it would only sour their relationship more.

My brother is stupid but overly kind, to a frustrating degree. He could never bring himself to blame anyone other than himself. In short, the average self-depreciative person.

As for dad… Well, that side is a bit more complicated, but I can tell that he also cares about brother. He doesn’t show it, but in some cases, he is even more emotional than mom—which of course, my brother doesn’t know about.

He probably doesn’t want to act like mom and burden big brother like that, but ironically, that cold, uncaring side of him likely hurt big brother even more.

Unlike my brother, I was born gifted—one of the smart kids, you’d say. What was considered hard for others would be considered child’s play within my grasp.

Anyone would expect a smooth childhood thanks to this, but they would be horrifically wrong.

I resent this brilliant intelligence of mine more than anything.

It was when I was around 12-years old—when that incident happened.

I was the popular girl back in middle school and had many people flocking to me, whether I liked it or not.

Of course, the me back then fully basked in and enjoyed that attention, but… it all changed until an incident happened.

One of my close friends—someone whom I considered the best of friends, tried to frame me and paint me as an abusive villainess.

What shocked me was that it wasn’t even a half-hearted attempt—she was seriously trying to drag me down.

Hidden bruises, scars, and other signs of abuse that felt as if it was formed over the span of months. It was clear to anyone that she was abused for a long time.

Of course, whether it was me or someone else who did it , that was still unproven, but it was middle school—a place mostly inhabited by children.

Children are easily misled and believe all sorts of information (Honestly, even most adults fall victim to this nowadays…), so you can imagine the hell that I had to endure.

I tried defending myself, but the me back then—who never even experienced this kind of malice—was easily taken aback and fell silent.

Fortunately, since it was still a plan devised by a mere middle schooler, it still had obvious flaws that any self respecting adult could see through, and luckily, our teachers were just that.

Despite calling her something like a ‘best’ friend, we never really hung out, talked much or even did anything outside of school at all.

So that ‘perfectly crafted’ plan of hers quickly fell after some ‘mild’ questioning from the teachers.

When she was caught, at first she tried to shift the blame elsewhere, but when the source of abuse was suddenly directed at her parents, she quickly confessed that she did it to herself.

Apparently she really hated me so much that she was willing to hurt her own body, just for the sake of ruining me.

“I despise people like YOU the most…! Why, why, why, why?? Why does someone like you get to enjoy a fun life of being a genius adored by everyone while everyday folks like us suffer to even pass by?!

HEY TELL ME!! HUA JIA XIA! WAS IT FUN PLAYING KING?! DID SEEING US PRAISE YOU BOOST THAT DAMN EGO OF YOURS?!”

I think that was what she said to me when I confronted her.

I was shocked. Just shocked—no other words could be said.

To think that someone could hate me so much to the point of destroying their own body just to drag me down.

Even if the plan was sloppy, the intent was still there. Had she been a bit more of a schemer and smarter, she could’ve likely ruined my life completely.

After the incident, I never saw her again—probably went to a mental hospital or something.

Even so, the wounds remained. I never made an effort to get close to anyone ever again.

That night, I think I went back home almost in tears. Luckily, my parents weren’t home at the time, but my brother did spot me.

12-year old me vented about what happened during that day, and my brother just calmly stood by my side, patting my head and telling me, “It’s okay.”

It should be the end of it there, but the incident also made me realize something.

Outside of my parents, the only other person who I am really close to was none other than my own brother.

Since we were little, I had always shown off to my brother and he would also always happily support me, giving me all sorts of compliments and praises.

I never really thought much of it, but if my so-called ‘friend’ tried to ruin me over knowing me for the span of more than a year, what would it be for my brother, who had been with me for as long as I lived?

Of course, this delusion of mine never happened. I said it before, my brother is overly kind—too kind even.

As stupid as he was, he is unreasonably perceptive when it came to human interactions and he likely knew of my fears too.

He never abandoned or stopped caring about me. If anything, he supported me even harder after the incident.

It made me really happy and I have never felt resentful since then.

While it did make me a bit of an ‘Ice Princess’, I didn’t really care about that, knowing my brother supports me behind my back.

So I continued to do well and lived a satisfied cool-beauty school life.

But it was never that simple…

It was slow—slowly but surely…

My brother who was once the definition of radiance, slowly lost his light.

He never blamed me or anyone about it, and he probably never considered doing something like that.

But part of me could tell… that my existence was that of a thorn by his side.

A thorn that pricked him whenever he tried to fall back and rest. A thorn that constantly reminded him that he had a brighter sibling.

I also knew that trying to comfort him would only hurt him more, and as for listening to his troubles…

Simply impossible.

Repeating it for the third time, my brother is too kind, he wouldn’t try to share his pain with anyone and instead shoulder it all by himself.

There’s no way he would budge no matter how much I ask him to open up, and if I force him, that would only make it worse.

So in the end, I distanced myself from him.

I knew that this wouldn’t help and it would likely also hurt him, but I had no other choice.

The other options were simply worse, and if any other options even existed, I couldn’t think of them.

For the first time in my life, I resented myself and my useless intelligence.

It was ironic how I was gifted with genius level intellect from birth, yet I couldn’t even solve a family issue with this ‘genius’ intellect of mine.

In the end, I was no different from dad—who also distanced himself from big brother.

But that wasn’t the worst of it—nowhere near the worst.

Not long ago, dad suffered from kidney failure and urgently required a kidney transplant.

