After Breaking Up with My Adopted Brother

Bonny hurried out after him. I calmly finished the food on my plate.

My memory, however, flashed back to three years ago.

A video of him passionately kissing a young model had gone viral. I'd had an emotional breakdown, crying, refusing to break up, even attempting suicide several times.

After I slit my wrists for the third time, he appeared at my door with men from the facility, his face a mask of cold impatience.

Holding my psychiatric evaluation in his hand, he ordered them to put me in a straitjacket.

He said, his voice clipped and cold.

"Crystal, you need help. You need professional treatment."

"It's impossible between us. I'll always be your brother!"

Eason and I were, indeed, brother and sister in name.

But eighteen years ago, his name was still Eason Shaw.

That year, my father’s company had driven his to bankruptcy. After the failed investment, his father took his own life.

He was left alone in the house for a month. When the police found him, he was on the verge of death.

My father took me to see him in the hospital several times.

Each time, he would just stare blankly at the ceiling.

Until, on one visit, I pressed a piece of candy from my palm into his mouth. That was the first time he reacted.

He grabbed my hand, tears streaming down his face as he whispered.

"Crystal, I don't have a home anymore. Can you give me one?"

When I got home, I cried and begged my father for an older brother.

I refused to eat or drink for three days until he finally agreed to adopt him.

The day we brought Eason home, my father spoke to him with a seriousness I had never seen before.

"From now on, you are Eason Reed. You must protect Crystal and never let her get hurt."

Eason nodded in agreement.

For the next fifteen years, he granted every single one of my wishes.

Until the day he sent me away. I knelt on the floor and begged him, again and again.

I'd bloodied my own forehead against the floorboards.

I screamed that I didn't love him anymore, pleaded with him to just tell me why.

But his expression remained cold, impassive.