I was just making polite small talk with my neighbor. "Your grandson is so cute," I said. "I wish I had one just like him." I went home for the summer, and my parents presented me with a baby brother. "It was *your wish* that made him happen," they said. "You have to be responsible for him." They completely checked out. My brother's entire life became my problem. From his homework to his job, from his first car to his first house. Eventually, when I couldn't afford to buy him a house, my brother murdered me. I opened my eyes and I was back on that day, admiring the neighbor's kid. "Wow, he's so cute," I began. "I wish I had..." My parents' eyes lit up, a predatory glint in them. I paused. "...a mansion!" I finished. "And a yacht!" "And a scholarship to study abroad!" "And ten billion dollars in cash!" 1 Our neighbor, Mrs. Gable, brought her little grandson over to our place. My mom watched my face like a hawk. "Jessie," she said, testing the waters, "look how adorable he is. If you had a sweet little brother like this, I'd be the happiest mom in the world." I almost laughed out loud. Having lived this nightmare once before, I knew the truth. It didn't matter what I wanted. The "brother" was already on his way. This whole song and dance with Mrs. Gable was just a setup, a way to trick me into saying, "I wish I had a brother," so they could saddle me with the crushing responsibility of raising him. In my last life, I fell for it. I was that naive. Because I said, "He's so cute, I wish I had one," my parents became deadbeats the second my brother was born. They dumped him on me, making me responsible for his every need. As he grew up, everything fell on my shoulders: his tutoring, his job applications, his car, and his down payment. If I showed the slightest hesitation, the guilt-tripping would start. "It was *your wish* that brought him into this world! You have to be responsible for his life!" My wish could make someone pregnant? Their excuses for wanting a son were more creative than a sci-fi writer. The tragedy is, they repeated it so often that they completely brainwashed my brother. If he failed a test, it was my fault for not finding a better tutor. If he couldn't get a job, it was my fault for not having the right connections. If he couldn't afford a house, it was because I wasn't working hard enough. It all came to a head when he came at me with a knife, screaming, "Why did you even have me if you're broke?! This is all your fault! If you hadn't wished for me, I wouldn't be in this hellhole! Just die!" The little brother I had raised from infancy murdered me in cold blood. And my parents? They signed a document saying they wouldn't press charges. I was the only one who got hurt in the end. This time, I wouldn't make the same mistake. When I didn't say anything, Mrs. Gable gave her grandson a little nudge. "Go on, sweetie. Say hi to your aunty Jessie. Let her hold you." The kid just stared at me blankly. "See, Jessie?" Mrs. Gable pushed. "He's such a darling. You should tell your mom to have one for you." My mom held her breath, her eyes glued to my mouth. She might as well have had "SAY YOU WANT A BROTHER" tattooed on her forehead. I smiled. "Wow, he is so cute. I wish..." My parents' eyes lit up with pure joy. They both leaned forward, practically vibrating with anticipation. "...I had a mansion!" I declared. "And a yacht!" "And a full ride to Yale!" "And ten billion dollars cash!" The living room went dead silent. Mrs. Gable's smile froze on her face. My mom's mouth hung open in shock. My dad's hand trembled, and he spilled hot tea all over the coffee table. "What kind of nonsense are you talking?!" my mom finally sputtered, her face burning with a mixture of embarrassment and anger. My dad's face was grim. He set down the teapot with a thud. "Jessie, don't joke around. We're talking about something serious." I blinked innocently. "What's serious?" "Mrs. Gable asked if you wanted a little brother. What do you think?" I played dumb. "You mean if I want one, I can just have one?" "Of course," they said in unison. "Anything you wish for, we'll do our best to make it happen." "That's great!" I beamed. "Okay, so, a mansion, a yacht, a scholarship, and ten billion dollars. Which one are you getting me first?" Silence. I raised my voice. "I said! I want a mansion! I want a yacht—" "Enough!" my mom shrieked. The fake smiles were completely gone. 2 Mrs. Gable mumbled an excuse and hurried out with her grandson. The second the door closed, my mom was in my