THE ONE WHO CARRIES TWO WINDS14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡo6LOjaAawv
Author:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡukgBHfMxoR
Pham Le Quy
"There are souls that belong nowhere –14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfnSoZCW8v0
yet still choose to live,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5RxIs9CaN1
to understand,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGIsQGRkXuP
to love,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHBYvveS01K
and to forgive."14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjb2xubvOUd
Vietnam, 2025
Table of Contents
Foreword (Page 7)14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCkM3A39l7x
Dedication (Page 9)14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUoIFyDtJRs
Blurb (Page 10)14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZ4pvE9jUT3
Copyright Page (Page 12)14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwwNoq1UxXx
About the Author (Page 13)14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZ2dhRc4o4w
Editor’s Note (Page 14)
Chapters
Chapter I: The One Who Carries Two Winds (Page 16)14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡf0rpviER3Z
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)14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQPJg6zSDfj
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)14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMVdPPCnfFB
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)14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlwpMZJnOwK
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)14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0UGUjWTVPY
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)14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1sfn7Nm1Ni
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)14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdI4WLiGKxX
No longer a line between enemy and kin — only the shadow of confusion remains.
Chapter VIII: Rivers of Blood – Oceans of Tears (Page 49)14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoextmVtfUu
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)14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAejKY7RwCW
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)14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡe7mJIOpEnZ
A final message — of apology and gratitude — to her parents and sister. A farewell wrapped in forgiveness.
Chapter XI: Forgiving Oneself (Page 64)14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3J9BFBik6I
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)14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUMWO1PFa7A
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)14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcWUdcjtUoT
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)14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWrIx8gB7Xw
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)14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsBSwiHefJj
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)14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1Wk9hhioYw
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)14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡo4DzGlM3oY
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)14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPMBwGGStXm
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)14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhN56Q8daJt
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)14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbnGA3MKXt4
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)14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡW1ugmLLiOZ
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxqUyU8XuRZ
I wrote it because there were days when I could no longer speak.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBednWcRwU9
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡm9SLDNGiOV
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDNU3VSNi7w
It is a bell that rings inside the soul, though no one strikes it.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDc2lhWDn0W
It is the confession of someone who once blamed their family, society, and even themselves.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡduMOYUFolG
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”—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCIHOzPiEAY
fragments of unnamed places, still breathing, still blooming in the swamps of life.
This is not a book to be rushed.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyjWsDHwXWU
Read slowly. Breathe with it.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEISVzJZN27
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,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4EZRvHjWia
who’ve been rejected, misunderstood, or torn between two opposing winds—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqSRXy7f2vw
one of the past, and one of longing.
To the hybrid souls—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDJJRmsZott
not only by blood, but by experience.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWsYcSfBuvh
Those who’ve lived on the fault line between East and West,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlDqbpG7F3z
between sacrifice and selfishness, between love and resentment.
This story is for you.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡs1QPdy5rDf
And for me—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3Cteojzg1a
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—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5OCeitNp6P
she (yes, she) never imagined that destiny would tear her apart.
A blood transfusion at age fourteen—meant to save her life—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMxat692imZ
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUMnsff99r7
From that moment on, she is no longer one person.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgnBwBvax8L
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—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtgQyYfp0qY
she continues to live.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAPUoam2zsY
Not to be accepted.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjqTLVZLecv
But to prove: she is real.
She studies. She loves. She aches. She forgives.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTJkdMAWPA8
She does not choose revenge—she chooses existence.
No one sees the tear in her heart,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUKdU3RHSJE
but all see her rise.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRI2wM1Rk20
No one hears her sob in the shadows,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsRcGGbIiaf
but all witness her smile—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡV81XfUI6DY
like a lotus blooming in the mud,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdik9810IPO
not as radiant as a rose,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDYI7E24clr
but resilient enough to survive.
And if you’ve ever felt unseen,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡf1r3SXrfwp
if you’ve ever felt like you didn’t belong—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNP6IUDajaC
then this story is for you.
Not to pity you—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjeWKvienfV
but to remind you that somewhere in this world,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUmdpvPbR8K
someone has lived as you have.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9iruvxLiL7
And is still living.
