The Last April Fool's: Counting Down to the End

It was April Fool’s Day. To entertain their precious adopted daughter, my fiancé and my brother dressed me up like a human toy. The adopted girl, Chloe, ripped my dress to shreds and used a red lipstick to write "WHORE" across my face. When I didn't react, she kicked me straight into the backyard septic tank. By the time they hauled me out, a crowd had gathered, everyone holding up their phones, recording, their laughter piercing my ears. My brother stood a hundred feet away, pinching his nose in disgust, refusing to come near me. Chloe smiled with absolute innocence. "Happy April Fool's, Claire!" My fiancé, Liam, stepped in front of her, protecting her, his voice dismissive. "It was just a joke, Claire. Don't be so dramatic." He signaled to the landscapers, who turned a high-pressure power washer on me to "clean me off." The force blasted me onto the ground. I turned purple from the freezing water, but I didn't beg for mercy. Not once. Overnight, the video of me, stripped bare and humiliated, spread through our entire social circle. My brother, furious that I had "tarnished Chloe's reputation," kicked me out of the house. Liam publicly broke off our engagement. "The Sterling family cannot accept a woman with this kind of stain on her character." I nodded to everything they said. I didn't argue. They thought I was just acting, playing dead inside. They didn't know that my mission deadline was only three days away. Looking at them now, I felt sick just being in the same zip code. Chapter 1 In the courtyard, my father swung his heavy leather belt, raining blows down on my back. "Shameless! Disgusting!" I didn't explain. I just gritted my teeth and took it. Arguing only ever earned me a worse beating. I had only been back with my biological family for a few days when Chloe framed me for stealing her diamond necklace. My parents tore my room apart. My brother stripped my clothes off in front of everyone to search me. They found nothing. I thought I might get an apology. Instead, my brother backhanded me so hard he knocked a tooth loose. "You must have sold Chloe's necklace! Where's the money?!" My room was barely the size of a closet, and I didn't even have a bank account to my name. When I tried to explain, he hit me harder, calling me an unrepentant thief. I huddled in the corner, getting kicked until I spit up blood. Suddenly, Chloe gasped. "Oh, I found it." The diamond necklace gleamed in the sunlight, but it just made my eyes ache. I looked at my brother. There was no guilt on his face. He just said indifferently, "A little misunderstanding. Don't take it personally." "I'm Chloe's brother. I trust her unconditionally." Nathan knew he was Chloe's brother, but he seemed to have forgotten that I was his actual blood sister. In the courtyard, my father's belt kept falling. I was covered in bloody welts. Nathan stood to the side, not saying a single word to stop him. Even though he was the one who let Chloe humiliate me, who let the video be taken, he hated me for dragging down Chloe's social standing. He threw my meager pile of clothes out past the front gates. He told me to get out. I agreed. But my father roared, "You think you’re going anywhere?! Haven't you embarrassed us enough!" He ordered the servants to bring the belt for "family discipline." After beating me for two hours, my mother frowned and stopped him. "Enough. Make her bang her head on the ground ninety-nine times and write a confession letter, and we’ll drop it." My father threw the belt down, annoyed. "You're just spoiling her!" Spoiling? I found that hilarious. By "bang her head," my mother meant my forehead had to hit the concrete hard enough to make a sound, or it didn't count. The "confession letter" had to be written in my own blood. Under ten thousand words, and it wasn't considered "sincere." I’d have to start over. But I didn't make a sound. I slammed my head against the floor until I passed out, then got doused with ice water to wake up and keep going. The blood confession ended up being twenty thousand words. Every single word was abject, dragging myself through the dirt. I thought it was finally enough. Chloe covered her nose, taking a step back. "Nathan, it’s not that I don't want Claire inside, it’s just... she smells terrible." My brother lovingly tousled her hair, then shot me a look of pure disdain. "You don't deserve the servant's quarters. Go sleep with Brutus." Brutus was Chloe's pet ten-foot Burmese python. I am deathly afraid of snakes. I remembered the day the police brought me home. Chloe had looked just as disgusted then. But back then, Nathan hadn't sent me to the snake pit. He just kicked me into the dog crate. The Great Dane's crate was bigger than the room I eventually got. As long as Chloe didn't give the command, the dog wouldn't bite me. I could almost sleep there. The snake pit? Absolutely not. I fell to my