The Final Goodbye

My wife made me get a vasectomy. Not once, but ninety-nine times.

Right before the hundredth operation, the doctor looked at me with pity in his eyes as the anesthesia failed to fully kick in.

"Ms. Gibson really knows how to destroy a man," he murmured. "She's put him through ninety-nine vasectomies, then had them reversed—again and again. However, his body's long since broken. There's no chance of children now."

"It's probably for her ex. Word is, it's his own brother. The scandals in these wealthy families—unbelievable."

Because of a hospital mix-up at birth, my and Jeff Cunningham's fates were exchanged. He grew up with the Cunningham family, while I lived a poor life.

Years later, my parents found the truth, taking me in and sending Jeff away. To make things worse, I became Wynnie Gibson's new fiancé.

I once asked her, barely able to speak through the pain, why she would marry someone she did not love.

She looked at me calmly.

"To get revenge," she said. "You came home and stole Jeff's place. He was the one I love. He drank himself to death after you returned."

Even my biological parents knew she was poisoning me.

However, they turned a blind eye.

They did nothing to stop her.

They knew Wynnie had got pregnant with Jeff's child through IVF—planning to raise the child and let him inherit the family fortune.

I coughed up blood and threw myself into the sea.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day I was first reunited with them.

This time, when I saw the sorrow in their eyes—sorrow not for me, but for the son they lost—

I chose to let them go.

"You're leaving us?!"

My parents were shocked as they stared at me, the calm in my voice contradicting the bombshell I just dropped.

Their eyes were wide with disbelief.

That day marked my official return to the Cunningham household, but they were clueless about the truth.

I had been reborn and was ready to move on from the past, from a version of myself that would never receive their love.

"Yes, I've booked my flight to study abroad. I'm just waiting on the visa. It should take a few more days—"

"You can't stand having your brother around, can you?!"

My mother, Alice Ferguson, cut me off, her voice dripping with impatience.

To them, my discontent stemmed from my brother, Jeff Cunningham, who was not a Cunningham by blood but had been living with them as if he were.

They thought I was acting out, wanting to storm off in a huff because of him.

Sensing she might have been too harsh, my mother's face softened as she tried again.

"Kelvin, you know that even if Jeff isn't our own flesh and blood, he's been part of this family for years. Can't you cut him some slack?"

Her words were laced with bias, always in favor of Jeff.

It was the same old story.

In my previous life, Jeff would pick fights with me, and our parents would always take his side, whether they meant to or not.

It was not until Jeff's knife had almost taken my life that they finally forced him to leave the Cunningham mansion and reflect on his actions in a swanky apartment they set up just for him.

They called it reflection, but it was all for show. It was just a way to make me drop the issue of his violent attack.

However, I never imagined he would turn to booze to numb the pain, or that he would get behind the wheel drunk and crash.

He was torn apart in the wreck.

From that day on, they pointed their fingers at me.

They were convinced I was the reason he was gone, never cracking a smile my way again, and they made me visit Jeff's grave every year to lay down flowers and wallow in guilt.

As time went on, their indifference only grew, allowing my wife to torment me relentlessly until I was a shell of a man, physically and emotionally spent, and finally, in utter despair, I threw myself into the ocean's embrace.