Copyright Paper
© 2025 by Author: Pham Le Quy
All rights reserved.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhOfxHkPEot
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 Winds14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZEcuhDW0nK
Author: Pham Le Quy14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBQVNwSbvI6
Editor: [if applicable]14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDnRRQNzPzI
Cover Design: [if applicable]14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvGFDGJ5Cnr
Illustration: [if applicable]14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLHRIDKCO1Z
Publisher: [Self-published or Name of Publisher]14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzn42IGWmMm
First Published: 202514Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNlr1p8VVnd
ISBN: [To be assigned if printed or registered]14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡujAG8fzZ1c
Country of Publication: Vietnam
All characters, events, and places in this novella are fictional.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡv8b1ioTmqZ
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,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡK30BjdfEdu
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0a6dEifjru
Out of that imbalance, The One Who Carries Two Winds was conceived—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1dFW6RSk14
as a deeply personal yet universally resonant journey of healing.
With academic backgrounds in language, psychology, and education,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMJxFsCFknT
Quy does not write from training, but from living.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsGVxVOu9jl
For this author, writing is not a career—it is survival.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡu4RK8Ogcwq
Writing to breathe. Writing to remember.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyExGpoH4TR
Writing to forgive—oneself, and those who unintentionally caused harm.
When not writing, Quy teaches, researches, and listens.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvPIJp9bSoa
In the quietest moments, the author believes:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡU19hQ8t9En
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡatUkwnSsuP
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,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNvc1YHmnkc
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,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfKQcDYGbQK
unbound by traditional forms.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7AjYHutRt9
The chapters do not simply follow chronological order,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1KYXYyDQqh
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—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvta7etRqNY
but it may also become your medicine.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxTA1saPrTn
A journey of self-healing.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSiTPANbByB
A voice for the silenced soul.
The author humbly presents this novella as something to be read—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1B2UVi2ntU
not with the eyes,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9qRygBdMpq
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.”14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnmvt3JE7V9
"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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTnhSc34Dpb
“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.”14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡl55t86RVVL
“Are you writing from personal experience, An?” the teacher asked gently.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYlYWK8HDju
He bowed his head, unable to answer.
In history, during a lesson on patriarchal feudalism, he stood up and said,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡx6FXo9M4tS
“Men have always written history, but women carry the true memory of humankind.”14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRn5Q5Y3DQj
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmSF86xrFtV
To the mirror: he was A Nhi—the unseen twin, always present.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCJIjcxJlvy
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzKhpS3Nb7e
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9tgFapI1sY
To him, An was a cursed blend.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡevOZmGyb2i
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,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfgW8YqlhjF
“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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZ0QxTzvV3T
Not Nguyên.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡd6E5CS81oI
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—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiQKkO3DFrR
Not the world,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjYZabogPPA
but himself.
He forgot he had been A Nhi.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvYv6CGETGQ
Forgot he had once been a husband.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡypjK1bAy3O
Forgot the golden-haired woman who had wept in his dreams.
But what they didn’t know was this:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuft5qGlrrO
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5PDgJQJxvt
“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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJmaRnnKvzm
She lacked the ambiguity of a soul reborn through lifetimes.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡm6WLAnWfcB
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ980ENotjIZ
No color.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCCtnwbk37I
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdsUP4Wk0mR
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJF9s7yWE3T
An was no longer a victim. Nor a vengeful soul.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrPcFKhFUtb
He was a witness—of all that had been twisted, denied, and finally… remembered.
And from the ashes of conspiracy, that soul rose—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbX7UYhb5NG
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:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIbEF04b9a4
“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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0oCLWXw08c
They didn’t know which gender box to place An in, which language, which identity.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcSbddcuqjd
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:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡA2XcZlWRin
“What kind of boy looks like a girl?”14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnSBAW5TReH
“Has that mixed-race kid caught some Western sickness?”14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0a8rNrjLWC
“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:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJ4e0NscDkn
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:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVrkSVLSuWE
“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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkorKAkvB5i
Some days, she looked at her hands and found them foreign, moving without conscious will.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0fn7OqLt4y
Some nights, she wrote love letters in French—perfectly, without having learned. Each word, each flourish, matched the old woman from her dreams.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXGwydl9axk
Some mornings, she stood before the mirror, applied lipstick, and smiled—not her own smile.
People said she was acting.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqH0DYmhI0q
But the truth was:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡG2w8YRiW93
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:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡL1dWIqYm1j
“Do not assign me a label.”
The article was published. It caused a stir.
Some praised her as a living emblem of diversity.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgtyTc9JsCO
Others condemned her as “a cultural aberration.”14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡv366yjB1Gy
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8gvEY9MzsA
“Because I am everything you say I am. But also none of it.”
One day, she received a handwritten letter. No sender.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxAQy2ooK1x
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡo08SLy1nOn
Not one person who stood beside her in the crowd had ever stopped to wonder what she needed.
