My Family Treated Me Like A Hidden Criminal

The first thing the doctor said when he walked out of the delivery room was a warning.

This child has the XYY syndrome. The 'super male' gene. There is a high risk of aggressive and violent tendencies. You need to keep a very close eye on him.

From that day on, I was handed off to a nanny.

I became the ticking time bomb of the family. A potential criminal living under their roof.

If my older brother tripped, if a vase shattered in the hallway, even if a stray animal was found dead on the street corner, I was the first and only suspect.

My mother would always look at me with cold eyes and say, "Genetics don't lie. We have to guard against you."

So, my bedroom was rigged with security cameras. To prevent me from "hurting" anyone, my parents forbade me from playing with kids my own age.

This lasted until the night of my brother's acceptance party. He had just gotten into an Ivy League university. Relatives filled the house, raising their glasses in celebration.

And I accidentally dropped a porcelain soup bowl.

My father exploded. He grabbed me by the collar and dragged me toward the balcony.

"I have put up with you for eighteen years! On the best day of your brother's life, you just had to cause a scene, didn't you?"

"If your genes dictate that you're a monster..."

He threw the balcony windows open, pointing out at the dizzying drop from the sixteenth floor.

"Then I should just drop you right now! End it before you actually murder someone and ruin this family forever!"

The freezing night wind howled through the open window. I looked down at the tiny, ant-like cars on the street below, and suddenly, everything made sense.

My original sin wasn't my genetics. It was being born into this family.

My father's laughter had been the loudest all night, his cheeks flushed from the expensive wine.

He had his arm wrapped tightly around my brother's shoulders, his face glowing with absolute pride.

"Double the blessings for our family today!"

"Connor got into a top-tier university. He's going to do incredible things!"

"Ross, you really know how to raise a genius."

I was sitting in the darkest corner of the dining room. In front of me was a bowl of plain white rice and a few wilted greens.

The sound of the soup bowl shattering against the rug wasn't actually that loud.

Just like every other sound I had made in this house over the past eighteen years, it was quiet enough to be ignored.

But because the sound came from me, to my father, it was a deafening crack of thunder.

Instantly, all the chatter in the room died.

My father turned his head. His gaze shifted from Connor to me.

In a fraction of a second, the warmth in his eyes froze into solid ice.

"Riley, you did that on purpose, didn't you?"

His voice was terrifyingly calm.

Before I could blink, his fist was twisted in the collar of my shirt. The fabric dug into my throat, choking me.

He dragged me across the living room. One of my slippers fell off, abandoned on the carpet.

He kicked the balcony doors open.

The glass reflected my ghostly pale face. The wind at this altitude was like a barrage of icy knives.

He shoved me hard against the metal railing. Half of my body was pushed out over the sickening drop.

The people and cars below were nothing but black specks in the abyss.

My father roared directly into my ear.

"You're always wearing that miserable look on your face! Always trying to drag this family down!"

"I have tolerated you for eighteen years! We installed cameras for eighteen years! We lived in fear for eighteen years! Do you know how exhausting that is?!"

"And today, of all days, you have to curse your brother's success?"

"If you're destined to be a murderer, if you're going to kill me, or your mother, or your brother one day, then maybe you should just fall right now!"

"Dad, stop!"

Connor rushed onto the balcony, desperately grabbing our father's arm. "Let go of her! You're going to drop her!"

"Let him fall!"

My mother's voice pierced through the wind.

I painfully turned my head. She was standing at the edge of the balcony, gripping the doorframe, her face completely drained of color.

"Let him drop."

Connor froze, staring at her in horror. "Mom?!"

"I said let him drop!"

She suddenly began to scream hysterically. "I am so sick of this! I can't take it anymore!"

She ran toward us, but not to pull me back.

She grabbed my father's arm and tried to push my weight further over the edge.

"Riley, I am begging you," she sobbed, her hands shoving against my chest. "Just let go. If you fall, we can all finally be free..."

"You always say there's no point in living! You always say we don't love you!"

"Fine, I admit it! I don't love you!"

