After I Learned To Obey Why Did My Family Start To Regret It? Chapter 09
Sean could not think.
One thought crashed into the next until nothing made sense.
Gerald swayed beside him, knocking several instruments from the table as he turned and left the prison.
Tiffany had already sensed something was wrong at the academy.
Students stood in small groups, whispering. Every now and then, they looked at her.
But she was still angry with Sean and did not bother with them.
When she returned home, she expected to find him waiting with a gift.
Instead, the villa was cold and empty.
No one came to greet her.
The silence felt wrong.
“What happened?”
She finally saw them in the living room and let out a breath, but the unease stayed.
They all looked at her as if she were a stranger.
Sean moved first.
Like a man who had lost control of himself, he struck her across the face twice.
“You lied to us for years, and you can still stand there like nothing happened?” Tiffany screamed and fell to the floor.
The color drained from her face. Her anger vanished.
She forced tears into her voice.
“What are you talking about? When did I lie to you?”
Anne’s shoulders shook. Tears kept sliding down her cheeks.
Two years ago, they had been wrong.
Two years later, they had been given another chance.
They had been even more wrong this time.
“People don’t lie in the dark prison,” Sean said. “You say you didn’t do it? Then come with me.” They dragged Tiffany there.
The moment she saw the prison, a scream tore from her throat.
She tried to back away.
But she was badly outnumbered.
They forced her onto the rack.
“Let me go! I want to go home!”
An hour passed.
Her screams grew worse.
By the end, Tiffany could barely think. She begged. She confessed. She admitted everything.
Sean sat nearby without speaking.
He bent forward and covered his face with both hands. His shoulders shook, but no sound came out.
When he finally lifted his head, his gaze seemed to pass through the room.
For a moment, he saw me.
“Harriet…”
He reached out.
There was nothing there.
Half a month later, Gerald had tortured Tiffany into a madwoman who could only babble nonsense.
He did not kill her.
He changed the punishment every day instead, until every torture in the prison had been used on her.
He was crueler than Sean.
During that half month, my soul grew thinner and thinner, until I was nearly transparent.
I watched my family go white-haired overnight.
I watched them pass half a month without speaking a single word.
Sean moved through the days like someone half awake.
Gerald was the only one who stayed clear-headed, and that made his suffering no less.
He hated himself for destroying me.
One night, drunk, he picked up a knife and drove it into his own chest.
The family collapsed around his body, wailing.
I did not want to meet Gerald’s soul.
So before he died, I had already dissolved into the sunlight.
Warmth closed around me.
And I said goodbye to this world for the last time.
The End.