No one asked:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnUt3FW5ddT
Are you tired? Are you in pain? Are you afraid?
She asked herself.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgwByAY47Ne
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡriGS4vdevp
I was once the bridge between East and West, but in truth a rope pulled from both ends.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdaDfP0lf7M
I lived under many names, many genders, many memories.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtk9vGunhg0
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:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjn4XTormkd
Forgive me for wanting to die.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOANShevJCD
Forgive me for trying to live behind someone else’s face.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAENuUn7zPF
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtQgtebYzWZ
Not to form a perfect figure,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVIw6G25xQS
but to form a human—one who needs no name.
Chapter VII: A Conclusion or a Curse Repeated?
They say destiny is a circle.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKy56oyrV8r
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8b7Ae8R9td
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡs88J5Zul6j
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:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWnRDuxrxBs
“You must call me Grandpa.”
The child smiled and replied, in a Vietnamese laced with French:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5SaRlECsXb
“But Grandpa... you’re my Grandma, aren’t you?”
That line sliced through his mind like a blade.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNaERKR03uh
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:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMTln71yS4H
“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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvPMbMI0kKh
“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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtOz0XNWdPJ
There are nights I dream of floating in lavender fields, not rice paddies.”
“So you’ve betrayed your people?”
“No,” she answered softly.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡifkBRuLRSn
“I’ve only accepted the parts of me I can no longer deny.”
Nguyên stepped out of her house, hollow.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFDF8gFBaqA
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpFMyDPh12i
Children who didn’t know their parents.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXCjq7tIqai
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUrVbYz0tZU
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMP7jmvJ8hG
Maybe… knowing who you are matters less than living like someone who knows how to love.”
He bowed his head.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZYLTsgQ2d8
For the first time, he felt small.
That night, he dreamed of standing before a mirror.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqG3lDtphEB
But it didn’t reflect him.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVPp0nbAsav
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡy7Ns6I6mNw
Not addressed to anyone.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKVppQA4Sk5
Just left it on the table:
**“I once wanted to make the world a replica of myself.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrivpFUGFB4
But I never knew who I was.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡg4yOUFgGaD
I once hated the mixed.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡv6uYyreuAi
But now I understand: mixing isn’t betrayal—it’s a form of survival.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjPxznajBAY
I thought I was preserving identity.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYAc0sQhBYD
But really, I was afraid—because I never truly understood my own.
Now, I seek no one to punish.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOxarIk6ojO
I only wish to learn how to listen.”**
No one saw Nguyên again.
Some say he secluded himself in the mountains.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIciKB4hvd9
Others claim he went to Africa to volunteer.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYc7F8BdeaF
Cruel tongues whispered that he went mad, struck by “cultural confusion.”
But those who truly understood said nothing.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAsfI9CvEtw
Because they knew: he wasn’t gone.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUdbrGywTxD
He had simply dissolved—like all the things he once tried to fight.
And the mixed-blood girl?
She still lived.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMOeuCIdP5y
Still taught.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ726F7uL3RS
Still wandered the markets, wearing a French scarf and a nón lá.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUxnvzOrDgg
Some days she wore an áo dài.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8yszxlr4VO
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:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ19Yy6pyaWR
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRuuvTwlIc6
But if it is a curse,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4yoweLvX3o
Let me be the one to repeat it—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaHSWMIpUUj
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBfEGukyNp5
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.”14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqqhGICMn31
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQ7oAQzOmB8
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYaF5UudldO
To keep Vietnam, never touch another’s blood.”
She once believed that.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVgN7dQNqy2
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:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgK7x69QUf2
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWV3Nnj1LcK
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2MlaMzZfVa
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?”14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRO6atsL6T7
She answered quietly:
“I don’t live to be someone’s wife.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKPjL5vc91R
Nor to be anyone’s version of anything.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQ5rhgcKcMs
I live like the wind—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7jtAATTg9v
Free, without gender, without language, without nation.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0F8ba8mf1i
No one can keep me.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8Zi9DFOtEv
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:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJFzvv7HqKb
“Then how will anyone prove who you are?”
She smiled and said only this:
“I don’t need to prove who I am.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡw3aRNPECFM
I only need to be remembered as someone who once truly felt alive.”
