📘 Chapter One: Shadow of Sin
Autumn crept in quietly, like winter sending its first letters — announcing its arrival through cold breezes and yellow leaves falling on the pavement.
Dry yellow leaves danced through the streets of Chorlton-on-Medlock, a neighborhood nestled in the heart of Manchester. It was a place of strange contradictions — modern university buildings facing crumbling old apartments, narrow alleys echoing with students' chatter and hospital sirens, all wrapped in the silence of cracked brick walls.
There, stood the Royal Manchester Hospital — a massive building with shadowed windows. Inside, life sometimes paused by a hospital bed... and sometimes began again on a waiting bench.
Here, nothing stays the same. People walk fast — but sorrow walks slower.
Behind weary schools and dim alleyways, a girl like Anne could be found sitting alone, staring at the world as if through a broken screen — everything looked distorted, dull, and painful.
Just as she stared blankly, the familiar dry voice of her mother shattered the silence — the same voice Anne had long described as void of affection.
From the stairwell leading down to the cold, colorless living room where dinner awaited, the house always felt more like a forgotten memory than a home.
Anne sat quietly at a wooden chair, eyes fixed on the floor — afraid of catching her mother's gaze. She knew those eyes too well — full of regret, blame, and suppressed sorrow. She had learned to avoid them entirely.
The stillness cracked when a plate of pasta landed on the table.
Marilyn, her mother, said sternly, "The prayer."
Anne folded her hands. Her mother always insisted on praying before meals — a remnant of the devout household she once came from. Marilyn had once tried joining a convent with a group of nuns... but things hadn't gone as planned.
Marilyn: "Begin."
At last, Anne looked up — her mother was usually the one who recited the prayer. But this time, it seemed like her lips had frozen. As if she wanted to run. Yet, Anne gathered her voice and whispered:
> "We thank You, Lord, for Your abundant blessings, and for this food we are about to eat. Bless the hands that prepared it, and let us eat with grateful hearts. Amen."
Marilyn: "Amen."
But as they ate, Anne could feel her mother's eyes chasing her — demanding a conversation.
Marilyn: "I was supposed to be there... with the nuns. Not here cooking you pasta."
Anne paused, then finally replied, her voice low but firm:
> "That's not my fault. I don't want to fulfill your dreams. This is my life. I want to live it as I choose."
Her words struck like lightning.
The sound of a spoon slamming against the plate shattered the tension into something heavier.
Marilyn, her face twisted with suppressed rage:
> "What did you just say?! Do you know what I gave up because of you? I had the chance to leave you behind — but you cried, clutched my finger, begged me not to go. I could've been a nun by now. Pure. Free of sin. But instead, I was stuck with you — and now you dare talk back? I gave birth to you. I bore your weight. So yes — I'll control your life! And mark my words, you'll end up where I should've been — in a convent, wearing the robe I never got to wear!"
She stormed off, grabbing her coat and keys.
The door slammed shut like a gunshot to Anne's heart.
Its echo lingered in the cold kitchen, like anger carved into the walls.
But this silence — Anne knew it too well.
She had become part of it.
Anne sat still, unable to eat. Her mother's words echoed in her head like sharp nails dragged across her memory.
"I had the chance to leave you behind..."
She repeated that line over and over — every syllable like a drop of acid falling on her heart.
A tear slipped silently down Anne's cheek, but she didn't wipe it away. She let it fall — as if it carried something rotten from inside her.
She stood up, walked to the sink, poured the untouched pasta down the drain, and rinsed the plate.
Then she went upstairs.
In her small, dim room — lit only by a flickering lamp — Anne sat on the edge of her bed. The walls were bare except for an old bookshelf filled with torn novels, school papers, and a broken clock that had stopped ticking since last summer.
She pulled out her worn diary. The pages had long stopped being a place of hope. They had become a graveyard of silent screams.
She wrote:
> *"It's strange how someone can live in your house, eat at your table, and still not see you.
I think my mother looks at me and sees a scar on her skin.
I wasn't born. I happened.
A mistake.
And now that I exist, she wants to shape me into the version of her that she lost.
But I'm not her second chance.
I'm just Anne.
And I wish that was enough."*
She closed the diary, placed it under her pillow, and turned off the lamp.
The darkness embraced her like a friend who never asks questions.
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