There was a time when I thought Sean was my salvation. When my parents and even my childhood best friend, Liam Hayes, completely abandoned me for Vanessa.

Sean appeared like a saviour from the heavens. When a guest at the hotel I worked in tried to grope me, it was Sean who stepped in and saved me. When my parents threw me out of the house into a snowstorm, it was him who opened his door to me. Even when he first met Vanessa, he didn't waver at her.

He even told my parents and Liam that he didn't believe that I was the type of person to deliberately lose my sister.

But I didn't expect that at my marriage to Sean, Vanessa pulled out a small bamboo flute.

Sean’s eyes lit up like never before.

He held Vanessa’s hand and said he had been searching for her for ten years.

From that moment on, I could do no right.

As long as Vanessa was around, I was the villain in here.

Even our child—my child—became nothing but a mistake in his eyes.

***

I lay quietly on the cold operating table, numb like a corpse.

My silence seemed to catch Sean off guard. He let out a mocking laugh.

"Had you realized sooner, maybe you would not be suffering now."

I looked at my arms and legs. They were bruises and deep marks from my earlier struggle.

But I did not respond to his cruelty. My voice was calm, almost detached.

“Give me the divorce papers.”

Even though I had rejected the system’s final mission to make them regret hurting me, it kept urging me to sever all ties.

Sean’s expression froze. “What did you just say?”

I knew why he was so shocked. He had once offered me an outrageous compensation to divorce him for Vanessa and I had refused.

Even after he neglected me…

Even after he humiliated me time and time again in public, I never once brought up divorce.

But now, I closed my eyes and said it again.

"Let's divorce, Sean. At the very least… I couldn’t let the child be delivered to death by his own father.”

For a moment, Sean looked shaken. But it didn’t last. His eyes turned cold again.

“Don’t think you can manipulate me with moral guilt,” he spat. “I’ve hired the best doctors. That bastard won’t die.”

"You think everyone's as heartless as you—using a child as a tool?"

A sharp pain twisted through my chest, but I didn’t argue. He never believed me anyway.

“Didn’t you always say you wanted your freedom?” I asked softly.

"Just as well, I also don’t want our child to have a father like you, either.” I continued.

He stared at me, his expression shifting as if trying to figure out if I really meant it.

Then Liam—my childhood friend, the second target I was supposed to win over—spoke from the side. He was also the lead surgeon for this horrific operation.

“If you don’t sign, how much longer do you plan to delay Vanessa’s treatment?”

Only then did Sean take the divorce papers from his secretary and scribble his name.

He slammed them down onto my body.

“You’re the one at fault,” he sneered. “Don’t even think about getting a single cent.”

I didn’t ask why I was suddenly the villain. I didn’t care anymore. After all, I’d be dead soon.

The surgery wouldn’t take long—maybe an hour. My hand gently stroked my belly, a quiet goodbye. I’m sorry, little one. Mommy couldn’t protect you after all.

Then, I felt a soft flutter. A tiny kick. Like a little hand pressing back. And I finally broke. Tears streamed silently down my cheeks.

***

At the side, Liam, who was also my second Raider, swore that he would protect me for the rest of my life watched without emotion. Seeing me soaking in tears, he snorted coldly, “Don't act out, someone as vicious as you would care whether your child is alive or dead?”

I looked at his warm face, but his eyes were full of contempt and couldn't help but let out a miserable laugh:

“Liam, you said you would protect me for the rest of my life.”

He was my childhood friend, the boy who once risked everything for me. He was supposed to love me.

In the beginning, Liam did not believe that I was the one who lost Vanessa. Back then, when my parents locked me in a room and nearly starved me, it was Liam who climbed on the 20th-floor balcony to bring me food.

He didn't even blink at the danger.

He'd just smiled and said, "When we grow up, I'll take you away from here."

But Vanessa—who already had plenty of friends at school—fixated on Liam.

She chased after him constantly.

After one pitch to deliver water, Liam mentioned Vanessa to me again, from whether she is the green tea that fights for a favour, to whether we misunderstood her.

I didn't make a sound and Liam turned into an awkward silence.

That day, I finally understood why his affection for me—once almost full—had started to drop. He was still kind to me, yes. But he was even kinder to her.

He skipped class for Vanessa, fought for her and even stabbed the school's department head for her—all because Vanessa claimed he gave her “creepy” looks.

That professor had a spotless twenty-year career. He was strict, yes. But never once accused of anything inappropriate. But Vanessa had shown up in skimpy clothes. He scolded her. And she cried to Liam, who without hesitation, stabbed him.

The day his affection for me dropped to 30%, I felt that madness turn toward me too. He showed up with a bag of my favourite snacks, acting as if nothing had happened. I followed him without question. He took me to an abandoned warehouse. And when the door slammed shut, Liam kicked me to the ground.

“You’re a girl too—how could you photoshop nudes of Vanessa?! If you didn't make up rumors about her, she wouldn't have been targeted by that bad old man, the director of education!”

