THE ONE WHO CARRIES TWO WINDS - There are souls that belong nowhere – yet still choose to live, to understand, and to forgive.

THE ONE WHO CARRIES TWO WINDS35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmvPbfcP3QW
Author:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmbO4yGSbty
Pham Le Quy

"There are souls that belong nowhere –35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5YSDwAqo2E
yet still choose to live,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJLXnQGVa1k
to understand,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡa2xwE8gqtJ
to love,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZiBEzcMm8y
and to forgive."35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡd6TWgeQCqP
Vietnam, 2025

Table of Contents

Foreword (Page 7)35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaYbZ1ZTbV4
Dedication (Page 9)35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMjSRo84jtw
Blurb (Page 10)35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOjXiIZT2np
Copyright Page (Page 12)35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSYDfB0VlTk
About the Author (Page 13)35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡd1CWbAj6YW
Editor’s Note (Page 14)

Chapters

Chapter I: The One Who Carries Two Winds (Page 16)35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6alCQvv0LB
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)35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgM32hYHjxk
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)35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡeszxVz72zR
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)35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1WUTtpTzBx
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)35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4k4EfB3OPL
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)35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmHgOn4DZXx
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)35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqRtXx8sujc
No longer a line between enemy and kin — only the shadow of confusion remains.

Chapter VIII: Rivers of Blood – Oceans of Tears (Page 49)35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzBD3Cy2VaF
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)35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡavs7KI6Lyn
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)35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMSW1BHXxA9
A final message — of apology and gratitude — to her parents and sister. A farewell wrapped in forgiveness.

Chapter XI: Forgiving Oneself (Page 64)35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkfFlKdgz2i
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)35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡb5vsnVthHY
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)35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtnx7CHH1iI
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)35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcul9qK15ri
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)35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0oEAPtPJRF
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)35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYTTaov9vmJ
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)35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXWO2C7NkQy
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)35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡE6VDjeWtxp
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)35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFnH2BGu8Yo
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)35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3iAzlKvOLK
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)35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDYYTuYnFKI
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxKvfpKiTRf
I wrote it because there were days when I could no longer speak.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfO4gOXusc4
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIwNlI3dXXN
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡo0Z05o3Iry
It is a bell that rings inside the soul, though no one strikes it.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSDZ0TPJJ7e
It is the confession of someone who once blamed their family, society, and even themselves.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ04TN3w9o5G
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”—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJa6lHVag0R
fragments of unnamed places, still breathing, still blooming in the swamps of life.

This is not a book to be rushed.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9zcCJ3gstM
Read slowly. Breathe with it.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzpF916BHz2
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,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6zmB60QdXu
who’ve been rejected, misunderstood, or torn between two opposing winds—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPhXnSM7SKZ
one of the past, and one of longing.

To the hybrid souls—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡP6p88OOyV0
not only by blood, but by experience.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLdiEoGNKBb
Those who’ve lived on the fault line between East and West,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3PIZRx5eic
between sacrifice and selfishness, between love and resentment.

This story is for you.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtrgNThxZHL
And for me—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡem7caVJAba
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—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzSZay8QQg3
she (yes, she) never imagined that destiny would tear her apart.

A blood transfusion at age fourteen—meant to save her life—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8RJ1Ihy2fI
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIkn9NElxkO
From that moment on, she is no longer one person.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaxuqfgI65P
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—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfIJqJIllnr
she continues to live.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSByDEv33m5
Not to be accepted.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡF6qTwMC9Ba
But to prove: she is real.

She studies. She loves. She aches. She forgives.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrVuOwlgbej
She does not choose revenge—she chooses existence.

No one sees the tear in her heart,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDPaqIBKNUV
but all see her rise.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4VNuqGyolD
No one hears her sob in the shadows,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ59EFpEjBIm
but all witness her smile—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡc3T3AV5Ibe
like a lotus blooming in the mud,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3gHaLnliRa
not as radiant as a rose,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbWXXGZhdIp
but resilient enough to survive.

And if you’ve ever felt unseen,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVklCzCvmN0
if you’ve ever felt like you didn’t belong—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡf8tSbsReJK
then this story is for you.

Not to pity you—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡO8RdewdX3b
but to remind you that somewhere in this world,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUieIPfgZBr
someone has lived as you have.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaLigDGPHYA
And is still living.

Copyright Paper

All rights reserved.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡY7oUT5fFlN
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 Winds35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBhjWWlLWUa
Author: Pham Le Quy35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡg0J1Fs73Qs
Editor: [if applicable]35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡn6xJbvO3oP
Cover Design: [if applicable]35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhXb3CklYAR
Illustration: [if applicable]35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwCYxz52gPy
Publisher: [Self-published or Name of Publisher]35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwbEXX9CrkR
First Published: 202535Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEf16WdorNM
ISBN: [To be assigned if printed or registered]35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEdfLjo6dfO
Country of Publication: Vietnam

All characters, events, and places in this novella are fictional.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0CWZX7e9uK
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,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡS8MDZc95LX
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOJgXv5DiBi
Out of that imbalance, The One Who Carries Two Winds was conceived—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZHTydSlYJg
as a deeply personal yet universally resonant journey of healing.

With academic backgrounds in language, psychology, and education,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡz7LNPnt0BP
Quy does not write from training, but from living.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMgrS9JYyue
For this author, writing is not a career—it is survival.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRfOYXUqHHx
Writing to breathe. Writing to remember.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsojAoTpsTK
Writing to forgive—oneself, and those who unintentionally caused harm.

When not writing, Quy teaches, researches, and listens.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡppSoyz7NH8
In the quietest moments, the author believes:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ78Xw2G4GPI
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfYsv0E3r4o
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,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFGng6a4z56
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,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkxn18FjIwE
unbound by traditional forms.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡN1uUOeNKrA
The chapters do not simply follow chronological order,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡW5I23U5U7K
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—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQzIJtbknl4
but it may also become your medicine.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXFEXbxjAQC
A journey of self-healing.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKI4CFphaAs
A voice for the silenced soul.

The author humbly presents this novella as something to be read—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡb0urrvxW8h
not with the eyes,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGRuLTyiGa2
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.”35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2mw88zDH10
"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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2MN1IecogK
“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.”35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ40rH4BoY0v
“Are you writing from personal experience, An?” the teacher asked gently.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFKmV8Xr2fv
He bowed his head, unable to answer.

