21. Jace

Jace had a terrible day yesterday, a terrible night, and was now having a truly terrible morning.

Before being reborn, he had been chased out of his home and had to live by working in a supermarket.

He could not express how much hatred he felt as the days passed.

From being everybody's darling to living a middle-class life, he truly hated Lance. Everything was not as it should be.

He had been told since childhood that he was a substitute. He was aware that his father had found a child resembling his son, solely to pull his mother out of depression.

His mother had no idea that he was not her biological son. He played his role according to the script provided by his adoptive father. Over time, he learned to genuinely love at least his mother; he also began to develop the need to prove himself to his father.

He loved his school; he loved the lifestyle; everything about it. Jace often thought, inevitably, that it would be perfect if he were truly Lance. After a few years, he wondered, 'Maybe I am Lance?'

He didn't remember much of his childhood in a random slum.

'Perhaps I have always been Lance; then I was kidnapped and got lost. My father found me but had his reasons for lying to me?' Several variations of this thought wandered through his mind for years.

He constantly stared at Lance's childhood pictures, finding himself increasingly similar to the kid. He examined photos on the beach and searched for similar moles, finding a few—but he had grown, so naturally, they could not be in the exact same place. His eyes were the same blue as Lance's; just because of a picture taken by an old camera, they had a gray hue.

Besides, how many people possessed such piercing eye color? Not many. It all made sense.

And someday, he truly believed it. He was convinced and let go of his worries, living honestly as Lance. He was Lance. And then came the day. The day when he returned from interning at his father's company, he saw a messed-up student in his class.

He had seen so many photos, had examined all the damn moles; he knew the moment he looked into those goddamn light gray eyes. Then, come on, they really shared the same surname. Many times, he told his classmates that it was just a coincidence, but who would believe that?

They were said to first look like cousins, later like brothers, and after that, they 'looked like twins'. Some fool even said that it would be possible for them to have been swapped as children, being the real-life true and false sons of the common novel trope. It was so damn near the truth; he felt torn apart.

Already on the first day Jace saw him, he had hired a private detective to find out everything about this guy. He couldn't stop laughing when he saw the results of the investigation. He had thought this guy just had a strange disease because of the sweating, but he was not only a junkie; he was also a victim of rape! And the cherry on top was that he was assaulted by men.

'Oh my goodness, thank you for this,' he had said to the ceiling.

Then, a few months later, he grew bold and meekly presented the documents to his father. He knew he couldn't keep it a secret forever, and one year was already the limit.

So he had to confess first about Lance being in his school, in his class. He told his father.

But he had apparently lived his life in vain.

He had underestimated his father's love for his mother. And he had underestimated his mother's love for her son.

Father Walker knew that Mother Walker loved Jace with all her heart. But he also knew that she had some doubt about him being truly their son.

She would never find true peace if he did not let her reunite with her real son.

So after nearly a year of helping Lance withdraw from his addiction, they did just that, and in doing so, Jace had accelerated his inevitable demise.