THE ONE WHO CARRIES TWO WINDS103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcFlb5QCAA5
Author:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlyC9Fz4ebh
Pham Le Quy
"There are souls that belong nowhere –103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2XDpJfJUxN
yet still choose to live,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLgdmWh56Be
to understand,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSbGtcv7ZjN
to love,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡP9VCo6FmPa
and to forgive."103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcQtaZkkDP9
Vietnam, 2025
Table of Contents
Foreword (Page 7)103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHfTMgZ6K2i
Dedication (Page 9)103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkkc14RGNtr
Blurb (Page 10)103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡm59Gqo58T8
Copyright Page (Page 12)103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxvnBuYBFvu
About the Author (Page 13)103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4V09hwNyG4
Editor’s Note (Page 14)
Chapters
Chapter I: The One Who Carries Two Winds (Page 16)103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVs5HuHIIf5
A child with a Vietnamese body but a soul split in two — a tragedy begins, transcending borders of culture and time.
Chapter II: Strange Blood – The Western Curse (Page 20)103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgZXDLtRzVp
When Western blood is transfused into his body, the spirit of a deceased woman begins to awaken within the boy.
Chapter III: The Unwanted Hybridity (Page 24)103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0u8yXjcsgT
History is torn and imposed upon the next generation — when national prejudice turns a child into a stranger in his own homeland.
Chapter IV: Twin Sister – A Duplicated Soul (Page 28)103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyxBVnL3LBL
Identity is fractured, the soul cloned — no one remains themselves when mirrors shatter and perspectives distort.
Chapter V: Schemes and the Price of Power (Page 33)103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzAEAyLBQEG
Revenge, manipulation, possession — all to protect an illusion of honor, which is in truth, nothing more than hunger for control.
Chapter VI: The Swap and Inner Conflict (Page 38)103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVrOddBbg0V
The protagonist is no longer a singular being, but a fusion of conflicting selves: male and female, East and West, saint and sinner.
Chapter VII: The Ending or a Curse Repeated? (Page 43)103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡN90iyNZY8p
No longer a line between enemy and kin — only the shadow of confusion remains.
Chapter VIII: Rivers of Blood – Oceans of Tears (Page 49)103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlFP2h9tqhu
The mixed-blood girl chooses to live like the wind — belonging to no one, owned by none, even if it costs her eternal loneliness.
Chapter IX: A Nameless Pride, Like a Lotus in the Mud (Page 54)103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡafMNtJ7bRr
Though betrayed, expelled, and denied, she still graduates — proving that no dream dies unless it chooses to.
Chapter X: A Message from the Survivor (Page 59)103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkTbHm4Ka2j
A final message — of apology and gratitude — to her parents and sister. A farewell wrapped in forgiveness.
Chapter XI: Forgiving Oneself (Page 64)103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyHdA6hQDaR
She stares into her old wounds — not to blame, but to understand that even without an apology, one must forgive oneself to go on.
Chapter XII: Where Dawn Blooms in the Heart (Page 67)103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0fRsFEXvEE
From a place once full of darkness, a gentle light emerges — not from without, but from the courage within. For once, she faces judgment head-on — and dawn begins blooming in her chest.
Chapter XIII: The Hands of the Imperfect (Page 70)103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXuepGbdXt7
She no longer waits for perfect embraces. Those who were once clumsy, who once hurt her — are now the hands that touch her soul. And for the first time, she learns: forgiveness is touching without holding on.
Chapter XIV: Seasons That Do Not Repeat (Page 74)103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡr2CKjUlwV7
Time does not rewind. But each passing season leaves a lesson — of those who left, of what can’t be regained, and of how to live fully in the present moment.
Chapter XV: A Home Within the Chest (Page 78)103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8H7QpfHFou
No need for a precise address, no need for others’ approval. At last, she builds a refuge within herself — where pain is named, memories laid to rest, and the heart learns to hold itself.
Chapter XVI: The Remaining Piece of Herself (Page 82)103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXFQUWfBCm1
No more running, no more fitting into molds. She pauses, gazes into the rejected fragments — and the final piece is simply acceptance of her whole being, beauty and flaws alike.
Chapter XVII: When a Flower Chooses to Bloom Itself (Page 86)103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmApoX6w4F4
No expectations, no promises of love — and still, she blooms. Like a nameless flower in the wind and dust, in a tangled world. Not to be seen, but because she deserves to live fully.
Chapter XVIII: Naming What Was Lost (Page 90)103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIm61x97JSu
No longer afraid of what has disappeared. She dares to name each stolen thing, each person who left, each dream that died young. For only by naming them can she lay them to rest — and allow herself to live on.
Chapter XIX: And Finally, I Choose to Stay with Myself (Page 94)103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3MogCEDxOL
She once wished others would understand, forgive, heal her. But in the end, with no one left to wait for, she chooses to stay — with herself, whole even in her wounds.
Chapter XX (Finale): Lessons Folded into Silence (Page 98)103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBtfaEiMWeO
No need for speeches or debates. The grandest truths — of identity, of love, of forgiveness — are wrapped in final silence. For compassion is a language that needs no translation.
Special Appendix
- Symbolism Explained (Page 102)
- The Hidden Timeline of the Main Character (Page 102)
- Quotes Marking Transformation (Page 103)
- Spiritual References & Creative Inspirations (Page 103)
- Character Family Tree (Page 104)
- The Three-Lifetime Reincarnation Diagram (Page 104)
- Music/Film Suggestions for Reading (Page 105)
Preview of Upcoming Work (Page 107)103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzY3D9tnhnt
Afterword (Page 108)
FOREWORD
For those souls once pushed to the margins of life.
I didn’t write this novella to seek pity. Nor to earn praise.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1NI0PQH4wh
I wrote it because there were days when I could no longer speak.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡY2j89RW3hQ
I wrote it because some truths, if left untold, rot within us like unnamed wounds.
This book is not for those who seek happy endings, flawless characters, or tidy plots.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8710qnj6iX
Because life—and people like the protagonist of this story—have never lived in such a world.
This work is an echo from bleeding memories.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyCzE3gZxyf
It is a bell that rings inside the soul, though no one strikes it.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTzRR5FEds0
It is the confession of someone who once blamed their family, society, and even themselves.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUJibNSBmUS
But also, it is the gentle manifesto of a survivor.
This book is for:
- The children marked as “different,” yet never told why.
- The students expelled not for their grades, but because their very presence was unwelcome.
- The honest ones cast out because they were too gentle to be silent, yet too fragile to resist.
- And anyone who has ever asked themselves: “Do I deserve to be loved?”
If you find yourself in a sentence, a chapter, or even a single glance of a character—hold it close, as a reminder: You are not alone.
We are all “those who carry two winds”—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGQWoI7LCdf
fragments of unnamed places, still breathing, still blooming in the swamps of life.
This is not a book to be rushed.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMidr0Bp8au
Read slowly. Breathe with it.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVze7ZNJ1s2
For some chapters will not be understood with the mind—but only felt by the heart.
Author: Pham Le Quy
DEDICATION
To those who’ve felt they never truly belonged,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgEYJOG8dIJ
who’ve been rejected, misunderstood, or torn between two opposing winds—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvz9nZmh9iw
one of the past, and one of longing.
To the hybrid souls—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLeyfa7H4uP
not only by blood, but by experience.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAVuqjyuhEj
Those who’ve lived on the fault line between East and West,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMjmi5Iu0ek
between sacrifice and selfishness, between love and resentment.
This story is for you.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5VNlPv1rLZ
And for me—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡx8eiTySLfS
someone who once had to learn how to forgive.
BLURB
"When blood is no longer pure, can the soul still have a name?"
Born in the body of a Vietnamese boy—with tan skin, black hair, and the wistful eyes of the East—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUkQ8PkbnAN
she (yes, she) never imagined that destiny would tear her apart.
A blood transfusion at age fourteen—meant to save her life—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡh2Vm5Sm4OC
becomes the beginning of a journey of possession, multiplicity, prejudice, and pain.
The soul of a Western woman—wife of a Vietnamese man from a previous life—awakens within her.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXQ0wAScDRf
From that moment on, she is no longer one person.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAw1QIhWb81
She becomes a fragment of history, an echo of the past, a threshold between East and West, male and female, sinner and survivor.
Rejected by schools, abandoned by her own twin sister, scorned by a society that despises “hybridity,” and belittled for her intellect, gender, and origin—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfYGAp8VBfP
she continues to live.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKVIR3eZBwz
Not to be accepted.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡD2DglDhSqK
But to prove: she is real.
She studies. She loves. She aches. She forgives.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtRy4EhyXKb
She does not choose revenge—she chooses existence.
No one sees the tear in her heart,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxMu2HBso6U
but all see her rise.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡS8GUFQKNJp
No one hears her sob in the shadows,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZy9FFvvAvh
but all witness her smile—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLnhHn9C16c
like a lotus blooming in the mud,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkRRYj9Z3EL
not as radiant as a rose,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiP21F2uJHu
but resilient enough to survive.
And if you’ve ever felt unseen,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjg811he2hO
if you’ve ever felt like you didn’t belong—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdQzBnSDL42
then this story is for you.
Not to pity you—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSzSfomyqZk
but to remind you that somewhere in this world,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4I6nnwHdST
someone has lived as you have.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQVBVJl4bLO
And is still living.
Copyright Paper
© 2025 by Author: Pham Le Quy
All rights reserved.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5xZF5qyjEP
No part of this publication may be copied, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without written permission from the author or publisher, except for brief quotations used for critical reviews or academic purposes with proper attribution.
Title: The One Who Carries Two Winds103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTeL7zx7P1C
Author: Pham Le Quy103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMpgldfAa3p
Editor: [if applicable]103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbFoBfDdVOL
Cover Design: [if applicable]103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiMVXY9Ah36
Illustration: [if applicable]103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ37vZsdZNE6
Publisher: [Self-published or Name of Publisher]103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4RoYLa5kUQ
First Published: 2025103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5vA4gag4l9
ISBN: [To be assigned if printed or registered]103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQ2PKsxUvTn
Country of Publication: Vietnam
All characters, events, and places in this novella are fictional.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcW0dux1P1u
Any resemblance to actual persons, organizations, or events, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright Contact: [email protected]
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Pham Le Quy – a writer who does not claim to be an author,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡeU4Mc6aiNE
but rather someone searching for words for the things that never had names.
Born at the crossroads of many cultures, Quy carries deep questions about identity, belonging, and the meaning of compassion in a world increasingly divided by prejudice, norms, and inherited wounds.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoJLoV1FTeG
Out of that imbalance, The One Who Carries Two Winds was conceived—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9yQOtwtiwC
as a deeply personal yet universally resonant journey of healing.
With academic backgrounds in language, psychology, and education,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0CIV5nApAj
Quy does not write from training, but from living.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6wqwNYryrd
For this author, writing is not a career—it is survival.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVrkyqj4rbD
Writing to breathe. Writing to remember.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDJo2oYLnfe
Writing to forgive—oneself, and those who unintentionally caused harm.
When not writing, Quy teaches, researches, and listens.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡi6MBs9AhzB
In the quietest moments, the author believes:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZ6JcYkkfFs
some stories can only be told through pain—and the courage to walk through it.
EDITOR'S NOTE (BY THE AUTHOR)
The One Who Carries Two Winds is not a conventional novella.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡU1ekajtiel
It is a blend of memoir, myth, biography, and literature.
Upon receiving the first manuscript, the author did not see this as a linear narrative,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡa20FPgRofO
but rather as the journey of a soul through three lifetimes, three layers of time, and three cultural landscapes—East, West, and the in-between.
The storytelling is intentionally non-linear, rich in symbolism and allegory,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGTywvVDeLL
unbound by traditional forms.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbsBCSTLjK8
The chapters do not simply follow chronological order,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡp5op7hUdrz
but rather unfold like layers of memory, reincarnation, and self-discovery—each peeling back the psyche of the main character.
A few notes for reading:
- The work employs frequent use of metaphor, personified souls, and ontological transformation. If read quickly, it may feel elusive. The author encourages slow, even repeated reading to absorb the layered meanings.
- At times, the protagonist undergoes shifts in gender, identity, even ego—these are not plot inconsistencies, but deliberate artistic choices reflecting the fragmentation and reassembly of the self.
- The chapters are constructed like spiritual psalms, each a step toward awakening—from trauma to understanding, from rage to forgiveness, from resentment to release.
- Elements like genealogies, reincarnation cycles, hidden histories, bloodline dynamics, and social exclusion serve not only as cultural metaphors but as reflections of the very real pain of being “othered.”
This novella may wound you—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrwiF8d9klG
but it may also become your medicine.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsZkC68qy81
A journey of self-healing.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4nlhslhTWE
A voice for the silenced soul.
The author humbly presents this novella as something to be read—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡg8oazQrrja
not with the eyes,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7ctkKarS5I
but with the heart.
