Prologue
There are two kinds of children in this world.
The first is a child born of love. The second is a child made out of need.
I belonged to the second kind.
The failed product of a couple who had wanted a daughter. A child outside the plan, perhaps only ever meant to be born in the hope of success.
There was no obvious cruelty. They never beat me with a stick like the ones in movies, and they never starved me either. They raised me while expecting me to become the spare parent who would live for the sake of my younger sister, and because of that, I never quite felt unhappy.
But they knew the difference between need and love, and before long I became nothing more than a component for my sister.
That was why, when I could have escaped by saving my sister, I ended up being hit by a car instead.
I had grown tired of comparing myself, someone who had never received even a grain of love, to my sister, who had been given love in its entirety, so I killed myself.
I was simply exhausted from living as a human being, and in the end, that exhaustion made me choose death.
I was a little dissatisfied that the last thing I saw was eyes full of regret and affection, but it was, in its own way, a refreshing ending.
When I closed my eyes with those thoughts in mind, I went on to live a second life.
And that life, too, had been made for a reason from the very start.