Rebirth

I slapped my sister and she became paralyzed for 20 years.

After my parents died, I took my paralyzed sister to my home to take care of her. To my shock, I came home early from work one day, I saw my sister and my boyfriend having sex in bed. Her limbs were as flexible as a snake. She didn’t seem paralyzed at all.

Then, they teamed up to push me from the 18th floor.

After rebirth

I saw my sister lying on the bed "pretending to be paralyzed". I picked up a basin of hot water and poured it on her. I wondered how long she could pretend.

***

I was reborn back to when I was 18, in my senior year of high school. I had a younger sister who was two years younger than me.

When she was eight, she was mischievous and spoiled by our parents. One day, without any reason, she pulled my hair and ripped off a piece of my scalp.

Unable to tolerate it any longer, I slapped her. To my shock, she fell to the ground and couldn't get up.

At first, she only intended to scare me and make me feel guilty. But after discovering the benefits of pretending to be paralyzed, she stayed bedridden. From then on, she was paralyzed for twenty years. By the time I was eighteen, she had been bedridden for eight years.

Now, I was carrying a basin of water and a towel to clean up after her. Since her paralysis, all her needs had been attended to in bed. I recalled in my past life, I had taken on the responsibility of cleaning her waste out of guilt towards my sister.

As I pushed open her room door, I saw her lying in bed, her beautiful eyes watching me with a knowing look.

I suddenly recalled the scene where my sister and my boyfriend teamed up to push me off the balcony. In my previous life, when they pushed me off the balcony, she looked at me the same way. Only the malice in her eyes was even more apparent then.

What I found harder to accept than my sister deceiving me for twenty years was that the sister I cared for so attentively for twenty years actually wanted to see me dead.

My parents passed away the year I graduated from university and from then on, the burden of caring for my sister fell entirely on my shoulders.

At that time, I had just graduated from an ordinary second-tier university and hadn’t found a job yet. However, during the four years of college, I worked hard and saved some money, just enough to support both me and my sister.

In the beginning, life was tough, but I would rather eat plain porridge myself to ensure that my sister had expensive, nutritious meals. Later on, I started a business with classmates from university and eventually, it succeeded, making me a young, wealthy woman.

In my previous life, I met my boyfriend only after I had achieved success. With the pressure from work, I often sought solace in bars, where Jeremy, with his high emotional intelligence and gentle, considerate nature, became a comfort to me.

Having never experienced love before, I quickly fell for Jeremy's "sweet talk" and paid off his debts and high-interest loans from his night job. I also brought him closer to my home in Yardley.

After marriage, I brought my sister to my new house, hoping for a harmonious life together as a family. I continued to take care of my sister with the same attentiveness as before, even though tasks like cleaning up after her could easily be handled by a nanny.

But out of guilt for my sister, I had been personally handling everything these years, thinking of it as a way to punish my reckless self from back then.

I believed I had done nothing wrong to Yara and Jeremy. However, I never expected that this pair of scoundrels would not only spend my money but also conspire to kill me and take all my assets. I was even more shocked to discover my sister's secret and my boyfriend’s betrayal in such an absurd way. The look in my so-called "gentle" boyfriend's eyes was full of the ruthlessness and madness of a gambler when he pushed me off the balcony.

This was the family I treated sincerely for twenty years and the boyfriend I loved deeply. With these thoughts, I looked at my sister lying in bed and smiled.

“Yara, why does the room smell so bad? You pooped on the bed again?"

Yara's face showed an expression of embarrassment upon hearing this. As I set the basin by my sister's bed, I moistened the towel, wrung it out and handed it to Yara.

Yara pretended to be paralyzed from the waist down, but her upper body was still functional. Since she had hands, she should clean her own waste. Seeing my actions, Yara's eyes were filled with surprise as she realized my intent. She said pitifully, "Yasmine, I can't move."

I stood up and helped her turn over. Instantly, the mess on her lower half was fully exposed, emitting a foul odor. I vomited immediately.

My sister's beautiful face instantly flushed red. In my previous life, while cleaning my sister, she would intentionally urinate on my hands to gross me out, claiming it was due to her inability to control herself after becoming paralyzed and I believed her.

It turned out she was simply trying to disgust me. Now that I was reborn, I would not be indulgent with this "paralyzed" sister any longer. I handed the towel to Yara and kindly advised, "Yara, you have long hands, you should be able to reach it. You need to learn to take care of yourself. What if Mom and Dad and I are no longer around?"