We were able to scrape up enough money to afford the procedure fees, but the issue of the donor remains a separate story.

That was, until my brother volunteered to be a donor.

At first, me and our parents strongly rejected it, but he kept on insisting, so we couldn’t stop him.

Honestly, it wasn’t too bad. Dad would be safe and my big brother’s relationship with us would probably improve because of this.

This thought was short-lived.

After the health examination to check if brother was a suitable donor, it was found that he had a brain tumor in the terminal stage.

Even if we weren’t considering the expense, there was no way to remove the tumor as it was already too late. We could only delay it.

The tumor didn’t really spread to other areas including the kidney, so my big brother was still eligible to be a donor, but no one was happy about the news.

Even if dad survived, big brother would still die.

After the surgery was over, dad quickly regained vitality and became healthy again, but no one except my big brother was happy.

Well, we tried to smile and be happy, but we couldn’t. Not after hearing what would happen to big brother.

The one who was feeling the most guilty was dad, but he still couldn’t bring himself to confront him.

We decided to not hospitalize big brother and instead spend his remaining days at home.

During this time, not much changed though. Mom kept weeping and repeated sorrys to big brother. As for me and dad, we just couldn’t bring ourselves to approach him as we might hurt him.

Of course, my brother was trying to be positive the entire time, but even he can’t hide that.

That scarily emotionless face of his, scarier than anything I’d ever seen.

It was an expression I couldn’t help but be afraid and regret, because it signified the word ‘too late.’

Before I knew it, he had lost so much light that he no longer felt like a living person—just a corpse with a soul waiting to be released.

Sometimes I still tried to talk to him, but it always ended in my despair.

Despair knowing that big brother will never be the same again, despair knowing that I could never help big brother.

Knowing that, I resented myself even more.

Eventually, I did come to terms with it and decided that I should spend my remaining days with big brother in a somewhat positive light.

And that I should visit his eventual grave at least once a month.

And maybe… When I grow up and get married, I’ll bring my kids and tell them to greet their stupid but kind uncle.

Haha… that’s only for future thoughts though…

So I continued living like that until today.

Today wasn’t really that different from any other day; aside from one thing.

The doctors estimated that big brother will die today.

Although it was a Monday and I had to be early to school, I decided to lay on the bed for a bit longer today.

I had to steel myself.

After like 3 minutes, I did get up and went to wash up—after which, I wanted to check up on my big brother and see how he was doing.

That was originally the plan, yes.

It seemed that someone was in the bathroom as the lights was open, possibly either mom or dad thinking the same thing as me.

Click

I opened the doors to the bathroom not expecting much, but—

“Ah…”

“Mom? Why are you up so early…? Well, I’ll wait outside until you’re done, oka—”

“...”

“Who the hell are you?”

“Good question…”

—A female stranger was staring at herself in the mirror.

◈

“Let… me get this straight, so you woke up today and suddenly became like this… big bro—Ahem—sister?”

“Ah… uh yeah.”

“Sigh.”

“I’m sorry…”

“N-No… Ignoring the lack of logic and absurdity of this situation, this isn’t your fault at all.”

“You believe me?”

“Believe you? Why would you say something as cliché as that, big sis?”

“Eh… ah?”

“In the first place, you wouldn’t lie about something like this, would you? And even if you were a stranger, you’ll be someone who needs to be sent to a mental hospital if you think that calling yourself my ‘brother’ is a good excuse.”

“Ah… right…”

“Sigh, don’t take it too hard, it must be hard to have your gender suddenly changed, but don’t be sad…”

“Actually… I’m not really distraught or sad at all…?”

“Huh…?”

“W-Well, I’d die soon, won’t I? I-It wouldn’t really matter now, right… right?”

“...”

I’m speechless…

“Ah uh…”

“Please never say that again.”

“S-Sorry…”

“No, don’t apologize… Sigh”

I hate seeing her like that, but I can’t blame her either…

“Moving on… are you sure that you should be up like this, sister?”

“Huh…?”

“Weren’t you getting weaker and weaker before this? Walking around like this… wouldn’t it be tiring?”

“Ah, actually I felt much more energetic than before, so I decided to come down to wash my face a bit and grab a glass of water…! Hehe…”

“I see… Yeah, it’s great that you’re feeling healthy…”

…

“Ah, this big bro—sister… won’t delay you any further, you have school today, right?”

“No, it’s fine, I plan to skip school today.”

“H-Huh??”

“I was going to do that even if this didn’t happen anyway. What kind of cold sister would go to school and not spend time with her brother-now-sister in her final moments…?”

“Ah but—”

“Don’t worry, mom and dad will understand. As for the school… I don’t think I would even get any penalties for missing a single day of class. I don’t care about a clean attendance record, especially not over this.”

“...Thank you.”

“Yeah yeah, now let’s get ready. Later, we will wake up mom and dad then go straight to the hospital, okay?”

“Hospital…? Why?”

“Well… we need someone to somehow explain this… now, don’t we?” I said, while pointing my finger at my brother-now-sister’s… honestly envious curves.

“Ah right… Let’s get ready, then.”

“I’ll wait outside, call me when you’re done, kay?”

“A-Ah?! O-Okay!”

Click

I closed the door and weakly leaned on it as I slowly fell.

To be honest, what made me easily accept the fact that she was my brother was…

That damn emotionless face.

Even if her gender changed, that corpse-like expression was still the same as ever.