face, her voice dripping with fake concern. "Jessie, be honest. Don't you want a real brother?" "No," I said, flatly. "It's for your own good! You'll have someone to look out for you." She was trying to paint a rosy picture of family bonds. "I have friends. I have a boyfriend. I don't need a brother messing things up." I picked up an apple from the table and took a loud, deliberate bite. My dad jumped in, using his authoritarian parent voice. "What do you know! When you get married, you'll be at a disadvantage if you don't have a brother at home to back you up!" "Oh, well, then I just won't get married." I chewed my apple, my voice muffled but clear. "Just date, no marriage. Way less drama." "Even better!" my mom blurted out. "Then your brother can take care of you when you're old!" And there it was. The mask finally slipped. They didn't give a damn about my happiness. They just wanted a son. "Expecting my brother to take care of me in my old age?" I said with a humorless smile. "I'd rather just drop dead now." "Even if you don't think about yourself, think about us," my dad pleaded. "A son is our security! Without a son, people will look down on us. Your mother and I have been pushed around our whole lives. It's time we had some respect." I had an answer for that one, too. "Don't worry. By the time your 'security' is grown up, you'll be in your seventies. At that age, no one's going to be pushing you around. You could fall flat on your face and no one would even dare to help you up." My dad's face turned beet red. He slammed his hand on the table. "How dare you! Is that how you talk to your parents? It's our right to have a son! We've raised you, fed you, clothed you! It's not your place to tell us what to do!" Finally. The act was over. I put down the apple core and slowly wiped my hands. "You should have just said that from the start. You want a kid, fine. Why drag me into it? What's the matter..." I leaned forward, staring into their evasive, guilty eyes. "Were you planning on popping him out and then dumping him on me? Making me a free nanny and ATM for your perfect little family of three for the rest of my life?" Their faces crumpled. He'd hit the nail on the head. My dad was shaking with rage, pointing a finger at me. "You ungrateful brat! We wasted our lives raising you! What's wrong with a man wanting a son to carry on the family name? You're the older sister! It's your duty to help your brother! It's the natural order of things!" I threw my hands up. "The only way I'm helping him is by preventing him from being born in the first place." "We're broke. You two don't even have retirement savings. Bringing a child into this is just cruel." Seeing that yelling wasn't working, my mom switched tactics instantly. She clutched her still-flat stomach, her eyes welling up with tears. "Jessie, look at me, I'm not young anymore. The baby is already four months along, I can feel him moving. And an abortion would be so hard on my body... can't you have a little sympathy for your own mother?" "Sympathy?" I scoffed, my voice sharp as a razor. "Did you think about how 'hard on your body' it would be when you were getting it on? You don't use protection, you have your fun, and now you want me to feel sorry for you? You deal with the consequences of your own carelessness. Don't you dare try to guilt-trip me." They were stunned by my bluntness, their faces a spectacular kaleidoscope of red and white. My dad was practically apoplectic. "We're having this baby!" The fox was finally out of the bag. 3 Seeing them furious but helpless, I knew my moment had come. I whipped out my phone, hit record, and aimed the camera straight at their shocked faces. "See? All you had to do was admit you wanted him. No need to pin it on me." "Hey, future-brother, what's up," I said to the camera. "Just so you know, for the record, I was completely against this. It was Mom and Dad's idea. So if your life sucks, you can blame them. Your big sister has nothing to do with it." "There's no throne for you to inherit in this family, just a sink full of dirty dishes. You're being born to be a wage slave, a cog in the machine, another speck of cosmic dust." "Mom and Dad brought you into this miserable world, but they don't have the means to give you a good life. You're on your own, kid." "Good luck! We're all just trying to survive out here~" I stopped the recording and calmly hit "save." On the screen, my parents' faces had gone from red to purple to a pasty, dead gray. "You... you heartless