In history, during a lesson on patriarchal feudalism, he stood up and said,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTZ83C5i2Bn
“Men have always written history, but women carry the true memory of humankind.”35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡErc4omWjCZ
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdsLlNqfmA8
To the mirror: he was A Nhi—the unseen twin, always present.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgo0a6rjIX3
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡr6BQLGBVh3
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLuzTmhPGDn
To him, An was a cursed blend.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3BONDDp4E8
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,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiux10FDrMG
“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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTTHtnDbmho
Not Nguyên.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgNQZHDMMlv
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—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvyTHzhFbF1
Not the world,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwp3scEwPQ1
but himself.

He forgot he had been A Nhi.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZYem9gWA0L
Forgot he had once been a husband.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZanyfXuC2i
Forgot the golden-haired woman who had wept in his dreams.

But what they didn’t know was this:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡR2PyQQ36xc
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0IOvsrYEha
“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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSk5J4rji8E
She lacked the ambiguity of a soul reborn through lifetimes.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡD7twVZIQ09
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡn1M5agFqWl
No color.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmahl7KxNlc
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2Vm9TnOynj
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNzly6nxhe7
An was no longer a victim. Nor a vengeful soul.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAOvDl9AELy
He was a witness—of all that had been twisted, denied, and finally… remembered.

And from the ashes of conspiracy, that soul rose—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjDqSm405fC
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:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡS1PVhfCrzq
“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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0irHFz0iqF
They didn’t know which gender box to place An in, which language, which identity.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡehQA1lUHYn
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:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZIDgNi2hOv
“What kind of boy looks like a girl?”35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJXe7nnxmOl
“Has that mixed-race kid caught some Western sickness?”35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2ODMJz9sX8
“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:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUlgMDnrWhT
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:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzwZNwwB8JY
“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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuGM6rUOr2k
Some days, she looked at her hands and found them foreign, moving without conscious will.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkpSiwS3zYy
Some nights, she wrote love letters in French—perfectly, without having learned. Each word, each flourish, matched the old woman from her dreams.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvvw3Zpi5mB
Some mornings, she stood before the mirror, applied lipstick, and smiled—not her own smile.

People said she was acting.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡURxegjztHW
But the truth was:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcXKsg7EoUN
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:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnsiLrY6Uqo
“Do not assign me a label.”

The article was published. It caused a stir.

Some praised her as a living emblem of diversity.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡub5IIVjvxq
Others condemned her as “a cultural aberration.”35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzgc2TShGk4
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWp9P5eNm4Z
“Because I am everything you say I am. But also none of it.”

One day, she received a handwritten letter. No sender.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSFUzs7nKW9
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPdywo4fP9G
Not one person who stood beside her in the crowd had ever stopped to wonder what she needed.

No one asked:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡINVui2qakO
Are you tired? Are you in pain? Are you afraid?

She asked herself.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8MMtcrzXYN
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEXGKdoj0A9
I was once the bridge between East and West, but in truth a rope pulled from both ends.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2OKXdqVFol
I lived under many names, many genders, many memories.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTkL7NvZAPc
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:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUaKxqdWIa4
Forgive me for wanting to die.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡs4pnzkex3F
Forgive me for trying to live behind someone else’s face.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvkgZzklY4F
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8SZIJxSxWo
Not to form a perfect figure,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuOFgJJEMn2
but to form a human—one who needs no name.

Chapter VII: A Conclusion or a Curse Repeated?

They say destiny is a circle.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgi6PCdMNKw
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡX2fCD4dBnX
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNL0Otc9ccs
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:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYIfoSR46Ir
“You must call me Grandpa.”

The child smiled and replied, in a Vietnamese laced with French:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4R8zTnQyuB
“But Grandpa... you’re my Grandma, aren’t you?”

That line sliced through his mind like a blade.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEoovBZQWAd
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:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5lW9fQayLl
“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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡI6ijFvUpTL
“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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYanQYkjP8x
There are nights I dream of floating in lavender fields, not rice paddies.”

“So you’ve betrayed your people?”

“No,” she answered softly.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOjLVvZqLy6
“I’ve only accepted the parts of me I can no longer deny.”

Nguyên stepped out of her house, hollow.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1UeMCe9sTX
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2zf9QeLhQk
Children who didn’t know their parents.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlvTfwL6F0N
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQ6OOACU7Y7
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgX4TS1OSfr
Maybe… knowing who you are matters less than living like someone who knows how to love.”

He bowed his head.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡb7PZUgc6Vj
For the first time, he felt small.

That night, he dreamed of standing before a mirror.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGU3BrK8AJU
But it didn’t reflect him.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWuCj2qxWf4
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5FIUET40sY
Not addressed to anyone.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcieqMTsQrl
Just left it on the table:

**“I once wanted to make the world a replica of myself.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKdRWs4wUMq
But I never knew who I was.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡS3ffED0QiN
I once hated the mixed.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjKpARWvyB9
But now I understand: mixing isn’t betrayal—it’s a form of survival.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ44IhPuABnU
I thought I was preserving identity.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHccaDS8Xmv
But really, I was afraid—because I never truly understood my own.

Now, I seek no one to punish.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5fn5sWjM1h
I only wish to learn how to listen.”**

No one saw Nguyên again.

Some say he secluded himself in the mountains.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHh1v8fIUmI
Others claim he went to Africa to volunteer.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0qHhRnoQkU
Cruel tongues whispered that he went mad, struck by “cultural confusion.”

But those who truly understood said nothing.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUFq0emx2kk
Because they knew: he wasn’t gone.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUhiPNT5RaF
He had simply dissolved—like all the things he once tried to fight.

And the mixed-blood girl?

She still lived.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNXGdV6TFXk
Still taught.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAF2ZGLAa5O
Still wandered the markets, wearing a French scarf and a nón lá.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡodO7FjnuNK
Some days she wore an áo dài.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvopY05YSd7
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:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡamg94psh5d
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXzhZqZChJj
But if it is a curse,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPVbKGCGZUy
Let me be the one to repeat it—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7IW6UEjPRV
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtR7UU773qT
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.”35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiK4iPeqw1W
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxJi5BXCB56
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9svSc3Z9Xp
To keep Vietnam, never touch another’s blood.”

