Hence began my life in this household as an invisible person.

Leonard preferred the quiet. Even the maids in the house walked on tiptoe.

Meanwhile, Mom kept trying every possible way to please him and curry his favor.

She made him stews, massaged him often, and also kept him company when he was watching those dry and boring financial news reports on TV.

In other words, Mom was acting more like a nanny than a wife in this household.

As for me, I barely left my room unless it was for meals.

I made sure to keep the storeroom spick and span. It might be piled high with old furniture, but the sunlight in here was divine. I would often position my chair before the windows and stay there for the entire afternoon, just like an old lady basking in the sun before her imminent death.

At times, Leonard would walk past my door and pause when he saw me in front of the windows. However, he never spoke a word to me.

His gaze was a little strange. It looked as though he were looking at one of his own kind.

During lunchtime that day, it was very quiet at the table as always, with only the sound of silverware clinking against the plates and bowls.

Suddenly, my phone began vibrating loudly, sounding like an alarm in the silence.

Leonard frowned.

Mom immediately set down her utensils and glared at me.

"Who told you to bring your phone to the table? Where are your manners? Hang up now."

I brought out my phone and glanced momentarily at the screen.

It was Tamara.

I canceled the call. However, less than two seconds later, it vibrated loudly again.

I hung up again, and she called again for the third time in a row.

When the phone vibrated for the third time, Leonard set down his fork and said, "Answer it."

His voice was soft and quiet. "It's annoying and gives me a headache."

I brought my phone out to the balcony. Right after answering the call, Tamara's voice exploded on the other end of the line.

"Tiana Browning! You did this on purpose, didn't you? Where did you put the checks?"

I held my phone away from my ear.

"What checks?"

"Dad said that the checks at home have gone missing. You must be the one who stole it! It amounted to five thousand dollars!"

I chuckled. The five thousand dollars was what I earned washing dirty dishes last summer.

"That money belongs to me. I earned it," I said.

"Well, your money belongs to the family!" Tamara exclaimed with a huff. "Dad's run out of money for cigarettes and is in a huge temper right now. Hurry up and transfer the money to us! Otherwise, I'm going to tell Mom that you stole the money from us!"

I could hear things being smashed on the ground in the background of the call, along with Dad's loud curses and insults.

"You good-for-nothing, ungrateful wrench! I should have strangled you to death back then!"

The sounds of his voice and things breaking, although heard from hundreds of miles away, still made me feel suffocated as soon as I heard them.

"I never stole them," I said calmly. "That's the money I earned myself to pay for my medical bills."

"Medical bills? What could you possibly be sick with?"

Tamara burst out laughing. "Who do you think you're trying to fool with that sick act of yours?

"Hurry up and transfer the money now! If not, then I'm going to your school to make a huge scene, saying that you don't care the least bit about your own dad's life!"

I looked at the garden outside the balcony where the flowers were in full bloom. They were as red as the blood coursing through my body.

"Tamara, this is the path that you chose. And you're going to have to get through it by yourself, even if you have to crawl to the finish line.

"Stop bothering me."

Then, I hung up on her and blocked her number.

When I turned around, I suddenly felt a sticky warmth on my nose. I touched it and realized that my hand was covered in blood.

In a fluster, I searched in my pockets for some paper napkins and held it over my nose, throwing my head back to try and stop the bleeding.

The blood flowed rapidly down my throat and into my stomach, causing a wave of nausea. I quickly rushed into the bathroom on the ground floor after that.

I looked at myself in the mirror and saw the bright red blood staining half of my face. I turned on the tap and hurriedly began washing it away.

"What are you doing?"

I suddenly heard a voice behind me. I froze at once and looked in the mirror, realizing that Leonard was standing at the door and watching me.

He saw that my face was wet and still covered in blood, and I could see his eyes darkening ever so slightly.

I hastily wiped at my face and said, "I just had a nosebleed."

Then, I lowered my head and said, "I think I might be having a fever or something that caused this."

Leonard didn't say anything. He just came up to me and handed me a clean face towel.

"Wipe your face with it."

I took it from him and held it to my nose, pressing against it.

"Thank you, Leo."

