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. 1 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. 2 “Leo, you really are incorrigible! I never should have listened to Julian and come to get you!” The door swung open, and Eleanor froze. I stood behind her, following her gaze into the room. It was just as I had left it. The small window I’d escaped from was still open, creaking back and forth with the gentle breeze. Weather-beaten and dry, it groaned with every movement. Eleanor always hated noise, but now, her face showed no irritation. Only shock. From her perspective, it was a shocking sight. A black, dried puddle of blood stained the floor at her feet. The walls and the door were smeared with it. The bedsheets had been torn to shreds, and even the pillow hadn't been spared. The curtains had been taken down long ago; the guards were afraid I’d use them to hang myself and implicate them. I died in the early morning of the day after I finally spoke to Eleanor. After a full night of torment, the morning breeze had felt almost sweet. It reminded me of when I was seven years old, when my parents died and Eleanor brought me to the Brown estate. From that day on, she was the only person I depended on in the entire world. I had been willing to risk breaking every bone in my body to climb out of that one small, unbarred window. The guards heard the noise. As they watched with panicked eyes, I didn't hesitate. I leaped from the cliff’s edge. They were terrified. They called Eleanor, their voices shaking, to report what had happened. But that day was her engagement ceremony to Julian. They had barely gotten the words out before she hung up. She was busy greeting guests, and had no patience for their hysterics. Perhaps she heard them. But even if she did, she probably thought it was just another one of my desperate stunts to get her attention. Her only reply was, “From now on, don’t report anything about him to me ever again.” Eleanor walked to the window and looked down into the yawning abyss. She let out a cold snort. “Leo is such a coward. He’d never jump from this high up. Julian was right, he’s far too manipulative. He needs to have that side of him beaten out.” “Who were the guards here? Bring them to me. I have questions.” A moment later, her assistant returned. “Ms. Brown, those men quit right after… after Leo’s suicide. Should we… send a team down the cliff to search for his body?” She laughed, a chilling, humorless sound. “Search for what? If he’d really jumped, the body would have been found by now. The police would have contacted us.” “He’s such a compulsive liar. He thinks he can fool everyone, but I know him too well. He can’t fool me.” Eleanor ordered her assistant to leave a team behind to continue the search. “Search everywhere, top to bottom, inside and out. I want him brought to me today, no matter what.” “He and Julian both have a rare blood type. He’s given blood to Julian before. Julian is injured now, and I need Leo here, just in case.” I stood right behind her, my entire soul trembling with a cold rage. She had left me here to rot for a year without a single thought, and now she was here only because her precious Julian might need me. For my blood. I thought I meant something to her. She wasn’t always like this. From the age of seven to seventeen, she had cherished me, held me in the palm of her hand. And I, in turn, had fallen hopelessly in love with this woman, three years my senior, my aunt in name only. Then Julian appeared, and everything changed. Julian was the liar, but Eleanor only ever believed him. On my eighteenth birthday, I took my chance and confessed my feelings. Eleanor scolded me, told me she was my aunt, that my feelings were wrong, unnatural. The next day, she sent me abroad. I knew, without a doubt, that Julian had been whispering in her ear again. He even fabricated the story about me being on drugs, a convenient excuse for Eleanor to have me brought back and locked away, just to get me out of the picture. And now that he was hurt, he needed his backup blood bank. But if I really were a drug addict, how could he possibly use my blood? It was such a simple, obvious contradiction. But Eleanor, blinded by her affection for him, couldn't see it. The assistant looked at Eleanor, his expression troubled. “Ms. Brown, the guards said they saw him jump with their own eyes. It’s unlikely he could have survived.” “I know you don’t want to believe it, but they sounded sincere. It didn’t seem like they were lying. If we just call the police and have them organize a search, we’ll know the truth.” Eleanor scoffed. “He has you all