Celebrated as a trailblazer long before they understood their own truth, the narrator of The Regret grows up amid acclaim and expectation. Every milestone-from social-media praise to school assemblies-becomes another performance in a story scripted by others. Yet beneath the applause lies a quiet turmoil: panic flares in crowded hallways, dissociation creeps into mirrored reflections, and the ache to be seen as yourself grows impossible to ignore.

Twelve chapters trace a journey from "The Golden Child" to "The Regret," revealing the true cost of living for everyone else's narrative. When the pressure to embody progress eclipses personal truth, the hardest choice becomes finding your own voice-and asking who you might lose in the process. At once intimate and unsettling, The Regret asks: when life is lived to fulfill everyone else's narrative, what's left of the story you were meant to tell?