Watching the Kane sisters shower Evan with such blatant favoritism felt like being plunged into a freezing lake.

Evan's question from moments ago echoed relentlessly in my mind.

How long would it take to replace me? The bitter truth was, they already had.

My chest tightened so much I couldn't breathe, let alone find the words to defend myself.

Suddenly, Evan scrambled up from the floor and dropped to his knees in front of me. "I'm so sorry, Declan! I didn't realize you'd be this angry about Amelia, Bethany, and Chloe throwing me a birthday party. It's all my fault. You told me to crawl out of this villa like a dog, right? I'll do it! Just please, don't make things hard for me anymore and don't break their hearts."

With that, he actually began to crawl toward the door.

The Kane sisters' faces shifted from pale to livid. Their eyes burned with rage as they glared at me.

I trembled, my mouth hanging open. But seeing that they were looking at me like I was their worst enemy, I felt a wave of desolation wash over me. I knew it didn't matter what I said. They wouldn't believe a single word of it.

…

Late into the night, the massive villa was a hive of activity.

The city's top medical team had been summoned just to examine Evan, while the Kane sisters hovered over him anxiously.

I stood a few feet away. My head throbbed with pain so intense that it felt like I was being torn in two, as if a dagger were twisting inside my mind, leaving me unable to stand upright.

Gritting my teeth, I approached one of the renowned neurosurgeons. "Doctor, my head hurts. I—"

"Declan, can you please grow up? These doctors are here for Evan. Stop being a nuisance. They had to come all this way in the middle of the night just to clean up your mess." Amelia's voice carried a hint of reproach.

When I didn't move, she stepped forward, grabbed my arm, shoved me into my room, then locked the door tightly behind me.

The pain was so agonizing that I couldn't even walk. I had to crawl to the nightstand to find my painkillers. I shook a handful of pills into my palm, shoved them into my mouth, and chewed them dry.

The bitterness coated my tongue, but it was nothing compared to the bitterness in my heart.

After my parents died in a car accident, my grandparents and I moved to this city and became neighbors with the Kanes.

They were a few years older than me and had always looked out for me.

When my grandparents passed away, they stepped up to take care of me.

I was 19 then. To take care of me, they knocked down the walls between our two villas and remodeled the entire place exactly how I liked it.

The four of us were the closest people in the world until Evan showed up.

It had started on an ordinary day when Evan fainted on our doorstep. I'd felt sorry for the scrawny young man and helped him inside.

From the very first moment the Kane sisters saw him, they started ignoring me. Over the following months, they poured every ounce of their affection into him.

It was as if he had appeared out of thin air specifically to steal their love.

The painkillers finally kicked in. I pushed myself up to lie on the bed, but the door was suddenly kicked open with a violent bang.

Bethany and Chloe stormed in, hurling a thick stack of papers into my face.

I was stunned. Before I could recover, they began to scream at me.

"Since when have you become so jealous and petty? How could you beat and berate Evan when we weren't home?"

"You've bullied him so badly that he's developed clinical depression! Declan, I never knew you could be this cruel."

Having finished their tirade, Bethany and Chloe vanished as quickly as they'd arrived, rushing back to Evan's side.

I picked up the medical report they'd thrown at me. My hands shook as I flipped through the pages.

The diagnosis claimed Evan was suffering from long-term abuse, malnutrition, depression, and paranoid delusions.

Seeing that, I bolted out of the room, desperate to clear my name.

The doctors were already gone. The Kane sisters were huddled around Evan in a tight circle.

Amelia was peeling an apple for him, while Bethany had an arm around his shoulder, whispering soft words of comfort.

The moment Chloe spotted me, her face contorted with pure loathing. "What are you doing out here? Checking to see if we're still home so you can find another chance to bully Evan?"

Evan's eyes instantly turned red. His gaze toward me glistened with tears. "Declan, I really did learn my lesson."

The Kane sisters went into a frantic state, dabbing at his tears with tissues.

As I watched this touching display of devotion, the urge to defend myself suddenly evaporated.

Without saying a single word, I walked back into my room. I took down the portrait of the four of us—a piece the Kane sisters had painted themselves—and held a lighter to the corner. I watched in silence as the flames devoured the canvas.

Every ounce of affection I had left for them died with that fire.

I lay down on the bed and put in my earplugs, shutting out the noise outside, and drifted into sleep.

Perhaps because I had reached the point of utter despair, the Kane sisters didn't appear in my dreams for once. For the first time in ages, I actually slept well.

Early the next morning, I got up to start packing.

My walk-in closet was filled with clothes Bethany had designed for me. She used to call me the family's prince and insisted I wear something magnificent every day.

From Amelia, there were stacks of tickets—concerts, soccer matches, and flights to every corner of the globe. She told me she wanted me to see the world, so long as I always came back as the young man who loved them.