He then looked at the blood stains in the sink that hadn't been washed away and asked, "Does this happen very often?"

"Sometimes," I lied. In reality, my nosebleeds were getting more and more frequent.

Leonard stared at me for a long while.

"Maybe you should get it checked at the hospital."

"No, thanks. It's quite common for me to get nosebleeds," I said, lowering my head and trying to walk past him so I could leave.

"Tiana Browning."

He called my name and stopped me from leaving. "You don't have to live in this household like you're walking on eggshells all the time.

"You and your mom are different entities altogether."

I froze and looked up at him. He still looked calm and cold, but there was a hint of an emotion I couldn't quite identify in his eyes.

"Just say it if you're not feeling well. Nobody's going to give you a medal for toughing things out."

Then, he turned and left, leaving me alone in the bathroom.

The towel in my hand still smelled faintly of pine.

That was the scent that Leonard had on him, aside from a faint smell of imminent death.

I knew that Leonard had a secret.

That was because I had seen the same medication I was taking in his trash can in his study.

It was a very strong painkiller that was specifically for late-stage cancer patients like me.

Mom had sent me into the study with a bowl of cut fruits the other day, but Leonard hadn't been home. He was at the hospital that day for dialysis.

I set down the fruits, preparing to leave, when I suddenly caught sight of the familiar white bottle in the wastepaper basket.

I picked it up curiously to look at it.

It was a bottle of ibuprofen sustained-release capsules, yet the medication inside was morphine tablets instead.

I had used the same trick before, swapping out regularly-seen pills for life-saving medication, just so that I could fool myself and others into thinking I was fine.

As it turned out, my new stepdad, whom Mom had put on a pedestal and whom Tamara had called a cold-blooded monster, was going through his own hellish torture as well.

I put the bottle back where I found it and pretended that nothing had happened.

That night, Leonard finally came back home.

His complexion looked a lot worse than usual, and his steps were unusually floaty and unsteady.

Mom went up to greet him, wanting to help him up, but he avoided her and said in a painful voice, "Don't touch me."

Mom's hand froze mid-air, and her eyes rimmed red.

"Did I do something wrong, Leonard?" she asked.

"I'm just tired," he said, walking up the stairs without sparing her another glance.

He paused slightly when he walked past me.

At that very moment, I could smell the strong odor of disinfectant on him, along with a metallic tang. That was the smell of dialysis.

Sometime later that night, I woke up in pain. The tumor in my brain was pressing painfully against my nerves. It hurt so badly that I broke out in cold sweat and pulled myself into a fetal position, shivering hard under my blankets.

I thought of getting something to drink and got up, carelessly making my way downstairs to the kitchen.

The lights in the living room weren't turned on. However, I caught sight of a dark figure sitting on the couch in the darkness.

It was Leonard. He sat on the couch without moving a muscle.

He was holding a cigarette between his fingers, the faint glow flickering in the dark.

I didn't dare to make a sound and thought of retreating as quietly as possible.

"Since you're already up, you might as well come over."

I suddenly heard him speaking to me in the dark, sounding hoarse and exhausted.

I had no choice but to walk up to him.

"Hi, Leo," I said, greeting him.

"Do you play chess?" he asked.

"A little."

"Have a game with me."

I sat down opposite him.

I saw his ashen face by the moonlight, and his forehead was also covered in sweat. He was enduring his pain just like me.

We ended up playing three games of chess.

Nobody spoke. Only the sound of the chess pieces moving and sliding across the board could be heard.

He played aggressively against me like he was trying to vent out some of his frustrations. Meanwhile, I played steadily, making every move deliberate.

"Are you afraid of losing?" he suddenly asked.

"I can't afford to lose," I said, placing down my chess piece.

He chuckled lightly.

"Life is like a game of chess, and it eventually ends in death. No matter how much you fight back, you'll still lose in the end."

I didn't retort.

The last game ended as dawn approached. I was prepared to pack up the pieces and return to my room when he suddenly held the chessboard down and looked up at me, staring deeply into my eyes with his dark ones.

"Tiana Browning," he said. "How much longer are you planning to keep the diagnosis report hidden under your pillow a secret?"