Chapter 2

The first few weeks were a blur of cheap motel rooms and instant noodles. The memory of my family' s betrayal was a constant, dull ache in my chest. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw their faces from that last dinner, a grotesque portrait of greed and manipulation. My father' s cold command, my mother' s false sympathy, Noah' s smug victory. The scenes played on a loop, a private torment that fueled my resolve. I had to survive, I had to get stronger.

I found a small, dingy room to rent in a part of the city I had never been to before. The landlord didn' t ask for references. He just wanted the cash up front. It was perfect. I was a ghost, and this was a ghost' s life. I needed to stay invisible, especially from them. They thought I had just run off in a fit of teenage angst. They would never think to look for me here.

My plan was simple, born from the bitter knowledge of my past life. In that life, while struggling through menial jobs, I had taught myself to code. I had a natural talent for it, a logical mind that found comfort in the clean, unforgiving rules of programming. I had even developed a few small applications, but I never had the capital or the confidence to take them further.

This time, I knew exactly which ideas had potential. I knew which sectors of the tech industry were about to explode. I had a roadmap to a future they couldn't even imagine, let alone steal.

I needed a computer. Most of my savings went to a used laptop from a pawn shop. It was slow and clunky, but it worked. I also needed an income, something to pay for my room and food while I worked on my real projects. I found a job washing dishes at a greasy diner. The hours were long, the pay was terrible, and the smell of old grease clung to me long after my shift ended. But it was anonymous work. No one cared who I was, as long as the dishes were clean.

During the day, I scraped burnt food off plates and mopped sticky floors. At night, I sat in my tiny room, the glow of the laptop screen illuminating my face, and I coded. I wrote lines of code until my fingers were stiff and my eyes burned. The anger was always there, a low hum beneath the surface. It was there when I saw a happy family walk into the diner, laughing together. It was there when I overheard conversations about college and future plans.

I remembered my parents' words so clearly. "You' re better with books," my mother had said. "Noah is the one who will build connections." The memory was sharp, a jab of pain. They saw me as a quiet, socially awkward boy, a tool to be used and discarded. They never saw the fire inside me, the ambition I kept carefully hidden. They thought I was weak. They were wrong.

This solitude, this hardship, it wasn't a punishment. It was a forge. Every exhausting shift, every lonely night, was chipping away at the naive boy I used to be, hardening me into the man I needed to become. I was shedding my old skin, the one that craved their approval, and building a new one made of purpose and cold, hard determination.

The house I grew up in was a place of constant subtle pressure. It was in the way my mother would praise Noah for the smallest achievement while my academic awards were met with a brief nod. It was in the way my father would discuss future business plans with Noah, even when he was just a teenager, while I was told to "focus on my studies." They were grooming him, preparing him for a life of success, a life they intended to build on my back.

Now, working at the diner, I learned a different kind of communication. The short, clipped orders from the cook, the tired nods from the other kitchen staff. It was a world away from my family' s passive-aggressive manipulations. Here, things were simple. You did your job, you got paid. There were no hidden agendas, no emotional games. In a strange way, it was liberating.

I was building my first application, a simple but effective data management tool for small businesses. I knew from my past life that there was a huge market for affordable, user-friendly software like this. I wasn' t trying to build a giant corporation overnight. I was laying the first brick.

My days fell into a grueling rhythm. Work, eat, code, sleep. Repeat. I was often exhausted, my body aching from the physical labor and my mind tired from hours of concentration. There were moments of doubt, dark hours in the middle of the night when the loneliness felt overwhelming and the goal seemed impossibly far away. In those moments, I would pull out the memory of their betrayal. I would picture Noah at that prestigious university, living my dream, and the anger would return, sharp and clear, burning away the doubt.

It was a lonely existence. I had no friends, no one to talk to. The other workers at the diner were ghosts like me, people on the margins, too caught up in their own struggles to notice anyone else. But I preferred it this way. Attachments were a weakness I couldn't afford. My only companion was the hum of the old laptop, a steady presence in the quiet of my room. It was the sound of my future being built, one line of code at a time.