Once upon a time, there was a girl named Elizabeth. She was born blind and had been adopted by a wealthy family when she was just a baby. Growing up, Elizabeth lived a comfortable life but she always felt like an outsider in her family. She had a younger sister named Daisy who was the apple of her parents' eye. Daisy was the perfect daughter - beautiful, smart, and kind. Elizabeth, on the other hand, was often overlooked and ignored.

When Elizabeth turned 15, a rumor started spreading around their small town. It was said that Elizabeth had tried to push Daisy in front of a bus. Everyone was shocked and began to see Elizabeth as an evil and dangerous person. Her classmates at school started bullying and isolating her, making her life even more difficult. Elizabeth couldn't understand why people would believe such a terrible lie about her. She felt alone and misunderstood. Her adoptive family soon began abusing her.

In her senior year of high school, Elizabeth's vision suddenly started to deteriorate. By the time she graduated, she was completely blind. However, everyone thought she was faking it to gain sympathy and attention. No one believed that she was truly blind and they continued to see her as a manipulative and evil person.

Despite all the hardships she faced, Elizabeth had always held on to hope. She was secretly in love with a boy named Liam, who soon became Daisy's boyfriend. Elizabeth knew that Liam would never love her back, but she couldn't help her feelings. However, Liam always looked down on her and treated her with disdain. He saw her as a threat to his relationship with Daisy.

Years went by and Elizabeth's life became even more complicated. She was constantly judged and ridiculed by society. But little did they know, she was actually a kind and gentle soul. She had never hurt anyone, let alone her own sister.

One fateful day, Liam finally snapped. He believed that Elizabeth was trying to steal Daisy away from him and he couldn't take it anymore. He decided to "protect" Daisy by getting rid of Elizabeth. He killed her, thinking he was doing the right thing. However, in the process, he also killed Niccolò, a man who was in love with Daisy and had always been kind to Elizabeth.

In the end, the truth about Elizabeth's innocence was never revealed.

...****************...

That was a popular fan theory surrounding the book "Daisy Lover's Quest" suggests that the story of Elizabeth Brown, the supposed antagonist, was not accurately portrayed.

It is believed that the real villain of the story was actually Daisy and Liam, the main characters who were deemed unoriginal and boring. However, the author chose to portray Elizabeth as the evil force, leaving little detail about her character. This overused trope has been criticized, with many fans believing that the writer was misguided in making Daisy and Liam the main focus instead of the more intriguing characters of Niccolò and Elizabeth.

However, I am one of those people who believe that Elizabeth was misjudged. She was my favorite character from the start, and I felt heartbroken when I discovered she was the villainess of the story. Her only "crime" was falling in love with the wrong person, just like Niccolò.

...****************...

I was always an outcast, mistreated by everyone in my life. My parents didn't understand me, my classmates bullied me, and even my friends betrayed me. But through it all, I found solace in the pages of "Daisy Lover's Quest" by Leonard Steward. The story of Daisy, a young woman on a journey to find true love, was my escape from reality. But it wasn't Daisy who captured my heart, it was the villainess, Elizabeth. Unlike Daisy, Elizabeth never gave up hope, even when faced with endless obstacles. She was strong and determined, and I admired her for that.

Obsessed with the book, I even wrote fanfiction based on Elizabeth Brown, the character I saw as a role model. But one day, I came home to find my boyfriend cheating on me with my best friend. Heartbroken and betrayed, I ran to my car, tears blurring my vision as the rain poured down. I drove aimlessly for what felt like hours, trying to make sense of the pain and betrayal that consumed me.

But then it happened. The sound of screeching tires, the blinding headlights, and the impact that sent my car spinning out of control. And just like that, my life was over.

As I lay there, my body broken and bleeding, I couldn't help but think about Elizabeth. The raindrops mixed with my tears as I whispered her name, my last breath escaping my lips. In that moment, I felt a strange sense of peace, knowing that I would finally be reunited with my beloved character.

But as the darkness consumed me, I couldn't help but wonder if Elizabeth would have given up hope in this situation. Would she have fought until the very end? And as I took my last breath, I couldn't help but feel a sense of disappointment that I would never know the answer.

