When I was young, our school organized a Children’s Day performance, and every girl needed a hand-sewn flower skirt.

Everyone has a desire to look good, and seeing other girls wearing beautiful skirts to school before the performance made me envious and disgruntled because my mom was too busy to buy one for me.

But as time passed, this emotion gradually turned into jealousy, and I felt like others were intentionally showing off when they wore skirts. Only when a similar flower skirt was hung on our balcony did this feeling finally disappear.

Later, I realized that if jealousy isn’t effectively vented and controlled, it can escalate into hatred, leading people down the wrong path in life.

The Japanese mystery novelist Keigo Higashino wrote about a transition from jealousy to hatred, ultimately becoming a tragic human nature exposé.

Renowned author Seiichi Numata was murdered. After an investigation, it was discovered that his friend, Shinji Nonomura, was the killer. During the interrogation, Nonomura revealed a shocking secret:

All of Seiichi Numata’s works were ghostwritten by him. Numata stole his writing achievements, gaining fame and fortune, while Nonomura couldn’t even get credited, which sparked anger in his heart.

When the news spread, the killer became a sympathetic figure, while Seiichi Numata was despised. Many people even thought he deserved to die.

However, Detective Kaga, responsible for the case, discovered suspicious clues during a series of investigations.

It turned out that everything Nonomura presented was fabricated. He and Seiichi Numata were middle school classmates. Nonomura moved from the city to a small town due to his father’s job transfer, and everything around him felt unfamiliar.

To make matters worse, their school often had violent incidents, and Nonomura and Seiichi Numata were bullying victims.

However, their reactions to this situation were different. Nonomura became a helper in the bullying to fit in, while Seiichi Numata remained steadfast in his principles.

Years later, Nonomura discovered that Seiichi Numata had become a famous author, while he himself was struggling and lost his job due to cancer.

He visited Seiichi Numata, who still treated him as a friend and introduced him to a children’s writing job.

Originally, he thought his upbringing was better than Seiichi’s, but Seiichi, who was inferior to him, became a writer and even married a beautiful wife, living a happy life. Nonomura felt jealous and resentful.

This resentment eventually turned into hatred.

The story may not be complicated, but Nonomura’s motives sparked deep reflections on human nature.

There’s a sin called being better than me; there’s an evil called being unable to stand others’ success. What was once thought to be a joke turned out to be the greatest evil in human nature.

Due to feelings of inadequacy, people try to attain satisfaction by belittling others. In the end, this is a self-deceptive, foolish strategy.

Everyone wants to achieve certain heights in life, but each person’s talents and choices are different, leading to different paths.

However, when others surpass us, we become resentful, ultimately leading to tragedy.

Envying others is normal. But instead of being envious, we should strive to be better. This is the correct choice.

Nonomura didn’t choose the bright path. When reality clashed with his ideals, he spent over a year planning a murder, weaving a perfect motive, and destroying Seiichi’s achievements.

His mind had become distorted; no matter how much friendship Seiichi offered, it couldn’t overcome his deep-seated feelings of inadequacy. Especially since Seiichi’s success was a constant reminder of his own failures.

Living in this self-created misery, sensitive Nonomura could never be at peace.

If he hadn’t met Seiichi, or if Seiichi hadn’t been so successful, he might have accepted his life’s failures.

But Seiichi tried to use his friendship to enlighten Nonomura, to awaken his hope for life. Living in Seiichi’s shadow, Nonomura found it difficult to maintain a normal mindset.

So he carefully crafted a fantasy, making Seiichi his ghostwriter, and his success was supposed to be his own. This was what Nonomura’s heart desired, and he preferred to live in this lie.

Human evil can be difficult to understand, and it’s hard to truly comprehend.

A young woman with a luxury handbag and driving a luxury car is often suspected of being a mistress; a beautiful woman is suspected of having had numerous plastic surgeries…

As if a young woman’s money couldn’t be earned by her own hard work, and natural beauty is just a myth.

Nonomura, although created by Keigo Higashino, exists in reality.

Actor Sun Li once sponsored a poor boy, but instead of gratitude, she received a knife in the back.

The boy received a 300-yuan monthly subsidy, a 1,000-yuan semester scholarship, and a 6,000-yuan award. These amounts were sufficient for living expenses.

Moreover, the boy could work part-time, but his requests for money from Sun Li increased, as if she was his ATM, always expected to pay for his desires.

When Sun Li stopped providing financial aid, he wrote a long letter to a journalist, criticizing Sun Li for being unwilling to increase his living expenses and feeling annoyed by his requests.

You’re better than me, so you should help me; you’re not helping me, that’s your mistake. If I’m not doing well, you’d better not think you can live in peace.

Having such a mentality is difficult to live with.

If we don’t rectify this situation, we might have to pay an even greater price in the future.

Envy, jealousy, and hatred—if it’s just envy, that’s still okay. But if it escalates to jealousy and hatred, it will slowly permeate our bones, causing severe psychological distortion.

The evil flowers that bloom from such soil will make people pitiful.

Having someone excellent around us might give us an inferiority complex, but to break free from this thinking, we need to strive to be better, not destructively think about destroying others.

Jealousy is the most evil emotion.

Through his pen, Keigo Higashino revealed the dark side of human nature, warning us that if we can’t control this terrible emotion, we might fall into an evil cycle that’s hard to escape.

Let this be a warning to everyone.