She once believed that.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrheuAEEAdu
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:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEYPfXF7wFq
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8vH5BSvLid
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGc0bLfsCGQ
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?”35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDNAzEvmOyt
She answered quietly:

“I don’t live to be someone’s wife.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKHOIoflWFc
Nor to be anyone’s version of anything.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSC40G7DD7e
I live like the wind—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPe3PHQ4nIC
Free, without gender, without language, without nation.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlTjOV7AMP2
No one can keep me.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdn8yBx98N7
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:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMyFrb57HPq
“Then how will anyone prove who you are?”

She smiled and said only this:

“I don’t need to prove who I am.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3MVENLXupn
I only need to be remembered as someone who once truly felt alive.”

Years later, stories were told—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPXY8Bshnbl
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:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7H0SaWGhmJ
“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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9ASnBduOFu
The room where Nguyên staged his violation.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBfod1QlEoL
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDukiCR0VNq
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaHLy8TTBeA
But if people still believe—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdSaQMJzxX0
That life is not to assimilate, but to understand.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEYupxKvKTl
That love is not to possess, but to liberate.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwXrYYYFbxu
…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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiBf67h4lmN
But I am everyone ever torn in two by borders.”

Some built statues of her along national frontiers—but carved no name.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3SXcZuzQwk
Some wrote novels about her—but called her only The Winded One.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡueOr1cTGH0
Some called her a curse.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQZxg86HQ6T
Some, an apocalypse.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMqileHP2Yf
Some—only whispered in the breeze—called her hope.

In a seaside village where the wind refused to choose direction,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNFChNP1goa
a child once drew in the sand:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡs1uhzUlWSr
a figure with two arms—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2Ay0xh8fSu
one holding a stalk of Vietnamese rice,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡADNyJdi1Rd
the other a sprig of French lavender.

The child didn’t know who she was.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡs3ckhnxIqC
But still, they drew.

Because perhaps…35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLI4kptsDUw
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:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSzmYEpZZES
“That mixed-blood girl is studying at our school?”

Then came scrutiny:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgm2J1CDObm
“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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJhbn044diK
“You’ve shamed me,” her sister spat, eyes clouded with hate.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4W1rzhqrz1
“I don’t want to be seen as having the same blood as you.”

But she didn’t cry.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKBY7GWNWbG
She simply told herself:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBiyo2V4msu
“As long as I can graduate… that’s enough.”

And she did graduate.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkUZXd8XXKk
Not with fanfare, but with blood and tears.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaldGeMlJ5E
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnDnpZuZoDc
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyCFAqXLeEk
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1FqcM6jXac
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMzxjqzbVBu
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGgomsGXG1a
Teachers couldn’t see her face but still gave her low marks.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡePGIwhVEXQ
Excellent assignments couldn’t score above 7.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkxx1OGuQPE
She had no friends. No allies. Only screens, cold presentations, and grades that slapped her efforts.

They said, “Everyone passes online classes.”35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGb0FUiYehp
But when she graduated with two Bachelor's degrees and one Master’s, they sneered:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡceI376KPpP
“Bought degrees? Who even checks those?”

They didn’t know:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡu2eaXegKpK
Every presentation cut off mid-sentence due to dropped internet.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvEBdh4zwMs
Every paper rewritten after software crashes.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4iyjap5i0Z
Every night awake until 3 AM completing demanding academic requirements—done alone, by herself.

They said she lacked hands-on experience?35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdl2U04RdQO
What about the volunteer hours?35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9AmNRoZwx0
The sessions with autistic children?35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡu1DXgOH1DW
The home visits to the depressed—the ones no one else dared approach?

They said online degrees held no value in Vietnam?35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqU4H0MIKtW
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?35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDna3NR0Ny4
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtWtvxW4iWF
That real study, real effort, real failure—are all part of the process.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ60rONehdJO
No one graduates just because they have money.

They once called her the bottom of society.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡR1dxqObjVH
But they didn’t realize: sometimes, it is from the bottom that the strongest souls are born.

Lotuses do not bloom in palaces.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7B6zR6ibMh
They bloom in mud.

Some said the lotus isn’t as beautiful as the rose.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqtpEbXI646
But the lotus doesn’t need to be beautiful.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXWW40trVQW
It only needs to live.

To live in silence. In loneliness. In obscurity.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6sfAfTaLht
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,”35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtQm3R86I0G
but do not have even a fraction of the effort, faith, or strength35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9QyPO3YhAs
as the one you once looked down upon as “abnormal”…

…then perhaps it is you who should be ashamed.

Because sometimes,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡc5q3GY9csK
“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—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmT9DM7ZFiB
and still walked forward with pride,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLBjOC9foqE
like a curse that had been transformed into something sacred.

Chapter X: A Message from the Survivor35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7LlohNMVsp
(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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡP1e6ec9Bzs
I asked myself:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJeT2N8D46T
Why didn’t my parents fight for me?35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSMOKdyx2B6
Why didn’t they shield me the way other parents shield their children?35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBJJWoO01WF
Why was I the one to suffer in my sister’s place?35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7k6YTcZFOn
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfVjnda9A0N
Your silence, at times, wasn’t a lack of love—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxEiftbpumU
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:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEqifQcFqS1
You feared that I would be poor, that I would suffer.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuejctBb0a1
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—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOz4fVbdCfu
The little girl who was once the light of my childhood—are probably someone else now.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡquz9qzNnPg
Someone with love, with friends, with joy.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwNnuFfGSWa
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnTwPe6kRGD
Maybe you think I’m selfish.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnzy4qkJusb
Maybe you think I don’t deserve your love.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvlAuG9jqYI
Maybe, in your eyes, I was never a good sister.

But dear sister…

Everything I did—I thought of you first.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7C3IKERAzE
Whether protecting, sacrificing, or enduring—I never did it for myself.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTKs759pfFm
I only wanted you to have the childhood we both should’ve had.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXk2wnlLdmO
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7ByWkN4HCY
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:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCbchIv8OWA
Like a sigh in the night.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9dWqqwNRN9
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡf5apl82dRP
You did what I didn’t have the courage to do.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1KXVgnoAz3
And now, if I could go back, I would never let you endure that burden alone.

You deserve a happier life than mine.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxuRVApKSow
And if fate demands I pay the price, then I’ll live in the shadows—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6q81VEwPfe
So long as you can walk in the light.

I will continue to care for our parents as you once did for me.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPLOdMLMV37
Not as repayment.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJOS5vWGr97
But as redemption.

And even if we never become close again—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1sJB3zNVv1
Even if the cracks between us never heal—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKNN5HSv6UL
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4LztEcFQOr
I ask nothing.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpijj8hIrvr
I beg for nothing.

I only hope you understand:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMUNOLktkHR
Only forgiveness and compassion can cure the poisons of hatred and selfishness.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡq3j3jaQ5Fk
But if you cling to the pain like a protective charm…35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡX6idmFNKQA
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1oa0yGesQF
I am a survivor—not thanks to anyone,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNUqM8LcWRx
but because of everything you unknowingly sowed.

And from those broken pieces,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8GgqXVKQo5
I’ve rebuilt myself into someone who knows how to love—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfwGLP0W389
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—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLwGSnwXwiX
It will all be too late.

Chapter XI: Forgiving Oneself35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHhRJMRb9md
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ35iTjtBOMS
It was she who had cursed her mixed-race body, her soul that never seemed to belong anywhere.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8y4dL80eyS
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTMwnuGqHHe
“It’s daring to look back and say:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9GSPtPa4P1
You were not wrong for being fragile.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnrCYVTdlqk
You were not guilty for wanting to give up.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHTiCbCqdd1
You were simply human.”

And she began to write—to herself.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5InMXyWDYz
No longer the old accusations, no longer the endless indictments.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfgdGdI2EX9
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ27rmenif5u
You were incredibly brave to survive what others wouldn’t even dare to face.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyWaopLmkA0
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9JRRebUox1
It is to release the roles of “the one who endures,” “the silent sacrificer,” “the ideal daughter,” “the invisible sister”—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡeuV3r9ggwY
And return simply to being someone learning how to live.

No longer must she strain to prove her worth.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2vdnOU096f
No longer must she chase high scores, degrees, or the world’s approval to feel valuable.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6ySRt0exUc
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5egJ4igjWr
Her life, her presence, was already a miracle.

Yes, there will still be long nights.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2J53MTI5hj
Yes, there will still be stumbles.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3cvsoDfMZN
But from this moment on, she will no longer wage war against herself.

She will live—not to untangle every misunderstanding,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5csesRbt5G
Not to make others love her again,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIdD1FFRThv
Not to reclaim what was lost—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPMYaGPNt3z
But to understand this:

Every pain that once pierced the heart did not come to destroy it—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1QAA8jQfBT
But to open a door into it.

And in the deepest part of her soul—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3GfeyaXcbq
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxzDwplFYQC
It comes in the moment when someone stands quietly before the mirror—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLNfZdROqt9
And sees themselves through eyes no longer clouded with resentment.

If forgiving others is liberation,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTPXz7SUoHm
Then forgiving oneself is the final redemption.

Chapter XII: Where Dawn Blooms Within the Heart

Dawn does not always begin with light.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBseFR9XZaY
Sometimes, it begins with a stillness—deep and quiet—after a long night’s storm.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡc0Nlmt3BJi
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgu6QSS7f5u
No longer forcing herself to prove her worth.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZeExT4N3Cm
No longer exhausted from searching for a place to belong.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzl3a2GW4Q1
No longer flinching at mocking words, or hiding from contemptuous eyes.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡt7lecVwdCn
She was—once more—fully human.

For the first time, she accepted that she was a flower that bloomed out of season.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKzCMywrajG
And because of that, she was beautiful in a way no one else was.

Dawn doesn’t begin with the sound of an alarm.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpWRGGtwiw9
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,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpnY5Cnl92V
But from the tiny fragments of belief she gathered day by day.

She began to teach—not to flaunt knowledge,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZL4fCYUgZd
But to give her students what she had longed for: someone who truly listens.

She wrote—not as a cry for help,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHgJFXKCQ79
But to spark something in others.

She loved—not to fill a void,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIEg3e6XB6L
But to grow alongside another soul.

Someone once asked her:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGwricGadUP
“Why do you still choose kindness, when life has treated you so unfairly?”

She simply smiled:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKcrA5SH0KA
“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—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0RkA7SSrC1
For she understood: justice is not about equal shares,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtyXODgGC8z
But about the right to redefine happiness in your own way.

Her happiness was not in riches, fame, or recognition.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ924En7Im6g
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—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQdbtQ0G9dt
Reminding her of darker days.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoN7kEpCfL7
But this time, she did not run.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHeQtRlVFeU
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrNZaJir3PO
It now resided in her heart—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDQJJz6cweM
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡelfSK2QHdX
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXF1Z3FWqD7
You don’t need to become someone else.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYJUTx8dd3X
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZsKL8t6nll
Nor from romantic dates.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqulQFpLjj1
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."35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7ghmG107Mu
But to her, each child was a shimmering fracture—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTAPNhYm0Bc
a star that did not follow constellations, yet still glowed in its own light.

Some could not speak.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡK6UVkDBgh4
Some sat rocking in corners, crying endlessly.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡepfKEJS1BV
Some hit others, tore books, even scratched her hands raw.

But she never grew angry.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjzEOeDN1SM
Because she too had once been like that—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPbEw5Iuf8K
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDbqd5VAOQn
She taught empathy.

She didn’t push them to excel.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAKHwqLbtga
She didn’t force them to conform.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRtOrqhbvac
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4RsrX8rd2l
A child who once scratched her now folded a crooked little paper crane and gave it to her.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2qIlghv0fR
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:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtumppfTFTE
The world is not saved by the great.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsUb2ePhX3H
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—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCgb9VbBB5U
but each word wasn’t just a story; it was a resurrection of belief.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡp1XHSWKfT9
The belief that no one is "useless."35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡneJPaVGZng
No one is born to be excluded.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4qqDEq6Yte
Not her.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkIdjG8Kwlw
Not her sister.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuJjHnNyvbE
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrBB7SfSysU
They reached out—not to bestow praise,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOSmOYVscq3
But to listen.

"We want you to train teachers for special education," they said.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡS0Kt5jGEvq
"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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVfydn8xMAI
Because she knew—she stood for the imperfect.

She stood before the class, not teaching theory.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVRLKV867pY
She simply told stories:

About a boy who once clawed her hand, now gently wiping a friend’s tears.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwpjUBWTMIo
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaeaQE3L5jU
We only need the courage to reach out—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOUUKCvoiiF
even when that hand is trembling."

End of Chapter:

In this life, perhaps everyone falls into a pit at some point.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1mjqM6eNdD
But not everyone meets someone willing to climb down, sit beside them, and say:

"I’ve been here too.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAOBDkk0fDl
But I got out.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡM229DCwKos
And now, I won’t leave you behind."

She became that person—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡj9qmXKrcpL
Not because she was strong.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1pMJGcFgIl
But because she had known pain.

And only those who have known pain...35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4I6i5bJMHF
can truly heal.

Chapter XIV: The Seasons That Do Not Repeat

There are seasons that pass without promising to return.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGhuyD5oT3J
Not because the world has changed—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtzwSF40dfl
but because the heart has.

And she—after years of dwelling in sorrow that spun in loops,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3elaQBnzug
after reliving memories like rewound tapes—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡi6Gx0tMNYU
finally realized something:

Not every season is meant to return.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡk72WHa99bK
Some seasons exist to come to an end.

That summer—the one where she curled up on a hospital floor,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡakMiyP3ozM
bathed in cold white lights and the heavy rhythm of heart monitors—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzYIiV8zMVk
will never return.

Because now, instead of merely surviving,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡncoN7vTt3Q
she knows how to live.

That autumn—the one where she sat outside the school gates,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKunJG9wVwa
watching classmates holding hands on their way to extra classes35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiW7fqobPrQ
while her name was struck from the roster—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡK89zXogh6p
will never return.

Because now, instead of waiting to be accepted by others,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡypCM50A4Iv
she accepts herself.

That winter—the one when she thought of ending it all,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgkomgb9b3k
stood by a high balcony, wondering,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZ07oInDjAJ
“Would anyone cry if I disappeared?”—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡj6trscHhPg
will not return either.

Because now, she would be the one to cry for herself35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYJfZ0XjP2b
if ever again she dared to let go.

And this spring—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡN1WxwgvhGT
the first spring where she no longer has to pretend to be strong,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPIt5OUGsKa
no longer has to force joy—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡL5ITu4sb5h
has arrived.

She has begun to love the little things.

The first rain of the season.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ31K30y54FS
A slow, unhurried afternoon.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTiCsojyuGV
A book left half-read.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwLIs6SxCb9
A spontaneous smile35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5KZ0JLWgZx
when sunlight filters through a crack in the door.

She is learning to live in the present—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbkK1ZOJi4I
not to forget the past,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFIhG1Opr07
but to stop depending on it.

The past is a chapter in the book of life—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5YesL0zas5
it needs to be read,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYXHpFCvR0P
it deserves to be cried over—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡG1Ze4TSJgu
but it must be turned.

Once, while teaching, a student asked her:

"Miss, if someone has been hurt too much,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhwMjc0284e
do they still have the right to be happy?"

She looked at the student, her eyes glistening,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTanNzWOUJq
and simply smiled:

"Not only the right.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxkMs3GiISL
You need to be happy.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡW0iUIj6ZEK
Because those who’ve known pain—deserve healing more than anyone else."

Each season holds its own sorrow.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTrzYcWVDz2
Each year leaves new scars.

But like the sun that always rises,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡr26STvV3AU
no matter how long the night—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMCTXToJbqw
hope always waits at the end of the road.

Not blind faith.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVZJKF4M7AM
But faith that has once been broken,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWV3ZZ9dWoJ
and now knows how to rise35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVB8fJC3Yh9
on the strength of its scars.

End of Chapter:

The seasons that do not return are not sorrowful ones.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbBcID50mpH
They are proof of growth.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIVH8XetvLx
Of a life truly lived—of pain endured, of falls survived—and of still being here.

She knows there will be more fears.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ13gMFq3rjJ
There will be days of confusion.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡo61LdNkWra
There will be moments when lovers fall silent,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡU8t7zL0Sq3
when friends turn away,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2Qtciufxlk
when the world feels cold.

But she also knows this:

No one can take away the seasons she’s lived through.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡstt9xid8Ff
No one can erase the light that once bloomed within her heart.

And if any season must not return—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHW3AefbWYF
let it drift away35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5zzqEqQmzJ
like a petal falling at the perfect time,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfPj5dilahZ
like the closing note of a well-ended song,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyRnyodY0Ve
like a part of her life once marked by pain...35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLwjL3uwFk6
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMguzgKrmWx
A place with a warm light at the door,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAOUqjSNeMR
a bowl of hot rice,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrYsUeM8e3h
and someone waiting to hear the words, “I’m home.”

She was once like that.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmwg2PZPzrv
She used to believe that a home was a physical place—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpKTwpLLuO3
an address, family inside,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5O4X9e6LUR
framed photos hanging on the wall.

But through many losses, she came to understand:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyCWTOt7z6T
Some homes are not outside.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡU8fqGHnjut
They dwell within the chest.

A true home isn’t the safest place—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfJ1ahmIDIV
but the place where you are most fully yourself.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdLEEC9zTf6
Not a place without conflict—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfNVIXF3f89
but where people choose to stay after anger has passed.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXMkXye25og
Not a place of perfect comfort—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEENCPLNeBP
but where you don’t have to pretend to be strong.

She began building that home—within her.

Each brick was an old wound,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcXEIgxkCJY
washed clean with tears.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7pEFRTDLtG
Each door was a new belief,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡePINDtbLE2
opened after years of being shut.

That house had no concrete foundation.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2SEFLA16ds
It was built on compassion—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSxd7qcwh5Z
for herself.

She learned to speak to herself each morning:

“It’s okay. You’ve done really well.”35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiVvirJWxiX
“If someone hurts you today, come back here—this heart-home will hold you.”35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡT4aDAHCEUr
“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,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIbiQrTMUor
she began seeing homes everywhere:

– In the glance of a stranger meeting her gaze with a smile.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ11bD8BWMc1
– In the rustling sound of a stray cat outside the door.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡd5fE2HLXi3
– 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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡv4bTu8IOoX
But now, I am the home for my own soul.”

Then she remembered her mother.

The mother who once stood silent through her injustices,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0IC60Hl7gt
now marked by wrinkles.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfpAiRSHPj8
The mother who once couldn’t protect her,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHUfWSdBoKK
now looked at her with eyes full of sorrow and regret.

Once, she had wanted to scream,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4umrTSDnlg
“Why didn’t you protect me?”

But now, she simply looked at her mother and said gently:

“You may not have been my home.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkCPz2MYHmP
But I will be your home—when you grow old.”

And so, she forgave herself—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzsFvV8sBah
for her moments of weakness,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqahGBAj361
for the times she almost let go,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1kbtLQXDSS
for loving the wrong people and trusting the wrong places.

