The mental washing lasted five years.
In those five years, I was little more than a puppet.
Well, nearly a puppet—to my father's design.
He trained me to be emotionless, to analyze people's thoughts and behaviors quickly and without hesitation.
For the first three years, I didn't understand what he wanted. I still dreamed of fatherly love.
But he was cruel.
Especially when he drank.
He would hit my mother, and when I tried to stop him, he attacked me.
My back carries the scars. Old scars—from bottles shattered on me as if they were whips.
When I was ten, he went too far.
My mother arrived to find me nearly lifeless. She thought I had stopped breathing and rushed me to the hospital.
She was no longer the glorious figure she had been five years earlier. She held my hand and cried.
It was at that moment the government returned.
This time, they came for my mother.
They offered the same promises as before—but now, they said they would protect me.
My mother had no choice. She gave me to them, hoping I would have a better life.
They took her to a separate area for her safety.
I didn't know the truth. I thought they had come to save me.
But no.
I was delivered into lessons of espionage, into brainwashing meant to make me the government's pet.
What they didn't realize was that my biological father had already instilled a deeper, more enduring wave of conditioning—learned from the Piao family's diaries.
No matter what techniques they tried, it was nothing more than a suggestion.
It did not break me.
It could not.