"I have hated you since the second you were born! I hate that you're a monster! I hate that you couldn't just be a normal child!"

Her manicured nails dug deep into the flesh of my arm.

It stung.

But it was nothing compared to the agony ripping through my chest.

I looked at them.

I looked at my father's bloodshot eyes, my mother's tear-streaked face, and Connor desperately trying to pull them away.

I looked back down at the tiny ants crawling in the street far below.

Suddenly, I wasn't afraid anymore.

Instead of tensing my muscles to fight gravity, I went entirely limp, leaning into the force of my father's hands.

My entire dead weight shifted outward.

My father stumbled.

I slipped over the railing, my body suspended over nothing but thin air.

If he let go right now, I would plummet sixteen stories and splatter against the pavement.

But I didn't care anymore. I closed my eyes and accepted my fate.

Seeing me surrender, the disgust on my parents' faces instantly morphed into raw panic.

My father used every ounce of strength in his body to haul me backward. The veins in his neck bulged, his face turning a deep, suffocated purple.

The death I was waiting for never came. I collapsed onto the cold tiles of the balcony.

The second I opened my eyes, a heavy slap cracked across my face.

"You little psychopath! You want to ruin my life and turn me into a murderer?!"

"If you want to die, go do it somewhere nobody has to look at you! Stop begging for attention!"

"Your mother and I are good, honest people. How did we ever produce a vicious mutation like you?"

"Get back to your room! Don't you dare step one inch out of the camera's view!"

My mother's face hovered over me, her eyes filled with nothing but resentment and disgust.

I didn't dare fight back. I quietly picked myself up and walked to my room.

The red light of the security camera blinked from the corner, a cold mechanical eye ensuring I had nowhere to hide.

Like I always did, I crawled into the bottom of my wardrobe, the only place I felt safe. I wrapped my arms tightly around my knees and curled into a ball.

The house eventually went quiet. I cried until I drifted into a heavy, exhausted sleep.

I didn't know how much time had passed when a thick, unnatural heat woke me up. Smoke was silently filling the enclosed space.

By the time I pushed the wardrobe doors open, black smog had completely swallowed my room.

The house was on fire.

The heat was unbearable. Blazing tongues of fire danced just outside my door, devouring everything in their path.

I panicked and ran for the window. I could climb down the fire escape. But right as I reached the glass, a thought hit me.

Connor's university acceptance letter was still in the living room.

If it burned to ashes, my parents would be furious...

I just wanted to prove to them that I wasn't a bad person. I wasn't born evil.

Taking a deep breath, I turned back around and threw myself into the burning hallway.

I found the heavy envelope, but the fire had grown too wild. The ceiling collapsed, blocking my way out.

The flames licked at my cheeks. The sickening smell of burning hair filled my nose.

With nowhere left to run, I dragged myself back into my bedroom and threw myself into the wardrobe, clutching Connor's acceptance letter tightly to my chest.

I prayed someone would see the smoke and put out the fire.

But with every breath, my throat felt like it was being sliced open by razor blades.

My lungs were being crushed. My vision blurred into a dark, hazy tunnel.

Right before I completely lost consciousness, one final thought drifted through my mind.

If there is a next life, I don't want to be their child anymore. And I don't want these cursed genes.

The next second, my body felt incredibly light.

I floated up through the flames, leaving the burning house behind, and materialized right beside my parents.

They were sitting in the VIP lounge of a luxury hotel.

Everyone was gathered around Connor, laughing and drinking.

Amidst the clinking glasses, an uncle spoke up.

"Ross, hasn't Connor's acceptance letter arrived yet? You said you were going to show it off to everyone tonight. Did you forget?"

My father smiled and nodded. "It should be arriving today."

"Let me call the courier and have him deliver it straight to the hotel. Everyone can get a good look and share in the good luck!"

He put the call on speaker. The courier sounded confused.

"Your package was signed for hours ago, sir."

"Let me check the system. The signature says Riley. Did your kid not tell you?"

My father ended the call and slammed his phone down on the glass table.

"That ungrateful little freak! He must have been so jealous of his brother that he hid the letter just to spite us!"

