The ninety-ninth time Carter’s clinically depressed stepsister tried to kill herself was the ninety-ninth time he left me at the altar. “As her psychologist,” he’d said, his voice tight with a sense of duty that had long ago curdled into a weapon against me, “I have a responsibility to my patient.” And just like that, the System declared my mission a failure. The penalty was a plunge into a profound depression of my own, a systematic stripping away of every last shred of my will to live. From that day forward, all I wanted was to die, to get it over with so I could finally go back to my real life. By the time Carter finally realized I was serious, it was too late. He threw the entire weight of his profession at me, every therapeutic technique he’d ever learned, desperate to “cure” me, to coax a single spark of love for him from the ashes, to anchor me to this world by force. But I was already gone. I didn’t want him anymore. 1 We were about to exchange rings when the call came. Of course, it was his stepsister, Chloe. Carter’s hand, which had been holding mine so tightly, went slack. “Carter,” she whispered breathlessly into the phone, her voice a fragile, childlike thing. “There’s… there’s so much blood, Carter. My prince is gone, so I have to become a mermaid now. I’m going to sleep forever at the bottom of the ocean…” A theatrical pause. “When you look at the sea, will you think of me?” His voice trembled. “Chloe, baby, tell me where you are. I’ll come watch the sea with you, okay? Just… don’t do anything reckless. I’m on my way. I’ll be right there.” He hung up, his gaze falling on me, already clouded with that familiar, pre-emptive apology. “Chloe’s not stable. I have to go.” “The wedding,” he added, a pathetic afterthought. “We can do it another time, right?” “No.” The word was ripped from my throat. I grabbed the sleeve of his tuxedo, oblivious to the sea of curious, judging eyes in the pews below. My control finally shattered. “Is there no other goddamn therapist in the world? Why is it that every single time we try to get married, she decides to kill herself?” I was pleading now, my voice cracking. “This is the ninety-ninth time, Carter. Have you ever considered that maybe a different doctor would be better for her treatment?” The warmth in his dark eyes vanished, replaced by a steely glint. His handsome mouth, the one I had loved to kiss, pressed into a thin, unforgiving line. He looked at me as if I were the one being unreasonable. Chloe was his sacred ground. You couldn’t criticize her. You couldn’t even touch the subject. 2 I couldn’t stop thinking about the first time I met her. She had stolen a necklace Carter had made for me by hand. Before I could even process my anger, Carter had stepped in front of her, a human shield. “It’s the depression,” he’d explained, his voice low and serious. “It can manifest as kleptomania. Don’t be angry with her, Alice.” He’d offered a placating smile. “I’ll make you another one, exactly the same. Since she likes this one so much, just let her have it, okay?” I opened my mouth to say that you can’t make two handmade things exactly the same. I wanted to ask, And what if she decides she likes you, Carter? Am I supposed to just let her have you, too? But the words wouldn’t come out. How could I, a perfectly healthy person, argue with someone who was sick? It felt cruel. Later, while Carter was upstairs getting her anti-depressants, Chloe, whose features were an uncanny, softer echo of my own, shot me a look of pure triumph. “You’re just a cheap substitute, you know,” she’d said, her voice dripping with condescending sweetness. “He only picked you because he can’t cross that line with me. He’d never forgive himself if he touched me.” She giggled, a light, airy sound that was completely at odds with her diagnosis. “He studied psychology for me. I’ll always be number one in his heart. You can’t compete with that. Ever.” Looking at her then, I finally understood why Carter had pursued me with such single-minded intensity, claiming love at first sight. I managed a polite, tight smile. “Of course,” I said, my own voice gentle as I reminded her of the one barrier she couldn’t overcome. “After all, you’re his sister. Legally.” As long as they were siblings on paper, as long as Carter’s rigid, old-money father was alive, there was no universe in which he would permit a relationship between them. The first thing Mr. Hayes had done when he found Chloe’s embarrassingly florid love letters to Carter was to try and force her to officially change her last name to Hayes. She’d fought back with hunger strikes, sleeping pills, a dramatic leap into the ocean—anything to resist. The old man was immovable. The stalemate only broke when Carter introduced me into the picture. For a family like the Hayeses, appearances were everything. Chloe’s triumphant expression curdled. In an instant, her mood snapped. She snatched a water glass from the coffee table and hurled it down. It shattered with a percussive crack, sending shards flying. Several splinters embedded themselves in the back of her hand, drawing long, crimson lines. I flinched back, startled. But Chloe didn’t even seem to feel it. She just smiled, a wide, wild grin. “Guess who he’s going to blame for not taking good care of me?” 3 A moment later, panicked footsteps thundered down the stairs. Carter rushed into