Woke Up, I Left Her For Fortune

Chapter 2

My name was Elias Carter. I was the other personality inside this body.

Twenty-two years ago, Elliot Carter was the most invisible orphan in the entire orphanage.

His parents abandoned him when he was little. The reason was brutally simple: he ate one bowl of rice more than his older brothers did. His biological parents decided they simply could not afford to keep him anymore.

Competition inside the orphanage was brutal. Every child there fought for the same limited scraps of resources.

Elliot was soft by nature, timid and gentle, which made him the perfect target for the bigger kids.

Once he started school, his status as an orphan only made things worse. The bullying from his classmates was relentless.

He spent his days in absolute misery, but all he ever did was cry.

He tried telling a teacher once. The teacher brushed him off without even looking up. "They're just playing around with you."

She never once glanced at the blood matted in his hair or the bruises blooming all over his skin.

Then came the day Elliot got cornered in the classroom after school by his deskmate, a heavyset boy. The rest of the class had already cleared out. A group of older, physically developed boys were about to beat him senseless.

That was the exact moment I opened my eyes inside this body for the very first time.

"Someone help me." Elliot was crying.

The heavyset boy heard him and exchanged a look with the others, his face twisting into a sneer. "Nobody's coming to help you. You're an orphan. No mom, no dad. I could beat you to death, and nobody would care."

He grabbed a chair and raised it over his head.

Despair flooded Elliot's face.

I spoke softly. "It's okay. I'm here."

His face went white with terror, and he screamed inside his own mind. "Is this a ghost? Who are you? Why is there suddenly a voice in my head?"

I smiled. "I'm you too. I'm your second personality."

He fainted right on cue.

I took over the body.

I was nothing like Elliot. I was not afraid of dying. I did not care about my own life.

That afternoon, I bit down on the fat boy's hand like a rabid animal.

I clamped my jaw shut until my mouth filled with the taste of iron. He screamed his head off and hammered his fist against my skull, but I did not let go.

Right before he passed out from the pain, I spat out a mouthful of blood and smiled at him. "Next time, I'll bite through your throat."

The other kids were so terrified they fell to the ground.

That incident got all of us written up by the school.

I never had to pay a single cent in compensation. Every piece of evidence pointed to the fact that the fat kid and his gang had cornered me with the intent to assault.

But nobody ever bullied Elliot again.

Bullies felt pain too. The moment I showed them I was willing to die, they learned to fear getting hurt themselves.

After the fat kid got out of the hospital, he would start shaking the second he saw me. He took the long way around every time. He never dared to look Elliot in the eye again.

When Elliot woke up, he asked me with genuine curiosity, "You're my other personality?"

"Yeah."

"Thank you," he said shyly. "Without you, I think they would have bullied me forever."

My voice came out softer than I expected. "I'll always protect you."

His face lit up with excitement. "You're like my guardian angel. I'm not alone anymore. Someone's actually with me." He had been lonely for so long, so desperately alone, that he accepted the existence of another personality inside him with startling ease.

In the hospital mirror, I saw his clear reflection smiling back at me, his face still marked with ridiculous bruises.

Yes. I was Elliot's protector.

I would always watch over him.

Seeing that smile, I felt something stir inside me.

That smile was the very reason I was born.

But I could not keep him happy forever.

Because while I was trapped in a deep sleep after an accident, he fell in love with Victoria.

Victoria saved him, and he fell for her like a fool.

He gave himself to her completely.

During the three years they were together, there was a constant revolving door of other men around her.

Elliot was never the one Victoria loved most.

Even asleep, I could still feel the waves of his sadness.

Every time Victoria abandoned him somewhere, every time her friends mocked him while she just stood there watching the show, he felt his heart being crushed.

And then came the arranged marriage.

He confronted her in tears. "What about me? What were these years we spent together?"

Victoria threw a check in his face. Her voice was ice. "Let's part on good terms."

On the night Victoria announced her engagement, Elliot lost his footing and fell down the stairs.

He did not want to face the fact that the woman he loved was about to marry someone else. So he slipped away into unconsciousness.

I woke up.

I took over the body.