knees before my parents, begging frantically. "Mom, Dad, if I smell, I can leave. I’ll go live in the dog crate again, please, just don't put me in the pit." For a second, there was a flicker of hesitation on my father’s face. He started to open his mouth. Nathan violently grabbed me by the collar. "Claire, stop acting like a victim!" "If it wasn't for you, this family wouldn't be a laughingstock! You should be grateful you have a place to sleep at all!" He began dragging me toward the reptile enclosure. I looked back at my father. He looked away. The stench in the pit almost made me vomit. The snake’s tongue flicked against my face. Just as I closed my eyes in absolute despair, The cold, mechanical voice of the System rang in my head. [Host, two days remaining until the mission deadline.] Chapter 2 I suddenly calmed down. I focused on my breathing. Two more days. I couldn't give up. Three years ago, Chloe finished dinner and suddenly had terrible stomach pains. Tears in her eyes, she accused me of poisoning her food with laxatives. Before I could even process what she was saying, Nathan pried my mouth open and forced an entire bottle of industrial laxatives down my throat. I was in so much pain I passed out on the bathroom floor. No one cared. The whole family rushed Chloe to the hospital. As I lay dying, a mechanical voice echoed in my brain. [Host life signs hitting zero. Force-binding Revenge System.] [Current Task: Survive for three years.] [Success Reward: Pain Reflection, $100 Million cash.] [Failure Penalty: Soul Obliteration.] I didn't know what a "System" was back then. I thought it was a hallucination before death. But when I woke up in the bathroom, the pain in my stomach was gone. I believed it. The System gave me a second chance at life. I was eighteen that year. I started valuing my life, becoming silent and submissive. I thought back to those survival shows I’d seen on TV. Forcing my terror down, I remained perfectly still. The massive python slithered past me. It felt cold and terrifying. Outside the thick glass enclosure, Chloe was holding hands with Liam, smiling sweetly. "Liam, your fiancée smells, so they moved her to the snake pit." "Do you feel bad for her?" Liam swept a casual glance over me. "Don't talk nonsense. I don't have a fiancée. The engagement was called off ages ago." Even now, my heart twisted with a sharp pain. Liam was different from my family. He was my childhood sweetheart from the orphanage. When he first came to the orphanage, his leg was broken, and no one wanted to adopt him. I played the fool, actively staying behind at the orphanage to be with him. It was hard for him to move around, so I fought the other kids for his food. I stood up for him. One winter, some older kids stole his crutches to use for firewood. I jumped in to protect him. They tied me up and hung me upside down from a tree. They packed snowballs until they were hard as ice, using me for target practice. They broke my nose, and blood splashed everywhere in the snow. Liam held me, freezing, and cried all night. He said, Claire, when I grow up, I'll protect you. I laughed dizzily, believing him. Later, when the police brought me back to my biological family, the first thing I did was help Liam find his own family. It turned out Liam was an illegitimate son, Intentionally abandoned by the powerful Sterling family. To help him get back into his family, I proposed a strategic alliance through marriage. My brother called me a slut, saying I was already obsessed with men the moment I returned. I knelt in the courtyard for seven days, without food or water, until the calluses on my knees bled, just to get that engagement contract. It wasn't that the Sterlings were a bad match; my parents just wanted me to marry higher, to be a stepping stone for Chloe's social climb. The day I went to the orphanage to pick Liam up, his eyes were red. He hugged me tight, swearing to the heavens, "Claire, once I have a solid footing in the Sterling family, I’m going to marry you!" But he didn't marry me. He personally tore up our wedding contract. He threw me to Chloe to be humiliated. When did he change? Maybe it was the first time Chloe called him "Liam." She was paler than me, cleaner than me, better at making people happy. She would hold Liam’s arm and say, "Liam, your engagement to Claire was forced, wasn't it?" Liam never denied it. Maybe it was at some corporate dinner where I drank until my stomach bled, trying to protect him from predatory clients, collapsing on the floor, unable to get up. Liam frowned and said, "Claire, you look truly pathetic like this." I brought up marriage. I brought up rings, a wedding. He was annoyed. He casually picked some wild grass from the roadside, wrapping a few loops around my finger. Then, he turned around and spent a fortune at an auction to buy a gemstone for Chloe, personally designing a custom ring for her. I asked him, "Liam, do