Chapter 4
Siana's hands shook violently as she stared down at her son. Her eyes were hollow, stripped of every lingering thread of light.
"Ryudien…" she whispered, her voice barely a breath against the heavy air. "I'm so sorry… Please forgive me."
Her words unspooled in a frantic, broken cadence. "Why, Ryudien… no matter how badly I scold you, you always come back to me. It makes me feel guilty. You should hate me!"
Ice seized Ryudien's chest. Something was wrong—terribly, irreparably wrong.
"Mom…? What are you doing?" His small voice cracked, sharp with panic. "Mom, stop! Don't—!"
Siana didn't stop. In a single, blurred motion, she ended it right there on the splintered floorboards. Ryudien stood frozen, his fingers trembling as the finality of the act crashed over him.
"I'm always lov—" Siana started, the words choking off before they could take shape.
Her body collapsed. The wet, sickening thud echoed through the tiny room, followed immediately by an absolute, suffocating silence.
Ryudien stood unblinking, his eyes wide and uncomprehending. He stared at the widening pool of dark crimson slowly soaking into the dirt beneath her.
Sorry…
The word drifted uselessly across his mind.
You're sorry?
Tears burned hot behind his eyelids, but he couldn't shed them. The pain in his ribs was too sharp, too deep to allow an outlet.
You said sorry… and then you left me.
His small fists clenched so tightly his fingernails broke the skin of his palms.
You just ran away. You escaped everything… and left me here alone.
A cold, bitter anchor settled permanently in his young heart: What about me?
Following Siana's death, Blanco changed—or at least, he tried to.
For the first few days, the house fell into an eerie, suffocating quiet. The screaming stopped. The shattered bottles were swept away. Blanco sat for hours in the old wooden chair, staring blankly at the floorboards where his wife had drawn her final breath, his eyes hollowed out by shock.
One quiet evening, Blanco knelt before his son, his large, calloused hands trembling.
"I… I failed your mother," he muttered, his voice cracking. "I know that."
Ryudien stood silently in the corner, his small frame rigid.
Blanco lowered his forehead until it nearly touched the floor. "I know you hate me. Hell… I hate myself too." He clenched his fists until his knuckles turned bloodless white. "But I swear to you, Ryudien… I'll change. I'll become a better father. I don't want to lose you too."
Ryudien's voice emerged barely above a whisper. "…A better father?"
Blanco nodded, hot tears spilling down his unshaven cheeks—the first time Ryudien had ever witnessed a grown man cry.
For 1 month, it felt like a miracle.
Blanco returned before sundown. He attempted to cook simple meals, often scorching the edges, and awkwardly asked if his son had eaten. The dark bruises marring Ryudien's arms and back slowly began to fade. For the first time in his brief, brutal existence, Ryudien allowed a dangerous spark of hope to ignite within his chest.
Hope, however, was a luxury he could not afford.
On a torrential rainy night, the front door crashed open with a violent bang. Ryudien flinched hard, his body instinctively curling into a defensive shell.
Blanco stumbled inward, drenched to the bone and reeking of cheap liquor. From the dark porch outside, the jeering laughter of his drinking buddies echoed through the downpour.
"Forget it, Blanco! She's already dead!" one of them shouted over the rain. "Drinking won't bring her back, you fool!"
The door slammed shut, cutting off the noise.
Heavy silence reclaimed the house, broken only by the drumming of rain and Blanco's ragged, heaving breaths. He stared at Siana's empty chair for a long, agonizing moment before slowly turning his bloodshot gaze toward his son.
Something inside him snapped.
"You…" Blanco muttered, his voice dropping into a low, venomous growl.
Ryudien took an involuntary step back. "D-Dad…?"
Blanco lunged. He caught the boy by the collar, hoisting him effortlessly off the ground.
"Do you know what they said to me?!" he roared, spittle flying from his lips. "They said I destroyed this family! That I killed her!"
Tears of stark terror welled in Ryudien's eyes. "Dad… you promised… you said you'd change—"
"PROMISED?!" Blanco bellowed, shaking him violently. "Your mother abandoned me! She left me with everything—with you!"
His wild eyes burned with a volatile mix of grief and unadulterated hatred. "And every time I look at you… I see her face. Her dead face."
With a roar of fury, Blanco hurled Ryudien across the room. The boy crashed hard against the wooden table before hitting the floor. Blanco no longer saw his son. He saw only a living monument to his own ruin.
As the months bled on, the brief illusion of peace shattered completely. Every evening blurred into the same relentless nightmare: the heavy, unsteady trudge of boots on the porch, the sharp sting of alcohol, and the creeping dread that preceded the blows.
One evening, bursting through the door in a blind, liquor-fueled rage, Blanco seized him by the arm. "Useless brat!" he snarled. "Do you have any idea how much I suffer because of you?!"
Ryudien let out a choked whimper, instinctively raising his thin arms to shield his head. The strikes landed without hesitation. Over time, he learned a bitter truth: crying only poured fuel on the fire. Eventually, he stopped making any sound at all. By the time he turned seven, the fear had calcified into a numb, hollow shell. He no longer wept, no longer pleaded. He simply endured in silence.
Then came a stranger clad in a heavy dark coat, sitting across from Blanco at the rickety table while Ryudien stood frozen in the shadows.
The man glanced over his shoulder, his expression entirely indifferent. "So this is the kid?"
Blanco took a long, deadened pull from his bottle and answered flatly, "Yeah."
"You sure about this?" the stranger asked, crossing his arms. "Once he goes to the Willoreach Welfare House, there's no taking him back."
Blanco let out a dry, mirthless laugh. "Take him back?" He threw a vacant look at his son. "I can barely feed myself."
The stranger rose, waiting by the threshold. Between father and son, only a heavy, suffocating stillness remained.
Blanco slammed his empty bottle onto the wood. "I'm done! I'm sick of looking at your face every damn day!"
Ryudien's small frame trembled, but he bit his lip until it bled, holding back every sound.
"You remind me of everything that went wrong… of your mother… of this cursed life!" Blanco turned his face away, his voice dropping to a final, brutal decree. "At least there… someone might feed you."
Ryudien stared at the man who had birthed him. No tears fell. Deep down, he realized he had known the truth all along: his father had never wanted him.
When the towering, austere gates of the Willoreach Welfare House finally loomed ahead of them, an unexpected sensation bloomed in his chest.
It wasn't fear. It was relief.
His mother had found her escape in the dark. Perhaps this place would finally be his.
"Go on inside, dear," the intake worker said, offering a warm, pitying smile. "You're going to like it here."
Ryudien offered a silent, obedient nod and stepped past the heavy wooden doors.
To be Continued...