Even after death, I was still something they hated.

Before I realized it, tears were slipping down my face.

“Host, don’t cry.”

A cold, mechanical voice rang out behind me.

I turned and saw the System that had been with me through countless lonely days and nights. For the first time, it had taken a visible form.

A black cat stood in front of me.

Expressionless, it padded toward me and placed one small paw in my palm.

“You are good,” it said. “Very good. The failed bond was not your fault. Do not doubt yourself.”

“Reading Host’s memories... 1%... 50%...”

As the percentage climbed, the cat’s black fur grew lighter and lighter, as if one touch would make it disappear.

I froze. Then panic surged through me.

“System, what are you doing?

“Stop. Stop reading my memories. You’ll use up all your energy.”

The black cat floated into the air and brushed its face against my cheek.

“Host, they owe you a debt. It is time they paid it back.”

Then its body slowly turned transparent.

“Memory extraction complete.

“Memory Broadcast Protocol activated.”

Before I could tighten my fingers around its tiny paw, the last of its energy burned out.

It dissolved into a wisp of pale smoke and vanished without a trace.

With everything it had left, the System began broadcasting my memories.

The screen in the morgue went black.

When it lit up again, it was playing a memory from the year I turned ten.

Back then, I had been hiding behind a door.

In the small box at the lower left corner of the screen was my mother’s face in real time, every flicker of her reaction livestreamed for everyone to see.

“Mom, happy birthday.”

In the memory, I stepped out carefully from behind the door, holding a metal tin in both hands as I offered it to her with hopeful eyes.

My thoughts from that moment played in the background.

“I spent six months collecting bottles around the neighborhood. I saved every penny myself to buy this hand cream. Mom loves looking pretty. She’ll definitely like it.”

The System’s voice cut in without mercy.

“Host, we do not have time to waste on someone like her. She is not one of your bond targets. Her Affection Score will not help you survive.”

I smiled and argued back softly.

“But she’s my mom. She’s the person I love most.”

The System seemed to roll its eyes.

“Yes, yes. A mother who has never treated you like her daughter. A mother who looks at you with nothing but disgust. A mother who wishes you would just die.”

My mother was sitting at her vanity. She glanced at me coldly.

“What is that junk in your hands?”

I looked at her with nervous anticipation.

“It’s hand cream. I bought it with the money I saved from collecting bottles.”

Before I could finish, she slapped the tin out of my hands.

“You dug through trash cans and brought me garbage as a birthday gift?

“Natalie, you little curse. Are you trying to ruin my birthday? You bring bad luck everywhere you go.”

The carefully wrapped tin burst open on the floor.

A cheap tube of hand cream rolled out, along with a neatly folded test paper marked with a perfect score.

My mother glanced down at them.

Then her face twisted into an expression that said she had expected nothing better from me.

When she looked at me again, there was not a trace of warmth in her eyes.

Only hatred.

Only disgust.

“Go back where you belong. Today is my birthday. I don’t want to see that cursed face of yours.”

Her voice was cold enough to freeze me in place.

“Don’t bring your bad luck near me.”

I stared at the gift I had prepared so carefully, now scattered across the floor.

Tears filled my eyes, but I did not even dare make a sound.

“Host,” the System said in the memory, “I told you not to waste your heart on this vicious woman. She does not have one.”

“No!”

In the livestream box at the lower left corner, my mother suddenly screamed.

“That isn’t me!”

Her face was twisted with panic and rage.

“This has to be AI-generated. How could I ever be that kind of person?”

“Turn it off. Turn it off right now!”

My mother rushed toward the screen in the morgue and clawed at the wall, trying to find the switch.

“Who the hell is behind this sick joke?”

Her voice shook with rage.

“Let me tell you something. I’m not someone you can mess with. I’ll collect evidence and sue every last one of you.”

In the livestream box, her face twisted into something ugly and frantic.

She grabbed the power cord and yanked it out.

But the memory did not stop.

The livestream did not stop either.

The screen kept playing as if it had never needed electricity at all.

In the recording, ten-year-old me stood there in clothes that hung awkwardly off my body. My eyes were red and swollen as I looked up at my mother and asked helplessly,

“Mom, why do you hate me?

“Why do you keep calling me cursed?”

The truth was, when my mother gave birth to me, she had almost died from complications.

We had been twins.

The older baby died.

The younger baby survived.

My mother and I had both made it through the same disaster. Once, she had held me in her arms and said she was grateful I had come into the world.

She said she would love me properly.

She said she would give me my sister’s share of love too.

But at some point, I did not know when, the way she looked at me changed.

The love disappeared from her eyes.

Then came disgust.

She stopped calling me her precious daughter.

She started calling me cursed.

She said I was born vicious.

She said I did not deserve to be her child.

In the livestream box at the lower left corner, comments began flooding in one after another.

[Wait, isn’t that Diane? The parenting influencer? I thought she was supposed to be a great mom. She treated her own daughter like this?]

[God, you really never know what people are like behind closed doors. I’ve followed her for ten years. I never imagined she could be this cruel.]

[Is this staged? Even if it is, who acts like that toward a child? That’s sick.]

My mother panicked.

“No. Please, don’t misunderstand. These videos are all AI-generated.

“I had my reasons.”

Her voice rose higher and higher.

“It was her fault. It was that cursed girl’s fault. She killed her own twin sister and traded her sister’s life for a System. She’s a murderer. She’s bad luck. I did nothing wrong.”

