The story began a long time ago, before all the natural disasters happened.
A time when the world was still peaceful, without the wails of the passing echoing from the survivors.
A time when the world was still divided by countries because the population could support it.
And in those times, Ming Ji was born.
He was born to a middle-tier rich family.
At that time, the privilege of nobles only came from money and how much money they spent.
They couldn't arbitrarily control the law or have a say in the way the country was run.
But they could pay a certain amount into the pockets of greedy officers for them to ignore certain things.
Like a second-generation rich young man beating and molesting an ordinary woman to death.
And the result of all that trauma was Ming Jun.
The arrival of Ming Ji into the world was a headache to the Ming family.
His father was not even in the oldest set to inherit the business.
Neither was he the academic one or the talented one.
He was the youngest, who had forever lived in the shadow of his two older brothers.
The family didn't expect anything from him.
And they showed it to him quite clearly by not interfering.
See, indifference is actually worse than being strict with one's children.
When a parent is strict or controlling, it means they care about you to a certain extent.
They expect something from you, so they pay attention to you.
I admit that sometimes it might be excessive and cause destruction beyond repair.
But the scale of the wasting of that child's life would be within a degree because they would have to find a way to go against their parents.
They would be held back.
Also, overindulging in the child's every wish is also better.
In actuality, it is quite close to indifference but also vastly different.
Indulging means that you are actually under strict supervision of your parents.
They would train you to indulge in your desires within their sight.
So the parent knows everything about them—
the good and the bad... but it's mostly the bad.
There's a high chance that your life would be wasted on whims and your future perilous.
But at least you could pass the blame onto your parents' indulgence.
At least you can get angry at them.
But indifference; the director let out a chuckle.
Now that is what really tears you apart.
They do not expect from you.
They do not want anything from you.
They do not view your affection or your efforts.
Their eyes toward you are calm, and most of the time they ignore your existence.
The child can do anything they want and they would only meet those disappointed eyes.
And when you lash out... and trust me, dear brother, you will lash out—
You will try to tear out of the suffocation of feeling like you do not exist.
And they will look at you with the only emotion they have ever shown you:
Disappointment.
They would look disappointed at the mere fact that you had the audacity to get angry at them.
They look at you as if questioning what else you want when your whims have been indulged.
And every single complaint and anger would be choked up.
You would swallow it with struggle and walk out.
Because from then on you would understand that there is nothing left.
That rage that you bottled up would grow in you until you would have to force it out.
There are a lot of ways to do that.
Drinking, smoking, clubbing.
Anything to distract you from the emptiness inside.
And our dear father's best distraction was women.
He found that his ache eased once showing off to various women.
That fawning and shy look on their faces in front of his wealth left him satisfied.
The strings of women and those who had their hearts broken grew with each day.
Until our dear father got stuck.
My mother was someone I had never met.
But I did hear of her from the drunken words of our father.
Shameless.
Arrogant woman.
How dare she reject me.
Who does she think she is to reject the young master of the Ming family?
So it wasn't easy to guess that his mother was smart enough to realize just how hollow our father was,
and how little worth he would bring to her life.
After all, she didn't need money, seeing as she was a genius tech manager in the Ming Technology Company.
Her story is quite inspirational.
An ordinary woman who was so talented that she was invited to work at a conglomerate technology company.
Too bad she was a woman; therefore she fell within the sights of our dear father.
The story he managed to hear was how his father got rejected, flew into a drunken rage, and molested her.
My mother, bless her heart, was depressed after that.
She was a strong woman, no doubt about it, but the positive test for pregnancy was what destroyed her.
Before that the seeds were planted;
She woke up in the hotel room ashamed, furious and disgusted all at the same time, at least that's probably what I expected her to feel.
She confronted our father the next day and the rumor spread about how she was a woman who hooked up with our father to get a job and had a lover's spat.
Then she saw no hope for her in the company and left.
Only to get sick the next day and find out she was pregnant.
Jobless, disowned by her family, and pregnant.
She went to the Ming family.
They treated her with disgust, but their innate pride would not allow for them to abort the child.
So I grew in her tummy while depression grew in her heart, staying locked up in the Ming family.
And that depression escalated into a physical fight with our father, who visited her only once just to tell her he was engaged and not to have any ideas.
Our father didn't spare a pregnant woman and I was beaten out of her—figuratively.
In reality, she suffered a complication and had an emergency delivery.
She died on the hospital bed without getting to see her child.
I like to think that she must have been relieved after a long time... maybe even happy.
At least our father told me she had a peaceful smile on her face as she passed away.
Leaving me alone to fend for myself with an abusive father and a household that hated me.
I was thrown into the servants' quarters and started working before I could even speak.
I was given the leftovers from the plates of my blood-related family,
while being ridiculed by the servants as they placed it on the ground like feeding a dog.
Then being called by my drunkard father for some "family bonding."
Which involved two things: his hand and a belt.
"Truly close contact bonding," Ming Ji snickered.
"This continued for a while until a situation in the company happened.
Like I said, my mother was a genius and had the skills to prove it.
She had been working on an entirely new tech that would change the company and move it to greater heights.
Alas, she just had to cross paths with my father.
And now the company lost revenue because their genius tech worker was buried in a ditch somewhere.
My grandfather was livid and desperate.
In that situation, he turned to me.
I was ten years old at the time, so I understood what my situation was quite clearly.
Life had made me very mature at that age.
Or was it abuse? I really can't tell anymore," Ming Ji muttered, then continued.