"Leaving a deranged criminal alone in the house was a mistake. Who knows what kind of sick things he's doing right now!"

"Come on, we're going back to check."

Hearing his words, I desperately wanted to open my mouth and defend myself.

But eighteen years of conditioning kept me entirely silent.

The truth was, I dropped the soup bowl earlier because my hands were shaking with nerves.

The moment I signed for the package, I planned exactly how I was going to give it to Connor.

I wanted to hand it to him myself. I wanted to tell him congratulations, from the bottom of my heart.

I wanted to show them that I hadn't ruined anything. I had protected his most important document.

I, Riley, was never a natural-born criminal. I was never an evil seed.

When my parents and relatives rushed back to our street, the front door was wide open. Inside was nothing but a charred, blackened shell of a home.

The firefighters had just put out the last of the flames and were investigating the source.

The moment my father saw the wreckage, he kicked the scorched wall in absolute fury.

"I knew it! Nothing good ever happens when that psychopath is around!"

"Just to destroy his brother's letter, he burned our entire house to the ground!"

"What kind of unforgivable sin did I commit in my past life to spawn something so purely evil?!"

The relatives whispered among themselves, looking at the devastation in shock.

"This... this was such a nice house. How did it burn down so fast?"

My mother crossed her arms, her voice dripping with cold mockery.

"What else could it be? Riley obviously set the fire on purpose."

"He's been doing sick things like this since he was a kid."

"We underestimated him. He's rotten to his very core. He actually tried to burn the house down!"

The atmosphere grew heavy.

Connor stepped forward, looking nervously at the blackened doorway.

"Mom, Dad... the fire was massive. Do you think Riley is hurt?"

My father let out a harsh sneer.

"If he was hurt, the firefighters would have found him by now. Besides, we left the door unlocked when we left."

"Do you think a cockroach like him would just stand there and let himself burn?"

"He knew he went too far this time, so he ran away like a coward."

Listening to them, I shook my head in the empty air.

Mom, Dad, Connor... I'm right here in the ashes. I didn't burn anything. I'm not a monster.

My mother's face grew darker with every passing second.

"Well, the house is unlivable anyway. The university can issue a replacement letter."

"Connor, I'll transfer some money right now. We'll buy tickets to Hawaii. The three of us will go on a vacation for a week while this gets sorted out."

"Let the police handle the house. Since Riley wants to play the villain, I'm pressing charges. I want him locked up for arson!"

"He belongs in a prison cell before he hurts someone else!"

I watched in silence as they bid farewell to our relatives, packed whatever survived, and boarded a flight to Hawaii.

It felt like a blunt knife was slowly carving my heart out of my chest.

But what they didn't expect was that the moment their plane landed, my father's phone rang. It was the local police department.

"Mr. Ross, we arrived at your residence following a report of the fire."

"We recovered a body from the premises. We cannot confirm the identity yet, but we need you to return immediately to identify the remains."

My father's knuckles turned stark white as his grip tightened on the phone.

Noticing the blood drain from his face, my mother rushed over, asking what was wrong.

The officer's voice continued through the speaker. "The deceased is a female, estimated to be between sixteen and eighteen years of age."

Hearing that, my father let out a massive sigh of relief.

"Officer, you had me worried. My wife and I only have two sons. We don't have a daughter. The body doesn't belong to our family. You'll need to keep investigating."

"Who knows, maybe that psycho Riley kidnapped some poor girl and did something unspeakable to her before he ran."

He hung up the phone. For the next week, they took Connor to every beautiful beach and resort on the island.

It wasn't until a full seven days later that the family of three finally returned to the city.

The moment they unlocked their temporary apartment, the police were waiting for them.

"Ross and Martha, there are a few glaring discrepancies in this case. We need you to come to the station and cooperate with the investigation."

My parents exchanged a confused look, dropped their luggage, and followed the officers, bringing Connor along.

In the freezing morgue, the white sheet was pulled back.

The body was burned beyond recognition. Seeing the charred remains, my parents and Connor physically recoiled, looking deeply uncomfortable.

The detective watched their reaction and spoke softly.