Heavy with sleep, my eyes crept open. As my senses wai ned, I became aware of a heavy weight bearing down on me, smothering and tight. It was as if my whole body had been caught in a thick, heavy fog; movement was very difficult, like breathing. My vision would not clear, no matter how many times I blinked. The stale, metallic tang of antiseptic stung my nose, confirming my suspicions. I was in a hospital.

The only sound to break the eerie silence was the rhythmic beeping of machinery, accompanied every now and then by the soft shuffle of nurses outside the door. Still, no one came in. I lay there, my body aching all over, every joint stiff, as if I'd been lying there for days. Fragments of my last moments flashed behind my eyelids: Liam, my boyfriend, with my best friend; the betrayal, the pain that had strangled me enough to get into my car and crash it. The rain, the screeching of tires. and then nothing. But where was he?

The one person I needed beside me at that moment. The only one who knew me better than anybody else. He was the only person I thought I could have always relied upon; he must have been contacted by now. Do hospitals not call their loved ones when somebody meets an accident? Even if he doesn't love me anymore, shouldn't he have been here, pretending to care? Uncertainty and fear crept into my mind and joined the physical pain I was going through. A wave of abandonment and betrayal suddenly brushed through my body, leaving me in that cold and sterile hospital room more alone than ever. In a last-ditch search, my desperate eyes raked over every inch of that space for one speck of hope, some sign I was not at all alone in that deserted room.

The heavy curtains closed out whatever natural light there was, and the outlook within the room was grim and unsure. I strained my ears to catch any sound, but all I could hear was the regular ticking of the wall clock, marking the passage of every second with a strange regularity. And nobody came to comfort and explain anything to me, even after my inquisitive stare and sharp senses. Indeed, all this was like being abandoned in that desolate closed room. Time stood still as I lay there; it passed like the flowing of a river that has sluggish movement.

My body felt so heavy and weak, full of me on every inch, as if all my life had been squeezed out of me. My mind was foggy, and everything was so unclear-I couldn't seem to catch my bearing on what was happening or going on. It was silent in that room, and it drowned me further into confusion and sorrow. I knew I couldn't stay in bed much longer, so with every ounce of strength, I made an effort to move. Every slight movement my body would protest, but I insisted. Finally, after managing to swing my legs over the side of the bed, I took a few stumbling steps toward the bathroom. It seemed like it took forever to get to the bathroom; every step was like an act of will. But I refused to give in. I had to move ahead, no matter how difficult that seemed. My bare feet hit the icy tiles in a shock. I stumbled on toward the mirror and caught a glimpse of my reflection. And it wasn't my face that stared back at me.

I was frozen. The girl in the mirror had a girly face, not the twenty-something woman that I knew. Her dark hair fell softly around her pale face in waves, and her eyes so large and expressive held a sadness that seemed too old for her years. She looked exactly like Elizabeth Brown of Daisy Lover's Quest.

I shook my head, blinking rapidly, clearing away the fog in my head. It must be drugs. I'd hit my head in the accident, right? Perhaps it was just some sort of wild, vivid hallucination, a product of my obsession with the book. That was what it was.

But as the minutes ticked by, the girl in the mirror didn't change. She stared back at me wide-eyed and terrified, her eyes reflecting my very own disbelief.

"No," I whispered. My fingers wrapped around the edge of the sink, feeling the cold porcelain beneath my fingers. "This can't be real.

I had doused my face with water, hoping the shock could restore me to reality. But when I looked up again, she was still there. The resemblance was uncanny.

Elizabeth Brown, the villainess whom I admired, misconceived by every other person in the story, was standing before me-except it was me. I looked just like her. No, I was her.

I stumbled backward, my heart racing. "This can't be happening…"

I was in denial and slept that night. Every time I tried to sleep, I woke up hoping to see my own reflection, but Elizabeth's face stared back at me each time. My body was trembling from exhaustion and fear by morning.

As the doctor finally entered, my heart skipped a beat.

"Ms. Brown, how are you feeling?

My breath caught in my throat. I opened my mouth to correct him, words catching in my throat. It hit me like a tidal wave. I wasn't Lily anymore. I was Elizabeth Brown, right in the middle of the part of the book where things began spiraling out of control.

