Chapter 2 — Reborn: This Hell Is Mine

Common Home at the Orphanage

Before wearing an elegant beige dress and stepping out of the motel room, Ý Vy sat back for a moment, letting her childhood memories flood back like a slow-motion movie that she had never had the opportunity to watch so carefully.

Bình Minh Orphanage was located in a quiet suburb, nearly two hours by car from the city center, where rows of pale yellow whitewashed four-level houses surround a playground shaded by ancient almond trees. Ý Vy was brought there when she was four years old, after her parents died in a fire of which she had almost no memories other than the smell of burning smoke and the distant sound of fire truck sirens. Tuệ Nghi came to the orphanage half a year later than her, when she was only three years old, skinny, silent, sitting in the corner of the playground all day without saying a word to anyone.

The first person to approach Tuệ Nghi was not the nanny, nor Ms. Ninh Diễm Thu, but Ý Vy.

She clearly remembered that afternoon, when she brought an old red plastic ball, rolled it to where the strange girl was sitting and sobbed, then sat down next to her without saying anything, just quietly rolling the ball back and forth between the two of them. It took nearly a week for Tuệ Nghi to hold the ball, and from then on, the two children became inseparable. Ý Vy taught Tuệ Nghi how to tie shoelaces, how to divide the cookies fairly, and how to hide behind the almond tree so they wouldn't have to eat the pumpkin soup that neither of them liked. Mrs. Ninh Diễm Thu, every time she saw two children holding hands running around the yard, she smiles and called them "my two sisters", even though everyone knew they had no blood relationship at all.

Those were the years Ý Vy always considered the most beautiful years of her life, until she died and had the opportunity to look back on them with a different mindset.

The first memory that made her pause was the drawing competition on the occasion of the Mid-Autumn Festival when she was ten years old. The children's camp invited a local artist to judge the prize, and the reward was a brand new box of paints that every child craved. Ý Vy painted a picture of her dream house, with a red tile roof and a garden full of sunflowers, and Tuệ Nghi painted a picture of two sisters holding hands and standing in the moonlight. The artist awarded Ý Vy the first prize, praising her drawings for their solid composition, rarely seen in a child. Tuệ Nghi stood next to her, smiling and clapping hands with everyone, but that night, when Ý Vy woke up in the middle of the night to drink water, she caught a glimpse of Tuệ Nghi sitting alone in the corner of the shared bedroom, tearing her own painting into pieces, her face expressionless.

The next morning, when Ý Vy asked where the painting was, Tuệ Nghi just laughed, said that the wind had blown it away, then hugged her, praising her as the most beautiful painting in the world.

In her previous life, Ý Vy only thought that she was a self-pitying, emotional child, and she loved her foster sister even more because of that. Now, when she remembered Tuệ Nghi's empty eyes at the pile of scraps of paper under the moonlight, she felt a chill run down her spine.

Another, sharper memory, is the day a well-off couple visited the orphanage with the intention of adopting. That year Ý Vy was twelve years old, Tuệ Nghi was eleven. The couple, after chatting with a few children, seemed especially fond of Ý Vy because of her politeness, composure, and ability to converse more maturely than her age. They offered to adopt her and even set a date to come back to do the procedure. The whole children's camp was in an uproar for several days. Ý Vy remembers being more scared than happy, because she didn't want to leave Tuệ Nghi, and didn't want to leave Ninh Diễm Thu - the person she had long considered her biological mother.

In the end, the couple never came back. Later, Ý Vy overheard the nannies talking, saying that they had encountered business problems and had to move abroad to live, and the adoption plan was therefore unfinished. At that time, Ý Vy only felt relieved to be able to stay, and never thought more about it.

But she remembers, the night she heard the news that the couple was not coming back, Tuệ Nghi hugged her tightly, sobbing, saying that she was afraid she would leave. Ý Vy was then moved to tears, hugged her sister, and promised that no matter what, she would never leave Tuệ Nghi.

Looking back now, with all that happened in her previous life, Ý Vy wonders if those tears that night were really just because of fear of losing her sister, or because of something else - maybe relief mixed with sadness when realizing that even strangers chose Ý Vy first, not her.