Years later, stories were told—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGLUa3CymUi
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:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3TTIA93SNU
“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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOFeew36lkO
The room where Nguyên staged his violation.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡa9NovEAcA1
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJDDUSv1FOQ
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdUvgPniBzu
But if people still believe—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ69eGXuGzeu
That life is not to assimilate, but to understand.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0UShnmj3w5
That love is not to possess, but to liberate.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwE2aUlxf38
…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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjFPPSXzJxx
But I am everyone ever torn in two by borders.”
Some built statues of her along national frontiers—but carved no name.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVYMgi6a511
Some wrote novels about her—but called her only The Winded One.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsk6vYlaW3S
Some called her a curse.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡU8H8h83D3D
Some, an apocalypse.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFUvXnHUiph
Some—only whispered in the breeze—called her hope.
In a seaside village where the wind refused to choose direction,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmLtGtTxiCg
a child once drew in the sand:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqjgflIsTIS
a figure with two arms—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZN2Uw16UiZ
one holding a stalk of Vietnamese rice,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8erbnyGhWY
the other a sprig of French lavender.
The child didn’t know who she was.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYm8UWM2Flx
But still, they drew.
Because perhaps…14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYBUmqp17In
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:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWNngzwtmXU
“That mixed-blood girl is studying at our school?”
Then came scrutiny:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡM70xkmspKc
“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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLPgtoYNlyt
“You’ve shamed me,” her sister spat, eyes clouded with hate.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡr8mtbq4jrL
“I don’t want to be seen as having the same blood as you.”
But she didn’t cry.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRQrNoboX6k
She simply told herself:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuZUzxVH4sz
“As long as I can graduate… that’s enough.”
And she did graduate.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBCNZNZYg4v
Not with fanfare, but with blood and tears.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡITgqztFxeL
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWwiErVnnkR
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJCT32Y6nIe
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlyGhgyc962
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡG9tWB7crLH
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaT56DSZ1T5
Teachers couldn’t see her face but still gave her low marks.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2VSTUaFetH
Excellent assignments couldn’t score above 7.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvn7YMNTzd1
She had no friends. No allies. Only screens, cold presentations, and grades that slapped her efforts.
They said, “Everyone passes online classes.”14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfrEZj1Pvy5
But when she graduated with two Bachelor's degrees and one Master’s, they sneered:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcABHd3aAef
“Bought degrees? Who even checks those?”
They didn’t know:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUQHQVGjqo4
Every presentation cut off mid-sentence due to dropped internet.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9MaCukieKt
Every paper rewritten after software crashes.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtoxS2NoFwd
Every night awake until 3 AM completing demanding academic requirements—done alone, by herself.
They said she lacked hands-on experience?14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoaPb9vzhIu
What about the volunteer hours?14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3OIL04arD7
The sessions with autistic children?14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡth3yP2gRf3
The home visits to the depressed—the ones no one else dared approach?
They said online degrees held no value in Vietnam?14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡU8qHCLK4A4
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?14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVnr40Zg96S
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLkkHoja9D0
That real study, real effort, real failure—are all part of the process.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOmaEOp2pD9
No one graduates just because they have money.
They once called her the bottom of society.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOn32wGl7r2
But they didn’t realize: sometimes, it is from the bottom that the strongest souls are born.
Lotuses do not bloom in palaces.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCLODMwJtKC
They bloom in mud.
Some said the lotus isn’t as beautiful as the rose.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡernvzfLBbS
But the lotus doesn’t need to be beautiful.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVhfdwRHypb
It only needs to live.
To live in silence. In loneliness. In obscurity.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDd6jLv9ltL
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,”14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9uwC7HDJCb
but do not have even a fraction of the effort, faith, or strength14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3DBgEEQL6V
as the one you once looked down upon as “abnormal”…
…then perhaps it is you who should be ashamed.
Because sometimes,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWgeRrWEbay
“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—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqeGlTB5RMb
and still walked forward with pride,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhAEmr8JTZk
like a curse that had been transformed into something sacred.
Chapter X: A Message from the Survivor14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzFCnLHgmMv
(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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzuFj3Op3uj
I asked myself:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpZAJ6oatt9
Why didn’t my parents fight for me?14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡE5pdwIV4ih
Why didn’t they shield me the way other parents shield their children?14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxCUFJOqmGo
Why was I the one to suffer in my sister’s place?14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9PrkBlyx00
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡS1F5zGRiO0
Your silence, at times, wasn’t a lack of love—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡz3YKyf6CZ8
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:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡl4AEE1NhKc
You feared that I would be poor, that I would suffer.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3GfK5gqjCm
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—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3y3cthvJMe
The little girl who was once the light of my childhood—are probably someone else now.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjjRoofaQ5M
Someone with love, with friends, with joy.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡU2oERjV3Yo
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡV1dmM26VTk
Maybe you think I’m selfish.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGxY4diV3MA
Maybe you think I don’t deserve your love.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzQKIYGFXvK
Maybe, in your eyes, I was never a good sister.