This was the moment when everything started to go wrong for Elizabeth. The rumors had just begun-that she had tried to kill her perfect, beloved sister Daisy by pushing her in front of a car. In reality, Elizabeth had saved Daisy, pushing her out of harm's way, only to be hit by the car herself. But no one would believe her. This is where her isolation began, where the world turned against her.

A pit formed in my stomach as I realized what was coming. Elizabeth's life was about to become a nightmare. And now it was my life too.

The hospital discharged me after a few days. I wasn't allowed to sit with my family any longer—Elizabeth's family, I corrected myself. Daisy sat at the center of the table, shining like a star, while I was made to eat alone, a pariah in my own home. Not one of them looked in my direction as I passed through the halls, disgust palpable.

Then came school. I should have expected the staring, the whispering, but somehow it still hurt to my core. Liam, the boy with whom Elizabeth—and now I—shared a secret crush, looked utterly disgusted at me. I could feel the hate in his eyes: to him, I was a monster, different from everyone else.

I tried not to let it hurt, to remind myself that this was Elizabeth's life, her burden. Yet the lines between us began to blur. Every mean word, every shove in the hallways, every snide remark in class worked its way deeper into me. I felt her pain, her loneliness, and it was as if it were my own.

The teachers weren't an exception, either: they would treat me as a criminal, as if I had practically killed my own sister. They did not allow me to participate in group activities, and day after day, it would get even colder and more hostile in the classroom. I just could not stand this moral pressure anymore. I had turned out to be the bad guy in this story, the most hated outcast for everybody, and I saw no end to it.

I came home to maids grudgingly recognizing mine; the adoptive parents also looked at me with disgust veiled behind a layer of pretense. Once, I had thought maybe being reborn into a different world would be an escape, but this was prison: living Elizabeth's life, having to live her nightmares-and it was much too real.

Days became weeks, and I just felt myself sink deeper into despair. Whereas my vision had cleared like water, it now began to blur around the edges. Elizabeth, in the original story, was blind, but I hadn't expected that feeling to start working its way into my body. It terrified me.

I endured the torment for three months: day in, day out, fighting just to survive and cling to a modicum of hope. But as my sight continued to deteriorate, the abuse beating me down, I knew I had to find a way out of this life. I wasn't Elizabeth, not really. I was Lily, and I was better than this.

How might I ever have run away from a world in which everyone detested me? How might I have ever changed a story that had already been written?

The rain started. The sky was low, heavy with grey clouds that seemed to reflect the weight in my chest as I limped back home from school. Every step caused a wave of pain through my body. But it barely registered-physical pain-meaningless compared to the weight of what I'd been through today. This wasn't just another bad day; far worse than anything I'd ever been through.

And it all started with Liam. A guy I used to like, but now he seemed to get some kind of pleasure out of pissing me off. I hadn't said a word to him, just breezed past him in the corridors, head hung low, but apparently that was good enough to get things running. By lunchtime, the whole school was talking about how I was "harassing" him. He had told everyone that I was obsessed with him and trying to ruin his life. The rumor spread like fire.

I finally reach my classroom, and my heart just dropped. Well, it wasn't a pretty sight: my desk destroyed, all my books torn in two, my papers crumpled and scattered everywhere upon the floor. The words freak, liar, monster were scrawled upon my desk, and garbage had been stuffed inside. I was gagging from the stench but forced myself to hold it.

I went to the teacher-my voice shaking in trying to tell him what was wrong, "Sir, somebody messed my desk up. My things are wrecked-"

And he didn't even look at me. "You had it coming," he said flatly. "Maybe next time you'll think twice before making it hard on your classmates."

My heart just fell. Deserved it? I stared at him, wide-eyed in disbelief at the words spewing from his mouth. I'd done nothing wrong, but the whole class was looking on, judged me, mocked me. And that teacher, all that day, made this huge effort to single me out, targeted me with impossible questions, and veiled insults masquerading as criticism. I felt straitjacketed; it was living in a nightmare where there was no exit.

