The words landed, and the air went dead.

The smirk on my father's face slowly flattened. The crowd of onlookers began to thin.

Mom walked beside me, following the doctors toward the operating room.

My father just stood there.

My back was to him.

But I could feel his gaze, sharp and amused, boring into me.

I counted silently.

One. Two. Three.

Right on cue.

On the count of three, I heard his cold laugh.

"You know what I always say? Some people are just rotten to the core."

He lifted his chin, strode in front of me, and jabbed a finger at the medical report in Dr. Cobb's hands. Every word rang through the corridor.

"He takes advantage of his sister being a doctor at this hospital to falsify his test results! He's got a filthy disease and he's trying to trick doctors into operating on him!"

"Gerard, is your life the only one that matters? Don't the doctors' lives count for anything?" He paused, then added, "Oh, and—"

He pointed at the rash on my neck, his lips curling with contempt.

"That rash has been there for a while now. You think I didn't see you hiding in your room, stealing your sister's foundation to cover it up? If you had nothing to hide, why would you do that?"

His voice climbed louder with every sentence. Mom tried to step in, but he shoved her aside.

A ring of people closed around us, whispering and pointing.

"Got a disease and tried to cover it up. People like that belong in prison!"

"Exactly! Getting sick is one thing, but what if he infects the doctors? How many lives does he have to pay that back?"

"Can't blame the father for turning him in. If it were my son, I'd disown him on the spot!"

I listened to every word of it. My expression didn't change. I even let out a quiet laugh.

Only my eyes burned, stinging with an ache I refused to show.

"Dad, I can smell it."

The moment I said that, his face went blank for a split second.

As I continued, a cold edge crept into his eyes.

"You smoked jasmine cigarettes today. And I'm severely allergic to jasmine."

"This rash is nothing more than an allergic reaction. You know that better than anyone, don't you?"

What I didn't expect—

Being called out in front of everyone didn't embarrass him in the slightest.

He laughed. A big, hearty laugh.

"Come on, Gerard. You're the CEO of Harmony Corp. You can't take a little joke?"

"Dad just saw how stressed you've been lately and wanted to lighten the mood. Help you relax a little."

"Didn't Dad always teach you? You've got to stay happy if you want to get things done!"

A joke.

There it was again.

No matter what he said, no matter what he did, all it took was one line: I was just joking.

And everything floated away like it weighed nothing at all.

Just like the day I turned eighteen, when I came home from school after being beaten half to death.

I stood in front of the bathroom mirror and saw the cigarette burns layered across my arms, one on top of another.

I broke. Completely shattered. And I chose to slit my wrists.

I lay in the bathtub, watching the water turn red around me.

The pain in my wrists coiled around me like a vine, tightening with every heartbeat. But beneath the agony, I felt something I hadn't felt in years.

Relief.

What I never could have imagined—

When I woke up in a hospital bed, the very first thing I heard was my father's voice, cheerful and bright, chatting with the woman in the bed next to mine.

"Kids these days, pulling a suicide stunt at his age. Definitely just trying to impress some girl!"

"The other day, I even caught him sneaking into our bedroom to grab condoms!"

"What? Really? He doesn't look like that kind of kid!"

When my eyes opened, the first thing I saw was the woman in the next bed staring at me with undisguised disgust.

Two sentences. That was all it took. Delivered with the casual air of a joke, they'd destroyed everything I had.

And when I finally confronted him about it, years later, after I'd built myself into something, he waved it off like smoke.

"I don't remember that. It was just a joke. Let it go."

The sting behind my nose wouldn't fade.

Dr. Cobb's brow furrowed deep. He glanced at his watch, then his eyes cut to the cold-storage container holding the donor kidney.

Ten minutes. That was all that remained before the organ became completely unviable.

"Mr. Gilbert, we don't have time to keep going back and forth! Once that kidney loses viability, no one on earth can save you!"

"If this is all a misunderstanding, then the surgery proceeds!"

I looked at my father one last time, long and hard. Then I turned away.

From the crowd of onlookers, someone seemed to recognize me.

"Harmony Corp... wait, is that the Harmony Corp that just went public?! Then this guy is the CEO!"

My father nodded, his face splitting into a grin.

"That's right! If my son weren't the CEO of Harmony Corp, he probably couldn't have paid his way to the front of the line."

Those words were a lit match tossed into gasoline.

Every pair of eyes in the crowd swiveled toward me. Most of them belonged to families of other patients—people who had waited months, sometimes years, for a donor organ. If there was one thing they despised above all else, it was someone cutting in line.

And through it all, my father just kept smiling, nudging the nearest patient's family member with his shoulder like they were old friends.