Chloe had personally prepared all my daily necessities and took care of everything for me, wanting me to rely on them for the rest of my life.

But now, I was taking all of it to the trash bins downstairs. I was throwing away all the good memories and bad blood.

I was stuffing the last of the clothes into the bin when I heard a sharp gasp. Bethany asked, her voice trembling, "Declan, why are you throwing away the clothes I made for you?"

I turned around. The Kane sisters were standing behind me, their eyes red and filled with a frantic panic.

Amelia ran to the bin and dug through the trash without a second thought for the filth. She saw the gifts from her and Chloe piled at the bottom.

Gritting their teeth, the three of them glared at me and demanded, "Declan, didn't you cherish these things? Why on earth would you throw them out?"

For a moment, I didn't know how to answer. My gaze drifted and landed on the garment Bethany was holding.

"I just figured it was time for some new clothes from you, Bethany. And I thought Amelia and Chloe would want to update my things, too. The old stuff was taking up too much space, so I cleared some out."

I took a step toward Bethany and pointed at the shirt in her hands. "Is that a new shirt for me, Bethany?"

Bethany looked even more flustered. She instinctively tried to hide the shirt behind her back.

I let my gaze drop, feigning disappointment. "Oh. I guess it's not for me."

When they saw my dejected expression, a flash of heartache crossed their faces. They lost the nerve to grill me further about the trash.

Amelia sighed softly. "Declan, Evan doesn't have any clothes here, so Bethany designed a few things for him. Don't start being jealous again."

Chloe chimed in from the side, "Yeah. You'll still get what's yours."

I let out a dry laugh and replied flatly, "Okay."

I didn't wait to see their reactions. I turned on my heel and headed back inside.

In the hallway, I ran straight into Evan, who was wearing a look of pure triumph. "Declan, look at that. I'm stripping everything away from you, piece by piece. Are you enjoying the show?"

I tugged at the corner of my mouth, too lazy to respond to his provocation. I rolled my eyes, slipped into my bedroom, and locked the door tightly behind me.

Evan didn't push further. I heard his footsteps fading as he headed downstairs.

The walls were thin. As I lay on my bed, his cheers drifted up clearly.

"Wow, Bethany! This is incredible. Did you really design and make this just for me?" he squealed.

Seeing his reaction, the Kane sisters felt a pang of pity and grew even more distressed over the hardships he had endured in the past. They chattered around him, promising that they would make it up to him and ensure his happiness from now on.

Listening to them was like swallowing broken glass.

They used to say those exact things to me. Now, they were just recycling that devotion for someone else.

And yet, they still claimed to care about me.

I suddenly found myself wondering how they would react once I had the surgery and my memory was wiped clean.

The next time I emerged from my room, the sprawling villa was silent. I was finally alone.

I felt a wave of relief. Their absence was the only thing that felt like peace.

I spent the day slowly packing the rest of my belongings, slowly moving them back to the old villa my grandparents had left me.

My strength was failing fast. Every small task required a long break. What should have been a quick move stretched late into the night.

The Kane sisters and Evan still weren't back by the time I finished. I had a follow-up appointment at the hospital the next morning, so I collapsed into bed and fell asleep instantly.

The next morning, I was jolted awake by a relentless string of notification pings.

I forced my eyes open and squinted at the screen, only to see dozens of photos of the Kane sisters in skimpy bikinis at the beach.

The last of my sleepiness vanished.

A message from Evan followed. "The Kane sisters are so sweet. I mentioned I'd never seen the ocean, so they dropped everything to bring me here.

"They're smoking hot, aren't they? Declan, how did you live with these three beauties for years and only see them as sisters? Why don't you let me teach you how to actually claim them?"

The sheer disrespect made my blood boil.

The Kane sisters treated him so well, yet he showed no gratitude at all.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath to steady my rising temper.

I knew Evan was only doing this to provoke me. If I lashed out, the Kane sisters would tear into me the moment they got home.

In the end, I simply blocked Evan's number.

After that, I sat up and stretched. Sleep was out of the question now, so I decided to head to the hospital early.

My regular doctor was in surgery, so an intern took me for my CT scan.

He kept giving me strange looks. When I asked him what was wrong, he just shook his head.

Baffled, I finished the tests and headed back home.

As I climbed out of the car, a sudden spike of pain hit my head, and I nearly fell.

A hand caught my arm, steadying me. Before I could regain my balance, the bottle of targeted medicine the doctor had prescribed was snatched from my hand.

I looked up to see Evan. He was tossing the bottle in the air with a wicked glint in his eyes. He said nonchalantly, "Declan, I heard from a friend interning at the hospital that you've got a massive tumor in that head of yours. You're going to die if you don't get surgery soon, right?"