By the time the last bell sounded, I just wanted to disappear into thin air. Their meanness followed me home, on my back, like a shadow stuck with me even as I stepped across the threshold of the front door. Still, I wasn't prepared for what awaited me there.

Standing in the entry, my adoptive father scowled, his dark eyes unyielding. "I received a call from Liam's parents," he growled low, the simmer of anger underlying every word. "He says that you have been harassing him, causing trouble at school." His head jerked to one side, disgust written across his face. "After all we've done for you, this is how you repay us?

I opened my mouth to explain, but the words caught in my throat. "I didn't do anything," I whispered, hardly audible. "I just walked past him. My things were destroyed—"

"Liar!" he roared, cutting me off before the words could leave my lips. The hard and fast slap came out of nowhere, sending me backward in a stumble. "Am I stupid? You think everyone else is lying? It's always something with you. Always trouble."

The next one came before I could even react; this time, it hit my ribs. The pain exploded through me in a sharp, blinding way. I tried to back away, to shield myself, but he kept on coming. Fists rained down upon me, each worse than the last. I was aware that I gasped, fighting for breath, but there was no escape.

I buckled at the knees, and then I was down, curling into myself as the beating continued. Sights blurred together, my ears rang, and the pain took precedence over everything. Blood filled my mouth and I couldn't move; I couldn't even cry.

He finally stopped and left me lying in a heap on that cold floor, shaking and broken. Every inch of my body throbbed in pain. My arm was on fire, and it wasn't beneath me if it was busted, but I couldn't move it. I tried to rise to my feet, but my legs refused to work.

My father was towering over me, his breath thick with the exertion of his scream. "You're a disgrace," he spat. "You're lucky we don't toss you on the street. But don't think you're taking it so easy. You're not leaving your room for the next three days. No food, no water. Let's see if that'll teach you some respect."

I didn't respond. How could I? He turned and strode away, ordering the maids to lock me in my room as if I were some kind of prisoner of war. I lay on the floor for hours-weak and broken and staring up at the ceiling.

It felt like three days of eternity. I lay on a cold concrete floor, in darkness, alone, with body aches and my mind racing. My stomach growled painfully due to hunger, and my lips were cracked, parched by thirst. But above all of these, I had been consumed by the feeling of helplessness with a sense that I was stuck in another person's nightmare and would never have any hope of coming out.

But as the hours dragged on, something in me started to shift. A new thought began a sluggish circulation in the back of my mind. This wasn't Elizabeth Brown's life anymore; this was my life. And if this was the story the author had written for me, well, I wasn't going to let it play out the way it was supposed to.

No, I wouldn't let them break me, and I would not let them be in control of my destiny.

By the time they opened my door, my mind was already set on one thing: never to stay in here and be their punching bag, their scapegoat. I had to escape, needed to strike back.

On those long, agonizing days in solitary confinement, I did have a plan. The old Elizabeth, through the years working odd jobs waiting tables, cleaning homes, or anything that would bring her a little bit of cash in her pocket, had managed to save some money. Enough to get me out of this place to start fresh somewhere far away.

I had packed a small suitcase with only what was truly indispensable and had carefully hidden the money at the bottom of my suitcase, where I had the special hiding place inside. Chaud, chaude, shaking, I booked the first one-way flight to Italy. It was crazy, but what was I to do? Had to leave.

Niccolò. The man from the story who treated Elizabeth with some sort of tender regard-a man unlike any of the other characters in the story. Yes, he is Italian; that is where he was raised. He would not be met by Daisy for many years, until he went to the U.S. for college. If only I could find him first, if only I could make him fall for me before he met her, the story would go differently. I would be able to alter the events of the story. My fate, rewrite it, his too.

Time was running out, and my eyesight had already begun deteriorating, well and due according to the book. Well, I couldn't wait anymore.

I ran and ran from the house until the fourth night, when the maids had fallen asleep. The rain was heavy; it made my clothes wet as I quickened my steps into the night, but I didn't care. For the very first time in my life, I was walking away from beatings, misery, and loneliness. I wouldn't be anyone's background character anymore.

I was in charge of my destiny.

Italy was waiting, Niccolò was waiting, and this time I would not allow fate to win. At least in this life I want to live.