The people listening nearby all reacted the same way, surprised and quietly pitying. But none of them mocked me. Slowly they began talking to me, comforting me, playing with Jack whenever he was awake.
Drake, however, must have known I was not Jack's real mother. One day he invited me into his room, pulled out a wooden box from beneath his bed, and took out a baby's milk bottle.
He placed it in my hands and explained how to feed Jack, how to hold him, how to clean him, how to soothe him. He gave me baby clothes and diapers and taught me how to use them. And before I left the room, he said a sentence I will never forget, not even on my deathbed.
"Saying 'he is my son' does not make you a mother. Giving birth does not make you a mother. Raising him until you die, protecting that smile of his, making sure he never faces what you faced, that is what makes you a real parent."
I stayed there for three weeks. During that time, Drake taught me everything I needed to know about raising Jack. The others in the building tried their best to help me smile again. They joked with me when I grew quiet, helped me care for Jack when I was unsure, and at night they danced and sang until the halls felt warm again.
For those three weeks, somehow, I was happy. Truly smiling.
The night before I left, they threw me a farewell party. Everyone was drunk, including Drake, and in that half-dazed state he made me a proposal. He asked me to stay there, to live in the building and help care for the people who lived in it.
I refused. I told him I could not remain in the kingdom where my nightmare began.
He grew angry at my rejection and shouted a little, but the next morning, sober and ashamed, he apologized. He gave me some clothes and some money as a gift before I left.
Drake… he is one of the few people I remember clearly from that time. One of the best people I have ever met.
After that, I left Noida and traveled to Briston, where my grandpa lives."She pointed toward the floor beneath them. "This house is his."
"I told him everything the moment I arrived. It was hard for him to bear. The next day he suffered a mild heart stroke. After he recovered and was discharged, he reported the incident to the polis and even wrote to the Queen. But nothing happened. No one cared. No one even believed what I said.
The government agents who inspected the deaths simply wrote it down as 'died from an accident during the storm.'
For me, who had lost my parents, and for my grandpa, who had lost his children, Jack became the only light left to us. We raised him together. We enrolled him in school with me listed as his mother and grandpa as his great grandfather, and we lived inside that lie until it no longer felt like a lie at all. To the world, we simply were his family.
Around the time Jack turned five, grandpa was preparing to retire. Just a few days before his retirement date, he received a letter from the King herself, asking him to drive the greatest train ever built, the Gigantic.
The Gigantic connected the Briston Kingdom and the Vebula Kingdom, and it was the only train in the world that crossed the widest and longest river known, the Aquarius. The bridge alone stretched more than 100 kilometers. Every driver in the kingdom dreamed of steering that train, but the Queen had rejected every applicant. Instead, she personally chose grandpa, asking him to drive the Gigantic for the final days of his career.
He accepted with pride.
On the day of the Gigantic's inauguration, Jack and I accompanied him to the station. Grandpa complained that his shoulder hurt, but neither his boss nor the staff cared. They told him, "This is the pride of the kingdom, and no one but you has the experience to drive it." He had no choice except to take his place in the engine.
The train crossed the river bridge without issue. But a few miles before the final station, during a turn, the Gigantic derailed and plunged into the woods.
Many people died in the crash.Grandpa was among them.
The shock of it shattered what little peace I had rebuilt. And then came the announcement that the cause of the derailment was grandpa's cardiac arrest moments before that final turn.
After that, everything grew worse. The families of the victims blamed him, cursed him, demanded answers from us. Some threw stones at the house. Some sent hateful letters.
One afternoon, after I returned home with Jack from school, we found the front door broken open and the house in complete chaos. A few days later, Jack began begging not to go to school. When I forced him to go, I discovered why.
The other children had stopped speaking to him. When he tried to talk to them, some even bit him. It wasn't their fault, not really. Their parents told them Jack was a bad child, cursed, dangerous.
I withdrew him from school. We stayed inside the house for a week, hoping the world would calm down.
On the last day of that week, while I was cooking for Jack, a sharp crash of breaking glass came from the attic bedroom.
I ran upstairs. Jack stood on the bed, frozen, while shards of the windowpane glittered across the floor. For a moment I assumed he had broken it and scolded him from the doorway, but he didn't respond. He only stared at a corner of the room.
When I followed his gaze, I saw a large stone lying there.Someone had thrown it in.
Before I could run to him, another stone, the size of my fist, shot through the shattered window and struck Jack's head. The force lifted him off the bed and flung him to the floor.
I screamed.
I rushed to him and gathered him into my arms. He didn't move. Blood poured down his face, coating his cheeks and dripping onto my hands.
Watching him there, limp and bloody, something inside me broke far worse than when I saw my parents burn. I felt nothing, no breath, no heartbeat, as if my soul had slipped away.
A third stone crashed through the window and struck the back of my head, but even that didn't pull me back. I could only stare at Jack's lifeless face.
Then, after what felt like an eternity, he opened his eyes and cried, "Mom… it's hurting!"
The sound of his voice jolted me alive. Tears flooded my eyes. My heart kicked in my chest. I lifted him and ran outside.
There was a man in the street, holding another stone. He wasn't smiling or excited. He looked devastated. When he saw me running with Jack, he dropped the rock, sank to his knees, and began to cry.
I didn't stop. I carried Jack to the hospital. The doctors said the bleeding was severe, that his chances were slim. I stood outside the operation room, peeking through the gap in the door whenever I could.
At some point I looked down and noticed the entire floor beneath me was smeared with blood. My footprints trailed behind me. When I turned back to the door to look again, my body gave out and I collapsed.
I was conscious, clearly able to see and hear, but completely unable to move. A doctor opened the door and stepped out, accidentally stamping on my hand. When she felt me under her foot, she screamed, terrified.
The other doctors rushed out and lifted me up. They kept asking me to speak, but no words would come out. Then one of them said, "He is alive. Your son is alive."
Through the small opening between the door and its frame, I saw Jack breathing again. When the door closed, my heart felt fuller than ever before. Then the world went dark as I blacked out.