Jealousy, resentment, and probably a sense of grievance, too.
I couldn't say I didn't understand those feelings. It was just that I'd never experienced them myself.
There were only two children in my family, my sister and me. We'd seen our cousins when we were little, but gradually lost touch and stopped visiting. My sister and I were just the right age gap apart. By the time she was born, I was old enough to know better, and she was a very well-behaved child. I wasn't the mischievous sort of boy, either, so the two of us had never fought.
Of course, that didn't mean we'd never had any disagreements.
When I was little, I'd sometimes tease my sister with things out of curiosity and make her cry. I still remembered one time when, for some reason, she got furious with me and refused to talk to me for ages. She was only just learning to walk then, a tiny toddler who wobbled away from me. When she couldn't get away, she sat in the corner with her little bottom turned toward me. There were times she made me angry, too. Once, she'd taken a red crayon and pretended to mark up my homework. She couldn't write, so she'd drawn a bunch of scribbles, forcing me to redo the whole assignment that night. When I got home from school the next day, I didn't want to talk to her. But she pouted and started to cry, and I couldn't help giving in.
Those were all wonderful memories.
But for Wu Ling...
She lived in a big family, but from what I'd seen in the dream's fast-forwarded scenes, she was often alone in her room, studying the Wu family's ancient texts and practicing magic. Only when she succeeded did the Wu