The Day I Kissed An Older Man

Melody chuckled bitterly.

Lucas felt a pang in his heart. It was an indescribable sensation. There were times when the human heart was simply inexplicable. Before meeting Melody, he could hardly fathom the existence of a mother who did not love her own child.

"Wendy did such terrible things to me, and they never once asked. They only care about her. Why is that? Or maybe I'm just too worthless, so even though I'm my mom's biological daughter, she doesn't like me. It's really exhausting..."

Melody let out a deep sigh and closed her eyes, as if drifting off to sleep. No one but her knew how she wept over her fate.

Lucas did not immediately comfort her. Instead, he looked at her with eyes filled with complexity.

Melody understood that tears only held meaning when shed in front of someone who cared about her. Wendy only had to cry a little for Helen to

one time when Melody missed a step on the stairs and fell down. Her knees were

hurts so

sit on the couch, eating potato chips in front of the TV, not

Melody reached out her arms to Helen when she passed by, hoping

you even go down the stairs properly? You should be

From that moment on, every time she got hurt, Melody did not dare to openly express her pain. She blamed herself, thinking that if she had been more careful, she would not have gotten

causing her to increasingly doubt herself. As she grew older, Melody realized that some

in that kind of environment through her formative years, her feelings of inadequacy and lack of love had become deeply ingrained. She felt like she could never escape from it. She hated her twisted family, despised her perpetually biased parents, and loathed that they exposed everything in front of Lucas, robbing her of the courage to stand beside him with dignity. She would forever be a joke to Lucas because of her family. A family that, at