Before leaving home, I made a big table of dishes.

There were lion’s head meatballs that Dad liked, shrimp that my brother liked, and scrambled eggs with tomatoes that I liked.

I wanted to have one last meal with the remaining family members.

But Dad rummaged through my bag.

In the morning, he checked the bank card I gave to my brother, which did indeed have 220,000 yuan in it.

He was both ecstatic and suspicious, always feeling that I must have been doing something bad outside to have so much money.

No.

I didn't do anything bad.

I was just too poor, too afraid of poverty, so when I was able to make money, I did so frantically, overextending my health to make money, and then couldn't bear to spend any of it.

It was just that simple.

Dad found my stomach cancer report in my bag.

Dad rolled up the report like a cylinder and knocked on my head, saying I was faking stomach cancer to scam insurance money, otherwise how could a worthless person like me earn so much.

I didn’t understand Dad’s motivation for saying this.

Did he really hate and despise me that much? Or had he gotten so used to calling me worthless over the years that he brainwashed himself into believing it?

I quietly finished eating the scrambled eggs with tomatoes I made for myself.

It was terrible.

Not tasty at all.

Dad kept knocking the report on my head, saying, "You're a worthless thing, even getting cancer is your punishment. Letting you live this long is already a favor."

I wiped my mouth, looked at Dad one last time, and said one word: "Okay."

I walked to the window of our home on the eighteenth floor, opened it, and jumped out.

Very calmly.

I saw a couple on the twelfth floor holding a newborn baby. The new father was carefully making formula for the baby, and the sunlight adorned him with a golden glow, it was so warm.

I thought, maybe Dad once loved me that way too.

But that love was worn down by a bleak life.

Now, though people's living standards have improved a lot, there shouldn't be any more children like me.

That's nice.

With a bang, I hit the ground and shattered.

I didn't feel any pain, just died.

Sorry for scaring everyone and affecting the second-hand house prices in this complex.

If I had known, I wouldn't have been so impulsive and would have died in an unnoticed park.

Goodbye.

I've always been a good person.

Sorry.

It was just bad luck for me.

Brother’s Perspective

No one expected my sister to jump so decisively.

From the 18th floor.

When my sister jumped, Dad and I were completely stunned.

Stunned for over 20 seconds.

After my sister jumped, Dad was the first to react, frantically rushing to the window, seeing my sister lying on the asphalt below with blood seeping out from underneath her. Dad's mouth was wide open, tears and snot streaming down as he wailed, "My child—"

Then he pounded his chest and tried to jump down too.

It took all my strength to hold him back.

Dad's cries nearly tore his throat.

I knew my sister was Dad's most outstanding child.

Dad fainted for three days and nights, waking up insisting my sister was possessed, that some spirit demanded her life, and he brought in a daoist to perform rituals for over ten days.

I have a rough idea why my sister died.

She already had cancer, didn't have long to live, came back to see us one last time, and then Dad's words pushed her over the edge.

She ended it.

My sister was always a person of few words, seemingly cold, but if you talked to her more, you'd find she was actually quite gentle.

But the most despairing thing was when I found the cancer diagnosis in her bag, showing the name "Li Juan," with a birth year that didn't match my sister's.

So I took the diagnosis to the hospital and discovered my sister had taken the wrong diagnosis report, she didn't have stomach cancer, just a bit of anemia. She mistook someone else's report—another common "Li Juan."

It was just a misunderstanding.

Dad went crazy, dragged my sister’s body to the hospital, made a scene, blamed the hospital for misdiagnosis, causing her hopelessness and suicide, and forcibly extorted 300,000 yuan from them.

He stored the money in a card, not spending a dime, just like how he stored the 100,000 yuan meant for Mom’s life-saving money, looking at it.

If it wasn't for my sister pitching in to buy a house after graduation, Dad wouldn't have touched that 100,000 yuan.

As if not touching that money meant Mom was still there.

Dad was evading reality, and he always found ways to escape.

The reason for my sister's death, I could never fully figure out.

I'm five years younger, didn't know her well, she was aloof and spoke little.

Our age gap was big, so she told me even less.

From my memory, Dad had high expectations of her, punished her severely for any shortcomings.

He frequently hit her with the fireplace poker, often striking her legs, her face, saying disfiguring her would keep disreputable boys away from her.

I had mixed feelings about it.

Sometimes I pitied her beatings, sometimes I envied the attention she got, as Dad ignored me.

Maybe I was never good at studying, pointless to ask.

My sister was always outstanding, unlike me, as teachers mocked me, saying, "Are you Li Juan’s brother? Quite different from her, she was a legend here."

But Dad always thought she wasn’t good enough, kept calling her worthless.

I tried telling Dad she was exceptional, but he wanted her to know shame and strive harder, aiming for Tsinghua or Peking University for graduate or doctoral studies.

Dad was too obsessed.

But discussing this now is meaningless.

After my sister's death, Dad and I sorted her belongings, finding a safe under her bed with her diaries.

She had been writing diaries since childhood.

To my shock, none of them had any happy events.

Most were about self-critique, repentance, self-encouragement, questioning her failures, her stupidity.

She attempted suicide many times, even eating a lot of sleeping pills in high school, but they might not have been strong enough. She failed, and later, suicide became a habit, pondering various methods in her diaries.

Finally, a few days ago, she succeeded.

Jumped from the 18th floor.

Dad sat on the ground with her diaries, crying like a child.

He asked why she never told him any of this?

I had no answer.

My memories of her are few. I remember when she was 10, a classmate broke her compass, she ran home crying, told Dad, and he slapped her, asking why only hers was broken, not others.

Since then, she became silent, never told the family anything.

I thought life must have been very hard for her outside.

I suddenly remembered on my birthday, I brought her hot milk and said, “Sis, life must be hard out there for you, right?”

She suddenly cried.

Then gave me that card.

It was quite sad.

Dad aged, cried snivelingly after she jumped, asking me repeatedly, "Did I kill your sister?”

I didn’t know how to respond.

I couldn’t say a word.

Dad asked every person he met, "Did I kill my daughter?”

No one answered him.

He kept asking, one person after another.

I didn’t know what answer he wanted.

Later, Dad turned to alcohol.

Even drunk, he persistently asked the same question, like Xianglin’s wife, so no one drank with him anymore, saying he was crazy.

Eventually, Dad drank alone, collapsed drunk in the snow, and never got up again. Found frozen stiff by sanitation workers the next day.

I suddenly remembered my 14-year-old sister, that snowy night.

Stripped of her winter coat by Dad, forced to kneel in the snow.

The whole night.

Came back with high fever, coughed all winter.

Must have felt helpless.

Neighbors had praised Dad for being wise, responsible, strict, loving towards his kids. I was jealous, thinking all his attention was on my sister.

Now I see... perhaps it wasn’t love.

I have my own children now and ran a small business madly making money. Later, I took good care of my child, didn’t push for academic achievement, believing life is just about finding a place in society.

Whenever it snows, I think of my sister and my dad.

But I can’t fully understand them.

I don’t know how it turned out this way.

Snow falls, making the world one color, all white.

A generation passes just like that.

Maybe life is just tough.