wrapped around his little finger. He’s just hiding somewhere, trying to get out of giving blood to Julian. He’s probably laughing at us right now.” “Cancel all his credit cards. Once he runs out of money, he’ll come crawling back.” With that, she stormed out, rushing back to be with the injured Julian. My soul, unable to resist, followed her. 3 When Eleanor walked into the hospital room, her expression softened the moment she saw Julian in the bed. “How are you feeling today? Any better?” “I’m fine,” Julian said with a weak smile. “See? I’m perfectly fine. There’s no need for me to be cooped up in here.” Eleanor picked an apple from the fruit basket and began to peel it. “You were hit by that car because you pushed me out of the way. Of course I’m going to stay until you’re fully recovered.” “Julian, you’re the most important person in the world to me. You can’t be so reckless with your life ever again.” I remembered when she used to say those same gentle words to me. But since Julian’s arrival, I had long ceased to be her priority. He was the one who told her that since she wasn’t my blood relative, it was inappropriate for her to be so involved in my life now that I was an adult. From then on, Julian became the intermediary for everything concerning me. He concealed the fact that I had a brain tumor, insisting instead that I was a degenerate addict. He had me locked away on the cliffside estate under the guise of helping me, yet never once came to see me. And now that he was hurt and needed my rare blood type, now that he needed his walking blood bank, he finally remembered I existed. But they didn’t know. They didn’t know that I was already a pile of bones, lying alone and forgotten on a desolate ledge halfway down the mountain. “Eleanor, Leo wouldn’t come back? He still resents me, doesn’t he?” Julian said, pushing back the covers as if to get out of bed. “I’ll go to him. I’ll apologize to him myself.” Eleanor rushed to stop him. “Julian, you were only trying to help him. He’s the one who’s ungrateful. It’s not your fault.” “I’ve already canceled his cards and sent people to find him. Don’t worry, I will find him and make him give you blood.” She carefully fed Julian the apple she had just peeled. “Julian,” she asked thoughtfully, “did Leo ever mention anything to you about having bad headaches while he was overseas?” A flicker of panic crossed Julian’s face. He stammered, “N-no. Leo grew up rough, he’s always been strong as an ox! Eleanor, why are you suddenly asking this?” Eleanor seemed lost in thought. “It’s nothing. It’s just… when I went to the villa today, the room was covered in blood. But you’re right. He’s always been so healthy. He rarely even catches a cold. It’s impossible he could be sick enough to die.” Julian visibly relaxed. My soul raged beside them. I wanted to scream, to tell her that this man was lying to her again. But I could do nothing. Even if she could hear me, she wouldn't believe me. She would always choose to believe Julian. In her eyes, I was just a twisted, jealous boy. Julian tested the waters. “Eleanor, if Leo doesn’t want to come home, maybe we should just let him go. As long as he’s happy, right?” Eleanor’s face instantly darkened. “Absolutely not! I have to ensure you’re safe. His blood type is the same as yours. You lost so much blood, and the doctor said you might need a second transfusion if complications arise. The hospital’s blood bank is already depleted.” “I raised him for so many years. It’s time he paid me back! Giving a little blood won’t kill him. Hell, even if it cost him his life, he should give it willingly!” For a moment, my entire being trembled. How could she say something so monstrous? She once promised she would always be my family, that I would never have to experience abandonment a second time. Had she forgotten all of it? Julian lowered his head, a triumphant smile hidden from her view. He had gotten the answer he wanted. He always pretended to be the bigger person, masterfully manipulating Eleanor, poisoning her against me. And even now, he continued to hide the truth, ensuring she would despise me completely. “Eleanor, don’t say that about Leo,” he said, his voice full of false sympathy. “He would be so hurt if he heard you.” Even now, he had to play the saint. Eleanor just scoffed. She was about to say more when her phone rang. I saw the caller ID: Detective Marcus. Our cousin, a police detective. She answered, and her face went rigid. She stood up, her expression turning grim. From the other end of the line, I heard his voice: “Eleanor… Leo is dead.”
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