My name is Li Xianwang, I am twenty-six years old this year.

My mother once said I wouldn't live past my teens, but fortunately, I broke the curse.

As soon as I arrived at the office today, I heard my colleagues sighing.

They said there was a relative's child at home who was born with poor health and probably wouldn't live past twelve or thirteen.

The parents had no choice but to have another child in the hopes of having a healthy baby.

Other colleagues sighed, "Both the child and the parents are pitiful."

"I hope they can have a healthy baby, so the parents can feel better."

Reflexively, I almost blurted out, "Are they going to swap lives?"

As soon as I said this, all of my colleagues looked at me with shock and confusion in their eyes.

"What do you mean by swapping lives?" the first colleague who spoke asked me.

I said, "The second child would be a 'medicine person', allowing the first child to grow up successfully. Isn't that so?"

The colleagues burst into laughter.

"Little Li, you read too many novels, where did you come up with the idea of swapping lives?"

"Even though the child has poor health, as long as the second child is healthy and is a match for the first child, they can undergo surgery, and everything will be fine afterward."

"Little Li's imagination is really rich, I've never heard of a 'medicine person' before, that's quite rare."

"Hey, Little Li, where did you hear about this? Tell me, I want to check it out later."

The laughter around me grew louder and louder.

The winter in the city wasn't as cold as in the countryside, and with heating and air conditioning, I was sweating under my down jacket.

But at that moment, I felt a chill in my back, as if I had lost something important.

[Extra]

When I was young, I lived in a village where the people would keep their distance when they saw me.

They said my family was abnormal, that we were mentally ill.

Because I had a brother, named Li Panmei.

The village favored boys over girls, and every family wanted a son.

But my mother was different. She wanted a daughter, so she gave my brother that name.

Under my mother's prayers, I was born.

My name, Li Wang, means hope.

I asked my mother countless times why she loved me so much and yet didn't care about my brother.

My mother just smiled and didn't say anything.

Later, I discovered a secret of hers.

I found a book hidden in the house, a book that described a secret method to transfer one person's fate to another.

The person who is transferred to, is called the "medicine person".

They live on medicine and grow up on it.

Both my brother and I grew up drinking medicine, and at mealtimes, my mother always brought a jar of murky medicine.

Naturally, I thought my brother was the 'medicine person'.

Because my mother loved me, she didn't love my brother.

But I always felt guilty, as if I had stolen my brother's fate to survive.

Every time I saw my brother, I would think that I was surviving at his expense.

I hated him! Hated that I had taken his fate for no reason, and hated that one day he would die for me.

So I insulted him, mocked him.

I wanted to show my mother that I didn't care about his fate.

So don't let my brother be my 'medicine person', okay?

I know my brother also hates me.

It was only the night his hand wrapped around my neck tight that I realized, he not only hated me, but also wanted to kill me.

My brother, who usually took my scolding without saying a word, almost killed me that night.

I was extremely afraid.

I wanted to tell mother, but I didn't dare.

My brother was my 'medicine person', he was already pitiful enough.

If I told mother, what would she do to him?

A few days later, snakes suddenly appeared in the house.

I was very afraid of snakes, because when I was young, I played a prank on my brother by leaving him in the woods, and I went back with mother to find him.

We found him with snakes coiled around his body.

Since then, I've had nightmares, dreaming that I would be coiled around like my brother.

I was so scared, I pounced on my brother looking for help.

My brother killed the snake, but the look in his eyes when he looked at me was colder than when he looked at the snake.

"What's so interesting?"

"It wasn't me!" I denied vigorously, but my brother didn't believe me.

Later, mother changed.

She always asked me if I had any injuries, especially if I had been bitten by a snake.

Her eyes looked more and more unfamiliar to me, as if she was seeing someone other than Li Wang.

My brother and I grew closer.

Maybe because I started to misunderstand mother, I felt more relaxed insulting my brother, who showed that he disliked me on his face.

I talked to my brother about it, and by the Dong River, my brother told me to trust him.

I didn't understand what my brother meant, and then he plunged my head into the icy river.

That was too rude! At least give me some psychological preparation!

Dazed, I heard mother scolding my brother.

"If your sister dies, who's going to save you in the future!"

It turns out, it was never my brother who was to swap lives as the 'medicine person'.

It was me.

At that moment, I suddenly felt like my life was a joke.

I existed to swap my brother's fate.

I hated him!

In front of our parents, I insulted him and hit him to vent my dissatisfaction.

But at the same time, my feelings towards my brother became more complicated.

I should hate him, because I am his 'medicine person', and ultimately my fate belongs to him.

But my brother doesn't know any of this.

He endured years of mother's coldness and my abuse in silence.

I was locked up by mother in the basement. She looked at me like a maniac, muttering that she could save her son as long as I died.

I cried and asked mother, "This is a lie! Don't believe this!"

"Nonsense!"

Mother yelled, "You don't understand anything! You don't know anything! How could you know how much pain I've been through!"

It turns out my mother was once a 'medicine person' too.

Her swap was with her brother.

When she found out, she killed her sleeping brother in a fit of anger, fled the house, and married my father here.

But she never imagined that long-term use of the medicine would cause side effects in her body.

The first child she gave birth to would definitely not live past his teens.

She prayed desperately, hoping that her first child wouldn't be a boy.

Girls could die, but a boy had to continue the family line.

That was the whole truth.

When father and mother returned, I asked my brother to fulfill my final wish.

He put medicine in my parents' cups, and as long as they drank it, they would be completely weak.

To be on the safe side, he sprinkled powder on the lid of the wooden board, so if they opened it, they would inhale it.

I used all my strength to knock mother to the ground.

Finally, I sat on top of father and smashed her head to pieces, feeling her life slip away.

At least, in the last moments before death,

Li Wang truly lived for himself.