monster!" my dad finally found his voice, screaming with pure, unadulterated rage. "You say no? Fine! We're having him anyway!" I raised an eyebrow. "Go for it. Be my guest. Just remember what I said today." I had my video evidence. In my last life, whenever things didn't go my brother's way, he took it out on me, physically. My parents would either pretend not to see or add fuel to the fire. "You're the big sister. You should be more patient with him." "If it wasn't for you wanting a brother, he wouldn't even be here." "He has feelings. You need to be his punching bag." This time, let's see how "patient" they are when they're the ones being blamed and screamed at. When winter break ended, the first thing I did back at college was start posting my daily workouts on social media. I'd finish my last sprint, my sweat-soaked tank top clinging to my stomach. It was flat and toned, with zero signs of childbirth. I'd zoom in on my abs and hit record. "Two miles done! Let's get it again tomorrow!" It was crucial to document my body's status during my mom's pregnancy. In my last life, I didn't know she was pregnant. I came home for the summer and was handed a baby. I was sitting outside with the newborn when a high school classmate walked by. She stared at my puffy, sleep-deprived eyes and the screaming baby in my arms. "Wow, Jessie," she blurted out. "You're only a junior and you already have a kid?" My mother didn't correct her. Instead, a sly little smile played on her lips. "Oh, we just call him her little brother, hehe." She deliberately let people believe he was mine. No matter how much I tried to explain, no one believed me. This time, I posted everywhere. Every day, a two-mile run. Hiking on weekends. Crunches in my dorm room at night. My roommates thought I'd lost my mind. "Jessie, you're already so skinny! Why are you trying to kill yourself? You're making the rest of us look bad!" They didn't understand. I was doing it to stay alive. The semester flew by. I had killer abs to show for it. I had just posted a new ab-selfie to my Instagram story when my dad called. "Summer break started two days ago. Why aren't you home yet?" "I just sent you two hundred bucks. Buy a bus ticket. I expect you home tomorrow!" Oh, here we go. They were summoning me home to be their free postpartum nurse. I accepted the $200, then immediately bought a ticket on a bus heading south. [Dad, I got a summer job at a factory with some friends. Won't be home.] My parents were cheap. Even if I didn't come home, they'd never pay for a real nurse. And my dad was the laziest man alive. With him in charge of my mom's recovery, things were about to get very interesting at home. 4 For the first few days after the baby was born, my mom's Facebook page was a highlight reel of a perfect life. Close-ups of the baby's tiny hands. A loving portrait of their happy family of three. She posted nine-picture collages eight times a day. The captions were triumphant. [It just had to be a son. Now that I have a son, even the air I breathe is sweeter!] [Finally did right by our ancestors. The family name won't die with us.] [The happiest family of three!] Too bad their perfect life didn't even last a week. My dad called me in the middle of the night, his frustration practically sizzling through the phone. "Your mother is impossible! I close my eyes for two minutes, and she's whining that her head hurts, her back hurts, her bones are falling apart, and I need to give her a massage. Who doesn't hurt after having a baby? Back in my day, women were back in the fields the next day!" "I wake up before dawn to make her oatmeal, and she complains it's bland! I buy the best pork hock for a soup, slave over it, bring it to her, and she says it's too greasy! She's acting like a damn princess just because she had a C-section!" "It's one thing after another, I swear to God! I'm done! I'm not waiting on her hand and foot anymore!" My mom was even worse. She sent me a flood of tearful voice messages, with the baby wailing in the background. "Your father is a useless idiot! He's going to be the death of me! Your brother is screaming his head off from hunger, I tell him to make a bottle, and he uses boiling water! The formula just clumps up! A pig could learn how to do it, but I've told him a thousand times and he still can't remember!" "He sleeps like the dead at night. I have to shove him just to wake him up. I finally get him up to change a diaper, and he just wipes the baby's butt with a wet wipe and shoves him back into a