Memories of Ms. Ninh Diễm Thu always come with an indescribable warm feeling in Ý Vy's heart. She was a woman in her fifties when Ý Vy came to the orphanage. Her figure was small but her eyes always exuded determination and unusual warmth. She used to have a small family of her own, but her husband and only daughter both died in a traffic accident many years before she founded a children's home, using all her inheritance to raise helpless children as a way to fill the void in her heart.

She loved all the children in the camp like her own children, Ý Vy never doubted that. But she also remembers, there were very small, very delicate moments in which she gave Ý Vy a different kind of care - the way she privately called Ý Vy into the office to ask about her studies, the way she kept an old silver bracelet, saying that it was a souvenir that Ý Vy's biological mother sent back to her before she passed away, instructing her to give it to her in person when she was old enough to understand its value.

Ý Vy never asked whether Tuệ Nghi had similar mementos from her biological parents. She simply thought that not every orphan was lucky enough to keep such an item.

Now, sitting in a small rented room three years ago, carrying the entire experience of a complete life from the age of twenty-four to twenty-seven, Ý Vy looked back at all those fragmented memories and began to see them connected to each other in a way she had never dared to think of. It's not that Tuệ Nghi is always fake. She believes her adoptive brother's feelings for her are, at least partly, real. But hidden deep underneath that feeling, there always seems to be a small seed of comparison, of the feeling of always being behind, always being the second chosen one, always having to put in more effort to receive the same level of love that Ý Vy naturally gets.

A small seed, if no one cares for it properly, can silently grow into something toxic.

Ý Vy remembers, when she was fifteen years old, one evening, Mrs. Ninh Diễm Thu called her into her office and talked for a long time about the future, about how she had saved a small amount of money to pay for her to study design at university, which she loved. That conversation lasted until nearly midnight. When Ý Vy returned to the shared bedroom, she saw Tuệ Nghi still awake, sitting by the window looking out at the dark yard. She didn't say anything when she walked in, just asked a short question: "What took so long for mom to talk to you?"

At that time, Ý Vy just smiled and told a few idle stories about studying, not realizing that Tuệ Nghi's eyes were glued to her throughout the story, not the usual curious eyes of a younger sister wanting to know about her sister, but a cautious, probing look, as if trying to find something hidden.

Sitting here, three years after that evening according to the old timeline, but in fact having gone through a whole life and death, Ý Vy understands that she needs to look back at the entire relationship with Tuệ Nghi with a completely different lens. It's not to alienate or doubt your foster child right now — that's too hasty and could be a mistake that causes things to go in a different, worse direction. But to observe, to listen more closely to what she had previously overlooked because she was too trusting and too loving.

She remembered what Mrs. Ninh Diễm Thu once said, on a rare occasion when she looked thoughtful while watching two children playing in the yard: "Sisterly love does not always come from blood, my child. But sometimes, because there is no blood bond, people need to nurture it more carefully, with fairness, with understanding, otherwise, it is much more fragile than we think."

At that time, Ý Vy did not fully understand the meaning of that statement. Now, she thinks perhaps Mrs. Ninh Diễm Thu, with the experience of someone who has raised dozens of orphans over many years, soon realized something that she herself did not know how to fully handle.

The phone on the table vibrated again, this time it was a missed call from Tuệ Nghi herself, accompanied by a short voice message: "Sister, I'm on my way to work. By the way, I'll stop by to buy you a cup of milk tea that you like, leave it in the lobby of your company, remember to stop by and pick it up before going to the party."

The voice in the voice message is still sweet and warm like every other time. Ý Vy smiled, a sincere smile because she knew that at least this part, this small daily concern, was real most of the time.

But she also reminded herself, as she stood up and put on a thin robe to prepare to leave the room: true feelings and hidden motives do not have to be mutually exclusive. A person can both love his sister with all his heart and harbor a secret jealousy big enough to, when pushed to the edge, be willing to do things no one expected.

In her previous life, she didn't realize it until it was too late.

In this life, she told herself, she would see it from the first signs.