Chapter I: The One Who Carries Two Winds
The boy was born on a July morning, when the southern breeze still carried the sultry remnants of summer, and the northern wind whispered a cold promise from beyond the horizon. People say that children born at the turn of seasons often carry dual destinies. But no one expected that this boy would carry two winds within him—one of origin, and one of fate.
He was named An—a name that sounded like a wish for a peaceful life. But from his very first cry, An was not cradled in familiar arms. There was no lullaby, no warmth of a mother, no steady presence of a father. The hospital recorded the names of his parents, but the room he returned to was a silent apartment on the twelfth floor, its windows shut, its walls sliced by the shadows of dusk.
An's parents were Vietnamese, living in the heart of bustling Saigon, but their hearts had long wandered toward dollar-shaped dreams. His father drove for an export company. His mother was an accountant who clung to numbers more than hugs. They believed loving their child meant working tirelessly, depositing money into savings, and leaving the child to the care of a housemaid. But An never understood how love could feel so absent. Dinner was a box of cold rice. Concern came in the form of sticky notes hastily slapped on the fridge. A birthday meant a lone candle stuck into a piece of stale bread.
The early years of An’s life passed like a slow-motion film. He learned to speak not through stories, but through TV news reports. He learned to write not for letters, but to jot down reminders for surviving alone. The house became a glass cage—transparent, clean, but utterly soundproof to the outside world. No children’s laughter, no hurried footsteps running into a parent's embrace, only the sound of wind slipping through window cracks and the dull yellow of streetlights fading like memory.
At school, An was the silent one. During recess, he sat alone in a corner of the yard, hugging his backpack like it was a small world no one else could comprehend. His classmates called him "weirdo," "bookworm," sometimes even "invisible." No one understood why he never smiled. No one knew that every time he was shoved, he bowed his head, never resisting, never crying. Perhaps because An’s tears had long been buried—like a dried-up well in a land where it never rained.
Yet in that dim space, a faint light flickered—from the classroom podium. The teachers, though they never spoke of it, always had a different look in their eyes when they saw him. In An, they saw a strange maturity, an ancient sadness, as if from another life. One day, his literature teacher quietly said after class: "An, your eyes look like someone who's lived through many winters." He didn’t fully grasp her words, but they touched something deep inside—a place even he couldn't name.
An loved books. Not because they made him smarter, but because in each page, he found fragments of souls lost in the real world. He read Dostoevsky like meeting an old friend, saw himself in Kafka’s obsessions, and cried at the final lines of Les Misérables — not from sentimentality, but because, for the first time, he felt understood.
Some nights, with wind brushing past his window, An would sit at a small desk, writing a journal in two languages: one in his mother tongue, and one in the language of the novels that had saved him. The ink wavered across the paper—sometimes confessions, sometimes whispers to a distant place in the universe. "I don’t know where I come from," An wrote, "but I know I carry two winds inside me. One from a past I couldn’t choose, and one from a future whose path I cannot see."
From a young age, An seemed to live more than one life. He had recurring dreams where he stood on an unfamiliar shore, heard voices in a language no one taught him, and saw his hands covered in blood for reasons he didn’t know. He once told an adult—only to be met with a dismissive laugh and advice not to dream so wildly. But deep down, An knew something remained untold.
Then one day, a strange wind blew through his neighborhood. It wasn’t hot, nor cold—but it carried a foreign scent: pinewood and aged paper, like the memory of a world never visited. For the first time in years, An looked up and felt something shift within—like a door quietly opening. He wondered, "Is the wind trying to tell me something?"
From that day on, An began recording his dreams. He called them "displaced memories." In them, there was war, a lost lover, a stone bridge leading to an ancient pagoda, and the laughter of a child calling him "Father." These images repeated, clearer than reality. An didn’t know if they were hallucinations or remnants of a past life refusing to fade.
At school, the principal summoned him after a composition left the faculty in prolonged silence. The essay was titled "The Loneliness of a Shadow." It had no personal pronouns—only the image of a shadow silently existing in others' worlds, never allowed to be itself. "Where did you learn to write like someone who’s lived through war?" the principal asked. An just smiled: "I don't know, sir."
An's world didn’t change. His parents remained absent. The housemaid still brought dinner. But something inside had shifted. The winds were no longer invisible. He began to feel them: the wind of his homeland, sorrowful like a mother’s lullaby; and the wind of a faraway place—so distant he didn’t dare name it.
One day, An stood on the rooftop, eyes on the sunset. The wind blew hard, tossing his dark hair like it was summoning a reunion forgotten for centuries. He closed his eyes. In that moment—no car horns, no school, no miscalled names—only two winds colliding, creating a silent note. And between them, An stood—like a bridge between two shores—not to choose, but to listen.
Chapter II: Strange Blood – The Western Curse
When An was fourteen, the first pain arrived one scorching afternoon at the height of a sunburned summer. He collapsed onto the classroom floor like a bird struck mid-flight, his mouth filled with the metallic taste of blood and his ears ringing with ghostly sounds. His classmates panicked, teachers rushed to help, but An—in a haze—saw only a red tide retreating from his body, as if the sea had come to carry away his memories.
The hospital was swift in its diagnosis: Helicobacter pylori—a vicious parasite that had silently eroded his stomach lining, like nightfall swallowing a lonely room. Blood poured out, urgently and endlessly, as if trying to erase a part of his soul. An lost over eighty percent of his blood—a number usually reserved for obituaries.
A transfusion was urgent. But the blood bank lacked his rare type. At that desperate moment, a Western woman—on a volunteer trip in Vietnam—agreed to donate her blood without hesitation. They called it a borderless act of humanity. But no one knew that the moment her blood flowed through the tubes and touched An’s heart, something irreversibly changed.
He survived. But from that second on, something inside him was no longer whole.
The first night after surgery, An dreamed of a vast lavender field. The sky above was a pale mint, gentle and strange. He stood there in ceremonial white clothes that belonged to no culture he knew. At the end of the misty path, a blonde woman waited—her eyes deep as forest lakes.
“An?”—her voice was soft as silk, yet it pierced his soul.
“I used to be your wife. Now, I am you.”
An awoke in a sweat, his body cold as if it had walked through snow. He stared at his hands—sun-kissed like any Vietnamese boy’s—but something within had changed.
From then on, the dreams returned—erratic, illogical. Sometimes, he sat by an old wooden window, writing letters in French. Sometimes, he was a woman trembling under air-raid sirens. Sometimes, he knelt before a cathedral’s cross, weeping for no reason he could understand. These were not An’s memories—yet they ached with familiarity.
One night, he opened his phone and searched: lavender fields, Provence, European wartime widows... and to his horror, every image he had dreamed of existed—in another hemisphere. He had never learned French, yet in sleep, he recited Apollinaire’s poetry, dreamed of the Loire River, and sometimes—cried for a man named Étienne.
An told no one. How could he? At fourteen, one is allowed to dream, but not to reincarnate. He feared his parents would send him to a psychiatrist. He feared teachers would label him “post-trauma hallucination.” But above all, he feared that speaking the truth would make it disappear—like dew under sunlight.
But the change wasn't only in dreams. Slowly, An’s habits shifted. He began drinking Earl Grey instead of iced coffee. He stopped reading Japanese comics and turned to Proust, to Colette. His writing became layered, tender—as if another hand were guiding his pen. His literature teacher asked quietly, “An, your writing has changed. Is there something you want to tell me?” An only smiled, eyes distant: “Maybe I’m just growing up, sir.”
He knew it was a lie. He wasn’t just growing—he was transforming. In his veins flowed the blood of that Western woman—not just biologically, but spiritually. With it came memories, longings, and a silent curse: to continue living, even without a form.
As he grew, the conflict within him deepened. On one side, the rooted self—An of Saigon, of dust and untold mother-tales. On the other, the unseen woman—a soul who had lost everything, now dwelling in her former husband’s body, rediscovering herself through each breath, each gaze. Sometimes, when he looked in the mirror, his familiar brown eyes shimmered with gray—like a European winter sky.
One afternoon, he found himself at a dusty bookstore, instinctively picking a fragile French novel titled Lettre à l’ombre. One line struck him silent:
“I shall live within the one I love—even after my ashes are scattered.”
He closed the book, hands trembling. That sentence—it wasn’t just a line. It was his reality.
No one believed him. But the universe did.
From that day, even the world around him shifted. Western winds—cold, scented with butter and old fairytales—began to sweep through tropical afternoons. Strange birds perched on his windowsill. Some nights, a violin melody floated through the air, though no one was playing. Once, he paused at a market stall, lured by the scent of toasted baguettes—something he’d never liked before.
And then, the soul spoke.
Her voice came not in words, but in feelings, instincts, memories trickling into his every moment. He never knew her name, but she knew all his pain. When classmates mocked him, she whispered, “Don’t bow your head. I once stood alone in an empty square and still sang.” When he wrote late into the night, she smiled, “I too once loved the light of candles.”
It wasn’t possession. It was coexistence.
An knew—he was now two people in one body. One, a Vietnamese boy. One, a woman from a distant land. Two winds. Two bloodlines. Two origins. Both abandoned. Both surviving. Both walking forward.
But he also knew—one day, he would have to face the truth. He had to discover who she was. He had to name the soul that had merged into his blood. He had to rewrite the story—not just of a teenager, but of a love that had died and returned in the most unexpected form.
And so, An was no longer just An.
He was the one who carried two hearts—one beating for the present, one for the past.
The curse had been cast. The path was unmarked.
But the wind had changed direction.
Chapter III: The Unwanted Hybrid
An never understood why his heart ached like a salted wound whenever he stood before French speakers who wore their pride like perfume. He couldn’t explain why, whenever he passed a war monument, an invisible guilt surged in his blood—like a verdict yet to be spoken, one his soul had already begun to serve in silence.
Only when the woman’s soul inside him began whispering fragmented memories did An start to grasp: this life was never his alone. He was a child born of fate’s collision—an unwanted hybrid, a grafted branch between two roots that once stood on opposing sides.
“You once called me a flower blooming on barren land,” the woman’s voice murmured on a cold, rainy night. “But I never imagined that land was a grave.”
And then, the images emerged—not through his eyes, but through his blood. A blonde woman, skin like porcelain, eyes as pale and distant as a frozen lake, stood in a white áo dài, at the altar of a wedding in a destitute Vietnamese village. Everything was silent—a silence not of blessing, but of refusal. No smiles. No firecrackers. That wedding was no celebration, but a sentence pronounced between two worlds.
The groom—a frail, quiet Vietnamese man—had once studied in France after the war. He had returned with hopes of building a home, but also with wounds no one could see: disdainful stares, refused handshakes, and the crushing shame of being called a “traitor to his people.”
Their love could not survive the weight of collective memory—the kind of memory that history smears on the faces of those still living: that Westerners brought opium, brought uniforms, brought boots that crushed native souls.
The wife had done no wrong. But in the eyes of the village, she embodied every wrongdoing embroidered over generations. And the husband—who had never once shaken hands with a French officer nor sold a single inch of his homeland—was nonetheless ground down by a hatred passed from tongue to tongue.
An felt his chest weighed down like stone.
He began to dream of the man being beaten—not with fists, but with insults, with condemning stares, and the icy silence of his own mother, who had once burned his wedding photo with her bare hands, saying, “You dare marry a Western woman?”
In the dreams, the woman did not cry. But her eyes looked like rivers that had run out of blood—too dry even for tears.
They were banished from the village, cast out to the remote highlands where the land remained untouched and hearts unpoisoned by prejudice. There, beneath pine-covered hills and a sky that made no distinction between races, they built a wooden home. They believed love was enough. But war came anyway.
One day, a unit of guerrilla fighters stumbled into the region. Seeing the blonde woman, they attacked. Not to violate—but to punish. This was what An would never forget: the woman—whose soul now flowed through his veins—was tied to a post like a symbol of the enemy, so that the men could “purge” their loss of homeland by torturing the innocent.
The husband came too late. He arrived to find her moaning in French, her voice trembling:
“Je t’ai attendu, mais je me suis perdue.”103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkIr2E966XL
"I waited for you, but I lost myself."
He cradled her in the smoldering ruins of their home, her blood soaking through his shirt. He screamed, but the mountain winds were too high. No one heard.
An woke up clutching his chest, heart splintered in silent agony. He had never known love, yet his heart felt shattered. He had never lived through war, yet the sound of boots haunted him like thunder.
He understood: the blood had passed. So had the curse.
No one had taught him to hate. But whenever he stood near people who condemned the West, he shivered. When he heard someone sneer, “Those half-breeds shame our ancestors,” his cheeks flushed—not in rage, but confusion. Because he, too, no longer knew where he belonged.
He was the child of two forsaken souls: a woman who never found a homeland, and a man who was never forgiven. And now, they lived again—through him—as if trying to prove that love could survive, even in the ashes of history.
At school, An changed.
He was no longer the boy who bowed his head and stayed silent. In literature class, he wrote about fractured selves. In history, he asked, “Can history forgive?” He startled teachers, unsettled classmates. Some said he was “too Western.” Others accused him of pretending. But An knew: he wasn’t pretending. He was only the voice of two souls, finally speaking.