new diaper without drying him off! It's been five days! Five days! And the baby's butt is already raw!" It was like they'd coordinated. One after another, they gave me my royal decree. "You have to come home! We can't handle this!" In my last life, when I was the one taking care of her, she called me an ungrateful brat if I did the slightest thing wrong. If the water was one degree too cold, I was useless. If the chicken soup wasn't hot enough, I was trying to poison her. When my dad came home, she'd tell him exaggerated stories, and then they'd both scream at me. Now that they had to do it themselves, they couldn't stand each other after less than a week. I'd rather be a wage slave in a factory than go home and face the three of them. Go home? Only if I had a death wish. [I don't want to get in the way. It's better if you three just work things out and have a happy life!] I really hoped they'd just forget I existed. And stop trying to drag me down with them. 5 After a long day at the factory, I checked my phone and it had exploded. In the family group chat, my parents and the entire extended family were putting on a real show for me. It started with a video my dad posted. In it, my mom was curled up in bed, looking pale as a ghost. The sheets beneath her were stained with blood. Her moans were faint but constant. He wrote: [Your mother's C-section incision is infected, she has a 102-degree fever, and her daughter is out having the time of her life. What a disgrace to this family!] The rest of the relatives immediately piled on. Aunt Carol: [Your mother risked her life to give you a companion, and this is how you repay her? You ungrateful brat, get your ass home and take care of her!] Aunt Sue: [How did you raise such a daughter? You never should have let her go to college! Education makes women wild!] Uncle Bob: [Get home and do your duty! If a girl doesn't learn how to keep a house and raise kids, what man is ever going to want to marry you!] ... Wow, they were really laying on the guilt. Fine. Two can play at that game. [@Aunt Carol, didn't you stick Grandma in a nursing home and not visit for three years? Don't pretend you're some great saint now.] [@Aunt Sue, isn't your son-in-law cheating on your daughter and beating her? Maybe you have bigger things to worry about?] [@Uncle Bob, did your son ever pay back that $30,000 he owes the loan sharks? Next time they show up at my door, should I tell them where you're hiding?] The group chat exploded again. When they couldn't win with logic, they pulled rank. [We are your elders! How dare you speak to us that way!] I ignored them. [Yeah, yeah, you're all saints, and I'm the monster. Since you all feel so sorry for my mom, why don't you take turns taking care of her?] [First person to volunteer, I'll pay for your Uber.] The chat went dead silent. The profiles that had been so self-righteous just a second ago all went quiet. I see these relatives once a year, if that. I wasn't afraid of burning bridges. They wanted to guilt-trip me? Not a chance. Finally, my mom jumped in, playing the victim. [Jessie, please. Your brother cries all night, your dad can't even make a bottle right. We need you. Please, have pity on me. The pain from my incision is so bad I want to jump off a roof!] So now she feels the pain. We're just getting started. In my last life, I was her slave that summer. At 3 AM, I'd be pacing the balcony with a screaming baby, and she'd yell from her bed, "Hold him tighter! If you drop my son, I'll skin you alive!" I washed so many cloth diapers that my hands were raw and cracked. I helped her get up and walk around every day until my own back ached constantly. After a month of non-stop work, my mom was fully recovered, healthy and strong. I looked like I'd given birth to octuplets and developed chronic joint pain. And all I got for it was, "The pain you feel is a sweet pain. Your brother will repay you when he grows up." This time, all the pain of childbirth was hers to bear. So I gave her own words right back to her: [Pain is good. It's the 'sweet pain' of motherhood. You brought a son into this world, you've brought honor to the family. It's all worth it! I'm sure your son will repay you when he grows up!] And how will he repay you? By screaming at you, by hitting you, and eventually, by coming at you with a knife. Now that's a repayment that really hits deep.
? Continue the story here ?? ? Download the "MotoNovel" app ? search for "385489", and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel