I had missed the cutoff for my dream school by a few points. I begged them for a $10,000 loan to retake the exam, offering to sign an IOU.
They refused. Coldly.
"Business is tight," Dad said, waving me off. "You need to start working and support the family."
Mom scoffed. "What if you fail again? Even if you get in, you'll be an old maid by graduation. Who'll want to marry you then?"
Under their pressure, I surrendered. I found a job near our hometown paying $1,200 a month. I kept $450 for survival and handed the rest to my parents for "safekeeping."
That money, I realized now, had flowed directly to Lily—funding her tuition and her lavish lifestyle abroad.
During the two years she spent "earning her master's":
While I pulled all-nighters in a cramped rental revising proposals, she was sightseeing at the Statue of Liberty.
While I shivered on an electric scooter commuting through winter storms, she sipped lattes in warm campus cafés.
While I worked unpaid overtime on weekends, she traveled the globe, posting pretentious captions like, "The world is a book, and I've turned another page."
We lived in different universes, and my parents watched it happen without a shred of guilt.