He began searching—medical records, hospital archives—for the woman who had donated blood. After months of quiet effort, a letter arrived.
Her name was Émilie Dufresne—a French-Swiss cultural researcher who had studied Indochina. In the letter, she wrote that on the night of the transfusion, she’d had a strange dream. She saw herself crying in a Vietnamese temple, clutching a faded photograph.
“Who are you?” she wrote.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxj2zMrdz64
“And why do I feel as if I’ve lived inside your body before?”
An never replied. He knew that answering would shatter something fragile. He wasn’t ready.
But he folded the letter, tucked it into a secret drawer of his desk, and wrote on it:
“I am the hybrid no one asked for. But I live—because I am the apology neither side ever spoke.”
Chapter IV: The Twin Sister – A Cloned Soul
Some lives are not lived once but unravel in layers—fractals of existence, like mirrors facing mirrors, reflecting endlessly with no trace of origin. An—or more precisely, the entity now living under that name—had already crossed three lifetimes. But fate, ever ruthless, split him once more. This time into a new form—more fragile, more complex, and far more painful: a “twin sister”—not by blood, but by soul.
It began one crescent-moon night. In his dream, An sat across from a girl in a long white dress, her hair cascading like silk, her eyes both tender and piercing, as if she could see through to the marrow of being. She didn’t speak, only looked. But that gaze reflected his essence—not his form, but a soul turned inside out.
She spoke without lips, with pure intuition:
“I am your twin sister. But I am also you.”
An woke with a jolt. Sweat soaked his collar. His hands trembled. He stared at himself in the mirror—and for the first time, wasn’t sure the reflection was truly his.
Then came the changes.
An no longer wrote like a boy. His handwriting softened, became rounded, like the gentle smile of a girl. He examined his nails and found them kept with an almost unconscious care, as though a tender instinct had bloomed from within. Passing by dress shops, his heart fluttered—not with desire, but with an eerie nostalgia, like part of his body long rejected had returned, asking to be remembered.
At school, people noticed—not because he was excelling, but because he was different. The boys began to keep their distance. The girls watched him with half-curious, half-guarded glances. Some whispered that An was “effeminate.” Others sneered, “He’s probably trans in the head.” But no one understood: An wasn’t just one person. He was two—or perhaps more.
He didn’t deny it. But he couldn’t affirm anything either. Because he no longer understood himself.
The soul of the Vietnamese man—the husband who had once loved and lost, exiled for daring to marry a Western woman—had been reborn. But this time, not into a masculine body, but into a soft, fragmented echo of a soul, split from its former frame to become his own “twin sister.”
Part of that man lived in An—a negative imprint, distorted, reversed. No longer a man. Not quite a boy. But her. A woman, living in a boy’s body, carrying the memories of both—and of something uniquely her own.
An began to call that part of himself A Nhi—a way to humanize, and to separate. But the more he tried to separate, the more she blended. A Nhi no longer appeared only in dreams. She crept into choices, into side-glances, into the moments when An paused at a stranger’s face—familiar yet foreign—perhaps because in another lifetime, A Nhi had once loved, birthed, or been born to them.
She whispered:
“I am the part you left behind when you became a man.”
An felt like he was carrying a soul—not in his belly, but in his chest, in his blood. A soft soul, deep and tearful, with more silence than speech.
Gradually, he let her speak for him.
In literature class, his essays shimmered with femininity—not fragility, but profound sensitivity. “Love is not possession,” he wrote, “but an echo that survives across lifetimes.”103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0vOJMLvxJZ
“Are you writing from personal experience, An?” the teacher asked gently.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkssm9Gd5BT
He bowed his head, unable to answer.
In history, during a lesson on patriarchal feudalism, he stood up and said,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfgKPLlhczS
“Men have always written history, but women carry the true memory of humankind.”103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdwMR9Xq1tP
The class fell silent. Someone snorted. But An didn’t flinch—because he knew it wasn’t him speaking. It was A Nhi, rising from the depths of his unconscious to finally be heard.
Every night, An and A Nhi conversed in silence. He’d lie staring at the ceiling, feeling her presence beside the bed. She would tell stories—of living in a man’s body, of the helplessness of not being able to cry, of the pain of pretending strength when weakness hollowed her out.
“As a man, I lost the right to be soft. As a woman, I lost the right to be myself.”
An didn’t know how to embrace her—how do you hold someone who lives in the same body? But his throat thickened, and the tears that welled weren’t his alone.
One rainy afternoon, An saw his reflection in a misted window. And for the first time, he didn’t ask, “Who am I?” but:
“Who are we?”
There was no answer. Only the sound of rain—like a wordless lullaby for cloned souls.
He wrote in his journal:
“I am the body of a boy. But within me lives my sister—who is also me—who once loved me. I no longer live one life. I am a composite of unquiet ghosts, unnamed, unmet, misunderstood.”
That same day, he impulsively cut off his shoulder-length hair—a favorite of A Nhi’s. And right after, he wept. Not for the hair—but for the feeling that he was rejecting part of himself.
She said:
“It’s all right. I don’t live in your hair. I live in your heart. And no matter what name you bear—you are me.”
From that day forward, An lived with many names.
To his friends: he was An—the quiet, contemplative boy.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡh33qsiTdaN
To the mirror: he was A Nhi—the unseen twin, always present.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJAXpJfAx9F
In dreams: he was both—the lover and the beloved, the one lost and the one reborn.
The world didn’t know what to make of him. His parents—if they ever found out—might deny him. His friends—if they ever saw—might reject him. But An no longer feared that. Because now, he was no longer alone.
He was a cloned soul—flawed, fragmented, and fiercely real.
And more than anything, he understood this truth: people may deny what is strange.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLpEXnBRBYc
But they cannot deny this—
That inside every human being lives a twin sister, unnamed and waiting.
Chapter V: Conspiracy and the Cost
In the depths of every culture lies a lingering fear—a fear of difference, of hybridity, of anything that blurs the lines carved over centuries: East and West, man and woman, native and foreign. For Nguyên, the Vietnamese younger brother, this fear wasn’t just a feeling—it was a conviction. A belief that blood must be pure, roots unmixed, order preserved. And anyone who disrupted that order deserved to pay the price.
He grew up with invisible hatred. His parents had once been deceived by a Western woman in a failed investment deal. Since then, in his mind, “Western” meant cunning, deceit, shame. That rage grew with him—like a needle lodged in his spine: it neither killed him nor let him rest. So when he looked at An—or more precisely, at the mixed-race girl living inside An’s body—he saw not a person, but a symbol of all he despised: a Western soul cloaked in Vietnamese skin, a gaze that softened yet defied gender boundaries, a smile suspended between two worlds.
To him, An’s existence was an insult.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrxz17YAMK0
To him, An was a cursed blend.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMeNy6Tw6LN
So, he devised a plan—not to kill, but to defile. To punish.
It happened on a rainy afternoon. The city was soaked, like a soul sobbing in silence. An had been summoned to a student group meeting, but found himself alone in a locked room. In front of him: Nguyên, his face calm and chilling. Behind him: a hidden camera, a metal chair, and a vial of anesthetic.
An was naive. He never imagined someone of the same blood, same nationality, same tongue—would use that very familiarity as a weapon.
“If you wake up and realize you’ve been violated,” Nguyên whispered,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNh6LSqVtir
“you’ll know no half-breed lives in peace on this land.”
An fought back. A Nhi’s soul screamed. But the drug worked faster than pain.
And just before he lost consciousness, he heard the voice of the woman from long ago:
“There are pains that do not kill us—but tear us into pieces.”
He woke in the infirmary, body aching, memories hazy. He couldn’t recall exactly what happened—only that a piece of his soul felt torn. He didn’t cry. Didn’t scream. Just sat there—still—as though his spirit had left his body.
And into that silence, another figure stepped.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡG3z5aZGypw
Not Nguyên.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡp9prfHgRBr
But Linh—his sister.
Linh had once been the embodiment of Vietnamese grace—long hair, soft voice, straight-A student, always compared to An. But beneath that obedient façade burned a quiet fury: a longing to be chosen, seen, validated. She believed An—with his strange aura and mixed heritage—had stolen the gaze that should’ve belonged to her.
She couldn’t stand that the West loved An. She especially couldn’t accept that the man she admired—a French-Asian scholar who once praised An’s writing as having “the melody of two languages”—looked at him with warmth. She was furious that she’d never been called “unique.” She’d only ever been called “correct.”
And in a blind act of envy, she gave the order:
“Inject him. The memory-wiping kind. Erase his selfhood. Let him forget everything—and I’ll become him.”
The drug was administered. Not once, but in rounds. Gently, like a spiritual cleansing. Day by day, An forgot—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZZyg92vdtx
Not the world,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡL0sxsILiY0
but himself.
He forgot he had been A Nhi.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwi4JiwwBqq
Forgot he had once been a husband.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFPHG1Z52El
Forgot the golden-haired woman who had wept in his dreams.
But what they didn’t know was this:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡI1dWmSScJh
The soul cannot be killed by drugs.
In the fractured realm of forgotten dreams, A Nhi stood in a boundless white room—no walls, no exit.
“You didn’t kill me,” she said, voice soft as a dandelion seed.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡegMJn4olnL
“You only erased the memories. But I live deeper than that.”
Night after night, she began piecing together shards of shattered mirrors. She wrote on them in phantom blood:
“Remember me. I am your sister. I am the betrayed self. But I will return.”
In the real world, Linh began taking An’s place. She wrote like him. She mimicked his speech. She wore his clothes—blended East and West, defied gender. She even mirrored the quiet sorrow he once carried.
At first, no one noticed. But something felt… off.
She didn’t have An’s eyes.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡq0reu7gMNW
She lacked the ambiguity of a soul reborn through lifetimes.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzgNYgY22j9
She was only a shadow.
Then, the teacher who once praised An’s writing spoke up:
“You resemble him—but you’re not him. There’s something… lifeless in your eyes.”
After weeks of wandering like a ghost, An dreamed again—of the sea.
But this sea had no waves.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡG43EjHeixj
No color.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡL6vdMJWEpN
Only A Nhi, waiting for him.
She reached out, gently touched his heart:
“We were violated. But pain cannot kill a soul. You have the right to return—not for revenge, but to rise.”
An awoke. His memory hadn’t fully returned. But his eyes had changed. They’d seen life torn apart—and still wanted to see more.
He walked into the schoolyard.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBtSUJGrRjj
And for the first time, he spoke aloud:
“Some people are born outside the norm. But that doesn’t mean they deserve to be erased.”
Nguyên froze. Linh stood still. The entire courtyard fell silent.
That day, A Nhi returned—not to mourn, but to live.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4TXy3kmMXJ
An was no longer a victim. Nor a vengeful soul.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ86ORURGfHf
He was a witness—of all that had been twisted, denied, and finally… remembered.
And from the ashes of conspiracy, that soul rose—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEauc4Nuk4D
like wild grass blooming through the cracks of history.
Chapter VI: The Exchange and the Inner Struggle
Perhaps no one truly lives just one life. For some, memories intertwine, roles trade places, and the soul is reshaped by unseen hands. And only when everything that was once called “me” becomes distorted, do we begin to understand: there are selves too fractured to be named.
Since the light returned after the darkness of conspiracy and injections, An—or rather, the being that once bore that name—was no longer a single person. She was a shattered mirror, each shard reflecting a fractured identity:
- A Vietnamese man who once loved across the shores of prejudice.
- A Western woman bound by an unfulfilled vow.
- A child abused between two cultures.
- A former wife, still in love but unable to return.
- A twin sister—replica of a soul.
- A victim, whose body and memory were violated.
- And above all, a survivor—of the past, of war, of human cruelty.
She—no longer accurately called “he”—was exiled from the West with a letter drenched in pity:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWkekXnU4L7
“You do not align with the institution’s current cultural direction.”
What they didn’t say aloud was the truth: fear—fear of a being too complex to classify.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDOkDrHgxuD
They didn’t know which gender box to place An in, which language, which identity.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6hXjux72y8
So instead of understanding, they erased.
The plane brought her back to Vietnam—the land of her mother, the body’s birthplace. But the moment she stepped off the plane, she knew this was no longer home.
People stared at her with strange looks:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWVakwkCzUh
“What kind of boy looks like a girl?”103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ29rqQKGOxC
“Has that mixed-race kid caught some Western sickness?”103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzx4xuicWE2
“What’s wrong with those eyes—they look like they’re seeing through you?”
No one saw the broken mirror inside her—only unfamiliar traces on the surface.
An international education organization reached out. They didn’t truly care about her past. They simply saw a “multi-purpose” commodity: fluent in English, with a bit of past fame, and above all… an Asian appearance with Western eyes. They offered her a “mission”: to be a bridge in talks about gender, culture, and ethnic reconciliation.
They wanted her to be “the face of identity harmony.”
What they didn’t know was:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2ZeVEAATul
She no longer had a face to represent anyone.
She was paired at a public event with a conservative Vietnamese scholar—one who once declared on national television:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwfieTPnbGD
“National identity must be pure. No mixing, no distortion, no dilution.”