you still remember the promise you made back at the orphanage?" He laughed. That laugh contained a mockery I had never seen before. "Claire, are you going to bring up the orphanage every single day? It’s annoying." "Yes, you helped me. But you’ve used that debt to bind me for so many years. Enough is enough." I was binding him? I knelt until my knees were ruined, went on a hunger strike, and fought with everything I had to secure his future. He said, "Claire, stop acting. You wanted this alliance because you’re the least loved daughter in this family." "You couldn't find a husband, so you had to cling to me?" "You're that desperate for a man?" At that moment, I felt something inside me shatter completely. Chloe’s laughter pulled me from my memories. "Liam, don't be so heartless. Claire was your fiancée for many years, after all." Liam sneered, "Fiancée? A gold-digger who throws herself at men doesn't deserve the title." I took a deep breath and silently asked the System, "Does betrayal also get reflected as pain?" Chapter 3 [Naturally. Any pain inflicted upon the Host will be reflected back.] [The prerequisite is surviving until the final moment.] Chloe stood on her tiptoes, peering through the glass window at me, Looking slightly annoyed. "This is boring. She’s not moving at all, like a dead person." "My Brutus doesn't like dead things." She pulled on Liam's arm. "Liam, get her out of there. I want to see her cry." A flicker of hesitation passed through Liam's eyes, but he quickly agreed. He dragged me out. The sunlight was so bright it stung my eyes. "Chloe wants you to cry." His voice came from above me, devoid of any warmth. I didn't move. Chloe picked up a piece of sandpaper from somewhere and began roughly scrubbing it against my face, Smiling with a terrifying innocence. "Does it hurt, Claire? Will hurting you make you cry?" The sandpaper left bloody streaks on my face, but my tears had dried up long ago. I couldn't shed a single drop. Liam lost his patience and kicked me hard in the shoulder. I fell backward, my head slamming against the concrete ground. My vision blurred. "Cry!" he commanded, looking down at me. When I didn't react, he kicked me again, harder this time. The force was so great I started dry heaving. I didn't want to die, but I couldn't cry. Slowly, I crawled back up to my knees, groveling. Then, I banged my forehead against the floor. "I'm sorry." Chloe was stunned for a second, then she laughed. "What is she doing? What is she apologizing for?" "Claire is just like that." A voice came from the side. It was my brother, Nathan. I didn't know when he had arrived. Standing a few feet away, his face wore that familiar look of utter disgust. "That’s how she survives in this family." "Hit her, and she kneels. Scream at her, and she grovels. Like a dog." Chloe tilted her head and sneered. "Really? Then make her bark like a dog." Nathan looked at me, expressionless. "Did you hear him? Chloe wants you to bark." I was kneeling on the ground. In the sunlight, the three of them looked like they were framed in gold, While I was in the shadows, smelling of filth. I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. When Chloe’s smile faded, Nathan’s expression turned lethal. He grabbed a handful of my hair, ripping me upward. "Bark!" The pain in my scalp was searing. I had to stand on my tip-toes to keep my hair from being ripped out. I looked at him. He was my blood brother. Years ago, when the human trafficker grabbed him, I was the one who stood in front of him, hugging the trafficker's leg, telling him to run. The trafficker, furious, had thrown me seven feet in the air, letting me slam against the ground. I lay in a ditch for two months, nearly dying. "Woof. Woof." My voice was tiny, barely audible. Chloe wasn't satisfied. "That sounds nothing like a dog. Obviously, it’s because she doesn't have a tail." She asked Liam to fetch her some rope. Nathan immediately understood. He tied one end around my waist and handed the other end to Chloe. "Crawl! Wherever Chloe wants you to crawl, you crawl." I didn't move. He kicked me in the knee, forcing me down flat on the ground. I pushed against the concrete with my hands and began to crawl. Small stones dug into my knees. Cold sweat beaded on my forehead from the pain. "Slower," Liam said from behind. "Don't let Chloe trip." Chloe was laughing brightly, Pulling me as I crawled through mud puddles and up stone steps. Cold sweat slid down my face. My knees were shaking uncontrollably. As we created some distance between us and Liam and Nathan. Chloe suddenly leaned down, whispering in my ear. "Claire, I really hate you. I wish you were dead." "Years ago, you escaped from my house and gave evidence to the police, which got my dad arrested and sentenced to life without parole." My pupils violently contracted. That human trafficker had kept over twenty children locked in a basement. I personally