Hana woke that morning to silence. Not the peaceful kind she had grown used to, but a silence heavy with absence.
Her mother was gone.
The news hit her like a stone, and for a moment, she couldn't breathe. Nami ran to her side, tears streaming down her young face. Hana held her sister close, trying to hold herself together, but her chest ached with a grief so sharp it felt unbearable.
Her father, Tomas, never spoke much, but now his grief found a dangerous outlet. He disappeared for hours, returning home with the scent of alcohol clinging to him. Hana could see the anger, the bitterness in his eyes.
It didn't take long before trouble found them. Tomas, drunk and enraged, confronted a man from the local mafia crew in their home. A heated argument spiraled out of control. Hana tried to intervene, but the chaos was too fast, too loud. In the scuffle, Tomas was badly injured, and the mafia representative left with a warning.
By the time the ambulance arrived, Tomas was barely conscious, and Hana knew life as she had known it had shattered. At home, the bills piled up higher, the cupboards grew emptier, and the small village seemed colder than ever.
Hana had no choice. She needed to act.
The next day, she walked into a textile factory for her first day of work. The building was noisy, bustling with workers stitching fabrics, sewing decorations, and creating the colorful materials that would one day leave the factory and find their way into homes far away.
Her hours were long: 9 in the morning to 6 in the evening. Her hands were raw from sewing, her mind heavy with worry, but for the first time since her mother's passing, Hana felt a sense of purpose. She was doing something, even if it was small, to keep her family afloat.
Kai noticed the change immediately. Their meetings became rarer, stolen moments in the late evenings, sometimes just a few words exchanged under the soft moonlight. A subtle tension grew between them — a chill forming at the edges of their once effortless closeness.
Hana, exhausted from work and worry, still carried a spark of hope in her heart. But she couldn't deny the strain. Life demanded her attention, and the carefree days by the riverbank felt like a distant memory.
And yet… even in the smallest smile from Kai, even in the quiet comfort of his presence, Hana found the strength to keep moving forward.
The storm outside mirrored the storm within, but she had decided: she would survive. She would fight. She would work. And maybe, somehow, love could still find its way through the cracks.