After My Little Brother Was Born, I Was Sent to the Countryside at Five

When I was five, my younger brother's arrival meant our family was fined for having an extra child.

Mom wanted to keep my older sister by her side, so she cruelly left me behind in the countryside.

For the next six years, I endured my cousins' exclusion and Grandma's cold stares.

Even eating an egg was a luxury.

So I became cautious and quiet.

When I was eleven, they brought me home, but my parents said I was cold-hearted and had grown distant from them.

I felt like a stranger who had intruded on this family of four.