I, Anna Gilbert, in the final stage of kidney failure, finally made up my mind to die.

Dr. Harrison refused to accept it. "The hospital just found a matching kidney. Pay $500,000, and you're cured." He leaned forward. "Talk to your family. One more time."

I thought of Mom bedridden, Dad hauling cement at construction sites. I shook my head.

I don't want to die.

But if saving this broken body means draining my family dry—I'd rather go.

Maybe after I'm gone, their lives can finally get a little easier…

After I died, I discovered that my "dirt-poor" parents owned luxury cars, a villa, and hundreds of millions in savings.

Eighteen years of grinding poverty was just one step in their "raise her poor" plan.

And it worked.

Poverty made me sensible. Inferiority made me obedient. I became the "perfect" daughter they'd always wanted.

They were waiting until after next month's college entrance exams to tell me everything—to finally let me live as the rich girl I was born to be.

But I died the night before dawn.

1.

On the eve of exams, the school arranged physicals.

The moment I saw my results, my world collapsed.

The report read: Complete renal failure. End-stage uremia.

Hands shaking, I searched treatment costs online. Hospital fees, surgery, post-op care—everything added up to over $500,000.

Panicked and lost, I took leave and went home.

In our crumbling one-room house, Dad was clumsily lighting the stove, reheating leftover scraps from the construction site. Mom sat in her wheelchair, snapping a painkiller in half before tilting her head back to swallow it dry.

Dad scolded her. "Last time you passed out from the pain because you shorted the dose. Why are you doing this again?"

Mom sighed and pulled a crumpled notebook from her pocket. "A bottle costs dozens of dollars. Every bit we save matters." She smoothed the worn pages. "Anna's exams are coming. Even if I have to scrape it from between my teeth, I'll get her tuition."

The scene scalded my throat like molten iron.

The confession I'd planned to make died in my chest.

I stood in the doorway until my tears stopped. Then I walked in.

"Dad. Mom. I'm home."

Mom quickly hid the painkillers behind her back. When she looked up and saw me, a flicker of joy crossed her sallow face. "Anna! Senior year is so busy—how did you find time to visit?"

I shoved the crumpled diagnosis deeper into my pocket and forced a smile. "I missed home. Asked my teacher for leave."

Dad didn't scold me for being impulsive. He pulled two eggs from the cabinet—eggs he'd been saving—and steamed my favorite egg custard.

I kept my head low while I ate, letting my bangs hide the tear tracks on my cheeks.

Mom noticed something was wrong.

She brushed the hair from my forehead and wiped my cheek with the back of her hand. "Anna. Did something happen?"

To keep them from worrying, I lied.

"A classmate got really sick. But their family can't afford treatment." I stared at my bowl. "I think… they're just going to die."

Dad sighed. "Only seventeen or eighteen. What a tragedy." He shook his head. "If you ever got sick, your mom and I would take out loans, sell our blood—whatever it took to save you."

Mom shot him a glare. "Our Anna is perfectly healthy. Don't say such unlucky things."

My hand trembled. My chopsticks clattered to the floor.

Yeah. If I insisted on treatment, my parents would have to borrow from loan sharks. Sell their blood.

But a family like mine—even if we sold ourselves down to the bone—couldn't scrape together five hundred thousand dollars.

I was only eighteen. I hadn't gone to college yet. Hadn't dated. Hadn't really lived.

I didn't want to die.

But to keep from crushing my parents, I had to choose death.

After making the decision, I actually felt lighter.

I forced myself to be cheerful, eating big spoonfuls of the steamed egg custard Dad made, hoping to leave them only good memories.

When it was time to go, Dad pulled a crumpled fifteen dollars from inside his shoe.

"Anna, this is what your mom had left over from buying medicine. Take it for pocket money."

Through blurry tears, I waved him off, turned around, and walked out the door.

The instant I stepped outside, it hit me—this was the last time I'd ever see my parents.

I broke down. Tears poured out before I could stop them.

With my back to them, I choked down a sob. "Dad, Mom… if I weren't here, would your lives hurt less?"

Mom's voice was soft, but scolding. "Silly girl. What parent would ever think their child is a burden?"

"As long as you make something of yourself—forget suffering—your dad and I would work ourselves to death and still be happy."

A mother's love pressed down on my chest like a stone, so heavy I couldn't breathe.

Maybe… I should have died a long time ago.

Or maybe being born was my original sin.

Because she gave birth to me, Mom's back was ruined. When it flared up, the pain made her lose control of her bladder and bowels. She'd be paralyzed in bed for days.