the room and shoved me aside so hard I stumbled and fell. “Why weren’t you watching her?” He scooped Chloe into his arms, carefully setting her down on the sofa before starting to tend to her hand. His eyes, cold with fury, were locked on me. “Do you have any idea how serious this is? She’s severely depressed. She could have a suicidal episode at any moment.” My own palm, which had hit the floor, was stinging from the glass fragments embedded in it. But I didn’t dare say a word, terrified of setting Chloe off again. She, in turn, wrapped her arms around Carter’s neck, burying her face in his chest and starting to sob in a breathy, childish way. The sound was laced with a victory I was sure only I could hear. “Carter, it hurts… It hurts so much.” He sighed, and the look he gave her was pure, undiluted sympathy. He gently wiped a tear from her cheek, then took her injured hand and brought it to his lips, softly blowing on the cuts. “There, all better. You’re being so brave.” He never once looked down to see the blood pooling around my own hand on the floor. I told myself it was okay. She was the patient. It was natural for him to give her more attention. But it was always Chloe. Over and over. Ninety-nine times she staged a suicide attempt. Ninety-nine times he abandoned me for her. He left me on deserted mountain roads, in blinding blizzards on the interstate, on the shoulder of a highway with cars screaming past, in the middle of nowhere late at night, and here, now, at the altar of yet another wedding that would never happen. Because of Chloe’s depression, I never had the right to say no. This time, I couldn’t give in. I just couldn’t. I held onto his sleeve, my knuckles white, refusing to let go. The System’s warning from the night before echoed in my mind. If Carter abandons you for Chloe one more time, the mission will be classified as a failure. You will be terminated. To give me a fighting chance, the System had also let me in on a secret: Chloe was faking it. She would never actually kill herself. Carter’s face was a mask of anxiety. “She’s my sister, Alice. I can’t just ignore her.” He lowered his voice, trying to reason with me. “And I’m her doctor. I have a professional responsibility. We can get married any other day, but if something happens to her today… I’ll never forgive myself.” He squeezed my arm. “I promise you, next time, it will be perfect.” I shook my head, my throat raw. “Carter, if you walk out that door, there won’t be a next time.” His patience finally snapped. He pried my fingers from his arm, his touch rough. His brow furrowed, his voice dropping to an icy whisper. “I am going to marry you, and I am going to save Chloe. The two are not mutually exclusive. Why do you have to be so stubborn?” His voice rose slightly. “This is a life-or-death situation. Are you really going to be this irrational right now?” The air froze. I could feel the mocking stares of our guests from every direction. I opened my mouth to tell him. She’s faking it, Carter. She’s not going to die. But the words wouldn’t form. The System had been clear: telling him its secrets was cheating. I tried again, desperate. If you leave, I’m the one who’s going to die. Before I could speak, his phone rang again. He answered, his voice instantly softening as he murmured reassurances to Chloe. Then, without another glance at me, he turned and walked away. A cold, mechanical voice filled my head. “Host, you have failed the mission.” “You are now free to choose your method of death.” “Upon termination, you will be returned to your original world.” Go back? Suddenly, it didn’t sound so bad. In my real life, I was sick, chronically ill, but at least I had my mother. A mother who loved me. In this world, aside from a healthy body I was about to lose, I had nothing. I considered my options. “Okay,” I transmitted to the System. “Let me develop real, severe clinical depression. And let me die at Carter’s hands.” If I had to die anyway, I wanted him—the expert psychologist—to see what the real thing looked like. And it looked nothing like Chloe. 4 After Carter left, the wedding reception devolved into chaos. Normally, I would have forced a smile, played the gracious hostess, and endured the pitying and scornful looks from our guests. Not today. I stood there, a statue in white, and watched Carter’s stepmother round on his father, her voice shrill. “Are you trying to drive her to her death? You know how much Chloe loves him!” she shrieked. “If anything happens to my daughter, I swear I’ll die too! Then we’ll see what’s more important—your precious family name or me and Chloe!” She shot a venomous glare in my direction. “You shameless bitch.” Then she stormed out, as if I were the other woman who had come between Carter and Chloe. The irony was suffocating. She was the one who’d had the affair, the one who’d ruthlessly driven Carter’s real mother to her death. But that, too, was a secret from the System. I couldn’t tell him. God, what I wouldn’t give to see the look on his face if he knew the beloved stepsister he’d coddled his whole life was the daughter of his mother’s killer. Mr. Hayes sighed, stepping toward me and patting my hand. “I’m sorry you have to go through this. Chloe’s illness… it will get better one day. You just have to be patient.” I numbly pulled my hand away and nodded, feeling nothing. Carter