They made her smile. Made her hold his hand. As if two extremes of the world could be reconciled with a single publicity photo.
She stood there, smiling, while within her, the screams of fragmented souls echoed:
- The man in her whispered: “We are betraying ourselves.”
- The woman sobbed: “We’re being used as tools again.”
- The child asked: “Who’s living in my place?”
No one heard. Only her.
That night, she vomited violently in the hotel bathroom. The face in the mirror was no longer whole. Every time she touched her eyes, she saw someone else’s gaze. Each voice in her head had a different timbre. She no longer knew who she was—nor who was real.
Some mornings, she awoke speaking in a hoarse male voice.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDBUU6RZaiC
Some days, she looked at her hands and found them foreign, moving without conscious will.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4QmuNXxXos
Some nights, she wrote love letters in French—perfectly, without having learned. Each word, each flourish, matched the old woman from her dreams.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtTLq9rUA6C
Some mornings, she stood before the mirror, applied lipstick, and smiled—not her own smile.
People said she was acting.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLfYcVHzyO5
But the truth was:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQouVuobDTc
She no longer had a self to perform.
A journalist came to interview her, wanting to write a feature on “the phenomenon of An—the one who carries many souls.”
She agreed, on one condition:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWiBRZ67hMW
“Do not assign me a label.”
The article was published. It caused a stir.
Some praised her as a living emblem of diversity.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡr8fDZMtQjv
Others condemned her as “a cultural aberration.”103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡeEUkgxon10
Online, her name was slapped with every tag: genderless, traitorous, progressive symbol, Westernized joke...
She smiled—a smile crumbling at the edges.
“No one is wrong,” she said during a speech.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkBrx8ZCXBS
“Because I am everything you say I am. But also none of it.”
One day, she received a handwritten letter. No sender.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6TvWAIKBB8
Inside, a single line:
“Every wounded soul needs a place to rest. You are that place. But who will rest you?”
She read it over and over. And finally, wept.
No one had ever asked her that.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZ4f64qT8rN
Not one person who stood beside her in the crowd had ever stopped to wonder what she needed.
No one asked:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTpCBfXDynI
Are you tired? Are you in pain? Are you afraid?
She asked herself.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡr7Y6VPA8db
And didn’t know the answer.
That night, she didn’t sleep.
She wrote a letter to a future “me”—some version of herself, if still alive, who might one day remember:
I was once the face of harmony, but in truth only a stage for endless battles.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSnWjSW4vHM
I was once the bridge between East and West, but in truth a rope pulled from both ends.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1FDgAUtISW
I lived under many names, many genders, many memories.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡR0HdlBFnW8
But at my core, I was just a soul no one believed was real.
If one day you—my future self—read this letter, please forgive me:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIZexPCSc7m
Forgive me for wanting to die.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnp9UW2msc4
Forgive me for trying to live behind someone else’s face.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5y4Db1pAbH
Forgive me… for still not knowing who I am.
She folded the letter and tucked it beneath her pillow.
Then looked up at the ceiling—where there were no mirrors, only darkness.
And in that darkness, she was no longer alone.
Because all the broken pieces—man, woman, victim, survivor—were gathering again.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNUgXSP1xVw
Not to form a perfect figure,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡglBqAgAdK8
but to form a human—one who needs no name.
Chapter VII: A Conclusion or a Curse Repeated?
They say destiny is a circle.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaLSg1ZXvFE
But some circles never close—they just spiral endlessly, like a whirlpool dragging the soul downward. Not to die, but to dissolve.
Nguyên, the Vietnamese younger brother—the one who once orchestrated the conspiracy, who once carved fate with a blade—began to dream strange dreams.
In his dreams, he sat on a throne of bamboo, in a grand hall filled with Westerners—all dressed in áo dài, eating fish sauce, calling him “Master,” “Ancestor,” “The Reviver of the Race.”
He smiled.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBkM0FpEhMq
He thought it was victory.
He dreamed of standing atop a mountain, holding aloft a map: no more France, America, or Britain—only Vietnam, stretched across the globe.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyyNKiNf0ae
He heard Vietnamese echo through European cathedrals, saw white children reading The Tale of Kiều instead of Andersen, saw Paris draped in red flags with yellow stars.
He called it “the dream of cultural revenge.”
But the deeper he dreamed, the more he lost his way.
One time, he pointed at a blonde child in his dream and said:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvt9GWf7qYi
“You must call me Grandpa.”
The child smiled and replied, in a Vietnamese laced with French:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhE8KwH2Hh7
“But Grandpa... you’re my Grandma, aren’t you?”
That line sliced through his mind like a blade.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡN7bXsEP5HC
He woke drenched in sweat, vision blurring, as if the world around him was melting into a river—and in that river, the blood of East and West had mixed, indistinguishably.
Nguyên went searching for his sister.
Linh—the woman who had once ordered injections, who once stole identities like pretty clothes.
He looked at her and asked:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWYCULu8tIA
“Are you still Vietnamese?”
She smiled—a smile he’d never seen before, half gentle, half frost.
“What do you think it means to be Vietnamese?”
“Someone who hasn’t been Westernized. Someone who preserves their roots.”
“And what are those roots?”
He fell silent.
“What our ancestors passed down,” he replied slowly.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡu0xpQBBW2W
“Blood. Language. Way of life...”
“Then tell me—did any ancestor ever marry a Westerner?”
That simple question left Nguyên speechless.
Then Linh said:
“You know… there are days I speak French more naturally than Vietnamese.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgn9nphbSwD
There are nights I dream of floating in lavender fields, not rice paddies.”
“So you’ve betrayed your people?”
“No,” she answered softly.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4DmXyp6mRF
“I’ve only accepted the parts of me I can no longer deny.”
Nguyên stepped out of her house, hollow.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuHpAjp1UrB
All the ideals he had clung to—purity, heritage, honor—began to crumble.
He went searching for the mixed-blood girl—the one he once called a disaster, a chaos.
An—no longer bearing that name—was living quietly in a small house, teaching orphaned children.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5ZmNeAyCVG
Children who didn’t know their parents.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlR4APwwXA3
Children who didn’t know whether their blood was “pure” or “mixed.”
He looked at her—the one who had once been his husband in a past life, now a girl with a fragmented soul.
She looked back at him.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡykpP7oWkiy
Her gaze held no anger, no blame—only the deep stillness of a dried-up lake.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
“I… don’t know,” he answered honestly.
“You want to ask me who I am?” she gave a faint smile.
He nodded.
She pointed to the children learning to spell:
“They don’t know who they are either. But they live, they learn, they love.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgRBHEWdA3S
Maybe… knowing who you are matters less than living like someone who knows how to love.”
He bowed his head.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNAuVpUZDza
For the first time, he felt small.
That night, he dreamed of standing before a mirror.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2NPsaykWAq
But it didn’t reflect him.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmuEAyPwp77
Instead, faces—male, female, white, yellow, ancient, modern—flashed across the glass, appearing and vanishing.
In the end, the mirror shattered.
And a voice echoed in his head:
“When blood is blended, no one is the host. No one is the guest.”
The next morning, he wrote a letter.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSFpDmG5Fwa
Not addressed to anyone.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡW8mVKK7cRH
Just left it on the table:
**“I once wanted to make the world a replica of myself.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdNoUQg359B
But I never knew who I was.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNWyH09SmqY
I once hated the mixed.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡq4KEBoM1x6
But now I understand: mixing isn’t betrayal—it’s a form of survival.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡn33xDZ7MiA
I thought I was preserving identity.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuolZFlvYM8
But really, I was afraid—because I never truly understood my own.
Now, I seek no one to punish.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAdEunZQbtT
I only wish to learn how to listen.”**
No one saw Nguyên again.
Some say he secluded himself in the mountains.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDNtH0Cmusg
Others claim he went to Africa to volunteer.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAd0TBORXMp
Cruel tongues whispered that he went mad, struck by “cultural confusion.”
But those who truly understood said nothing.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFeZhMUu5xe
Because they knew: he wasn’t gone.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1g0QzEl7GM
He had simply dissolved—like all the things he once tried to fight.
And the mixed-blood girl?
She still lived.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡn5GftmFOaI
Still taught.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtoUgsW8V16
Still wandered the markets, wearing a French scarf and a nón lá.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrBIUWG3wNk
Some days she wore an áo dài.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡN8y7KtVq04
Other days, a vintage dress.
People didn’t know what to call her—he, she, madam, sir—so they called her the Nameless One.
She didn’t mind.
Because she knew:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8jtS4vQQOK
Once you’ve gone beyond names, there’s nothing left to prove.
On the final night of the changing winds, she wrote one line in her journal:
“This isn’t the end.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5Fi6PM4Vh5
But if it is a curse,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJjwxiv4JtD
Let me be the one to repeat it—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ05awVt4i2w
So those who follow won’t have to.”
Chapter VIII: Blood Becomes Rivers – Tears Become Seas
On a windswept hilltop, nameless and unmapped, she stood.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCo55CbpIWO
The evening sun spilled across her thin blouse like a dragonfly’s wing, her hair dancing between two skies—one soaked in Northern mist, the other stained with Southern dust.
No one called her “the boy she once was.”103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOxNjJeKa9h
No one remembered she had once been a man lost inside his own body, a wife seeking rebirth through another’s blood, a child whose soul was torn apart by unnamed ambitions.
She—the one who bore three lifetimes—carried no more names.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrDeXwPt1NN
Only wind. And a curse.
That curse—like a sorrowful melody—whispered in the breeze, not in sound, but in trembling:
“To claim the West, you must become the West.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtu6ZOIErkq
To keep Vietnam, never touch another’s blood.”
She once believed that.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡggZucAWOu2
Once thought she was a mistake—an accident of history, a wrinkle in the silk of identity.
But when she witnessed the blood of three lives flowing through her veins, she understood:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBRqFkM5P3V
Blood is not wrong—only too many people demand that it be pure.
Nguyên, the younger brother, had once believed that by making the West Vietnamese, he would triumph.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGkizw255CR
But he shattered—because no one can possess anything without losing part of themselves.
Linh, the sister, thought that if she stole An’s place, injected the drugs, rejected the foreign, she would be accepted.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡa5OjFHMzJ9
But she was only ever accepted as a shadow—and spent a lifetime never finding her own light.
As for her—the mixed-blood girl—when asked one final time, “Who do you want to be?”103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡifRdnpn2CT
She answered quietly:
“I don’t live to be someone’s wife.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcbSwbLNz60
Nor to be anyone’s version of anything.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1UuZooIQ9V
I live like the wind—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8Chn93AGht
Free, without gender, without language, without nation.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwJLtqgrAkd
No one can keep me.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhmMGANBcFY
But I abandon no one.”
On the last day of her public life, she burned all her documents: passport, ID, birth certificate, even the degrees that once made people worship her as a symbol.
A friend once asked:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWZaAZ4QpH7
“Then how will anyone prove who you are?”
She smiled and said only this:
“I don’t need to prove who I am.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiLJW9oLOTJ
I only need to be remembered as someone who once truly felt alive.”
Years later, stories were told—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6aF5f9vwl4
That she crossed countless borders without papers. No one stopped her. No one ever really saw her.
They said—she once stayed in a monastery high in the Alps, where nuns had lost their languages but learned to listen to souls in silence.
They said—she once appeared in a Khmer village, teaching orphaned children how to write with nothing but smiles.
They said—she once lay on a boat drifting down the Perfume River, gazing at the sky and whispering:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAOVVHCS1qK
“Don’t name me, so I may become the river.”
But no one knew—on a night when rain fell like blood, she returned to the place where her soul had been torn.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBD2MmVipYI
The room where Nguyên staged his violation.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOK71i7HAAt
Where the drugs erased her essence.
She stepped in.
The room was abandoned. Door broken. Wind howling.
She knelt on the floor—where once her blood had dripped like red rain.
And for the first time in years, she cried.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkGwCxN01xx
Not from hatred. Not from pain.
But from forgiveness.
A bowl of blood she poured from her own wrist—not to die, but to lift the curse.
Each drop that touched the ground bloomed into a pale lavender sprig.
And from within the wound, she whispered:
“The blood of three lifetimes never dries.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4yuwE5DrLR
But if people still believe—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSr0I2XTa41
That life is not to assimilate, but to understand.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡb04T0aGTWL
That love is not to possess, but to liberate.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8AplHRA2L2
…then from wounds, flowers may still bloom.”
No one found her after that night.
Only a single line, written in blood—dry but not blackened—remained on the cold tile floor:
“I am no one.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbK7W3cwLeg
But I am everyone ever torn in two by borders.”
Some built statues of her along national frontiers—but carved no name.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhZ1rhcmgLK
Some wrote novels about her—but called her only The Winded One.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡam2uECtMp7
Some called her a curse.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHCAef0nIhf
Some, an apocalypse.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡd7NdGYp8kx
Some—only whispered in the breeze—called her hope.