Because the home in her heart wasn’t a space only for the beautiful.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEt0dxH46tj
It was a shelter for cracks and foolishness too.

End of Chapter:

Perhaps no one teaches us how to build a home inside.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVb8SeqYaAO
But each of us can learn—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmNNynLwY2P
from ruin,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFAUB0UfqEc
from winters spent unwelcomed,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgRuq5mrX8p
from moldy rented rooms,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡasL1F0IezD
from dreams cut short.

And once we learn to become a home for ourselves,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPvAmUK9VER
we no longer fear being abandoned.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1uY8ygNvN7
Because we already have a place to return to—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUFqzLesnnd
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4Avw447KPl
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡosbiOU2CMY
Not the fear of someone leaving.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyudeVjrn3y
But the fear of not being enough.

Not good enough.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡO0sT1LNBhZ
Not strong enough.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqDXV7FCenO
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ50T9Pifnwb
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcev1iBpXul
Tears welled up—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7w192YDJMD
not because someone had insulted her,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ31R8i14g1K
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzzBWxeHkKL
But where was the child who once believed that if she just tried hard enough, people would love her?

That child—was still there.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡF9cVboAZEW
Trembling.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ737xdEg8OU
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…35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡze8EywRV4Q
she wrote to herself:

“You don’t need to prove anything anymore.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0RnDr7pEHJ
You have the right to be tired.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJ7OyMUgoLd
You have the right to be wrong.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡObleCLKj3D
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWwdMEnnUh7
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3dZsZQ8ite
Not to expose everything…35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyiU2EpLTmQ
But to feel lighter.

She walked in the rain without an umbrella.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡO24cFx66XW
She sent an apology to someone she had upset.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgVHSHFAZrM
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6xO7zrDBym
The fear was still there.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2XpNGJ7ALu
The insecurity was still there.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoHyNBR32aV
The feeling of being abandoned, misunderstood, rejected—still lingered.

But this time, she embraced it.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOwhRGWGtZY
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNlUtG8AkUU
Not perfect.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡS02QcKbvvP
Not pretty.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjKgrljS63n
But exactly where it belonged.

End of Chapter:

People aren’t incomplete because they lack good things.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiwEOsqqEzb
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡls7h8FuQxs
But now, she chose to mend herself with truth.

The truth that she had been weak.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmmGFuhya7p
Made mistakes.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGHSidXEoRL
Felt envy, harbored resentment, tasted despair.

But also the truth that she—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6GRq9MxyGh
was the only one who never let go.

And if she had to live another life,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfFZq60KiAt
she would still choose to be herself—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlQtNa9VjJK
with every single piece.

Chapter XVII: When a Flower Chooses to Bloom on Its Own

She once believed:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsi9XklMIDC
To bloom, one needed fertile soil.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9DSZYNzWcR
A gentle caretaker.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAaSMyrq7Rt
Water, protection, eyes that see, and voices that affirm.

So she spent her youth searching—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgV3mYczK3U
for a tender hand,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpjiQjZonTz
for a roof wide enough,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtGqSM3VH5t
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcfHVXq4PVH
It crushes.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnO4jGhhv2W
It suppresses.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1psEJo3LEo
It throws the softest seeds into the harshest gravel and stone.

And then… she realized:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmtXynxAyPy
Some flowers don’t get watered.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSxDbXE5AJT
They bloom because there is no other choice but to live.

They called her “thorny.”35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyZH3uJDwu6
They said she was “so strong, she became cold.”35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAtdAl5Lvgs
They said, “She’s strange. Not like the rest.”

But they didn’t know that what they called “thorny”35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmCnTl4Pv4g
was the result of once being tender—until pain made her numb.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ638nRS1moq
That what they called “cold”35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡi4CceK1P7Z
was the echo of once caring too deeply—until she was left without a word.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpLK0Crh9V1
That what they called “strange”35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpTmA7TJrU4
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—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpuKq3PySY4
She bloomed.

No stage.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡV5dyqYaY6h
No spotlight.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbO6UiSYUD4
No audience.

She bloomed quietly—like a small miracle.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6t66FDJ7rJ
She bloomed because she had survived.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEQai2dWDgu
She bloomed because she no longer waited for permission.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4bCuPSWHKF
She bloomed because she had learned:

“I don’t need to look like any other flower to be beautiful.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡN2yoU4Wek8
I only need to be me—and that is enough.”

From that moment on, she did everything with gratitude:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡA9NXXOlFhH
– Ate a meal slowly, without rushing.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjNlgRFV8hs
– Wore a dress she loved, even if no one complimented her.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKgrnLBpbrO
– Sent birthday wishes to someone who once hurt her.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoUGdERM6X3
– Forgave someone who never knew they had wounded her.

She told herself:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyIw7gS7xXM
“If a flower only blooms when someone is watching, then it’s not a flower—it’s a tool.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvZh65PeQtQ
But I—I am life.”

Someone once asked her:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡa58xGwyhoj
“How do you keep living without anyone’s support?”35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7S7oZb8SuK
She smiled:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJ6fSpuLS4l
“Because I waited for a very long time…35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJdpXKlApsI
Until one day I understood: if I wait for a prince to come before I live happily,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGilv40Mi2q
I will die of old age in a tower built from my own fear.”

So instead of waiting, she lived.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbKGmodioqU
Instead of hoping someone would come back, she moved forward.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGR1pE5Jaw8
Instead of demanding justice from those who never understood the meaning of “hurt,” she learned to hold herself and say:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkWJzMyvt0X
“It’s okay. We still have each other.”

End of Chapter:

A flower chooses to bloom—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdXSxz8e8AV
not because spring has come,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0c2tzHfBKh
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxXvHaUR6iy
Doesn’t need to be lifted up to know she’s standing.

Because she has become someone…35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBWKkLGLnvZ
who does not bloom to please the world—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7HqAM1n8Io
but blooms because she is worthy.

Chapter XVIII: Naming the Things That Were Lost

She once tried to forget.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkbbNXhlDPQ
Tried to fold the past into a drawer with no key,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCjzLQv9DEH
locked it with a smile,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXB3akxNoYt
sealed it with busyness.

But some nights, the wind slipped through her fingers,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmsh1jDDC6H
and in the sound of her own sigh,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUcyVrXb5Nm
she heard something no one else could:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGzFVYsliRi
The voice of the things that were lost.

Not loud. Not resentful.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2tLdf5Ek2U
Just whispers that once were flesh and blood.