"Staying like this would be a fate worse than death.
So I seized the chance handed to me by my grandfather.
He got a tutor for me to learn to read and write.
Then got a tutor for me to learn coding and programming.
So while other children learned Maths, Physics, and English,
I was learning the coding languages.
While other children were writing exams,
I was writing strings of code as a test.
While other children had summer vacation,
I had work as a servant in the Ming family.
While other children took the college entrance test,
I was given a project to recreate an app from scratch.
While other children went out,
I was hidden in a tiny room built specially for me at the company.
While other children's parents took them on a trip,
I was under strict supervision to never leave.
And the result exceeded their expectations.
I had talent.
And not just average talent, but an exceptional one.
I was even better than my mother, my grandfather complimented me one day."
Ming Ji said this with a mocking tone.
"Actually I wasn't that much better than my mother.
I was talented, yes—I admit that quite generously.
But the key ingredient was that I was desperate.
We were vastly different so much so that you can't even compare it.
My mother pursued her passion in safety.
While every code written was a life-or-death matter to me.
It took me three years to learn every aspect of tech possible.
My first work was a success.
A success that the Ming family and my father fought over, our father was claiming that I was half of his blood.
Hah, that was the first and only time I ever heard my father acknowledge that his blood runs through my veins.
Though he only claimed half of it, and that was said through gritted teeth.
Still, it was truly an unpleasant surprise.
My father lost, obviously, but he wasn't going to let this opportunity pass by.
He stole me away with his criminal friends that followed him for money.
I was taken from one prison to another.
But I've got to say that the second prison was less comfortable.
But who was I to refuse?
So I designed an app in my father's name and for his newly established company.
It was a hit, and the name Ming played half of the role.
Along with my genius work,
In two years, my father's company became a leading enterprise and he became a renowned businessman.
He walked back to the Ming family with pride and they reluctantly accepted him back to get the benefits.
And it was after all this that you were born.
I felt complex at the gossip of your birth.
At the time, our father was already married and rich.
So it wasn't a surprise to attract vain women who complimented his playboy character.
But it was a surprise for me to hear that a woman escaped the abortion drugs and climbed onto our father's bed.
When I heard it, I felt admiration for your mother.
She was really a ruthless woman and I would have quite liked to have her as a mother, but unfortunately she died by our father's hands.
And our family got a new illegitimate son.
I was intrigued about you and wanted to meet you very much.
So much that I asked my father for permission to see you for the first time in my life.
I was strategic about it though.
I asked him after creating another app that attracted a huge profit and took me two months to create.
By then you were eight and I was twenty-one years old.
I had a formal job at our father's company as a specialist.
My office was hidden and all the coworkers around me were bought by my father to monitor me.
So I didn't need to report at work when taking a day off when I came to visit along with my father.
I watched as you served me snacks on a tray with your head bowed.
I watched as the servant that passed by you stretched out a leg so that you could trip.
I watched as you stumbled and rolled around with tears in your eyes amidst the snickering.
I watched you bow your head to apologize to the servant for being in the way.
I watched as our father scolded you and berated you for being clumsy.
I watched you flee in tears.
Then I observed my father pat my shoulder, saying that at least I got a talent, unlike that fat waste of a son.
I watched the malice bestowed upon you and I was not sad.
Neither did I look at you in pity, but my emotions felt complex.
I returned to the company with that same complexity until the natural disasters occurred a year later.
I had always been looking for a chance to escape and took it.
My disappearance, plus the natural disasters, made it hard for my father to get back on his feet.
Plus the other members of the Ming family had fallen in the earthquake.
I suspect it was our ruthless father who caused it, but who cares about that.
Anyway, the complexity I was burdened with was answered a year after that.
You were ten years old and I had appeared at my father's doorstep a changed man and wanted to prove to him that he needed me.
My plan was to rejoin the company and steal it from the inside,
and to gloat in our father's face how much he needed me.
There I stood with a triumphant expression when I heard the sound of belt hitting against skin.
I am ashamed to admit that I flinched.
Each stroke, each curse, and each insult of the woman who gave birth to us made me flinch every single time.
Eventually I took a step back and tripped, landing on my ass.
The sound paused and the stench of alcohol was coming my way.
I ran away in a panic and only stopped when my legs gave out.
There I was, sitting down on the street when I was supposed to be confronting my father.
And that's when it clicked.
The reason for my complexity.
The feeling I got when I looked at you was not one of pity or empathy due to a similar life.
It was hatred and fear.
I feared that you were the end result I so desperately wanted to abandon.
I was afraid that I would never escape the sin of our father.
I was afraid that I had no future in life except being used by him.
Most specifically, I was afraid that I would never be able to be worth something.
And I hated you for that.
I hated you with a burning intensity simply because you never tried to fight for your worth.
You always believed in the vile words of a drunkard that would repeatedly tell you that you were trash.
Why, dear brother?
Why did you have to remind me of my insecurities and my pain?
So from then on, I sought to kill an additional person in the list.
The legal wife was the first because of her pride.
The servants because they used me as a way to feel better about themselves.
Our legitimate brother who received all the love and thought himself higher than us.
Our dear, dear wonderful father.
The reason for killing him is much and so deeply attached to every single thing about us that sometimes I am astounded by the near size of my hatred.
Lastly is my dear illegitimate brother—
the one closest to me.
The only person in the world who understood me best.
The only person that I can truly call my brother in this world.
I despise you so dearly, Ming Jun," Ming Ji caressed his father's cheeks and looked at him tenderly.