Sebastian and I had grown up in the same orphanage.
Two wild weeds clinging to life in the cracks.
I was hot-tempered, reckless, always getting into fights. Sebastian was different. Quiet. Gentle. Mature far beyond his age.
But every single time something happened, the one standing in front of me was always him.
I was the one who stole another kid’s steamed bun.
Sebastian was the one who got beaten black and blue for it.
So I swore that when I grew up, I would protect him instead.
Later, as I got older and started looking more like a girl than a scrappy little kid, the orphanage director began sending me to pour tea for the wealthy donors who came by. Sebastian never left my side. He always blocked those slimy, disgusting looks before they could touch me.
Until one day, he came back from school and found me standing there white-faced, trembling, hands covered in blood.
And the director on the floor.
Unconscious.
Pants half down.
Sebastian didn’t ask questions.
He walked over expressionlessly and made sure that man would never hurt anyone again.
Then he took my hands and washed the blood from between my fingers.
He wiped the tears off my face.
And that very night, he took me away.
I was thirteen.
He was sixteen.
We slept under bridges.
We dug half-rotten food out of trash bins.
Once, someone gave us a meat bun out of pity, and we got beaten nearly senseless for it.
I used to envy kids our age in school uniforms, laughing like the world would always stay kind.
Sebastian never said much, but behind my back he started doing brutal day labor at construction sites, saving every dollar he could for my first tuition payment.
The day I found out I could finally go to school, I threw myself into his arms and cried so hard I could barely breathe. He patted my head, his fingertips rough from work but impossibly gentle.
“From now on,” he told me softly, “I’ll make sure you live a good life.”
And for a while, he did.
Sebastian was brilliant.
Sharp.
Good at reading people.
In just three years, he climbed from a grunt at a construction company to a position at corporate headquarters. I, on the other hand, struggled in school because my foundation had always been so poor. My grades were a disaster.
He never mocked me.
He only comforted me.
“We’ll go abroad,” he said. “You can keep studying there.”
He was being transferred overseas.
A dream future was right in front of us.
That night, I was so happy I didn’t sleep at all.
I had no idea how quickly happiness could turn around and bite.