witnessed him beat a young boy to death, simply because the boy wouldn't stop crying at night. After beating him to death, he smiled at us and said, "Whoever cries next gets to go join him." The day I escaped, he found me. He chased me with a knife for two blocks. I jumped into a river. He stood on the bank throwing rocks at me, cracking my head open. I barely survived. And my parents actually adopted his daughter. My brother treated her like royalty. My fiancé betrayed his vows for her. Chloe was still going. "I’m not afraid of you telling anyone. No one will believe you. I’m just saying this to mess with you." Her laughter was arrogant and unhinged. I broke. I surged upward, Violently ripping the rope from her hand. I wrapped it around her neck, pulling tight. "Your father was a murderer!" My eyes burned with unshed tears. "That boy was only six years old!" Chloe just wanted to provoke me; she hadn't expected me to fight back. Her face turned a bright, choking red. She clawed at the air frantically. "Claire!" A furious roar came from behind me. Before I could even turn around, I was violently tackled. I slammed against the ground. Liam stomped his boot directly onto my chest, Her force so strong it felt like my ribcage was about to crush. His eyes were cold and homicidal. "You’re insane!" "Her father is a human trafficker..." I opened my mouth to explain. SLAP! A hand slammed across my face. My head snapped to the side. The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth. Nathan looked at me with pure disdain. "Before we adopted Chloe, I personally checked her background. It was clean." "If you're going to make something up, at least make it sound plausible." Clean? That’s impossible. If Chloe wasn't truly the trafficker's daughter, she wouldn't know about my escape, and she certainly wouldn't know about the police testimony. "It’s not made up," I screamed, raw with desperation. "Go check. Six years ago, the trafficker named Jiang who was convicted..." "Claire," Liam’s boot pressed down harder on my chest. "I used to just think you had no shame. Now I see you’re as stupid as you are malicious." Chloe rubbed her slightly reddened neck, looking incredibly pitiful. "If you guys hadn't arrived just in time, I would have been killed by Claire." She cried large, dramatic tears as she spoke, Making Nathan’s heart ache for her even more. He snapped. He dragged me to a far corner of the backyard. There was a large wooden board there, completely covered in rusty nails. It was an old security measure before they installed an electric fence, discarded and forgotten. Thousands of rusty nails, packed tight. "Throw her on it." Before I could even react, Nathan and Liam picked me up and threw me onto the nail board. The moment the rusty metal pierced my flesh, my body violently convulsed, and I screamed in pure agony. Blood leaked from thousands of small puncture wounds, quickly staining the wood beneath me. I struggled, but the barbs on the rusty nails hooked into my flesh, ripping me further. The pain was so white-hot I became dizzy. "Think about what you've done!" Nathan spat the words at me, then he and the others walked away. I didn't dare move. One tiny movement, and the nails would push deeper, more blood would flow. I regretted it... but it was too late. The sun set. My eyelids grew heavier and heavier. My breathing grew shallower and shallower. The System’s voice sounded distant, like it was coming from another world. [Host life signs hitting critical zero...] [Final countdown beginning...] Chapter 4 Finally, at that sound: [Congratulations, Host. Three-year period completed. Mission reward is calculating...] I smiled and closed my eyes. Three days later. My body was discovered by a neighbor. He was out walking his dog in the early morning, and the dog squeezed through a hole in the backyard fence. The family was gone. The whole family had gone on an international vacation, completely forgetting about me. After a deafening scream, the neighbor called the police. Forensics arrived, and the scene was cordoned off. Given the prominent nature of the family, the media arrived almost instantly. Within hours, the news spread, and the estate was surrounded by a wall of cameras. The coroner peeled open my eyelid. "The victim appears to be between twenty and twenty-two years old. Time of death is approximately seventy-two hours ago." "Livor mortis is fixed. Corneas are moderately cloudy..." He paused as he looked at the wooden board beneath me, the blood now dried and black. As he lifted me, he sucked in a sharp breath. The back of my body was fused to thousands of rusty nails. On the surface, it looked like I bled to death. But the coroner didn't list a cause yet. He carefully unzipped the filthy, stiff old jacket I was wearing. The entire scene fell into a suffocating silence. Someone turned away, unable to look. Someone openly sobbed. On that body, there