[This is also strongly related to your ‘efforts‘ to transfer all the protagonist’s assets to a side character.]
【Your parents and brother came to see Noah as useless, unlike in the original story where they couldn’t live without him. Fate, seeing through
their eyes, agreed that Noah was not irreplaceable. And so, the protagonist was easily discarded.)
【Just as everyone now thinks Adrian taking Noah’s place at university is the best possible outcome.]
“So… I’m the one to blame?”
Celeste suddenly coughed up a mouthful of black blood, as if the true weight of her sin had finally crushed her.
[Yes,】 the System stated coldly.
She sat there, catatonic, as the ends of her hair began to turn white.
“Celeste, what kind of game are you and Noah playing? Why did the police call the house, asking the head of household to have his records expu-
nged?” My other brother burst into the room.
My sister turned her head, her movements stiff and robotic, like a broken doll. It startled him.
“Are you and Noah faking his death to get sympathy?!” he accused. He scoffed. “Stop playing games and get up. You need to help Julian pack for
college.”
A bitter, mocking smile twisted Celeste’s lips. “That murderer, that liar, that thief… he is not worthy of taking my Noah’s place.”
My brother’s face hardened. “It seems you’ve really lost your mind. I don’t talk to crazy people.” He reached for the urn and the panda, intending to
throw them in the trash.
My sister fought him off. They grappled, and soon my parents and Adrian rushed in.
“Celeste, stop this nonsense! Get that rude, embarrassing brat Noah to come out and apologize to Julian! Julian accepting his place is an honor!
Tell him not to push his luck and start thinking he’s entitled to anything else in this family…”
“How many times do I have to say it before you believe me?” my sister screamed, finally understanding the helpless frustration I must have felt. “I
told you, Noah is dead! He died in place of your precious adopted son!”
“I have proof that Adrian hired those men to kill him!”
She threw the evidence in their faces. Adrian looked nervous. My parents and brother were simply annoyed.
“We told you, he’s an Ashworth now. Call him Julian, like you used to.”
“For you to suddenly go crazy and forge pictures to slander him… you’re really siding with outsiders now, aren’t you?”
Adrian put on a wounded expression. “It’s okay. I won’t blame sister. As long as she continues to treat me well.”
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“And by ‘treat you well,‘ you mean dote on you, fawn over you like a pathetic dog?” my sister shot back. Her eyes swept over my brother and pare- nts standing beside him. “Just like now. They’re all fighting your battles for you. You must be getting quite a thrill out of it, aren’t you?”
Adrian, caught off guard, let a crack show in his facade. “No, no… sister, why would you say such things? And why would you get a
urn and toy? Are you trying to torment me and our parents?”
The three behind him erupted in anger. They pinned my sister down and smashed my urn on the floor.
custom–made
My brother ground the fragments under his shoe. My father swept the ashes away with a broom. “What kind of flour is this?” he sneered. “So poor- ly made, not even a dog would eat it.” My mother stood protectively in front of Adrian, as if Celeste were the monster.
My sister, in a frenzy of rage, broke free and threw the four of them out of the room. She ripped the old, blessed red–string bracelets from their
wrists.
“Since you all love the fake so much, then you don’t get to wear the good–luck charms Noah made for you!”
My parents‘ and brother’s wrists were red and sore, but their first concern was for Adrian. “Julian, are you okay? Should we call a doctor?”
Once, I had knelt until my legs were broken for them, and not one of them had cared. They said I was just causing trouble. The good–luck charms! had begged a monk to bless for them had been presented to them as a gift from Adrian. He had even stolen mine. My sister had told me to endu-
re it, that she would get justice for me, but nothing ever came of it.
Now, she was the one who could no longer endure.
“Enough! Julian was the one who got these blessed for us! Why are you bringing up that unlucky trash?”
They called a medical team for Adrian, then continued to berate Celeste, trying to get the bracelets back, worried that Julian would feel uneasy
without one.
[Host, you truly have reaped what you have sown.]
[After all, you were the one who helped Adrian destroy all the evidence in the first place.] The System, after enjoying the show for a moment, chimed in. [But if you take the best–preserved bracelet and the ashes for a forensic analysis, you might still be able to prove it.]
“Shut up! I know I was wrong! He’s a two–faced, heartless monster!” my sister screamed internally.
“Who? Who’s talking?”
“Is that Celeste, playing tricks?”
“You heard it too? You’re also…”
My parents and brother stared at each other, then turned to my sister with a shared, dawning suspicion.
Celeste’s expression was strange. “System,” she whispered in her mind, “run a diagnostic. Is something wrong? I think… I think they can hear us.