"We checked the hallway security cameras. When the fire started, she had already escaped. But for some reason, she turned around and climbed back through the window into the burning apartment."

"When we found her, she was clutching a university acceptance letter to her chest, shielding it from the flames."

My father immediately interjected, "That sick freak Riley must have tricked this poor girl! He essentially murdered her!"

My mother's face twisted in anger. "Have you still not caught Riley yet?"

The detective frowned, looking at them in absolute bewilderment.

"The deceased is Riley. We ran a DNA test. The genetic match to the two of you is 99.99%."

"We called you down here to identify the body, but also to ask a very important question. Why was Riley a biological female, but registered on all her legal documents as a male?"

In that exact moment, every drop of blood vanished from my mother's face.

Her jaw parted as if she wanted to speak, but not a single sound came out.

My father's expression cracked, piece by piece, like shattering glass.

"Impossible!"

He heard his own voice echo in the sterile room. It sounded like a stranger.

"The doctor told me himself! The child had the XYY syndrome! The super-male gene! A high risk of violent tendencies!"

"Only males can have the XYY gene! That's why we knew Riley was a boy!"

The detective looked at them with profound pity. He didn't say anything for a long time.

Finally, he spoke.

"Ross, Martha... we verified the hospital records from eighteen years ago."

They slowly raised their heads.

"The doctor's diagnosis wasn't wrong. There was a child with the XYY gene."

The detective paused. "But you must have misremembered, or you were too panicked to listen carefully."

"The doctor was talking about your oldest son. He is the one with the XYY gene."

The air in the room completely solidified.

My parents slowly, mechanically, turned their heads to look at Connor.

Connor stood completely paralyzed, his eyes wide with shock, his face as pale as a ghost.

Suddenly, my father lunged forward and snatched the autopsy report from the detective's hands. His eyes drilled into the black ink.

Relationship: Direct biological parent-child probability 99.99%

Then, his eyes dropped to the next line.

Biological Sex: Female

He stared at that single word for an eternity. My mother couldn't take the silence anymore. She snatched the paper from his trembling hands and looked down.

She began to shake her head violently, her perfectly styled hair falling into a messy tangle around her face.

"No... no! Riley is a boy! He's my son!"

But she couldn't finish the sentence. Her voice cracked and died in her throat.

The detective gently placed an evidence bag on the metal table. "This was the only item we recovered fully intact from the scene."

"It was lucky she kept it inside a metal tin. The contents survived the heat."

He placed a rusted, scorched cookie tin in front of them.

My mother stared at it. Her trembling hands reached out and pried the lid open.

Inside rested a small, palm-sized notebook.

The light blue cover was stained with soot and the edges were curled from the heat. But the pages inside were perfectly preserved. The handwriting was clear.

Starting from the day I learned how to write, my childish, clumsy words filled the pages, tracking my life up until the very end.

[What does it mean to be a bad seed? What is a natural-born criminal? Why do Mom and Dad always call me that... Am I really different from the other kids?]

[Today is my birthday. I saw other kids get special noodles on their birthdays. I wanted to make some for myself, but I made a mess in the kitchen. Dad came home and beat me. He said I was maliciously trying to ruin his day. But I wasn't. I just wanted birthday noodles, Dad.]

[Connor got the highest grade in his class, so Dad was really happy and took us to McDonald's. I didn't do anything, but Dad heard another kid in the restaurant lost a toy. He forced me to get on my knees and apologize. But I didn't steal it! Why won't Dad believe me?!]

[I bled so much today. I thought I was dying. People say only bad guys get punished. Am I really a monster? Is God punishing me?]

[The school nurse saw the blood on my pants and gave me a pad. She said it's not a punishment. It's a period. She said I'm a girl! I'm not a monster!]

[I finally got the courage to tell Mom. But Mom said I was a pathological liar. She said: "Have you no shame? You would make up a lie like this just to make us like you? You are a boy, the doctor said so! You're just a late bloomer, stop making sick excuses!"]

Reading that line, my mother clamped her hands over her mouth, letting out a suffocated, agonizing wail.