In a seaside village where the wind refused to choose direction,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6nzrRikQfV
a child once drew in the sand:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgx1Te5bmL8
a figure with two arms—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFMaLMbeuHg
one holding a stalk of Vietnamese rice,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡN0hM088YlS
the other a sprig of French lavender.
The child didn’t know who she was.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkAZZDa9qkd
But still, they drew.
Because perhaps…103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYZZ2piN37z
That soul never left.
It had only become the wind.
Chapter IX: Lotus in the Mud – Nameless Pride (Epilogue)
She walked out of her childhood like one emerging from a fire—smoke clinging to her skin, eyes red, hands trembling—but alive. And survival itself marked the beginning of a new journey: the journey of someone cast out, yet unwavering in preserving her dignity. Like a lotus blooming in the mire, needing no name to blossom.
Her secondary school years passed like an unending storm. She moved from one school to another, each bearing a different face but the same eyes—eyes filled with suspicion, judgment, and disdain.
At first, there were whispers:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBwwu2qWsct
“That mixed-blood girl is studying at our school?”
Then came scrutiny:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡO0REvH60IF
“Was she really assaulted? Or did she make it up for attention?”
Eventually, came punishment: her grades lowered despite correct answers; her responses dismissed because the teacher “didn’t like her attitude”; excluded from group work; beaten in places without security cameras; called “low-class mongrel” in the school corridors.
From prestigious French schools to international academies in Asia, the institutions formed a silent, subtle alliance—a network of rejection. No one said it aloud, but everyone understood: she was the hyphen no one wanted in their pure-blooded system.
Even her twin sister—once part of her very soul—turned away.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHLDTmoqo47
“You’ve shamed me,” her sister spat, eyes clouded with hate.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfU2iYKcpyp
“I don’t want to be seen as having the same blood as you.”
But she didn’t cry.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8gn1UugiZc
She simply told herself:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRng0YjJeJz
“As long as I can graduate… that’s enough.”
And she did graduate.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlxAocA9xJt
Not with fanfare, but with blood and tears.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrmz8ZrcbKO
An international diploma—neither glittering nor prestigious like those awarded to the “pure” and privileged—but a testament to a silent rebellion.
They called her grades a failure. But they didn’t know they were forged through rigged scores, swapped exam papers, and nights of studying in tears out of fear of being expelled.
She never failed.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAiEmhZaiRA
She was simply denied the right to succeed.
When college came—cruel in its irony—she was directly admitted into a medical school in Vietnam. But instead of accepting that safe haven, she returned to France—the very place that once stabbed her heart with prejudice.
No one understood why.
But she did.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrNhI2TbaNR
Some wounds must be faced directly to ever close.
This time, college wasn’t a place of learning, but a prison named “international cooperation.” She was allowed to study—but only for two years. Allowed to stay—but tightly surveilled in the hospital. Allowed to live—but only as a research subject, a guinea pig for Franco-Vietnamese medical education experiments.
She once wanted to die.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡT2ZxfZBWpd
Once stood atop the hospital roof, contemplating the fall—not from weakness, but from being too strong for too long.
Then COVID-19 struck.
The pandemic—tragic for the world—became her personal escape.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPLfTu82y4G
She returned to Vietnam, studied Psychology online. At the same time, she enrolled in a second bachelor’s program in Linguistics at an international university in Vietnam—still connected to the same system that had once rejected her.
Online learning—her supposed salvation—turned into another prison.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVayMj22Rwk
Teachers couldn’t see her face but still gave her low marks.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡm9UudCplLC
Excellent assignments couldn’t score above 7.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡswnvfWdato
She had no friends. No allies. Only screens, cold presentations, and grades that slapped her efforts.
They said, “Everyone passes online classes.”103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcEWE7hnotJ
But when she graduated with two Bachelor's degrees and one Master’s, they sneered:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDPgSNQA1w9
“Bought degrees? Who even checks those?”
They didn’t know:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVFuwZpTBaD
Every presentation cut off mid-sentence due to dropped internet.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡV7R0MFygDv
Every paper rewritten after software crashes.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGFw3MWt4SE
Every night awake until 3 AM completing demanding academic requirements—done alone, by herself.
They said she lacked hands-on experience?103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOKXDoyRaqp
What about the volunteer hours?103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlnDV9hcw0f
The sessions with autistic children?103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjVDHhRwYoQ
The home visits to the depressed—the ones no one else dared approach?
They said online degrees held no value in Vietnam?103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMqnTeqCUMH
Then what of her in-person Linguistics degree from a Vietnamese-certified international institution? Was that fake too?
What about the internationally accredited TESOL certificate from Australia, the Pedagogy certificate from Vietnam’s Ministry of Education, the French Psychology diploma, the 1240 SAT score, and a 7.0 IELTS?103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡR3XKPTajJ9
Who sold her all those?
No one had an answer.
She chose to pursue a Doctorate—not to flaunt degrees, but to prove that online education is not a crime.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡP2jzgpFjCq
That real study, real effort, real failure—are all part of the process.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7EibyEAzse
No one graduates just because they have money.
They once called her the bottom of society.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡa17nobBfKh
But they didn’t realize: sometimes, it is from the bottom that the strongest souls are born.
Lotuses do not bloom in palaces.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡo16CiO3ObJ
They bloom in mud.
Some said the lotus isn’t as beautiful as the rose.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQ7CqSvYMZd
But the lotus doesn’t need to be beautiful.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCOUdnG2YL0
It only needs to live.
To live in silence. In loneliness. In obscurity.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlJokfuQurX
And it is precisely from obscurity that the lotus blooms—radiant, for no one, for no applause.
She is that lotus.
And if you—the one reading this—consider yourself “normal,”103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡM309p5pzzH
but do not have even a fraction of the effort, faith, or strength103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzssNuaAHbT
as the one you once looked down upon as “abnormal”…
…then perhaps it is you who should be ashamed.
Because sometimes,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6HbW7iiof1
“normal” is just the mask worn by those too afraid to leave their comfort zones.
And she—she lived through everything the world hurled at her—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4B0zM3msOO
and still walked forward with pride,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNx7tm5T9hk
like a curse that had been transformed into something sacred.
Chapter X: A Message from the Survivor103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNj7ZtvfB1M
(Written by the protagonist to their family)
There was a time I thought of myself as a child abandoned in a storm—no hand to pull me up, no one to listen. In those days, I lay alone in my room, the wind pounding against the window like the echo of my own resentment. I was bitter. I was angry. I blamed even the sky for birthing me only to let me carry every injustice, while others—while my younger sister—were allowed to live the childhood I never had.
I once believed you didn’t love me.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbwZ16qEDKT
I asked myself:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlhhuQ0qN1m
Why didn’t my parents fight for me?103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡp152dluj83
Why didn’t they shield me the way other parents shield their children?103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxnopya25MQ
Why was I the one to suffer in my sister’s place?103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmJD13MkI5D
Why was family the very thing that drove me into life’s dead ends?
Back then, my heart had no answers—only layers upon layers of despair, pressing down like boulders on a fragile soul.
But now, as I write these words, I understand.
Without those storms, perhaps I would never have become the person I am today—a person bruised and broken, yet capable of forgiveness. Flawed, but still capable of love.
I once thought I was a failure. I blamed you—often for things that weren’t truly your fault. But now I realize, even if you were wrong… it was through that very wrongness that I learned how to look within.
Because if I hadn’t had the capacity to hurt others, perhaps you wouldn’t have chosen to sacrifice me to protect them.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmoVGJXcXOr
Your silence, at times, wasn’t a lack of love—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXbhNlbiwRH
It was a lack of choice.
You let go of me to preserve the last ounce of peace for the family, for the relatives, even for those who never deserved it. That wasn’t favoritism—it was helplessness.
I used to think you feared hardship, feared poverty. But now I know:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPAAcjEu2eC
You feared that I would be poor, that I would suffer.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡasSbHfS3rt
And above all, you feared that if you once stood up for me—and lost everything: honor, kinship, stability—then the very bond called “family” would be reduced to nothing.
Because if love becomes a reason to inflict pain, then that love is no longer love—it is poison.
And you, my sister—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWmJIZqQ23h
The little girl who was once the light of my childhood—are probably someone else now.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIvOXA9HeI6
Someone with love, with friends, with joy.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡt0Gsv4TFcS
Someone who no longer looks back to find the sister who once sheltered you, who once bore it all alone.
I know, you have your own wounds.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWlBq3GZDNT
Maybe you think I’m selfish.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡozUOXNontK
Maybe you think I don’t deserve your love.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡes7J9mfyrT
Maybe, in your eyes, I was never a good sister.
But dear sister…
Everything I did—I thought of you first.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡme6liDg5pZ
Whether protecting, sacrificing, or enduring—I never did it for myself.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEKI6THTzrp
I only wanted you to have the childhood we both should’ve had.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKD7zjbph3K
And if there’s one thing I regret most, it’s making you grow up too fast—to bear the love I should’ve given our parents.
Yes, I’m a fool.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjdomOIknQN
A fool who didn’t know how to express love, who couldn’t protect herself, and even more so, couldn’t make you understand that—
I love you.
Not in sweet words, but in quiet persistence:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsGhGiFlq7W
Like a sigh in the night.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTEAWJM4jJ9
Like the silent figure standing outside your classroom when you were bullied—never stepping in, only watching—because she knew if she entered, you’d be embarrassed.
You loved our parents in my place.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjh6mGUnUFe
You did what I didn’t have the courage to do.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5vcJsGXJrH
And now, if I could go back, I would never let you endure that burden alone.
You deserve a happier life than mine.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoSlL4FsZpi
And if fate demands I pay the price, then I’ll live in the shadows—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1INTbXxdPT
So long as you can walk in the light.
I will continue to care for our parents as you once did for me.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9SkiZa3cac
Not as repayment.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLpJnNKbAjB
But as redemption.
And even if we never become close again—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXWwf8us81X
Even if the cracks between us never heal—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmf6iXPxXjx
I hope that this apology and this thank you will not come too late.
Whether or not you forgive me, whether or not you choose to return or move forward alone, is your right.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDtyudKb5uw
I ask nothing.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ75W1mzOuhU
I beg for nothing.
I only hope you understand:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUpZAmR2sZq
Only forgiveness and compassion can cure the poisons of hatred and selfishness.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ24H6eq7GzM
But if you cling to the pain like a protective charm…103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTza9x17apV
The one who suffers most won’t be me, won’t be our parents—it will be you.
Because no chain is crueler than the one forged by our own hearts.
Mother, father, sister—
Today, I am no longer that child crying in the dark.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLzTpsOoC6O
I am a survivor—not thanks to anyone,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ30f7ZicZl9
but because of everything you unknowingly sowed.
And from those broken pieces,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGdpspVj5nj
I’ve rebuilt myself into someone who knows how to love—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXp7bg2k3cV
Even if that love came late.
If there is one thing I wish for, it is this:
Live truthfully with one another, while there is still time.
Because one day, when apologies and thank-yous are only flowers laid on gravestones—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡflVvm6dmjG
It will all be too late.
Chapter XI: Forgiving Oneself103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZyqfisgud4
From the Journal of the Soul
There exists a kind of forgiveness that is the hardest of all—not the forgiveness of those who hurt us, but the forgiveness we give ourselves.
After all the years of bearing burdens, after countless nights spent writhing with questions that had no answers, the girl—who once resented her father, was angry with her mother, wounded her sister, hated life, and despaired to the point of wishing to vanish from the world—now stood face to face with the most silent enemy of all: herself.
It was she who had once spoken cruelly to herself after every failure.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcp5xX01hqA
It was she who had cursed her mixed-race body, her soul that never seemed to belong anywhere.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡF0l9BFMVlD
It was she who, in moments of panic, had drowned in her own tears, accusing herself of being the source of every misfortune.
But now, standing in the quiet of midnight, in a room filled only with the sound of wind breathing and moonlight slipping through the window, she knew: it was time to embrace the child within her—the one who had been screaming for years, the one who had never been heard.
“Forgiveness is not forgetting,” she whispered to herself.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqb1BYotOxn
“It’s daring to look back and say:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBCBYNyt6Ds
You were not wrong for being fragile.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqOtv5ydpTC
You were not guilty for wanting to give up.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlSnZX7qucb
You were simply human.”
And she began to write—to herself.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLfLARWiyXl
No longer the old accusations, no longer the endless indictments.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡM7xefjqTtm
But a gentle murmur—like that of a sister, a mother, a friend—written to the tender self she had neglected for so long:
“Little girl, you did not deserve such pain.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMO9MAoapZp
You were incredibly brave to survive what others wouldn’t even dare to face.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaafys0H2xn
You deserve love—not because you are perfect, but because you are you.”
Each line fell onto the page like tears finally allowed to flow without shame.
To forgive oneself is to accept that we, too, have limits.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEtLjFHZKwr
It is to release the roles of “the one who endures,” “the silent sacrificer,” “the ideal daughter,” “the invisible sister”—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEA21rrHCOt
And return simply to being someone learning how to live.
No longer must she strain to prove her worth.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPaX2epI80x
No longer must she chase high scores, degrees, or the world’s approval to feel valuable.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡERqgeFtC7o
No longer must she wait for others to forgive her before she’s allowed to forgive herself.