Someone once asked her:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHs0EUq8zfS
—“Why do you keep remembering sad things?”35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVWDyKjtdq0
She replied:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡw2My1lkcMg
—“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—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡunbQzZtlqk
not to hold on,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3Zf8PuDdwa
but to say goodbye, like one would to a former love.

She named her first fear:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4Nrpph14Mx
Abandonment.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlXv7MJweLt
She once clung to her mother’s shirt in the schoolyard while other children gathered in groups.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCAyXba6a8f
Startled awake at night when the house was too quiet.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCOcqpzNFdd
Once wondered: If I vanished, would anyone notice?

Then she named the first teacher who shamed her—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0fDpLYmewM
for not being “pure” enough.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡf0xsHsYJjM
She remembered his eyes—colder than winter.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDEWzLdgJMi
The way he judged her,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡn3gqHDWKlm
as if she were an unforgivable flaw.

She once resented him.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡP7kW3vsmAv
But today, she whispered:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYiYavUmHso
“Thank you, teacher. Because of you, I learned to stand—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡt9BRBWb6so
even when no one stood beside me.”

She named her first love—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7DVD3AkNbd
the one who claimed to love her for being “different,”35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDS5dFKaqyU
but left when that very difference stopped being “charming.”35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡe0PMToUtcg
She once wrote hundreds of unsent messages,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡryq3qdrZaW
wondering what she had done wrong.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3SPTg40tj6
Now she knows:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡo1xDP7LWpV
She was never wrong.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwTaNNq3fH8
He just didn’t have a heart wide enough to hold all the layers of hers.

She named an old dream:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDMLFqBKoeq
To be seen.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiAXjfhSoEH
As a child, she thought if she studied hard enough, people would love her.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9WAHpLrY09
As she grew older, she replaced that dream with degrees, titles, and posts that racked up likes.

But in the middle of that glow,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJ9uP3jaJzs
she felt empty.

And she whispered to that dream:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOkfNmXDg8P
“I’ve done my best.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡk06FGirCVx
But now, I don’t live for recognition.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5e4QGgxIon
I live for peace.”

Finally, she named something formless—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYAXdNAVSd3
A version of herself that had died.

The child who loved the color yellow, believed in fairy tales, and called her father “Superman.”35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIWALUWitb7
The teenage girl who wrote journals in purple ink and texted her crush just to ask, “Have you eaten yet?”35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5byLOLfuil
The girl who once believed everyone in the world was trustworthy.

She cried when she named that former self.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡF3KtrL6VPa
Not out of regret.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMAyRdr40sI
But gratitude.

Because without all those versions of herself—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwt8MoLzh9q
there would be no woman standing strong in today’s storms.

End of Chapter:

To name the things that were lost35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtHbBi0mjWk
is not to dwell in the past,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJE4HtJW4B5
but to say a final goodbye—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQmvIzJcXOb
like the way one sends off a loved one into the beyond, without lingering guilt.

Because she now understands:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ74iMDrIEbt
What’s lost is not always a loss.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjSWHlxKQLd
Sometimes, it’s the price of growth.

And when we are brave enough to name our pain,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡO7wyYkuYQJ
we become capable of naming joy—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRQU9bOrAiG
when it comes.

Chapter XIX: And Finally, I Chose to Stay with Myself

No one is chasing me anymore.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7FQLftdBPt
No one is abandoning me anymore.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQEwGLM0TIt
No one needs to love me just so I can feel worthy.

Because for the first time in my life, I sat down,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡv574pwIx2E
looked deep into my own eyes in the mirror,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfwKL1Kgt7k
and no longer saw a seeker—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqyZDKollpg
but someone… who has come home.

All my life, I thought I had to belong somewhere:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBklNjvcc3o
– A family that was whole,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡo7GbqFMGiW
– A community free of judgment,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡi7O6IWIcEO
– A love without conditions,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJOTk2Rncga
– A title accepted by society.

I once ran from East to West,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtqRrYwMCYq
from homeland to foreign land,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWGCXNHzFRP
from childhood to the present,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡj7rmCwDPEB
from one wound to another,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡny73kac035
just to find a "home"—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgUwF5YdJIc
a place where I could be myself without being rejected.

But then I realized:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡI6oRl52m9U
Nowhere is home if I don’t stay with myself.

Staying—was the hardest thing.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7Mk8yPScXC
Harder than forgiving others,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwPFRopKxIM
was forgiving myself—for being weak, for being blind, for having endured.

Harder than searching for love,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSp1ABcAjGA
was learning to love myself—even when no one cheered, no one applauded, no one waited.

Harder than surviving storms,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVDSzlEexvE
was standing still—to accept that:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHyCJxBWijL
“I don’t need to go anywhere. I just need to not abandon myself.”

I no longer need anyone to call me “worthy.”35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcNSge36WnW
I don’t need to reach some peak to feel “enough.”35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTuxQ36kGrH
I don’t need to defeat anyone to know my life has meaning.

All I need is to wake up each morning,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡktT7117XI5
see sunlight filter through the curtains,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbURJEWAAyg
brew a cup of warm tea,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgImCxmL0zC
and smile at the reflection in the mirror:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsbP0UGWQza
“Today, I’m still here. And that is enough.”

I used to fear being alone—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2UEoZ8x9ZV
so much so that I forgot the voice inside.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3Y3qmS6S72
But the farther I went, the more I understood:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNVoEBCoZb4
Loneliness doesn’t kill.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡq2VmiWBKWV
What kills slowly is not daring to live truthfully.

When I stayed with myself, I heard things I thought were lost:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaE5a2y6a5c
– The voice of my heart wanting to love again, but not in haste.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡeBtcPqMGh6
– The song of my soul, once broken, still humming.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXhz1w3BcJa
– The sound of silence—not empty, but deep like a spring.

And at last, I understood:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAgW7ZdNpaf
I don’t need to be saved.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmzmzyBYhnO
Because I was never truly lost.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡU1iqFUCjJM
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmDWKm1PFdS
Some stories just need to end with the truth.

And my truth is this:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡb7SfNJngHm
I have walked through many people, many dreams, many wounds…35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDYeuLc4RNt
To return—and remain—with myself.

I no longer seek the “perfect happiness.”35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsTr2tQgIlg
I only need a quiet corner in my heart—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJAn6DUmiNG
a place where I can breathe,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡeBcXGGbYoA
where I no longer have to pretend,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡT1gP9F5YNx
where I don’t need to prove anything to anyone.

