I always keep an old photo neatly in my desk drawer. The photo shows me smiling awkwardly with a husband and wife in the dining room. For others, it might just be an ordinary family photo. But to me, this is evidence of a life I almost never had.

Today is my first day of high school. When I looked in the mirror while straightening my uniform, I remembered all the events in the past. The incident about two babies who were switched.

Since I was a baby, I was raised in an orphanage because my status was declared an orphan. Meanwhile, a boy lives comfortably and is raised by a husband and wife with great love. In reality, the boy was the real orphan. His biological parents died not long after he was born, and the hospital made a fatal mistake by switching the two of us. That boy took my place, living with my biological parents.

His name is Alcel Meyer. In the past, I really hated him. I think of him as the person who took away my childhood and stole the love that should have been mine.

But ironically, he was also the one who gave me my life back.

Everything was revealed when he was in the 1st grade of junior high school. At that time he joined the journalism extracurricular class and was assigned to report at an old hospital. Armed with his old camera, he accidentally photographed a pile of old medical record documents. In one of the photos he captured, he saw blood type data and birth records that medically proved that the baby the parents brought home was the wrong baby.

If he was a selfish child, he could have deleted the photo and kept his mouth shut to continue living comfortably. But Alcel is not that kind of person. For him, truth is a fact that must be straightened out. He gathered the evidence, told his parents, and in the end, the facts found me in an orphanage.

After I returned to my original family, we were forced to live under the same roof for a month. During those thirty days, I purposely stared at him with hatred every time we passed each other. I want him to feel guilty.

But Alcel didn't react at all. He never returned my gaze angrily, nor did he apologize apologetically. He just kept quiet, took photos of his surroundings, and went about his day as if nothing major had happened. For him, there is nothing to dramatize.

He didn't look devastated or sad at all because he had to lose his status as a child in the family that raised him. He accepted reality as it was, purely without excessive emotions.

At the end of that month, Alcel discussed with my parents that he decided to leave. He wants to live independently. And somehow, he did prove that he could take care of himself without having to worry anymore. My parents finally allowed it with a heavy heart.

Before he actually left this house, he left something on the table in his room. Not a letter, not even an apology. But a photo.

It was a photo of me and my father and mother eating together, photographed secretly. A very ordinary candid photo, nothing special from a photographic point of view. But the photo tells the narrative as it is—a warmth of my original family that is finally whole again.

The moment I saw that photo, all my hatred for him disappeared. Behind his always flat face and cold attitude, he voluntarily stepped aside from this family so that I could find my true place.

Now, I can only stare at the photo he gave me while smiling faintly. Deep in my heart, I am very grateful to him.