Treating her illness drained every penny we had. It still didn't fix the root problem.

To take care of her, Dad quit his decent job and started hauling cement at a construction site near the hospital.

For as long as I could remember, I'd known the taste of poverty.

The food at home was so scarce I was severely malnourished—skinny and stunted, living like a little rat.

Everything I wore was hand-me-downs from relatives.

Oversized clothes. Shoes that didn't fit. And an inferiority complex branded into my bones. That was my childhood.

In middle school, my body started developing.

The first time I got my period, I went to Mom, heart pounding, to ask for money for pads.

She was groaning in pain in bed, but she still insisted on giving me the money set aside for her medicine.

Drenched in sweat, gasping, she said, "Even if it kills me, I won't let my child suffer."

I cried from guilt, covered the bloodstain on my pants, and ran back to school.

From twelve until now, during my period I used tissues stuffed with scraps of cloth.

Every month, for those few days, I endured the sticky wetness of blood soaking through my pants. Endured my deskmate covering their nose and looking at me with disgust. Endured the boys' mocking laughter.

In high school, the school stopped providing meals.

The food money my family gave me wasn't even enough for bread.

But I never asked them for more. Not once.

Because I knew every dollar I spent was carried in on Dad's back, hauling cement. Saved by Mom, scraping it from between her teeth.

I already owed too much. I wasn't qualified to talk about dignity.

I survived by picking up plastic bottles on the sports field. By eating leftovers other students abandoned in the cafeteria.

In winter, to save twenty cents on hot water, I drank straight from the tap.

Day after day, I pushed through. And finally, I made it to the eve of the college entrance exam.

My practice scores—over seven hundred—were enough to get me into a top medical school on a full scholarship.

By then, I could finally make Dad straighten the back that steel and concrete had bent. Finally take Mom to a real hospital.

And I could finally repay that debt—the one that had crushed me for eighteen years.

But I was about to die.

Some debts can never be fully repaid.

Having decided to die, I returned to the hospital.

The doctor said without surgery, I had one month left. As my condition worsened, my body would swell, my kidneys would fail, until my heart simply gave out.

After a brief internal struggle, I decided to donate my organs.

Better to help others than rot in a hospital bed with no dignity.

And more importantly—I could leave my parents some money for nutrition supplements.

The doctor couldn't talk me out of it. Eventually, he agreed.

I signed the papers: my corneas, part of my liver.

While waiting for blood work and matching results, the doctor handed me a meal voucher. Starving, I traded it for a palm-sized cake.

Tomorrow was my eighteenth birthday.

The cake bristled with eighteen candles, like little flames ready to consume me whole.

I closed my eyes for a long time, but couldn't think of a wish. Maybe the dying shouldn't have hopes at all.

I ate the sweet cream in tiny sips, scraped the plate clean, and still wanted more.

My first cake ever. It was delicious.

When I returned to my room, the doctor said the match was successful. Surgery would begin tonight.

I hesitated, embarrassed. "How much... will they pay?"

"I told both recipients about your situation," he said. "They're willing to give twenty-four thousand total, including follow-up costs."

The number loosened something in my chest.

Soon, the recipients' families delivered a heavy bag of cash.

There wasn't much time. I tore a page from the visitor log and scrawled my last words in ballpoint, then stuffed it into the bag.

As they wheeled me toward the operating room, I pressed the bag into the doctor's hands.

I choked back tears. "Please—give this to the Chens."

He nodded solemnly. "I'll hold onto it. When your parents visit, I'll hand it to them personally."

The anesthesia hit. My thoughts dissolved.

When I woke, I was lying in a sterile white room, tubes snaking from every part of my body.

Painfully, I lifted my arm, grabbed the breathing mask strapped to my face, and ripped it off.

Finally. It's ending.

The heart monitor screamed. Medical staff flooded in, hands pressing, machines whirring.

Their movements were frantic, but I felt nothing.

My body grew impossibly light. I drifted up, away from the hospital room, pulled toward somewhere unfamiliar.

Old folks always said the dead return home.

But my soul didn't go home. It drifted to a mansion in the city center.

A luxury van idled at the entrance. The driver opened the passenger door.

A familiar figure stepped out.

Dad.

Dad—who had always worn threadbare work clothes—was dressed in an expensive suit.

The front door swung open. A girl in her twenties emerged, looking eerily like me.

She hooked her arm through his, beaming. "Daddy! Everyone's ready, just waiting for you!"

Daddy?

Did Dad... have another daughter?

My soul followed them inside.

Pristine white carpet. Blinding luxury. Crystal, gold, silk.

And there—

Mom.