And if someone asks:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0PcF5p4YpN
– “Do you still want to be loved?”

I will smile and say:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4EowJ5nLQI
– “Of course. But this time, I’ll start with loving myself.”

Because…35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXUIBJugUhx
When someone learns to stay with themselves,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡeehq2TJ0Z0
they can never be abandoned again.

Final Chapter: Lessons Wrapped in Silence

Not every story needs to end with applause.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmI0Y85wsVl
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—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ28HZe7RXfY
a girl born between East and West,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmz1vtpbblf
a girl carrying wounds carved by history, society, and her own personal trials.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡl3U7QoiBEJ
She has journeyed through many lives, many layers of pain and love.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcWpcQkdf0z
And yet, in the end, what she leaves behind is not tears or resentment—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0iawV7jbWU
but light.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEVftuSYu0o
Small, perhaps,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzkwZXTpxe4
but enough to guide others out of darkness.

Below are truths that no school ever teaches—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFCXkZqcBr6
but she learned them with blood, tears, and unwavering faith.

1. No one is born to fit perfectly into every mold.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡeQVELo5biF
She was once rejected—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRyOVn3U7LD
not because she did anything wrong,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡO76KvtXJVR
but because she was different.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqtUe5AYUWp
And in a world built on standards,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkE1TWtWwpY
anyone who doesn’t match the majority is labeled “flawed.”

But the lesson is this:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkk8Je4faTf
Being different is not a flaw. It is a form of courage.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfgodpwc2z4
The courage to live authentically.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡV2gyWIozi3
The courage to not distort oneself for others’ approval.

2. Love is not always protection.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7vOKBTr0md
Sometimes, people love without knowing how to love.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuiMT8JEFYX
Parents may stay silent—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnK95MC4OhM
not out of hatred, but out of fear greater than their capacity to bear.

Loved ones may hurt us—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIIi0DOc3O2
but that doesn’t mean they haven’t hurt watching us in pain.

The lesson is:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYPcOo33Ii0
Forgiveness is not for others. It is for your own freedom.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPEhjqSsVJv
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgwpA03DoFu
She was once disrespected for studying online,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBayqqNtbqJ
for being biracial,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ14IGic3FW7
for not attending a “prestigious” school.

But what she accomplished—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRYJTNJrK3I
every lesson, every exam, every sleepless night spent chasing a deadline—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSm1dqN1ezE
proved this:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡieWC9CrEGN
True value lies not in the paper, but in the journey taken to earn it.

A bought diploma is paper.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMe9WY7yjWY
A hard-earned one is part of a lifetime.

4. No one can truly love you until you learn to love yourself.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMInTJxOPQD
She used to chase validation,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ483Ra8ndNw
used to try so hard to be accepted.

Until one day, she looked at herself and said:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSFCeVU1hOb
“I don’t have to prove anything anymore. Living is already enough.”35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSfFODqrN6N
And from that moment on, she was free.

5. Sometimes, simply surviving is a kind of miracle.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ62zk8eJSLB
In a world that only values success through status, wealth, or fame,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfon49mr6nT
she chose to define success as this:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcpLt9e6ihc
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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWq5EEHqKwg
She was once the abandoned child,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡocgxe3qWTy
the sister who carried all the scars,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKzSRpf6eu8
the expelled student,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4IkyvF0uK5
the one scorned for being “impure.”

But in the end, she was not a “victim.”35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbSix8FBAST
She was a survivor.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzvFuCB6LdY
And more than that, she was someone who finally understood:

No one owes us happiness.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡS2N59nQjgB
We must be the ones to write our own ending—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYS5XgfLvBA
even if our story began as a tragedy.

Epilogue:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWN87W5OZg8
Her story doesn’t need to be made into a movie or printed in textbooks.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1qerOsOB4Q
It only needs to be remembered—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9ALnbWm4np
by someone who once felt lonely,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHLnM79Rwii
understood—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5ITve1hCbA
by someone who was once seen as different,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGDd1lbI9TJ
wept over—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQcWFHNoF68
by someone who once struggled to survive.

And if you are holding this book,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVg0HYiylz3
reading to the very last line,35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6W8hOimkZQ
then please hold onto the simplest truth she ever came to know:

Life is a long, challenging journey.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnDgppdYCFx
But if we remain gentle enough35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡv7TjI9d1YS
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)

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 1:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡumdFTKGuL2
Vietnamese husband → Discriminated in the West → Dies quietly35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuHlxz93Hcd
→ Reincarnated through blood
Life 2:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4SqXIsk8qU
Western woman → Wife of Vietnamese man → Dies of illness → Blood transfused into Vietnamese boy35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlrqX33jmG9
→ Spiritual merging
Life 3:35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCIN8AnyjZX
Vietnamese boy with a Western soul → Rejected by both East and West → Faces violence, abuse, and exploitation35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRQ501yf1iv
→ Becomes the “One Who Carries Two Winds”

VII. Recommended Music & Films While Reading

Suggested Soundtracks:

“Experience” – Ludovico Einaudi35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUIhRz8zoUU
→ Soft, evocative of memory and inner life.
“Nuvole Bianche” – Ludovico Einaudi35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVVsG9LxNFH
→ Ideal for chapters on loss and rebirth.
“In This Shirt” – The Irrepressibles35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHyD9B8hrda
→ A haunting song about gender, identity, and the pain of living outside norms.
“Breathe Me” – Sia35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7vex0cQyRs
→ Perfect for the story’s ending—survival, loneliness, and the yearning to be understood.

Complementary Films:

Cloud Atlas (2012)35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5035NNhDbl
→ A film about reincarnation, multiplicity of being, and soul connections across time.
The Danish Girl (2015)35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcuTxujCRio
→ The journey to reclaim one’s true identity across gender, society, and compassion.
A Silent Voice (2016 – Anime)35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9lYjoSySdw
→ A story of atonement and healing among those who once inflicted pain.
The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick)35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAfjpqraxfz
→ 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.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡK2iQcvIKXQ
Thank you—for enduring each wound with an open heart.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPvm9tlaHSE
The story may have ended. But the journey of loving, understanding, and forgiving continues.

Author: Pham Le Quy

35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡu5xK1Q3jF4

35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ22W9xqMvt9

ns216.73.216.210da2

There are souls that belong nowhere – yet still choose to live, to understand, and to forgive.

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