She realized: she does not need anyone’s acceptance to justify her existence.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡweq9DxM0wG
Her life, her presence, was already a miracle.
Yes, there will still be long nights.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwFMeJ8byQp
Yes, there will still be stumbles.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrUO63Gxrov
But from this moment on, she will no longer wage war against herself.
She will live—not to untangle every misunderstanding,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjFCnsORuey
Not to make others love her again,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTWSxwB4uwk
Not to reclaim what was lost—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZ5d5xBIcBq
But to understand this:
Every pain that once pierced the heart did not come to destroy it—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmJGzpOAFlV
But to open a door into it.
And in the deepest part of her soul—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXYCYQXlxQq
That was where she needed to pause, sit down, and take her own hand:
“It’s okay now… I forgive you.”
End of Chapter:
Sometimes, resurrection does not arrive with applause.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2roihtArQ7
It comes in the moment when someone stands quietly before the mirror—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡErvCnHKSzr
And sees themselves through eyes no longer clouded with resentment.
If forgiving others is liberation,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡM2HfzWCLum
Then forgiving oneself is the final redemption.
Chapter XII: Where Dawn Blooms Within the Heart
Dawn does not always begin with light.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAhIHcfsWcM
Sometimes, it begins with a stillness—deep and quiet—after a long night’s storm.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡO92hVJXqD9
Just like the heart of that girl, after years of tempests, finally allowed itself... to rest.
Not rest in resignation, but in awakening.
After forgiving her family, forgiving her sister, and forgiving herself, she was no longer the same.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbUcGCN9teM
No longer forcing herself to prove her worth.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoP4mBuQNzn
No longer exhausted from searching for a place to belong.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEGtRrXQ7PL
No longer flinching at mocking words, or hiding from contemptuous eyes.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ79YZrtjvEm
She was—once more—fully human.
For the first time, she accepted that she was a flower that bloomed out of season.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBnzWXBhSiV
And because of that, she was beautiful in a way no one else was.
Dawn doesn’t begin with the sound of an alarm.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡenj4SyVHBq
It begins with a decision: no more blame, no more bitterness, no more living by scars.
From a survivor, she became a creator.
She did not build a home from the bricks others had thrown at her,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyfrIQR4shk
But from the tiny fragments of belief she gathered day by day.
She began to teach—not to flaunt knowledge,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ51wPaps6Wn
But to give her students what she had longed for: someone who truly listens.
She wrote—not as a cry for help,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXBAqzGAnOw
But to spark something in others.
She loved—not to fill a void,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgl5Ctnwp9N
But to grow alongside another soul.
Someone once asked her:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhau8QyLp1S
“Why do you still choose kindness, when life has treated you so unfairly?”
She simply smiled:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ53PyzjWIZg
“Because if I live the way life once lived with me... then I’d no longer be myself.”
She no longer demanded justice from the world—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMBbCWrRuk1
For she understood: justice is not about equal shares,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzwRo13TZ9F
But about the right to redefine happiness in your own way.
Her happiness was not in riches, fame, or recognition.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWJOTwO1VMM
It was in placing her hand over her heart and hearing its rhythm say:
“I am still here. I am still strong. I am still learning how to love.”
At times, the past still returned like a bitter wind—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡht4hgqJldC
Reminding her of darker days.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5C1ut7buQP
But this time, she did not run.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2gZrF1FkvM
She sat down, smiled, and told herself:
“I’ve walked through more than this. And I deserve to be here, now.”
Dawn was no longer at the horizon.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZKSCaz0cJE
It now resided in her heart—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOxE6EWw0v1
The very place where darkness once dwelled.
And from that place, light began to rise.
End of Chapter:
She stood at the front of the classroom, watching a student who was being bullied.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡS3trv1HcnZ
She said little, only placed a gentle hand on the child's shoulder and looked into their tearful eyes:
“You have the right to exist.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvGyU0QO0k1
You don’t need to become someone else.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3dkfqoojtH
You only need to live as yourself.”
It was the very thing she once wished an adult would say to her.
Now, she was the one saying it... to someone else.
And that is how dawn spreads.
Chapter XIII: The Hands of the Imperfect
Some handholds don’t come from weddings.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡS3UWVorobx
Nor from romantic dates.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdn5zbZa4Ej
Some handholds simply exist to keep someone from falling.
And that’s what she learned as she stepped into a new chapter of her life—a chapter filled with the imperfect.
She began volunteering in a small classroom where children with intellectual disabilities were sent, treated by others as "burdens."103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfn5AcnZe8F
But to her, each child was a shimmering fracture—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4hw4xFVxE0
a star that did not follow constellations, yet still glowed in its own light.
Some could not speak.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNQoEKCQZy4
Some sat rocking in corners, crying endlessly.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡS3q9LDZStG
Some hit others, tore books, even scratched her hands raw.
But she never grew angry.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXj2viFPfpF
Because she too had once been like that—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwISIAiFWWW
a "stranger" to this world, labeled as "abnormal," "unruly," "in need of isolation."
For the first time in her life, she didn’t teach letters.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoTDSM7xuvN
She taught empathy.
She didn’t push them to excel.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYhS1TY2Bnd
She didn’t force them to conform.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3X1sECwYk8
She simply held each of their hands gently and whispered:
"You’re not wrong. You just need more time."
And then, the miracles began.
A child who once couldn’t meet anyone’s eyes now smiled when she entered the room.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡe5ywnZtGAa
A child who once scratched her now folded a crooked little paper crane and gave it to her.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgboWf4O1fo
A child once rejected by his own parents whispered:
"Miss, I want to be a good person."
Each of those moments—tiny to others—was a second dawn to her.
She realized:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0ZwGfSDwaI
The world is not saved by the great.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrTnmRNd2Rn
But by clumsy hands that know how to hold one another when the sky collapses.
She began to journal her journey with these "different" children—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9CwlF89pRI
but each word wasn’t just a story; it was a resurrection of belief.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡK25ZOhmCbd
The belief that no one is "useless."103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNEB8Wlx4gd
No one is born to be excluded.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBgYdG65yYg
Not her.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuslwbaNoEI
Not her sister.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡeWDncVTurd
Not the children the world had dismissed with a shake of the head.
And then, the unexpected happened.
An international educational organization read her journals.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLE5PGkMyjS
They reached out—not to bestow praise,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJ7KaHHFMlk
But to listen.
"We want you to train teachers for special education," they said.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡthNhmbBxiN
"Not because of your degrees, but because you understand what education has forgotten: the heart."
She didn’t decline. But she also didn’t feel honored.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0p4wF9YwZb
Because she knew—she stood for the imperfect.
She stood before the class, not teaching theory.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuUNqYbItAa
She simply told stories:
About a boy who once clawed her hand, now gently wiping a friend’s tears.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡK7qOxAduSf
About a girl once locked in darkness, now writing her first words:
"I want to live."
And then she looked toward the distance, where sunlight spilled down the steps, and whispered:
"We don’t need to be perfect to love and be loved.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiCxVTArTMA
We only need the courage to reach out—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2VFiJaLGil
even when that hand is trembling."
End of Chapter:
In this life, perhaps everyone falls into a pit at some point.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhj2tbSlhvn
But not everyone meets someone willing to climb down, sit beside them, and say:
"I’ve been here too.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡslqVfmK0x8
But I got out.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLTLJN38Q4s
And now, I won’t leave you behind."
She became that person—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyJQ6Tf4TYz
Not because she was strong.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiGXt4MIWo3
But because she had known pain.
And only those who have known pain...103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyBqPCa6ijE
can truly heal.
Chapter XIV: The Seasons That Do Not Repeat
There are seasons that pass without promising to return.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMxZT9Vv5ES
Not because the world has changed—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDpfv3jbOQ9
but because the heart has.
And she—after years of dwelling in sorrow that spun in loops,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEFOcBg3DxH
after reliving memories like rewound tapes—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKKYS4YY6ti
finally realized something:
Not every season is meant to return.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4cMMlWcvWv
Some seasons exist to come to an end.
That summer—the one where she curled up on a hospital floor,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVXvOoP1b9C
bathed in cold white lights and the heavy rhythm of heart monitors—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZrzDetXEgZ
will never return.
Because now, instead of merely surviving,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtxpaKXJFEA
she knows how to live.
That autumn—the one where she sat outside the school gates,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡigmLoN5V73
watching classmates holding hands on their way to extra classes103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNPNtLXYO5a
while her name was struck from the roster—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7I7gqV0Clx
will never return.
Because now, instead of waiting to be accepted by others,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMAPtNEkcEr
she accepts herself.
That winter—the one when she thought of ending it all,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡw5uMlHCaRB
stood by a high balcony, wondering,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhLaLjzrmLb
“Would anyone cry if I disappeared?”—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXeGqgIShWo
will not return either.
Because now, she would be the one to cry for herself103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2zLU2917wO
if ever again she dared to let go.
And this spring—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwcCHvZZpBf
the first spring where she no longer has to pretend to be strong,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAMFAZIJ43q
no longer has to force joy—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOjMdv7pxOS
has arrived.
She has begun to love the little things.
The first rain of the season.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1gCrCfM4Qb
A slow, unhurried afternoon.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2WcvAnms7D
A book left half-read.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKhbZX7RDGQ
A spontaneous smile103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ05YHLcq4ie
when sunlight filters through a crack in the door.
She is learning to live in the present—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKcSw7qPEe8
not to forget the past,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaxknpovFkH
but to stop depending on it.
The past is a chapter in the book of life—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyTU9x9OyOB
it needs to be read,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVCmezTAWrG
it deserves to be cried over—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZ8njINIcN5
but it must be turned.
Once, while teaching, a student asked her:
"Miss, if someone has been hurt too much,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUueGyG07bh
do they still have the right to be happy?"
She looked at the student, her eyes glistening,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHQ6M2gdrl6
and simply smiled:
"Not only the right.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjZfJj9dmSK
You need to be happy.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4aKhmt4piW
Because those who’ve known pain—deserve healing more than anyone else."
Each season holds its own sorrow.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdW0fdve7VD
Each year leaves new scars.
But like the sun that always rises,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡynmLRNKdAk
no matter how long the night—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ82PyJt82G7
hope always waits at the end of the road.
Not blind faith.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhNW7znQdYQ
But faith that has once been broken,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPxQJd8cEPV
and now knows how to rise103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmqTeXk5Qlh
on the strength of its scars.
End of Chapter:
The seasons that do not return are not sorrowful ones.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡavZVoPoSNq
They are proof of growth.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGeDaL7xITm
Of a life truly lived—of pain endured, of falls survived—and of still being here.
She knows there will be more fears.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAfX1AWVHbk
There will be days of confusion.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡw48AcyXYMp
There will be moments when lovers fall silent,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIDIAXv3O1z
when friends turn away,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKLlUwIyJqb
when the world feels cold.
But she also knows this:
No one can take away the seasons she’s lived through.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡi6h6PUQGSq
No one can erase the light that once bloomed within her heart.
And if any season must not return—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvBnci7wAOA
let it drift away103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4RsmbCPLxp
like a petal falling at the perfect time,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVTI4ttOtxK
like the closing note of a well-ended song,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLXt92WIjQw
like a part of her life once marked by pain...103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7rL10oRw9t
so now she can cherish peace.
Chapter XV: The House Within Her Chest
People often spend their lives searching for a home to return to.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbwYYzuAsQA
A place with a warm light at the door,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAjsbQ33SNE
a bowl of hot rice,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBQWXEg4aXk
and someone waiting to hear the words, “I’m home.”
She was once like that.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiG4FVdGZa7
She used to believe that a home was a physical place—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjF3Cr1pqsQ
an address, family inside,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfNNiAE5NHk
framed photos hanging on the wall.
But through many losses, she came to understand:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBkamVhyXPX
Some homes are not outside.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkEwdGi9N0y
They dwell within the chest.
A true home isn’t the safest place—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhx4GGAKOYO
but the place where you are most fully yourself.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyLMzor121m
Not a place without conflict—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwumBw0u8BX
but where people choose to stay after anger has passed.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOfKP7Fp61d
Not a place of perfect comfort—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIj1B6EyvTK
but where you don’t have to pretend to be strong.
She began building that home—within her.
Each brick was an old wound,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpwrMTax9k6
washed clean with tears.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYYF6bwBIji
Each door was a new belief,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYKx1YjXYLr
opened after years of being shut.
That house had no concrete foundation.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡY2tT265e6P
It was built on compassion—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaD7aznY2F3
for herself.
She learned to speak to herself each morning:
“It’s okay. You’ve done really well.”103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡI3Cm5g8nNl
“If someone hurts you today, come back here—this heart-home will hold you.”103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡeL6C8MQxlo
“You don’t have to be perfect. You just have to be real.”
And strangely, the moment she stopped waiting for someone else to give her a home,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFdLNQqre3l
she began seeing homes everywhere:
– In the glance of a stranger meeting her gaze with a smile.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡI4lKeqfovU
– In the rustling sound of a stray cat outside the door.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgJov5OZ4D4
– In the quiet moment alone with a cup of tea, no longer feeling lonely.