had said the same words to me a hundred times. Be patient. Don’t hold it against a sick person. I used to feel anger, grief, despair. Today, I felt nothing. The System had explained it. This is what severe depression does. It robs you of normal human emotion, strips away your will to live, and leaves you with nothing but endless pain and the unwavering resolve to die. “But if Chloe’s depression is so different from mine,” I asked the System, “how could a professional psychologist like Carter not see she was faking it?” There was a long pause before it answered. “Who says he couldn’t see it?” The air left my lungs. If Carter knew all along… then her “depression” was just an excuse. An excuse to spoil her without limits, to force me to yield to her again and again, to allow her to cross every conceivable line with him without consequence. It’s not the lies that kill you. It’s the truth. My chest felt like it was being pricked by a thousand tiny needles. I walked out of the chaos, through the gossiping crowds, and went home in a daze. I signed the organ donor forms, swallowed an entire bottle of sleeping pills, and curled up under the covers, waiting. Soon, I’d be with my mom again. The truth is, people who truly want to die do it quietly. They don’t broadcast it to the world like Chloe did. They just slip away. 5 The phone rang, dragging me from the deepening fog. I answered. Chloe’s cheerful, singsong voice came through the line. “Carter, what brand is your mattress? It’s so comfortable.” Of course. She was in our marital home. In our wedding bed. A bed I had never even slept in. A wave of nausea churned in my stomach. “Your sister-in-law picked it out,” Carter’s voice replied, distant. “I don’t know. Don’t lie on it, Chloe. Alice hasn’t even used it yet. She’d be upset.” “Carter,” Chloe purred, “have you ever slept with her?” A long, damning silence. Then, his honest answer. “No.” “Hee hee,” she giggled. “I knew you didn’t love that clingy bitch. If you really loved her, you wouldn’t have been able to keep your hands off her for this long, would you?” My mind drifted back through a haze of memories. So many times we’d been lost in the moment, skin on skin, on the verge of going all the way. And every single time, Carter would pull back, breathing heavily, stroking my hair and whispering that he wanted to save the most precious memory for our wedding night. I thought it was because he cherished me. It turns out he was saving himself for Chloe. I was about to hang up, disgusted, when I heard it. The unmistakable sound of a kiss, followed by a soft gasp. Chloe’s voice was breathy, broken. “Carter… please… don’t push me away again… If you do, I think… I think my depression will come back and I’ll want to jump off the balcony.” Carter’s normally cool voice was husky. “Chloe, I’m getting married. I can only be your brother. Do you understand?” “Stop lying to yourself,” she murmured. “You decorated this whole apartment to my tastes.” It was true. We had fought endlessly over the decor. Our aesthetics were polar opposites. Exhausted from the arguments, I had finally given in and told him to just do it his way. I never imagined his way was Chloe’s. “Carter, I dare you,” she whispered, her voice a challenge. “Touch my heart, right here, and swear you’ve never had a single improper thought about me. If you can swear it, I promise I’ll never bother you again.” She took a deep, theatrical breath, waiting for her victory. And on my end of the line, so was I. I needed to know. For five years, had I been nothing more than her stand-in? The answer came in the form of a long, heavy silence that crushed the last flicker of hope in my chest. All those moments I had treasured, all that manufactured magic… it was all just me, fooling myself. Chloe’s voice, now a sultry whisper, shattered the quiet. “Let me be your first, Carter. Please? I want to see what you’re like when you finally let go…” His response was a weak protest. “Stop it! This is my marital home!” “Doesn’t that just make it more exciting?” she purred. Listening to them, my mind spiraled. All those nights he’d left me to rush to her side… what had they been doing? An involuntary, wrenching dry heave escaped my throat. I don’t know if I imagined it, but I could have sworn I heard Chloe let out a soft, triumphant laugh. As if to say, I win. Again. Suddenly, Carter’s voice was in a panic. “Alice? Alice, listen to me, it’s not what you think!” A bitter, hopeless laugh escaped me. “Then what is it?!” “It’s a long story. Stay there. I’m coming to you right now, I’ll explain everything—” “Get lost,” I spat, my voice thick with revulsion. “Don’t you dare come near me.” Before he could reply, I used the last of my strength to end the call and block his number. The cold was spreading through my limbs now. My eyelids felt impossibly heavy. The world dissolved into a welcoming darkness. I saw my mother, as if from a childhood memory, wearing her slightly faded apron, standing at the entrance to our old alleyway. She was waving, her voice soft and warm. “Sweetheart, come inside now. Time to wash up for dinner.” … Just before I lost consciousness completely, I heard a frantic pounding on the door. “Alice! Open the door! I swear, there’s a reasonable explanation for everything!” It was Carter’s voice. Too late.
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