After a moment, the System’s voice was like a funeral dirge.
[Host! Host! I know why Noah gave up!]
“What… what are you saying?” My sister’s lips were white. A terrifying premonition took hold of her
[Yesterday, during the second half of his torture… his extreme emotional state… he accidentally connected to our private channel.]
[I suspect the bug originated from the improper transfer of fate between the protagonist and the side character.]
“He… he heard everything?!”
Celeste’s face contorted in horror as her worst fear became reality. “No… how could he… so that’s why…”
She began to weep uncontrollably, her fingers clawing at the floor, her eyes losing focus as if she had fallen into the deepest, darkest pit of her own making. In less than three minutes, tears of blood streamed from her eyes, and she lost her voice completely, her breathing becoming almost
inaudible.
Seeing her collapse, on the verge of death, the System panicked. It delayed fixing the bug and, as a last resort, began broadcasting information to
the other three, hoping they had some shred of conscience left.
It told them of all the self–sabotaging, foolish things my sister had done.
It told them of all the bloody, dark, and vicious deeds their angelic Julian had committed in secret. The bullying he had orchestrated against me
Chapter 2
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It told them of all the bloody, dark, and vicious deeds their angelic Julian had committed in secret. The bullying he had orchestrated against me
when I was just an unknowing child was only the tip of the iceberg. The term “criminal” was not sufficient to describe his sins.
“We’ll split up and verify,” my brother said after a glance at my father. They had someone take my unconscious, bleeding sister to the ICU.
My mother hesitated, her eyes on the dusty residue on the floor that might have been my remains. Then she heard Julian in the next room, whini-
ng that he wouldn’t cooperate with the doctors unless she made him ice cream.
Tears suddenly streamed down her face. “What… what have I been doing?”
“Noah was home for over a hundred days, and I never once cooked a single meal for him…”
My father’s once–straight back seemed to crumble. “Me neither… I never gave him a single dollar…”
My brother’s lips tightened. He thought of the three massive storage rooms in the villa, filled to bursting with gifts for an outsider, while I, their son,
was still living in the tiny, windowless five–square–meter room next to the servants‘ quarters. They had given me so little, and I had never complai-
ned.
“Why? He was so obedient, so brilliant. Why were we so convinced he was evil?” my brother murmured. He knew, deep down, that there was noth- ng left to verify. The System had no reason to lie to them. They were as insignificant to it as ants.
“Are you the family of the patient who was in this room?” a nurse asked, knocking on the door. “Do you people not do background checks before allowing visitors? You let a criminal gang, who had just assaulted him less than a day ago, into the room of a PTSD victim to agitate him!”
“No wonder his vitals were so unstable this afternoon! You guardians are unbelievably negligent… and you even signed a letter of forgiveness?!”
My parents and brother ignored her tirade, crowding around the copy of the police document she held. There, under the word “Forgiveness,” was a clear, bold signature: Adrian White.
My brother made a call. A moment later, he let out a cold, bitter laugh. “He’s already been officially adopted by his real family. He was just using us as his stupid, disposable pawns.”
My father, realizing he’d been played, gritted his teeth in fury. “If he doesn’t consider us family, after what he did to our son… then he’s not going to any Ivy League school. He can go to prison and enjoy some real torture.”
My mother, silent, carefully gathered the last of my ashes into a handkerchief. “Before that,” she said, her voice low and hard, “he needs to be ruin- ed. His reputation destroyed. And my Noah’s name must be cleared.”
And so, when my sister Celeste finally awoke, she found that Julian’s–or rather, Adrian’s–name was mud. Promiscuity, cheating on exams, bullyi- ng, hiring hitmen… the list of his crimes was long, with at least ten deaths on his hands, most of them carried out by the same thugs.
My sister arranged for them to “take care of” Adrian in prison, to ensure he would beg for a death that would never come. Everything I had suffer- ed, he would suffer, and more. He would be kept conscious as he watched his own flesh being flayed from his bones, piece by piece.
He went mad within days, screaming that he was the real protagonist, that everyone else was only fit to lick his shoes.
Two weeks later, the story was that Adrian White had choked to death on his own rotting flesh.
And the thugs who had served him met their own gruesome end at the hands of a rival gang. The same instruments of torture were used on them, and in the end, they were forced to taste their own medicine.
Online, people who had once slandered me wrote daily apologies.
But this world… it felt rotten to the core.
More and more people began to cough up blood.
The System desperately tried to gather the scattered fragments of my soul, begging me to stop my sister’s madness,
I said:
“I will not see them. I will not save them.”
“Let it all burn.”
