Chapter 12
This was my first time climbing the mountain behind the village.
The forest stretched endlessly before me.
Desolate.
There wasn’t even a proper path beneath my feet. The air carried the musty scent of an uninhabited wilderness.
From time to time, the distant roars of wild beasts echoed through the
trees.
Yet, instead of fear creeping in as it should have, I felt strangely at ease. It was as if, in some unseen way, someone was silently watching over me.
Following my instincts, I pressed forward.
I had no idea how long I had been walking when a thatched cottage finally appeared at the top of the mountain.
Before I could even step inside, a hoarse, aged voice drifted out from
within.
“You’ve finally come.”
I had never heard this voice before, but an inexplicable sense of familiarity
stirred.
With an uneasy heart, I stepped inside.
A flickering candle cast a dim, wavering glow over a wooden table.
An elderly, frail man sat before it, his features strikingly resembling my
father’s.
“Grandfather.”
I greeted him politely, my tone laced with restraint.
He gazed at me intently before speaking.
“Don’t be nervous. Sit.”
I nodded and took a seat across from him.
Before I could utter a single word, he spoke first.
“For them to have raised you this far, your parents must have given everything they had.”
“They can finally rest in peace now.”
Mom’s Whisper Led My Father and Fiancé to Death
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His words caught me off guard.
“Grandpa, you knew my parents had died?”
“Then do you know what happened?”
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“Why did my parents and my fiancé all mysteriously take their own lives?”
Grandfather let out a long, weary sigh.
“This matter must be traced back to my youth.”
“In my arrogance, I believed I could see through everything.”
“So I defied the natural order and revealed the secrets of fate.”
“Because of this, I was destined to face a great tribulation.”
“Your birth was my tribulation.”
“In truth, the best solution would have been to end your life.”
“But your parents couldn’t bear to do it.”
“They fought desperately to keep you alive.”
“So I had no choice but to retreat to this mountain, attempting to defy fate.”
“But forcibly altering destiny invites disaster upon those closest to you.”
“From the moment your parents chose to protect you, their deaths were sealed.”
“They knew this better than anyone.”
“But they never told you–perhaps because they didn’t want you to bear the weight of guilt.”
“And that phrase you’ve agonized over for years was just your mother’s way of misleading you.”
“She knew their time was running out, so she deliberately confused things, shifting the blame onto herself.”
At that moment, everything suddenly became clear.
No wonder. No wonder my father, always so cautious, had spent his life in
constant fear as if treading on this
It wasn’t death, he feared.
ice.
He was afraid something would happen to me.
So he did everything in his power to shield and protect me.
And my mother, knowing all of this, never spoke a word of my father’s true
Chapter 12
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cause of death.
She even whispered those final words on purpose, deliberately leading me to place the blame on her.
All to keep me in the dark.
To spare me from the crushing weight of guilt.
I thought back to that moment in the police car, to the way my mother had. gazed at me so deeply, so painfully.
My heart twisted in agony.
For my sake, she endured everything alone.
She swallowed every ounce of suffering.
And yet, I had resented her.
I had hurled cruel words at her and refused her even a single kind look.
All these years, she bore the unbearable grief of my father’s death, the burden of my hatred, the blame I so recklessly threw upon her.
How much pain must she have suffered?
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