wasn't a single patch of intact skin. Whip welts, burn scars, needle punctures... layered one on top of the other, old scars covering new wounds. Some scars were already white and faded, old injuries from years ago. Some were covered in dark red scabs, fresh from the last few days. And some were completely raw and open, pus and fluid leaking from pink, exposed flesh. The lead detective went pale, his eyes turning red. "What kind of deep-seated hatred is this?!" The coroner didn't answer. He carefully examined my wrist. There was a very deep scar there, running from the inner wrist all the way up my forearm. It looked like an ugly, oversized centipede. "A suicide attempt. At least three years ago." The detective stared at the scar, confused. When most people try to commit suicide, they cut across the wrist. He had never seen such a bizarre, deep, longitudinal slash. It looked... almost like it was done just to bleed me out. The crime scene investigators walked out of the mansion, their faces grim. There was only one servant in the house. She was shaking, barely coherent. "I only clean inside. I never go to the backyard. I don't know anything." The detective led her over to identify the body. She gasped, "Isn't this the eldest daughter? She didn't go on the vacation?" Then, as if remembering something, she hung her head. "Mrs. Miller said the eldest daughter grew up in an orphanage, that she had no manners, and told me to ignore her..." "I don't know anything." She pointed down the dark hallway. "The eldest daughter's room is at the very end." The investigators followed the detective to the end of the hall, to a tight, wooden door. Pushing it open, a stench of mold mixed with dried blood hit them. The room was maybe fifty square feet. No windows. It contained a bare mattress, a plastic bucket, and a ragged old duffel bag in the corner. In the corner of the wall, there were several lines of dried text. Written in blood. [I didn't steal the necklace...] [I didn't poison the food...] ... [I'm not dirty...] ... [I'm your real daughter...] The detective stood before that wall for a very long time, unmoving. An investigator stepped up behind him and said softly, [We took a sample of the dried blood. It matches the victim's DNA.] The detective nodded. He saw the corner of the duffel bag and reached down to open it. Inside was a massive stack of papers. All shapes and sizes, torn from notebooks, scraps of construction paper, old receipts. Every single inch was covered in text, packed tight, written in red ink. Flipping through them, one by one. Three years. Forty-seven distinct letters of confession. The signature at the bottom of every single one was Claire. [Written in blood,] The investigator's voice was dry. [Preliminary tests confirm positive for hemoglobin.] The detective didn't say anything. He understood the meaning of the ugly centipede scar on my forearm now. The case exploded. A massive alert was put out at all ports of entry for the family, waiting for them to return. A week later, the detective saw the family at the airport. The middle-aged man wore a custom-tailored designer coat and a Patek Philippe watch. The woman beside him was impeccably made up, looking arrogant. The young woman was dressed in high-end streetwear, holding nothing, While all her luggage was loaded onto the back of the young man behind her. The detective walked up to them, flashing his badge. [Arthur Miller?] The middle-aged man turned, looking him up and down. [What is it?] [Your daughter, Claire, died ten days ago.] Arthur froze. [What did you say?] His wife reacted first, her voice shrill, [Who did you say died?] [Claire,] The detective repeated, Looking at them. [The body was discovered a week ago.] Nathan stepped forward, a cruel smile on his lips. [You think you can just show up and scare us? Pathetic.] [She got scratched by a few nails and now she's dead?] [Get out of my way before I file a complaint for impersonating a police officer.] The detective fought back his fury. [Detective Sean Evans, badge number 098230. You can verify that with dispatch.] [A few nails? There were hundreds of nails on that board!] [They were all covered in rust! Have you never heard of tetanus?! Did you not realize it could kill someone!] [But Claire didn't die from tetanus, or from bleeding out. The autopsy report says the cause of death was systemic multi-organ failure.] [She died from long-term, systematic abuse at your hands!] The family fell silent. A flicker of hesitation crossed Nathan's eyes, but he still didn't fully believe it. Until the detective spoke again. [The body is at the morgue. We need you to identify her.] The mother swayed, collapsing into Arthur's arms, her hands and feet turning to ice. Nathan's face went white for a split second, Only Chloe, hidden behind her sunglasses, had an expression that couldn't be read.

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