Seeing my firm attitude and realizing that our parents were not at home, Yara couldn't express her frustration and had to reluctantly clean her own lower body.

I remained patient and sat in a chair, watching my sister's performance. Amazingly, as she cleaned, her legs, which had been stiff for eight years, actually bent slightly on their own.

Yara's anger grew as she continued to clean and eventually, the resentment in her eyes erupted fully. Yet, she still kept up the pretense of being paralyzed. I sneered inwardly, thinking to myself that this time, I would see just how long she could keep up the act.

In the evening, my parents came back from the fields. As soon as they arrived, my mother rushed into my sister's room. After a while, she came out with a dark expression on her face.

She called me over and slapped me hard on both sides of my face. The force of the slaps was so intense that my cheeks swelled up immediately.

With a face full of anger, my mother furiously accused me, "Yasmine, who do you think is responsible for your sister's current state? Your sister is still bedridden and now you won't even clean her up. Don't you have any heart?"

My mother's eyes were filled with concern for my sister and blame towards me. I was familiar with this look, having lived under such scrutiny for twelve years in my previous life.

I had always known that my parents favored my sister. She was adorable and sweet-talking, their little darling. When, at the age of eight, she had fallen bedridden because of a slap I gave her, their concern was even greater. That day, my parents rushed her to the hospital for an examination, but the results showed she was fine.

However, my parents refused to believe the results. They would rather think the examination was flawed than accept that my sister had deceived them.

They really believed that a single slap from me could have caused my sister's paralysis. We lived in the countryside and when my sister became paralyzed, it was during the busy farming season. With one less person to help, all the work that was originally meant for my sister fell entirely on me for the autumn harvest. My parents preferred to watch me labor under the scorching sun rather than offer any help.

As the "culprit," I took on my sister's share of the work, farming under the blazing sun, causing my skin to burn layer after layer.

When the younger daughter, who was the parents' favorite, became paralyzed due to the elder daughter's actions, they grew to loathe the elder daughter and instead showered even more affection on their beloved younger daughter.

From then on, I became the "leftover" in the family. As the term suggested, I was left with whatever was discarded by my sister: the best food was always given to her first and I wore her old clothes. The most unbearable part was that my sister did everything on her bed and even after many washes, the clothes still carried an indescribable odor of excrement and urine.

I had to wear these short and ill-fitting clothes with a lingering smell of excrement to school, where my classmates mockingly called me "the excrement and urine person."

Meanwhile, the fact that my sister was paralyzed became increasingly exaggerated among the villagers. They didn't believe that a single slap could cause paralysis. Eventually, I was labeled as the villain who constantly abused and beat my sister, ultimately leading to her paralysis.

Even my parents, who knew the truth, came to believe these accusations over time. Whenever they were in a bad mood, they would take it out on me through physical abuse and verbal reprimands, seeing it as justified. Since I was considered a villain, everything that happened to me was deemed as my just desserts.

So, even when my mother hit me, I had to endure it; otherwise, I would face even harsher punishment.

"Mom, Yara’s hands can still move. I was thinking, what if we are not at home and she needs to poop or pee?"

When my mother heard this, she angrily warned me not to shirk my responsibility for taking care of my sister. She insisted that my sister's condition was entirely my fault.

I endured this, knowing it was not the right time to tell my parents that my sister's paralysis was actually a ruse. As they themselves said, pretending to be ill for three or four days might be believable, but how could someone fake an illness for over ten years?

These ignorant people held on to this belief and even when things seemed odd, they never questioned it. They trusted only what they saw with their own eyes and heard with their ears. Since they didn't believe the doctors, I decided to let them see the truth about their supposedly paralyzed daughter for themselves.

One day, after my father had neatly arranged the farming tools in the toolbox as usual, I took the opportunity to sneak out a small hoe while he wasn't paying attention.

After finishing everything, I put on my backpack and set off for school on foot. My home was quite far from the school, requiring a walk of over an hour and the only vehicle at home was a tricycle. My father would never waste time driving his "bully" of a daughter to school.

Nevertheless, I was determined to go to school, hoping that education would enable me to leave this small mountain village and fly away from my original family, like a bird.

Without proper shoes, my feet were constantly covered in painful blisters from walking long distances.