No matter how much I screamed and cried that I didn’t do it—he didn’t listen. He ripped off my clothes. Took pictures of me in my underwear. And then he also took away my clothes with him.

"Since you like calling people sluts so much," he said, "why not experience it for yourself?"

I cried all night in that freezing factory, too afraid to come out.

Liam didn’t return.

A homeless man eventually found me. I fought back, broke his head open with a brick and ran.

When my parents picked me up from the police station, Liam even said that I had stripped myself naked to seduce him.

The fact that I offered myself to seduce Liam spread all over the school. Everyone called me a slut and all the punks wanted to come and touch me.

I was scared to get through to my senior year but managed to apply to a top foreign university.

Liam, however, said that I drugged Vanessa during the exams, causing her to play poorly.

He pinched the photo and threatened me to give up graduate school to Vanessa.

My only hope was shattered and even the way to repeat the exam was blocked by him.

Just because he was afraid that I would get into graduate school again and continue to victimize Vanessa.

From then on, I could only do odd jobs to support myself. But Liam still does not stop, but where I am a little bit of a place, he has to send gangsters to make a scene. Until I met Sean, he stopped. Only because, Vanessa hope through me, to approach Sean.

Even though she didn’t love Liam, he gave her everything.

Just like now—he was willing to break the law, to lose his medical license, to cut open my body in order to cure her.

When I reminded Liam of the promise he once made to me, his expression twisted in disgust.

“You?” he spat. “You’re not even worthy of that memory.”

Liam pulled on his surgical gloves with practised ease, the snap of rubber echoing ominously in the sterile room. His fingers smeared cold gel on my stomach, moving with mechanical precision, clinical and detached—like he was inspecting livestock, not a person.

Satisfied, he nodded.

"Even a venomous snake doesn't eat its own child. I’ll give you credit—you've kept the baby healthy," he said. "If this child can save Vanessa’s life, maybe I’ll even return those racy photos of yours."

I didn’t flinch. “No need,” I replied calmly.

Liam still didn't know that those racy photos had long been spread everywhere by Vanessa. There was no use salvaging what had long been burned.

Raising my tied hands slightly, I said softly, “Liam, I returned something of yours.”

His eyes flicked to my wrist. For a brief moment, surprise cracked through his mask. It was an old plastic bracelet, faded and peeling—cheap, childish, worthless to anyone else.

But once, it was a promise.

He reached over and gently removed it. His voice dipped, touched with a whisper of softness I hadn’t heard in years.

“Other than releasing you, I will promise everything else.”

I lowered my gaze. "After I die, scatter my ashes into the river, will you?"

He let out a bitter laugh. “Still trying to play the tragic martyr? It’s just a Cesarean section. You’re not going to die.”

I smiled faintly. “I trust your skills. But people die, Lin. That’s just how it is.”

My calm seemed to pacify him. He stopped talking and turned to inspect the surgical tools again.

"Fine," he muttered. "If you really want to cash in that promise on this… then don't regret it. From now on, just stay away from Vanessa. We’ll have nothing more to do with each other.”

I watched his back silently. “Goodbye, Liam.”

Just like that, the system in my mind confirmed the last trace of the bond between Liam and I had been severed.

Confused, I asked the system why it still urging me to dissolve my relationship with my Raider, even when I was destined to die. But for once, it didn’t answer.

That’s when the first people I’d ever been assigned to “win over” in this world—my supposed parents—stormed in. They shoved a paper in front of me and grabbed my hand to press my fingerprint onto it. No discussion.

A surrogacy contract.

It stated that as long as Vanessa remained ill, I would continue to bear children to provide her with fresh cord blood. Again and again.

Mr. Carter and Mrs. Carter is my first Raider object. I used to think of them as my parents. They were my first targets in this mission, supposedly an easy one because "family love" was considered simple to earn. If both of their affection meters hit 100%, the system counts it as success.

Because of Vanessa's loss, they treasured me even more. Their favorability towards me has been maintained at ninety-nine per cent.

And for a while, I really believed they loved me. I basked in their attention for years and even thought, ‘If I can’t go back to my original world, at least I can grow old with them here.’

But everything changed the day Vanessa returned.

All it took was her saying, with wide, tearful eyes, “I don’t know why big sister left me behind…”

And with Vanessa’s words that I had abandoned her before, they turned on me.

No questions asked, no second chances. In their eyes, I was the villain who abandoned their precious Vanessa.

Then came the guilt-tripping. Vanessa would whisper, “Please don’t leave me again, sister…” and their pity for her curdled into disgust for me.

They stopped coming to my school events. When they travelled, they only brought back gifts for her. Even at dinner, if I sat down, the air would go cold—no one spoke, no one served me a plate. I was a ghost in my own home.

Eventually, they claimed they were away on business trips and stopped coming home altogether. Vanessa and I were sent to boarding school—except later, I learned she was still a day student and they picked her up every single afternoon. They had built a new life. Without me.

