Hated by All, Exposed by System: My Memories Revealed

Everyone in my family knew I was a Bond-Seeker with ninety-nine lives. And still, not one of them loved me. During the holiday, I woke up early making breakfast for my family. My mother threw it all angrily. “You filthy little curse. Don’t dirty my kitchen.” When my father was hospitalized after a car accident, I stayed by his bed for three days and three nights. The moment he woke up, he grabbed the IV bottle beside him and smashed it against my head. “Was killing your twin sister not enough for you? Now you want me dead too?” I used my scholarship money to buy my elder brother a brand-new laptop. He threw it straight off the balcony and watched it shatter on the ground below. “I’m not using anything bought with a cursed girl’s money. I don’t want it shortening my life.” On my eighteenth birthday, I handed a love letter to Ethan Whitmore, the boy next door I had secretly loved for years. He tore it to pieces right in front of me. “What, were you hoping to trade my feelings for points? Get lost, Natalie. I don’t want you getting me killed.” In the end, the System ruled that my bond had failed. Then it took my life back. I thought no one would grieve for me. But before it disappeared, the System spent the last of its energy broadcasting every memory I had across every major platform. Chapter 1 “Is that cursed girl really dead?” My mother stood beside the hospital bed, my death certificate clutched in her hand. For one brief moment, she looked stunned. Then something in her face snapped. She tore the paper to pieces. “Impossible. That girl has always been impossible to kill. She fell off a cliff when she was little and still made it back alive. How could she pass out today and just die?” My father’s expression hardened. He kicked the hospital bed over. My body, already stiff and ice cold, hit the floor with a heavy thud. “Enough with the act. Get up.” He stared down at me with disgust. “Did you spend your points on some fake-death trick? You’re still so young, and your mind is already this rotten. What, you wanted the whole family terrified for you?” Connor Hayes, my brother, crouched beside me and checked my breath. Then he looked at my motionless body. For one split second, all the color drained from his face. But he quickly forced out a cold laugh. “She deserved it.” His voice was sharp with hatred. “If she hadn’t stolen her twin sister’s life in Mom’s womb and traded it for that System, would our family have ended up like this? “It’s all her own fault. She killed her own sister. How were we supposed to let someone like her get close to us?” My father’s face had gone pale too, but he nodded as if Connor’s words had given him something to hold on to. “Exactly. If she could sacrifice her own sister for that System, of course we couldn’t let her win us over so easily. She brought this on herself. “She was willing to trade her own family for cheat powers. This is the price she deserved to pay.” My mother covered her mouth and began to sob softly. “Maybe this is for the best. They were twins. They came into this world together. It’s only right that they leave together too.” Her voice trembled, but every word cut into me. “She kept that System for twenty years. Now it’s time for her to go apologize to her sister.” My spirit hovered above them, watching as they searched for a reason to make my death feel justified. I trembled harder and harder. Only then did I finally understand why every bond had failed. They had known about the System all along. They all believed I had traded my twin sister’s life for it. They believed I had gained some kind of stolen power from her death. That was why they hated me. That was why they called me cursed. They were not afraid I would love them. They were afraid that if they loved me back, I would drag them to their deaths too. But none of it was true. Before I came into this world, I had been an abandoned orphan. After the System bound itself to me, I was born from my mother’s womb. I thought I had been given another chance. I thought this time, with a real family and a real name, I might finally be loved. But more than twenty years had passed, and they had never loved me once. They dressed me in old, ill-fitting clothes and fed me whatever leftovers had already spoiled. Whenever outsiders asked, they would say, “A child born under a curse can’t be spoiled too much.” They watched me like I was a thief. And yet they trained me like a starving dog. Every so often, they would toss me the smallest scrap of kindness. Just enough warmth to make my Affection Score move, just enough to make me believe they might care after all. Then, the moment I reached for that hope, they would shove me back into the dirt. Even then, I had only thought they hated me because my twin sister had died and I had survived. So I tried harder. I tried to be good. I tried to be useful. I tried to make them love me. All I ever got back was deeper disgust. Chapter 2 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?” Chapter 3 “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. Chapter 4 [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.] Chapter 5 My father stared at my ruined, battered body. For a moment, he seemed lost. Then he lowered his head and began muttering, as if the words could hold him together. “No. “She was born evil. She traded her own sister’s life for that System. She killed her sister. She was cursed from the very beginning. “When I woke up after the accident, she was right there beside me. How was I supposed to know whether she had caused it on purpose? “Maybe that was part of another bond mission.” His voice grew colder, but his hands were trembling. “I just didn’t want to be manipulated.” Comments slid across the screen one after another. [So what if she had a System? Who told you she traded her sister’s life for it? Your daughter was kind. She loved you so much. Couldn’t you see even a little of that?] [Without her System, you would have died. Where do you think those points came from?] The moment my father saw those comments, his expression changed. In his mind, he suddenly remembered the voice he had heard right before he passed out after the accident. It had been mine. I had held him the whole time, speaking into his ear again and again. “Dad, you’re going to be okay. “Don’t fall asleep. Please don’t fall asleep, Dad.” He looked at my broken, unrecognizable face. In that instant, he seemed to age ten years. He stood there in silence, staring blankly at me. The footage kept playing. This time, the camera turned to Connor. He watched himself in the recording. He watched me staying up late every night to study. He watched me work through problem after problem, reviewing until my eyes turned red, until I finally earned a scholarship. Then he watched me spend every penny of that scholarship on the newest, highest-spec laptop for him. Back then, he had only glanced at it with contempt before throwing it straight off the upper floor. “I’m not using anything bought with a cursed girl’s money.” His voice in the memory was careless and cruel. “It’ll probably shorten my life.” At the time, he had been wearing headphones. He had tossed out those words without even looking back. He never saw me standing behind him. Never saw the way my face slowly turned pale. Never saw how helpless I looked. Now, watching it happen on screen, Connor froze. He tried to explain himself to the comments, but even his voice sounded hollow. “I didn’t know. “I thought it was just some random item she got from the System. I thought it was a tool to please me, something she was using to trade for points.” His throat moved. “I didn’t know she only wanted to give me a birthday surprise.” As the footage played, my family fell into a heavy silence. My father clenched his jaw. “I’ll find out who’s behind this.” Then he looked at my body and let out a low sigh. “But right now, the most important thing is to let our daughter rest in peace.” His voice softened, almost painfully. “Even if she was cursed, she was still our daughter. She was still your sister.” “No!” The moment I heard that familiar voice, my entire spirit shuddered. Even the image on the screen flickered into static. The person who stormed in was my fiancé, Ethan Whitmore. Ethan rushed into the morgue without caring who was watching. He tore the matching ring from his finger so violently it left a bloody mark, then threw the bloodstained ring beside my corpse. “I won’t allow it.” His eyes were red, but not from grief. “Before she died, she was still sending flirty messages to other men. She never truly loved any of us. Why should we forgive her?” Then he turned to my parents. “Mr. and Mrs. Hayes, don’t you think this is strange? “These videos were obviously recorded long ago. I suspect she isn’t dead at all.” His voice grew sharp and certain. “She’s setting a trap for us. She wants to drag all of us into hell with her.” The screen, which had been filled with static, suddenly cleared. The camera turned straight toward Ethan. And when everyone saw what appeared on the screen, the entire room went still. They stared at him in disbelief. As if, at last, the ugliest secret had been dragged into the light.