She kept explaining to the livestream.

But watching her, I finally understood something.

She cared far more about her image being destroyed than she cared about what she had done to me.

Maybe the System had been right all along.

My mother had never kept me in her heart.

She had never truly seen me as her daughter.

My father stared at the screen, his brows drawn tight.

“Who the hell is trying to ruin us?”

He grabbed a stool from the morgue and swung it at the screen with all his strength.

The glass shattered.

Only then did the livestream image cut out.

But in the very next second, my father’s phone began ringing nonstop.

Call after call flooded in.

He answered one of them, his face dark.

“What's going on? Every ad screen, TV, and phone in the city is showing your family’s private business right now. It’s everywhere. The buzz isn’t dying down.

“And no one can turn it off.”

His friends kept sending him video after video.

Every electronic device seemed possessed.

Even the radio at a roadside barbecue stand, one without any screen at all, kept repeating the same sentence on a loop.

“You don’t deserve to be my daughter. You are nothing but a cursed girl.”

A vicious glint flashed through my father’s eyes.

“Someone is targeting us.”

My mother stood there in a daze.

“Could it be her?”

Her voice dropped into a frightened whisper.

“Could that cursed girl have come back for revenge after she died? I knew she was bad luck. Even dead, she won’t let us have peace.”

My father shook his head.

“Natalie never dared to do anything to us when she was alive. What could she possibly do after death?”

He pulled out his phone and called his assistant.

“Find out who’s behind this.”

His voice turned cold.

“And check whether Sterling Group has made any moves.”

During all this, my mother glanced down at her own phone.

She had always been an influencer, so her inbox was full every day.

But today, her phone had been completely drowned in messages.

Not one of them praised her.

Every single one was tearing her apart.

[You still have the nerve to play the loving mother online? Look at what you did to your own daughter.]

[How is someone this cruel still alive? And she’s been making money off that fake mom image?]

[Careful, everyone. She’s probably about to post some crying video about how depressed she is.]

Insult after insult pushed my mother closer to the edge.

With nowhere else to put her rage, she turned it all on me.

“You cursed girl.”

Her voice trembled as she glared at my body.

“Even dead, you still won’t leave us alone. You ruined me.

“What did I do wrong?”

She began to sob and mutter to herself.

“I just didn’t want you forming a bond with me. I didn’t want to die like my first daughter. Is it wrong that I wanted to live?”

Then she kicked off one of her high heels, grabbed it in her hand, and slammed it down against my corpse.

Again.

And again.

Every strike was vicious.

My face, already stiff in death, was beaten until it was almost impossible to recognize.

I floated above them and watched it all happen.

My eyes felt hollow.

And still, somewhere deep inside me, a faint ache remained.

“Mom, are you insane?”

Connor pointed at his phone screen.

In the livestream box at the lower corner, my mother’s face appeared clearly.

Twisted.

Grieving.

Vicious.

She had not realized that every second of this latest cruelty had gone live again.

My father stepped forward and tried to calm her down.

“It’s fine.”

His voice was low and controlled.

“Worst case, you stop posting online. It’s not like this family can’t support you.”

But even my father did not expect the image on the phone to change in the next moment.

The livestream camera turned toward him.

When I was fifteen, my father was targeted by a former business partner and nearly died in a car accident.

In the video, a car slammed into him and sent him flying across the road.

His leg snapped on impact.

White bone pierced through torn skin, and blood spread beneath him in a dark pool.

My mother and Connor saw everything.

But neither of them stepped forward.

They were too afraid of getting their expensive custom-made clothes dirty.

They stood far away and watched him bleed, as if he were a stranger.

Only I ran to him.

I was terrified, shaking so hard I could barely breathe, but I still rushed over without thinking.

I pressed my clothes against his wound and called 911.

My father was taken into emergency surgery.

I spent every point I had to make sure he survived the operation.

Then I took three days off from school and stayed awake for three days and three nights to take care of him.

But when he finally opened his eyes, the first thing he did was rip out his IV.

He grabbed the glass bottle beside him and smashed it against my forehead.

Blood ran down my face.

He looked at my exhausted, frightened expression and found comfort in his own twisted reasoning.

“It’s because of you.”

His voice was hoarse with hatred.

“Because you’re cursed, I got into that accident. Every bit of pain I suffered was because of you.

“I hit you because you deserved it.”

Beside me, the System let out a long sigh.

“Host, was it really worth spending all your points to save someone like this? Now your points are gone, and every mission has to start over. If you fail to form a bond in the end, you will be erased.”

I held back the pain and gave it a bright smile.

“It’s okay. I can earn more points.”

My voice was small, but stubborn.

“But I only have one dad.”

The System muttered under its breath.

“A dad like that is worse than no dad at all.”

In my last life, I had been an orphan.

I had never known what having a family felt like.

This time, after I came into this world, I finally had blood relatives.

For the first time, I thought I understood what it meant to belong to someone.

Nothing I did for them was ever for points.

I did it because they were my family.

The people I loved most.

By the time the video reached this part, the comments were still pouring in, furious and relentless.

That car accident had made the news back then.

It had caused a huge stir and stayed on the trending list for days.

People quickly realized this was not some scripted drama.

It had really happened.

[I’m honestly speechless. She was the only one in that family who cared whether he lived or died, and he still treated her like that? He’s worse than an animal.]