She wrote a line in her journal:
“I once had no home.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡb7FU5YaLPV
But now, I am the home for my own soul.”
Then she remembered her mother.
The mother who once stood silent through her injustices,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrPnHS84y6n
now marked by wrinkles.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsSQ04QZ75b
The mother who once couldn’t protect her,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHKdrrWEhrT
now looked at her with eyes full of sorrow and regret.
Once, she had wanted to scream,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡH5Cd0XPbJF
“Why didn’t you protect me?”
But now, she simply looked at her mother and said gently:
“You may not have been my home.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXVQPezLtOJ
But I will be your home—when you grow old.”
And so, she forgave herself—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfnMpb6d6zb
for her moments of weakness,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsEFCvwY9DG
for the times she almost let go,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNIkPwbG5wf
for loving the wrong people and trusting the wrong places.
Because the home in her heart wasn’t a space only for the beautiful.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡt4neh8FMEm
It was a shelter for cracks and foolishness too.
End of Chapter:
Perhaps no one teaches us how to build a home inside.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMwtYXSeQYm
But each of us can learn—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDEBc6G7BMM
from ruin,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUXvdF8y6qz
from winters spent unwelcomed,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpTEPUEDyr2
from moldy rented rooms,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPlTiNdNg0t
from dreams cut short.
And once we learn to become a home for ourselves,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡb1ppGFBxjn
we no longer fear being abandoned.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLIUVMijVgK
Because we already have a place to return to—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6axDLLWYpV
a place no one can take away.
Chapter XVI: The Missing Piece of Herself
There was a part of her—one she had never dared to name.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ96VhaWRvlV
A piece that lay still, shapeless, neither light nor dark, yet it was the most vital fragment in completing the picture of who she was.
That piece—was fear.
Not the fear of darkness.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlwo6gaFa8x
Not the fear of someone leaving.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ982R4IJYmn
But the fear of not being enough.
Not good enough.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1Xk43qBErZ
Not strong enough.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8dYKD3sMsD
Not worthy enough to be loved.
She had hidden that piece in the deepest place—beneath layers of achievements, certificates, smiles, and endurance.
People looked at her and thought she was a fortress.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2QIhj818MZ
But inside was just a little girl, lost, holding the piece in her hand, not knowing where to place it.
One day, she sat alone in a small room, after a tense lesson, after a brief argument with someone she loved.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡno93XtOPal
Tears welled up—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUN8ALvP87j
not because someone had insulted her,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7V0q4aVcYm
but because she no longer knew who she was.
She looked in the mirror—her hair had changed, her eyes were different, her voice deeper, her dreams quieter.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIfhBExkpgi
But where was the child who once believed that if she just tried hard enough, people would love her?
That child—was still there.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhSeLdnCdgP
Trembling.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsoseAQpOT2
But still waiting to be seen.
She sat down, opened her journal, and for the first time, instead of writing about others, about lessons or accomplishments…103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPjpmTYhrKG
she wrote to herself:
“You don’t need to prove anything anymore.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaAU7YrFg7j
You have the right to be tired.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6UKBU8Mstk
You have the right to be wrong.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlDDEX4N7Vo
You have the right not to understand yourself—because even a heart needs time to learn how to beat peacefully.”
“If someone doesn’t love you because you’re not good enough, that’s not your fault.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5DvNp7d2qI
And if, at times, even you can’t love yourself, that’s okay too—because you’re still here. You haven’t given up.”
From those words, she began to shed her shell.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡp4GQnc7xWK
Not to expose everything…103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgHMq7FRTTS
But to feel lighter.
She walked in the rain without an umbrella.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxsdW3qqP1F
She sent an apology to someone she had upset.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡelzCYPwdtI
She laughed when she saw a child fall and then get back up—because she realized, she had done the same.
Some days, that missing piece would stir again.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0i0KySohSB
The fear was still there.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡacHEQF6W5Z
The insecurity was still there.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlBmn2oSqao
The feeling of being abandoned, misunderstood, rejected—still lingered.
But this time, she embraced it.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡg4960wFXFe
She placed her hand on her heart and whispered:
“It’s okay. I still have me.”
And that piece—after years of rejection—finally fit into place.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBTp8jQM5uZ
Not perfect.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZQp2jzcrIu
Not pretty.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSd7ByRmKpu
But exactly where it belonged.
End of Chapter:
People aren’t incomplete because they lack good things.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvFZrrbzMVq
They’re incomplete because they’ve forgotten to embrace the parts of themselves that aren’t whole.
She had once tried to piece herself together using others’ expectations.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLi88Ig4NJe
But now, she chose to mend herself with truth.
The truth that she had been weak.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7TZp59EeeV
Made mistakes.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsXAIw8UaZs
Felt envy, harbored resentment, tasted despair.
But also the truth that she—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHPBSOaWciV
was the only one who never let go.
And if she had to live another life,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmRyNAqMwKJ
she would still choose to be herself—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡogIIb1PE0A
with every single piece.
Chapter XVII: When a Flower Chooses to Bloom on Its Own
She once believed:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGmnvxbqlRF
To bloom, one needed fertile soil.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡytqYdAnnkk
A gentle caretaker.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡi71zJSqXi6
Water, protection, eyes that see, and voices that affirm.
So she spent her youth searching—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKW4M9YcXrf
for a tender hand,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPAwQY9vbod
for a roof wide enough,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3EvKIGxGGw
for a pair of eyes warm enough to make her believe she had the right… to blossom.
But life does not wait for anyone to bloom in season.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxsnmqnIGF4
It crushes.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5qvsWhSC07
It suppresses.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtwOnw2pHrG
It throws the softest seeds into the harshest gravel and stone.
And then… she realized:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡG64UjmuLhM
Some flowers don’t get watered.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcsGTJmJfO8
They bloom because there is no other choice but to live.
They called her “thorny.”103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnkOfOFxM3S
They said she was “so strong, she became cold.”103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRXNsqh8NVB
They said, “She’s strange. Not like the rest.”
But they didn’t know that what they called “thorny”103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4azXOQY3a2
was the result of once being tender—until pain made her numb.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKvdLpvPDwd
That what they called “cold”103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2W1KOpoRWM
was the echo of once caring too deeply—until she was left without a word.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5O04hlDh9U
That what they called “strange”103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEbmxcJizge
was a survival instinct when being herself was no longer safe.
And then, on a day when no one was watching, when no one hoped—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqKLDepWMoH
She bloomed.
No stage.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlqKd2iFAfp
No spotlight.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYQANjSMiDl
No audience.
She bloomed quietly—like a small miracle.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWi4iVTkONe
She bloomed because she had survived.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuHGgBftSww
She bloomed because she no longer waited for permission.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXkbfUBWp5F
She bloomed because she had learned:
“I don’t need to look like any other flower to be beautiful.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMgC0yVH6Mc
I only need to be me—and that is enough.”
From that moment on, she did everything with gratitude:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaotikm4kSL
– Ate a meal slowly, without rushing.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyhO1pMhbZM
– Wore a dress she loved, even if no one complimented her.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyzZaeH0kG5
– Sent birthday wishes to someone who once hurt her.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEzqLhamIxl
– Forgave someone who never knew they had wounded her.
She told herself:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡz4WOlVnC3u
“If a flower only blooms when someone is watching, then it’s not a flower—it’s a tool.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ10uyhib5FY
But I—I am life.”
Someone once asked her:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDYhV5GeKND
“How do you keep living without anyone’s support?”103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEdjn0cA7bw
She smiled:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZ6TtEYWBV6
“Because I waited for a very long time…103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxE0b29eaOS
Until one day I understood: if I wait for a prince to come before I live happily,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbtciHDP4Dg
I will die of old age in a tower built from my own fear.”
So instead of waiting, she lived.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzJF59VRiBF
Instead of hoping someone would come back, she moved forward.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUCpcygWfXy
Instead of demanding justice from those who never understood the meaning of “hurt,” she learned to hold herself and say:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhh6BGLPBCd
“It’s okay. We still have each other.”
End of Chapter:
A flower chooses to bloom—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaI8JxCgMnh
not because spring has come,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡT8oLQtH0mS
but because it has grown brave enough to know:
Every wound that once bled is now the lifeblood feeding its roots.
She doesn’t need applause to know she’s precious.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡw3V58ekrXd
Doesn’t need to be lifted up to know she’s standing.
Because she has become someone…103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRoPiEe5Wvr
who does not bloom to please the world—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡetVL88s5UO
but blooms because she is worthy.
Chapter XVIII: Naming the Things That Were Lost
She once tried to forget.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAdAoi9oAeN
Tried to fold the past into a drawer with no key,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡysAfN27xXW
locked it with a smile,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡo6fu52NRY5
sealed it with busyness.
But some nights, the wind slipped through her fingers,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ52QbYSwTJj
and in the sound of her own sigh,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIrouPV3L2u
she heard something no one else could:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaB23idQCil
The voice of the things that were lost.
Not loud. Not resentful.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcGNGhuY4iK
Just whispers that once were flesh and blood.
Someone once asked her:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuFIQuXA0ap
—“Why do you keep remembering sad things?”103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPKDuA0tR9J
She replied:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡivrtF609AY
—“Because some things cannot truly be released until they’ve been called by their rightful names.”
She decided to walk back down the path of memory—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtPBvJ9hNvr
not to hold on,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡP74freStva
but to say goodbye, like one would to a former love.
She named her first fear:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRwkbAMYgu9
Abandonment.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuEB9fm02ni
She once clung to her mother’s shirt in the schoolyard while other children gathered in groups.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3IMOmL3I7t
Startled awake at night when the house was too quiet.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1fyuYEhpvs
Once wondered: If I vanished, would anyone notice?
Then she named the first teacher who shamed her—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMlMnPRpryS
for not being “pure” enough.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡr98JO9C0iO
She remembered his eyes—colder than winter.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAyEGDO6Yvx
The way he judged her,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡspdM4o992o
as if she were an unforgivable flaw.
She once resented him.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1a4X7P14yO
But today, she whispered:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzWDsbuqST9
“Thank you, teacher. Because of you, I learned to stand—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡm4NabDW15q
even when no one stood beside me.”
She named her first love—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1mQPXlpsOG
the one who claimed to love her for being “different,”103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrAvsXekzBy
but left when that very difference stopped being “charming.”103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9eE2RSQnfm
She once wrote hundreds of unsent messages,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6CtYdhTjST
wondering what she had done wrong.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡE8nFbBliFh
Now she knows:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡojrVnr2EKH
She was never wrong.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡs5kYmpiKCm
He just didn’t have a heart wide enough to hold all the layers of hers.
She named an old dream:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRhHDxzRJE4
To be seen.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡq5hgWuZuwS
As a child, she thought if she studied hard enough, people would love her.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ70RT7G0f90
As she grew older, she replaced that dream with degrees, titles, and posts that racked up likes.
But in the middle of that glow,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUourAsLME1
she felt empty.
And she whispered to that dream:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡo3AfqlU3eZ
“I’ve done my best.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡG61TDWC8fG
But now, I don’t live for recognition.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡccG0d2WFr4
I live for peace.”
Finally, she named something formless—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbXgOcDFdPM
A version of herself that had died.
The child who loved the color yellow, believed in fairy tales, and called her father “Superman.”103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPdtln7UymG
The teenage girl who wrote journals in purple ink and texted her crush just to ask, “Have you eaten yet?”103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVplzQ0k5YL
The girl who once believed everyone in the world was trustworthy.
She cried when she named that former self.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡV8YSJN3Dee
Not out of regret.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡu56lfR3phT
But gratitude.
Because without all those versions of herself—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIQXqSmZ27I
there would be no woman standing strong in today’s storms.
End of Chapter:
To name the things that were lost103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4P4VCiCOtI
is not to dwell in the past,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡl8Lqm5E9J3
but to say a final goodbye—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHPqfAXTnhL
like the way one sends off a loved one into the beyond, without lingering guilt.
Because she now understands:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPN443c2nPZ
What’s lost is not always a loss.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHNMzj6Hv3v
Sometimes, it’s the price of growth.
And when we are brave enough to name our pain,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡly0hRPlkVX
we become capable of naming joy—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡl3HQgGh8cH
when it comes.
Chapter XIX: And Finally, I Chose to Stay with Myself
No one is chasing me anymore.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSDNtiLnZUC
No one is abandoning me anymore.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgk8QYuj8Eo
No one needs to love me just so I can feel worthy.
Because for the first time in my life, I sat down,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLT4hKKoDHu
looked deep into my own eyes in the mirror,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJn56QebMyP
and no longer saw a seeker—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9LMN9HpoW3
but someone… who has come home.
All my life, I thought I had to belong somewhere:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡA2UQVTRfNU
– A family that was whole,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡn5CZ71Uqwl
– A community free of judgment,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1hSGbsK42e
– A love without conditions,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡu5p8UQUlo6
– A title accepted by society.