"My son's the executive CEO of Harmony Corp. If you need a kidney, I'll just have him get you one!"

"He always says waiting in line is for poor people. And if you're poor, well—that's your problem!"

The moment those words left his mouth, the furious crowd closed in around me and the medical team.

One man lunged forward, snatching a scalpel from a surgical tray and raising it toward me.

I couldn't dodge in time. All I could do was squeeze my eyes shut.

When I opened them again, my sister was there.

Camila Gilbert had rushed over in her white coat and thrown herself between me and the blade. She seized the man's wrist, her grip iron-tight, forcing his fingers open.

Clang.

The scalpel hit the floor.

Camila's brow creased with frustration, and she turned to our father.

"Dad! What kind of joke are you pulling this time?!"

"Do you have any idea how long my brother waited for this kidney? How could you do this to him?!"

Under Camila's explanation, the crowd of families gradually calmed down.

But they didn't leave.

They stood there, glaring at me with undisguised hostility.

Dr. Cobb let out a heavy sigh.

"If this kidney was obtained by cutting the line, then by all rights, we shouldn't be performing this surgery."

He looked at me. Pity in his eyes. And resignation.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Gilbert."

"As things stand, neither the STD allegation nor the question of whether you jumped the queue can be resolved quickly."

With that, he turned and motioned for his team to leave.

My mother's eyes went wild with desperation. She dropped to her knees in front of the doctors.

"My son would never do any of those things!"

Her eyes were raw and red, her whole body swaying as if she might collapse at any second.

"Doctor, I'm begging you—save my son! If he can't get this transplant, he'll..."

She couldn't finish the sentence.

She didn't need to. We all knew. Without that kidney, I was already halfway in the grave.

She had never been good with words. The only thing she could offer now was her own dignity, traded for my life.

Camila stepped in front of the medical team, blocking their path.

"Dr. Cobb, I'm staking my entire career on this—my brother is not that kind of person!"

"Everything I've achieved, I owe to him!"

"And that STD accusation? Baseless slander, nothing more. My brother is the CEO of Harmony Corp. He's always conducted himself with integrity. There's no way he'd have contracted something like that!"

Watching them fight for me with everything they had, I couldn't hold back the tears burning in my eyes.

Bartholomew shrugged helplessly, his face a portrait of innocence.

"Alright, alright, I must've remembered wrong. And the rest of you—I was just joking around! You all took it way too seriously!"

Dr. Cobb let out a cold scoff and fixed my father with a glare.

"Sir, there are jokes you can make, and jokes you absolutely cannot."

"If you'd actually delayed your own son's surgery today, you'd have regretted it for the rest of your life. Fortunately, it's not too late."

From the doctor's tone, it sounded like the surgery could still proceed.

The relief had barely settled in my chest when I saw my father looking at me, letting out a long, weary sigh.

"Gerard. I raised you to be honest. To keep your word."

"Everything I said before was me giving you a chance to come clean. But you still refuse to tell the truth, so don't blame me for doing what's right—even if it means turning against my own son."

With that, he pulled out his phone. A video was already playing on the screen.

A man was on top of a woman, drenched in sweat.

Heavy, ragged breathing filled the air.

The video froze on the man's face.

It was me.

"You think being a CEO means you can cover up anything?! The woman in this video has been diagnosed with a sexually transmitted disease! That's a documented fact!"

The room erupted.

Even Dr. Cobb, who had been on my side just moments ago, was furious.

His eyes held more than anger. There was disappointment.

"Do you have any idea how dangerous occupational exposure is?! If we'd gone into surgery today without knowing this, we could have been infected!"

"This is a matter of life and death! Were you trying to get us killed?!"

I stared at the video, shaking my head over and over.

"No... that can't be me!"

"It's not you?!" My father held the phone closer and closer to my face. "There was a company party a week ago. Don't tell me you weren't there!"

A company party a week ago?

The words hit me like a jolt. My head snapped up, and I looked at my sister with desperate, pleading eyes.

I hadn't gone to that party. I knew I hadn't.

That night was the night my sister had held her proposal ceremony for her boyfriend, Joshua Delgado.

She'd invited me to witness their love.

If she would just vouch for me, then—

"Cam—"

I barely got the word out before my sister turned her cold gaze on me.

"So that's what you were really doing that night, Gerard. You actually went into someone else's room."

Never. Not in a thousand years would I have imagined this.

The sister I had raised with my own hands. The sister who had just stood up for me moments ago.

She had become the blade now being driven into my chest.

Time was slipping away, second by second. Just like my life.

I looked at my sister and my father. The same faint smile curled at both their lips, perfectly synchronized.

How could I not understand now?