Chasing the Light Through Darkness

“Auntie, don’t you want your son anymore?”

“I don’t.”

“Then give him to me. I happen to be short one big brother.”

That year, with an innocent request, she “adopted” him, a boy the world had abandoned.

She was the warmth of a little diner, the only light in his frozen world.

He was a silent rock, an obsession she could never quite warm, even after devoting her whole life to it.

They grew up together, leaning on each other through the bitter winter after losing their closest family. He became the sharpest blade, while she became a hand that saved lives. He went to the minefields; she went to the battlefield. He said, “I don’t have a mom or dad anymore.” She said, “I’ll always be your family.”

It was once a story about redemption and protection.

Until gunfire in a foreign land turned redemption into a cage and crushed protection to dust.

They injected poison into him and ripped out his fingernails. They tore her soul apart.

In the end, he traded his life for a lifetime of torment for her.

She survived, carrying every memory of him with her, reliving that summer when he was there again and again through the endless years.

It turns out the most painful loss in the world isn’t “I lost you,” but “You died because of me, and I won’t even let myself forget you by going mad.”