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 conditioning—an imprint that came from years of meticulous, merciless shaping, 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.
Because I was already broken.
I was not normal. I had never been normal.
Every attempt to instill obedience, every lesson, every subtle manipulation—they landed on a mind that was already a battlefield, already disciplined, already trained to act without hesitation.
Around that time, my appearance began to change.
When I was younger, I had looked more like my mother. Softer features. Warmer. Something human.
But as I grew, that resemblance faded.
My hair darkened into a deep, pitch-black shade.
My eyes—bright green, clear and striking—stood out against it, almost unnatural in contrast.
My features sharpened. My jawline became defined, precise, as if carved with intent.
People began to notice.
They said I was handsome.
That I was beautiful.
That I resembled him.
I hated it.
There were moments I considered destroying my own face. Breaking it. Tearing it apart until nothing of him remained.
But I never did.
Because I knew what would happen if I tried.
Whatever I did to myself, he would do ten times worse to my mother.
So I left it untouched.
Not out of acceptance—
but out of restraint.
I could maintain a semblance of sanity, a conscious self—but when my father commanded, I obeyed. Instantly. Unquestioningly.
That was the foundation.
And that is why I have two personas.
One wears the world's mask, navigating it carefully.
The other carries the core principles drilled into me—principles imposed directly into my consciousness by my father, not suggestions, but unyielding rules that shape who I am.
When they tried to break me, the government's methods were nothing.
Because they weren't fighting me—they were fighting the persona my father had forged.
And that persona could not be broken.