"How can you sit there and tell me that pain means nothing to you?"
Guiying looked at him.
And something shifted.
Something that had been sitting quietly underneath the composure, underneath the calm and the strategy and the careful, methodical construction of a new life, came loose.
"Because of who I am, Liuxian," he said. His voice was still even. "Look at who I am. I'm nobody. An illegitimate child. Trash, by the accounting of the family I was born into." He turned back to the window. "You don't know me well enough to judge what I think or feel or say."
"Guiying—"
"Twenty three years of being an illegitimate child teaches you a lot of things." Guiying continued, his voice quiet and entirely without self pity, which somehow made it worse.
"My family hates me. My father is disgusted by my existence. Me being alive brings him shame. My stepmother despises me. My brothers see me as a burden that should have been dealt with before it became their problem." He paused.
