Why Not Rather Be Wronged In Modern Ethics?

I was nineteen the first time Cole Whitfield broke me. Not with cruelty. With a single word. Why. Not did you — why. Like the answer was already settled and he just wanted the story to make sense. I told him the truth anyway. He said nothing that mattered. So I picked up my bag, walked out of his apartment, and decided that a man who trusted a rumor over two years of me wasn’t worth a correction. I spent the next two years becoming someone I actually liked. New city. Graduate program. A published paper with my name on it. I was done with Cole Whitfield in every way a person can be done. Then I walked into Seminar Room 114 and he was sitting right there, gray eyes already on the door, like some part of him knew. I sat down. I opened my notebook. I did not look up. Here’s the thing about studying how people form beliefs: you understand exactly why he believed it. That doesn’t mean you forgive it. That doesn’t mean two years of silence disappear because he’s learned how to look at you like he’s sorry. He wants a conversation. I want my degree. But the campus is small, the seminar table is round, and the boy who broke my heart at nineteen is doing everything right at twenty-one — and I’m starting to understand that composed isn’t the same thing as healed. I hate that I still know the exact sound of his voice.

My parents have always been biased against me, even as a child. They leave me in the countryside while raising my brother themselves. When I'm finally brought to live with them, they neglect me because they don't want my brother to be upset. When my brother says that I'm rude and falsely accuses me of getting people to assault him, my parents believe him without a shadow of doubt. And so, I'm sent to a residential treatment center. Under my parents' tacit permission and my brother's persuasion, the teachers at the center "educate" me inhumanely. In the end, I learn my lesson, as everyone wishes. I die while learning it, too.

As the owner of a small private business, I had never been stingy with my employees. Having made a million in profit, I distributed $850,000 to them. I believed this would win people’s hearts. I never expected it would lead to being reported by my own employees. "We have received an anonymous tip-off from your company’s employees alleging arbitrary wage deductions and unfair profit distribution. The report further states that company discipline is disorganized and that employees are being compelled to work overtime, constituting a serious violation of labor laws. Immediate corrective action is hereby required, along with a fine of $500,000." Fine. Since they were so dissatisfied with my policies, then we would do things by the book—by the rules every other company followed. I would keep every last cent of this one million in profit.

I had always been obedient and compliant. I never dared to disobey others' instructions. The day my wealthy biological parents brought me home, my adoptive brother leaned close to my ear and sneered arrogantly, "The position of the Spencer family's heir belongs to me. If you know what's good for you, get lost on your own." I nodded obediently. Then I turned around and threw myself straight into rush-hour traffic on the highway. My parents nearly lost their minds. Panicked and trembling, they dragged me back into the car, their faces drained white with terror. My sister's expression darkened as she warned me coldly in my ear, "If you pull another stunt for attention, believe me, I'll throw you right back into the doghouse you came from." I obediently listened. That very night, I locked myself inside a dog crate. My sister froze in complete shock. Gritting her teeth, she yanked me out, staring at me like she'd seen a ghost. Later, when my adoptive brother pretended to be sick, my sister forced me to donate blood for him. I obediently took the knife. Without the slightest hesitation, I slashed straight through the artery in my wrist. By the time my parents rushed over, blood had just begun spraying out. They screamed in horror and lunged forward to press against my wound. "Somebody call 911! Now!!!" My sister had gone just as pale. After a long moment of stunned silence, she finally stammered, "Mom, Dad… I only told him to donate a little blood to Eric. I never told him to slit his wrist…" I blinked. My sister wasn't lying. She really hadn't taught me that. It was something the traffickers taught me during the five years my family personally handed me over to them—to "learn obedience."

The woman my husband never got over and I were rushed to the hospital after the same car accident. The hospital's plasma supply was dangerously low. To get her into surgery as quickly as possible, my husband, Maxwell Gallagher, chose to draw my blood. What he did not know was that I had hemophilia. That single decision drained the life from me. My body failed first. My heart followed, quietly and completely. "Once Josie is stable, I'll make it up to you," he said, forcing the promise through clenched resolve. I smiled faintly as I listened. By then, everything inside me was already dead. Just as my existence was about to be erased, the Neural Outcome Determination Engine took my place and returned to my body. I thought Maxwell would never realize the truth. But the moment he looked into "my" eyes, he broke down completely.

To make me "obedient", my parents send me to a reform center. There, I'm tortured until I lose control of my bladder. My mind breaks, and I'm stripped naked. I'm even forced to kneel on the ground and be treated as a chamber pot. Meanwhile, the news plays in the background, broadcasting my younger sister's lavish 18th birthday party on a luxury yacht. It's all because she's naturally cheerful and outgoing, while I'm quiet and aloof—something my parents despise. When I return from the reform center, I am exactly what they wanted. In fact, I'm even more obedient than my sister. I kneel when they speak. Before dawn, I'm up washing their underwear. But now, it's my parents who've gone mad. They keep begging me to change back. "Angelica, we were wrong. Please, go back to how you used to be!"