Chapter 2: Shattered and Silenced

She only had me.

But our secret didn’t last long.

After all, someone with two opposite personalities will always leave traces, no matter how careful you try to be.

Lillian’s stepmother told her father she’d seen Lillian talking to herself in the mirror.

Her stepbrother told her father she’d held a sewing needle and tried to hurt him.

Teachers at school reported that classmates said Lillian sometimes seemed like a different person—sometimes gentle and quiet, sometimes cold and unfeeling.

This was a huge embarrassment for Lillian’s father, who cared about appearances above all else. He slapped Lillian, splitting her lip. “How did I raise such a freak?”

Before we were taken to a private psychiatric hospital, Lillian’s stepmother leaned against the door, smiling smugly. “Oh, I picked this hospital carefully, Lillian. Don’t be afraid. When you’re cured, you can come home.”

The private hospital’s method was to use convulsive electroshock therapy as “treatment.” They called it therapy. It was torture.

I was trapped inside Lillian, unable to come out, forced to watch as they electrocuted her.

We tried pretending I was gone, tried to fool them, but they always figured it out.

They forced her to look in the mirror while she convulsed and foamed at the mouth, delirious, demanding she name who was present.

They starved her for two days, then placed a strawberry cupcake and milk in front of her, promising she could eat if she erased me.

They deprived her of sleep, flipping the thermostat from freezing to sweltering.

They weren’t treating her—they were torturing her.

I told Lillian to give up, to cooperate and erase me.

But the timid girl, from somewhere, found the will to curl up, battered and bruised, in that huge empty room, hugging herself tightly—as if she was hugging me, as if this way, she wouldn’t feel cold or afraid anymore.

She bit her lips until they bled. That girl who once cried every night after being kidnapped now stubbornly refused to shed a single tear.

She said, “I won’t abandon you, Quinn. I won’t let you disappear. We promised—we’d never be apart.”

“This time, I’ll protect you.”

Finally, on the night she almost died from electric shock, I forced myself to fade away.

Before I left, I told Lillian:

“I’m just leaving for a while, Lillian. Don’t be afraid. Walk forward bravely and with confidence.”