The final betrayal came when I brought Sean home. They didn’t even show up to greet us. But when Vanessa said she had feelings for him, suddenly they threw a grand family banquet. But after getting Sean drunk, they sent Vanessa into his room. Without even giving me a look, they shut me out of the house, “This is what you owe Vanessa.”

Later, Sean refused and took the opportunity to escape through the window. They then found me again and persuaded me to convince Sean to marry Vanessa.

Everything didn't go their way, they didn't contact me once in seven or eight years. When my former neighbours asked, they told me that I eloped with a punk and died outside. If it wasn't for the sake of curing Vanessa, I don't think they would have come to see me again in this life.

Now, they were here with this contract. Not out of regret. Not out of love. But to turn me into a womb on demand. And I didn't move a single muscle and let them press the handprint of me giving Vanessa a lifetime of being a child production tool.

As soon as they forced my fingerprint onto the surrogacy contract, Mr. and Mrs. Carter didn’t even glance my way. They turned to Liam instead.

“Stitch her up properly,” Mrs. Carter said coldly. “She still needs to be able to give birth again later.”

Liam nodded, unbothered. “Have you signed the surgical consent form?”

Mrs. Carter frowned. “Why would we need to sign anything?”

I spoke calmly from the table. “I’m divorced from Sean now. That makes the two of you my only direct relatives.”

Mr. Carter’s face lit up. “You finally divorced him? That means he and Vanessa can be together—true love, at last!”

I didn’t respond. I just reminded them again, “Don’t forget to sign the consent form. I have no one else left.”

Mrs. Carter’s face twisted in rage. She slapped me so hard my head snapped to the side, crashing against the metal edge of the operating table.

“You’re cursing Vanessa, aren’t you?” she screamed. “She’s your sister, isn’t she?”

Blood streamed down from my forehead, blurring my vision, hot and sticky in my eyes. Through the crimson haze, her once-gentle face had transformed into a monster’s.

Mr. Carter rushed over—not to help me, but in panic. “Her bleeding won't affect the quality of the umbilical cord blood, right?”

Liam shook his head. “No, it won’t.”

Only then did they relax, their expressions twisting with disgust as they turned back to me. “We don’t know how we could have given birth to such a cruel, heartless daughter.”

They signed the consent form with painful ease and I whispered to them, “Daddy… Mommy… El El will always love you.”

It was a line I used to say when I was little. Anytime they wept over losing Vanessa, I’d say that and they’d hold me tight, whispering they didn’t know how they’d survive without me.

And now, Mr. and Mrs. Carter were just stunned and showed that expression of looking at an enemy again, “We can't afford your love.”

I smiled faintly. “Then give me a document to sever our parent-child relationship. From now on, you will only have Vanessa as your daughter.”

Mr. and Mrs. Carter didn't hesitate, there was no paper at hand, they even picked up a tissue and wrote the note of severing paternity.

Then they couldn't wait to press their handprints, “Since we're breaking it off, let's break it off cleanly,” she said. “You're not allowed to take the surname Carter and you're not allowed to use the name we gave our baby daughter anymore.”

“The Carter Family will be pure again without a toxic woman like you.”

And just like that, they walked away without a backward glance. My eyes stung. I couldn’t tell if it was the blood still dripping from my forehead… or tears I hadn’t realized were falling.

Liam injected the anaesthetic. My body went numb, but my mind remained painfully alert.

I felt the scalpel cut into me. I felt my child being pulled away.

The moment the cord was cut, a storm of agony ripped through me. My blood poured out onto the floor, forming a dark, growing river under the table.

Liam shouted my name, panicking. He hesitated, then made his choice—he put the newborn down and rushed out the door with the collected cord blood in his hands.

My baby, born premature, lay beside me—silent. Lifeless. I reached for him, stretching with all my might. And just before darkness swallowed me whole, I felt his tiny hand in mine.

In that flickering space between life and death, I heard the softest voice:

“Mommy, don’t cry.”

Tears poured down my cheeks. But my hand, now cold as snow, couldn’t warm his anymore.

“Baby… Mommy’s has come to stay with you.”

***

[Congratulations to the host. The Raider mission shift was successful.]

[Initiating regret-value calculation for three targets. Time remaining: 6 hours.]

My spirit floated above the table. My body lay there, drained and still.

But… my child’s soul was nowhere in sight.

The system told me I’d meet him again when the settlement was made.

So I waited.

For now, for the first time, I stayed silent and looked coldly at what the world looked like after my death.

Liam was the first to rush back.

Sweat drenched his forehead as he sprinted through the corridor—only to freeze at the doorway of the operating room, where blood had pooled into a dark, horrifying lake.

“Elena Carter! Don’t you dare sleep!” he shouted, voice cracking as he grabbed the defibrillator and slammed it against my chest.

“Aren’t you always the one fighting? Huh?