I once ran from East to West,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwfEFXMdgCq
from homeland to foreign land,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVVEJSBGRln
from childhood to the present,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbxzmSRmZzW
from one wound to another,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuonLI6RnSz
just to find a "home"—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡveOOwuq1FO
a place where I could be myself without being rejected.
But then I realized:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLdqyQyb9Yf
Nowhere is home if I don’t stay with myself.
Staying—was the hardest thing.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLj7mu3SMkO
Harder than forgiving others,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡc29xSe2GfC
was forgiving myself—for being weak, for being blind, for having endured.
Harder than searching for love,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQ0Ygn7bHTI
was learning to love myself—even when no one cheered, no one applauded, no one waited.
Harder than surviving storms,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKrlwd0jzEY
was standing still—to accept that:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡY7p1TQ4xer
“I don’t need to go anywhere. I just need to not abandon myself.”
I no longer need anyone to call me “worthy.”103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmIuzK4MV97
I don’t need to reach some peak to feel “enough.”103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmIAe6XT80Q
I don’t need to defeat anyone to know my life has meaning.
All I need is to wake up each morning,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsithIdtmje
see sunlight filter through the curtains,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSb4phTX8DO
brew a cup of warm tea,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡi2kRF0JGMw
and smile at the reflection in the mirror:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxEH7ZwgRJO
“Today, I’m still here. And that is enough.”
I used to fear being alone—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiwllsacTcI
so much so that I forgot the voice inside.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ10jf94Zgvp
But the farther I went, the more I understood:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuYiQkfn5Qj
Loneliness doesn’t kill.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ446eLDcIPc
What kills slowly is not daring to live truthfully.
When I stayed with myself, I heard things I thought were lost:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡX2az1M2QYB
– The voice of my heart wanting to love again, but not in haste.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIHN0CKxC9b
– The song of my soul, once broken, still humming.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwU2LP7VXtm
– The sound of silence—not empty, but deep like a spring.
And at last, I understood:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2oJsQO61Xs
I don’t need to be saved.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcpif9DRkAP
Because I was never truly lost.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQY2jchADsc
All I needed was someone to be with me—and that person, is me.
End of Chapter – and also, the end of the story:
Not every story needs a happy ending.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzjLRyqW9EV
Some stories just need to end with the truth.
And my truth is this:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡI6i4xbWWtL
I have walked through many people, many dreams, many wounds…103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ95toE9ubGo
To return—and remain—with myself.
I no longer seek the “perfect happiness.”103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbxFpslHC9k
I only need a quiet corner in my heart—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuSQJVMUlDd
a place where I can breathe,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2b7pkU9iVF
where I no longer have to pretend,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3u22HKggYq
where I don’t need to prove anything to anyone.
And if someone asks:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡap5wyuHOku
– “Do you still want to be loved?”
I will smile and say:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSK3z97QUKQ
– “Of course. But this time, I’ll start with loving myself.”
Because…103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3iOo18Ekrg
When someone learns to stay with themselves,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpRrCurE66d
they can never be abandoned again.
Final Chapter: Lessons Wrapped in Silence
Not every story needs to end with applause.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡY3kPmdW7Qq
Some journeys only need a quiet moment—so that the reader’s heart can echo with lessons unspoken, yet universally understood.
This is the story of a girl—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRhydbCZRjc
a girl born between East and West,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMWknfpZao1
a girl carrying wounds carved by history, society, and her own personal trials.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5xzc1YHrNq
She has journeyed through many lives, many layers of pain and love.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡX0MaSoKCm0
And yet, in the end, what she leaves behind is not tears or resentment—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNPxgTF1S0u
but light.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1xuOPBf7Od
Small, perhaps,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUACstecvQb
but enough to guide others out of darkness.
Below are truths that no school ever teaches—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5pjHDYj3f5
but she learned them with blood, tears, and unwavering faith.
1. No one is born to fit perfectly into every mold.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyQmFQSPX3E
She was once rejected—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9171CMHTws
not because she did anything wrong,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡr2t2Jtfwoe
but because she was different.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSnFtImb7qm
And in a world built on standards,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHorkLmcJdn
anyone who doesn’t match the majority is labeled “flawed.”
But the lesson is this:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9pLEjXPXFQ
Being different is not a flaw. It is a form of courage.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdnG8nQVAeU
The courage to live authentically.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7yhBm9Hf41
The courage to not distort oneself for others’ approval.
2. Love is not always protection.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡihpNZ9l6NL
Sometimes, people love without knowing how to love.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoAayYsaKCs
Parents may stay silent—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgjDZ8B4vSp
not out of hatred, but out of fear greater than their capacity to bear.
Loved ones may hurt us—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡr4lgIq2XUm
but that doesn’t mean they haven’t hurt watching us in pain.
The lesson is:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡI0c1uGrNbH
Forgiveness is not for others. It is for your own freedom.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUGpzLI5lsx
Because holding onto resentment keeps us shackled to the past.
3. No one has the right to judge the worth of a diploma—or a person—based solely on where they come from.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡU0AAuKu5Jv
She was once disrespected for studying online,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiYqlDh9mKR
for being biracial,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJRhc9BGIJB
for not attending a “prestigious” school.
But what she accomplished—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡI4LpUZVEcL
every lesson, every exam, every sleepless night spent chasing a deadline—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxOzpwL35a8
proved this:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyHzU5POcca
True value lies not in the paper, but in the journey taken to earn it.
A bought diploma is paper.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡA4MlBGGooQ
A hard-earned one is part of a lifetime.
4. No one can truly love you until you learn to love yourself.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3cd9ewpJHx
She used to chase validation,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLGuxpQ5PL5
used to try so hard to be accepted.
Until one day, she looked at herself and said:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡi4rqxmHTkE
“I don’t have to prove anything anymore. Living is already enough.”103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGlXxStDeR4
And from that moment on, she was free.
5. Sometimes, simply surviving is a kind of miracle.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUTBgFR4N4K
In a world that only values success through status, wealth, or fame,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMZGuCInIGO
she chose to define success as this:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXHaOwghBTE
Still being gentle—despite everything that’s happened.
6. You don’t need to become someone else. You only need to return to yourself—and live that truth fully.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIISxcRAb9E
She was once the abandoned child,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡx5Dh5lVxs6
the sister who carried all the scars,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYbT2OAIqTS
the expelled student,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZJ2t5Xp3BN
the one scorned for being “impure.”
But in the end, she was not a “victim.”103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKS3d0cNni8
She was a survivor.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGyyd622qGB
And more than that, she was someone who finally understood:
No one owes us happiness.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmMQ9xFp7M6
We must be the ones to write our own ending—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxqIcui0im4
even if our story began as a tragedy.
Epilogue:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJDR5u0gW0O
Her story doesn’t need to be made into a movie or printed in textbooks.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoD7RTuS6Fq
It only needs to be remembered—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡK4uWOpCkZR
by someone who once felt lonely,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJ7wlAN1dY0
understood—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡL7j0Wl7lV6
by someone who was once seen as different,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFtQQWVF32O
wept over—103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvk21n1c3vb
by someone who once struggled to survive.
And if you are holding this book,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDo68xawkeY
reading to the very last line,103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTVVQGjhVLg
then please hold onto the simplest truth she ever came to know:
Life is a long, challenging journey.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡA0aY2xTmmO
But if we remain gentle enough103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuMrUPf3iTc
to not become the very thing we once feared—
then we have already won.
APPENDIX
I. Symbolism Explained
- Two Winds: A metaphor for dual identities—two cultural currents, East and West—coexisting within one soul. It also represents internal conflicts between past and present, gender and selfhood.
- Strange Blood: Symbolizes genetic memory, societal prejudice, and the invisible force of “karma”—a realm where no one chooses the blood they bear but must live with its consequences.
- The Twin Sister: Represents the “humane ego”—a soul that has been copied, replaced, and distorted in its desperate hunger for love.
- Lotus and Rose: Contrasting images of traditional beauty (lotus—resilient, silent) and modern flamboyance (rose—popular, adored).
- The Final Wind: Liberation. Acceptance of impermanence. Letting go of the victim identity to live as a free spirit.
II. The Character’s Hidden Timeline
- Past Life I: A Vietnamese man—husband to a Western woman—discriminated against while living in the West.
- Past Life II: The Western woman—dies of illness, her soul merges into the body of a Vietnamese boy.
- Present Life: The reincarnated soul exists in a male body with a female soul—born as a child carrying “two winds,” rejected by both East and West, and becomes a victim of prejudice, abuse, and power games.
- Social Rebirth: The character matures through education, experience, and the conscious decision to let go of bitterness and live for themselves.
III. Quotes Marking Transformation
- "I was once your wife. Now I am you." — The Western Soul
- "Blood transfused, hatred inherited." — Fate
- "If love is born to hurt others, then it is poison." — A message to the family
- "We live not to assimilate, but to understand. We love not to possess, but to liberate." — Final Chapter
IV. Spiritual References and Creative Inspirations
- Teachings on rebirth in Buddhism and East Asian cultures
- Personal experiences of gender discrimination, mixed-race identity, and exclusion in education
- Literary works with similar themes:
- Giấc Mộng Phù Hoa – Nguyễn Tuân
- The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy
- The Color Purple – Alice Walker
- I See Yellow Flowers on the Green Grass – Nguyễn Nhật Ánh
V. Symbolic Spiritual Family Tree
Narrator (Main Character)
An
Vietnamese male body, Western female soul; divided across lifetimes
Western Woman’s Soul
“I was once your wife”
Deceased Western wife who entered Vietnamese boy’s body via blood transfusion
Vietnamese Husband (Past Life)
“You”
Vietnamese husband exiled in the West, discriminated; the narrator’s previous incarnation
Twin Sister (Symbolic)
A Nhi
A mirrored soul and embodiment of lost emotions
Vietnamese Younger Brother
Nguyên
Embodies conservative, purist views on bloodline and national honor
Vietnamese Older Sister
Linh
Manipulative, injected drugs to take over the narrator’s social identity
Parents
Not named
Represent silent, traditional generation—sacrificed child to uphold family honor
VI. Reincarnation Map (Three Lives – Three Forms)
- Life 1:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSC4UAUUOea
Vietnamese husband → Discriminated in the West → Dies quietly103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0cP9SuQueb
→ Reincarnated through blood - Life 2:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDzlcVBptcB
Western woman → Wife of Vietnamese man → Dies of illness → Blood transfused into Vietnamese boy103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1n7rrwfs8w
→ Spiritual merging - Life 3:103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgWOSBvnm4X
Vietnamese boy with a Western soul → Rejected by both East and West → Faces violence, abuse, and exploitation103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDceoH8inm8
→ Becomes the “One Who Carries Two Winds”
VII. Recommended Music & Films While Reading
Suggested Soundtracks:
- “Experience” – Ludovico Einaudi103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3WOXUw9aGE
→ Soft, evocative of memory and inner life. - “Nuvole Bianche” – Ludovico Einaudi103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlla0doTCjd
→ Ideal for chapters on loss and rebirth. - “In This Shirt” – The Irrepressibles103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtpjVCrvIBh
→ A haunting song about gender, identity, and the pain of living outside norms. - “Breathe Me” – Sia103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1FdsLhqovZ
→ Perfect for the story’s ending—survival, loneliness, and the yearning to be understood.
Complementary Films:
- Cloud Atlas (2012)103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHSMHKpucBY
→ A film about reincarnation, multiplicity of being, and soul connections across time. - The Danish Girl (2015)103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9WjUSHR8Jh
→ The journey to reclaim one’s true identity across gender, society, and compassion. - A Silent Voice (2016 – Anime)103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡC4NRXNF7RY
→ A story of atonement and healing among those who once inflicted pain. - The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick)103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwBSJhvM817
→ A cinematic meditation on life, loss, and forgiveness—where beauty meets sorrow.
Afterword
As you close the final pages of this novella, perhaps you feel a hollow quietness—a vague sensation, like saying goodbye to someone once dear. Or maybe, you’ve glimpsed a part of yourself—or someone you once knew—in a character who first seemed distant.
The Windbearer was never written for entertainment. It is a mirror—sometimes warped, sometimes razor-sharp—reflecting back the truths we often try to forget: fractures within families, rejection by society, the dislocation within one’s own body. It is a report no one asked for. A cry no one heard. A memory no one wanted to keep but couldn’t bear to discard.
I wrote this story from the shards of my own lived experience. And yet, I also wrote it for those who have never dared to speak. For the children pushed to the margins. For those who were “not worthy enough” to be loved publicly. For the souls who chose silence because no one was willing to listen.
I don’t expect you to understand everything. I only hope you feel something—even just one line.
And if after reading this story, you find yourself a little gentler with your own heart—and a little more compassionate with others—then I know this journey of words was not in vain.
Thank you—for walking this far with me.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEE8n9CEgtP
Thank you—for enduring each wound with an open heart.103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡr7PYeMaabh
The story may have ended. But the journey of loving, understanding, and forgiving continues.
Author: Pham Le Quy
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103Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHaqD9beZor
