Looking back, my life has been a continuous string of misfortunes. It was a very long time ago, that childhood thatched house now fading from memory. We lived through freezing winters without even coal briquettes, huddled together on a yellow linoleum floor far too cramped for three or four people. On days my father came home drunk, I was beaten until my face turned blue; the winter wind felt even colder against my feverish skin. When my mother's sobbing, as she knelt with a face just as bruised as mine, filled the tiny room, sixteen-year-old me would feel strangely angrier at her than at my father, storming out to stay outside for hours. I wanted to scream, 'You should have been the only one suffering, why did you give birth to me and make it two people in pain?' Yet, at the same time, I couldn't bear how much I pitied her. The following year, my father lost interest in us and gained interest in gambling, so he was rarely home. Except for the rare occasions he barged in drunk to cause a scene, I had never known such peace. In that brief respite, I won an award at a writing contest for the first time and began to dream of becoming an author. I still can't forget my mother's warm face as she looked at me then. As if mocking my thoughts of peace, my father suddenly stormed back. He scraped together every bit of our meager household assets for gambling stakes. With a single kick, he shook off my mother, who was clinging to his trouser legs begging him not to, and left to lose every cent. Thanks to him borrowing money here and there, our home was buried under a mountain of debt in an instant. Naturally, the college I had dreamed of vanished like smoke. I wondered idly if it was called a 'dream' because it was something I could never have. I didn't go to college, but I continued to write even as an adult. Locking myself in my room all day to write made me feel like I had become someone important. My mother, watching me with a complex expression, grew noticeably haggard over the years, looking like a sick woman. While I was absorbed in my writing, the debt kept growing. The following spring, the walk home after submitting a piece to a competition was exceptionally beautiful. The laughter of children blowing dandelion seeds, butterflies chasing each other in flight... The moment I stepped through the front gate, breathing in the warm spring breeze and the scent of flowers, I froze in my tracks. My mother and father were hanging limp in the room, having taken their own lives.

When I came to, I was standing before debt collectors. All the debt had become mine.

I resent my parents for escaping through death.

I realized that even dreaming was a luxury I wasn't allowed. I took any job I could find.

My parents, who fled from life by dying... I still...

While clearing out the house to move, a letter arrived for me. The work I submitted to the competition had won the grand prize. Thinking it was utterly useless now, I crumpled the paper. I don't remember what my face looked like then.

A life like a dust-covered book shoved into the back of a closet, hidden so deep I don't even want to see the title, a pile of tattered paper that no one would want to read even if they stumbled upon it. That was exactly what my life was.