Ficorpio
Chapter 1
Adrian Sterling had come to Northbridge Children’s Home to choose a little sister.
Every girl had crowded around him, praying she would be the one he picked.
Only I had hidden inside the wardrobe and fallen asleep.
I thought I could finally escape the fate I’d endured in my first life: becoming the Sterling family’s foster daughter, only to end up as Adrian Sterling’s wife.
This time, I would live freely and happily.
But when I woke, Adrian Sterling was standing outside the wardrobe door.
He smiled at me and asked, “Claire, will you come home with me?”
When I saw Adrian’s face in front of me, I thought I was still trapped in the nightmare I’d just been having.
It wasn’t until the director called sternly, “Claire Bennett, why were you sleeping in there?” that I came fully awake and realized none of this was a dream.
When I continued standing there in a daze, Helen Carter reached into the wardrobe and pulled me out. She straightened my collar, then ushered me toward the Sterling couple.
“You fell asleep, and Mr. Sterling told us not to wake you,” she explained. “Everyone’s been waiting for you for half an hour.”
Adrian stood in front of his parents, a faint smile resting on his face as he looked at me.
The Adrian Sterling standing before me now was different from the man in my memories, the man who had always treated me with cold indifference.
He greeted me first.
“Hello, Claire.”
I couldn’t explain why, but hearing my name from his lips felt strangely wrong.
I frowned and looked away from him.
A question churned in my mind. They could have chosen any of the other girls. Why had they insisted on waiting for me?
“Why did you wait for me?”
The director bent down to explain.
“They want to adopt you. You’re going to have a home too, Claire. A father, a mother, and an older brother.”
Helen rarely smiled, but she was smiling at me now.
I supposed she was happy for me.
For children from a home like this, being adopted was a blessing.
But Helen didn’t know that I had been given a second chance.
I already knew Adrian would come to Northbridge Children’s Home today to choose a sister. That was why I had deliberately hidden inside the wardrobe.
“Come home with us, Claire?” Margaret Sterling took my hand and spoke gently. “Adrian has always wanted a little sister. From now on, you’ll be his sister.”
The scene was exactly the same as it had been in my first life.
Memory after memory flashed through my mind like slides.
I immediately pulled my hand free and looked up at the director.
“Ms. Carter, I don’t want them to adopt me.”
The moment I said it, everyone stared at me in shock.
Adrian’s reaction was the strongest. His brows drew together.
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to be your sister.”
Although I had rejected him, there was no anger on Adrian’s face.
Chapter 2
Instead, his voice grew even gentler, carrying a faint trace of indulgence that was almost impossible to detect.
“Then don’t be my sister. Just come home with me and live with us. Would that be all right?”
The director gave my sleeve a discreet tug, but she still couldn’t stop me from rejecting Adrian again.
“No.”
I thought Adrian would finally give up.
But when Helen asked the Sterling couple whether they wanted to choose another girl, Adrian suddenly raised his voice.
“Mom, I want her.”
He looked at me with stubborn certainty.
“She’s the only one who looks like my sister.”
In my first life, Adrian Sterling chose me from among dozens of girls because I bore a faint resemblance to his younger sister, Lily.
When I learned that I had been chosen, I thought fate must truly favor me.
The Sterling family brought me home and changed my name to Lily.
They gave me a room of my own in their enormous estate.
Even though that room had never truly belonged to me, I was still satisfied.
“Children from the home are bound to be provincial,” Margaret Sterling said. “They don’t know how to speak or conduct themselves properly.”
So I changed my old habits. Little by little, I became less and less like myself.
Margaret was strict with me.
Every day, I had to practice the piano for more than twelve hours.
Even after my teacher clearly told her that I had no talent for the instrument, Margaret still sat beside me and made me practice every day.
But some things could not be forced.
“I’m sorry, Mom. I still can’t play well.”
Whenever I apologized, Margaret would look at me with even greater tenderness and comfort me.
“It’s all right. As long as you work hard, Claire, you’ll be able to play well someday.”
Only later did I learn that playing the piano had been Lily’s passion.
Margaret treated me that way because she was searching for another person’s shadow in me.
But I didn’t care.
A fish dying of thirst wouldn’t care whether the water it found was clean. As long as it could survive, that was enough.
Water was to a fish what love was to me.
Having it was enough.
I practiced the piano harder. I worked even harder to win Margaret’s affection.
We grew more and more like a real mother and daughter.
Until the night of Adrian’s engagement party.
Someone secretly drugged him, and I happened to burst into his room.
When Richard Sterling saw Adrian and me together, he was so furious that he fainted.
Margaret slapped me across the face.
“I should never have brought you into this family.”
Adrian stared at me in silence, an emotion in his eyes that I couldn’t understand.
But I thought he must have regretted it, too.
Regretted choosing me to be his sister.
“I don’t know what happened. I didn’t drug my brother.”
I tried desperately to explain myself, but no one believed me.
Chapter 3
Later, whenever Adrian betrayed me—whenever he betrayed our marriage—he would say, “You drugged me just to marry your own brother. Everything happening to you now is what you deserve.”
Adrian hated me.
That was why, after we married, he took pleasure in humiliating me in public and making me lose face.
More than a few people in our circle even placed bets on how long our marriage would last.
“A year at most. Once she gives birth, Adrian Sterling will throw her away.”
Unfortunately, the result surprised everyone.
Adrian and I remained tangled together for nineteen years.
Even after I died, my gravestone still bore the words:
Wife of Adrian Sterling.
“Claire, tell me. Why don’t you want the Sterling family to adopt you?”
After Adrian and his parents left, Helen Carter, the director of Northbridge Children’s Home, called me into her office.
I remained silent for a long time before casually offering the first excuse that came to mind.
“I don’t want to leave you and everyone else here.”
The director sighed and urged me to think it over carefully.
I knew she meant well. She wanted me to have a better life in the future.
But I didn’t want to repeat the same mistakes, and I didn’t want anything more to do with Adrian Sterling.
Then a fire broke out that night, destroying every plan I had made.
“Did you start the fire?”
At the hospital, I stared coldly at Adrian Sterling.
“No.” Adrian hurried to explain. “The fire department has already determined that faulty, aging wiring caused it.”
When he finished, he gave a self-mocking laugh.
“Claire, you think too badly of me.”
In this life, Adrian and I had met only two or three times, yet the way he treated me carried an inexplicable familiarity.
“I only want to help you.”
“If you agree to come home with me, I’ll pay all of the director’s medical expenses.”
The fire had broken out at Northbridge Children’s Home the night before. Helen Carter had suffered severe burns because she had gone back to save us.
I let out a cold laugh. “Taking advantage of someone’s misfortune. Does that make you a good person?”
Adrian made no attempt to defend himself. He only said, “Claire, it’s fine if you don’t want to be my sister.”
“You can simply stay with the Sterling family under a foster arrangement.”
He coaxed me patiently, compromising again and again.
That only made me more curious. “Why are you so determined to take me home with you?”
“My mother has been missing her daughter terribly,” Adrian said. “And you look very much like my sister.”
“I want to bring you home to keep her company.”