But dear sister…
Everything I did—I thought of you first.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGba2F16Sd7
Whether protecting, sacrificing, or enduring—I never did it for myself.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmlmecbwJWN
I only wanted you to have the childhood we both should’ve had.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡomAPKe1f2P
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRckwuz7Izi
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:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHPent9xQ0T
Like a sigh in the night.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOn3R8qk7tu
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZFvSyzd8VH
You did what I didn’t have the courage to do.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1Jlp1XaqwF
And now, if I could go back, I would never let you endure that burden alone.
You deserve a happier life than mine.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbvDfKllIc8
And if fate demands I pay the price, then I’ll live in the shadows—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1Vipr3KUoF
So long as you can walk in the light.
I will continue to care for our parents as you once did for me.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyzk27LYgqB
Not as repayment.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7E3rw90iY9
But as redemption.
And even if we never become close again—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡw2yb9kKxlB
Even if the cracks between us never heal—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBJ5NGA513Y
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5K32FusLsf
I ask nothing.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBdn9PFuMOE
I beg for nothing.
I only hope you understand:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFp83aR1p6b
Only forgiveness and compassion can cure the poisons of hatred and selfishness.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2iRunRpWWh
But if you cling to the pain like a protective charm…14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡi0Zdu2SnQj
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBJTwhceZNt
I am a survivor—not thanks to anyone,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYwa7cok0KJ
but because of everything you unknowingly sowed.
And from those broken pieces,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZzcMoXIGpp
I’ve rebuilt myself into someone who knows how to love—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡu9MG6eynN3
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—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3HconXl48O
It will all be too late.
Chapter XI: Forgiving Oneself14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8jJI0ox7uW
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSj4tHUmVqd
It was she who had cursed her mixed-race body, her soul that never seemed to belong anywhere.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnpAoxJwhTA
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNSVaXkTKN3
“It’s daring to look back and say:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNuPDSF8do2
You were not wrong for being fragile.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡz1dycmzQ6Y
You were not guilty for wanting to give up.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzir9ywZIDt
You were simply human.”
And she began to write—to herself.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFL2NdCzPXS
No longer the old accusations, no longer the endless indictments.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2BhKmy5gyE
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfrOmNCvOmk
You were incredibly brave to survive what others wouldn’t even dare to face.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1IzIeVxWR3
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡl5t4r9UB4E
It is to release the roles of “the one who endures,” “the silent sacrificer,” “the ideal daughter,” “the invisible sister”—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7bczhozW9v
And return simply to being someone learning how to live.
No longer must she strain to prove her worth.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLAgOe9c2tT
No longer must she chase high scores, degrees, or the world’s approval to feel valuable.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwnBnvqTcri
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaQqLhmiAf8
Her life, her presence, was already a miracle.
Yes, there will still be long nights.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiHSAXrvczO
Yes, there will still be stumbles.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1NIpnIbQTr
But from this moment on, she will no longer wage war against herself.
She will live—not to untangle every misunderstanding,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgsqGzj6KnI
Not to make others love her again,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOVIejDzETi
Not to reclaim what was lost—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxyr5cI5cmA
But to understand this:
Every pain that once pierced the heart did not come to destroy it—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡILYLshM7BS
But to open a door into it.
And in the deepest part of her soul—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGLhRVmaouA
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfjUpqfiVaw
It comes in the moment when someone stands quietly before the mirror—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡv06Aepaw1H
And sees themselves through eyes no longer clouded with resentment.
If forgiving others is liberation,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡujOZfkNYUH
Then forgiving oneself is the final redemption.
Chapter XII: Where Dawn Blooms Within the Heart
Dawn does not always begin with light.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡelZucVIYfD
Sometimes, it begins with a stillness—deep and quiet—after a long night’s storm.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPK4aysTmV8
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzUQRn2baVh
No longer forcing herself to prove her worth.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJnrNJnxrLC
No longer exhausted from searching for a place to belong.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2rhSjJpqVC
No longer flinching at mocking words, or hiding from contemptuous eyes.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbqVOkWlZ1a
She was—once more—fully human.
For the first time, she accepted that she was a flower that bloomed out of season.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9qP8W9WWtn
And because of that, she was beautiful in a way no one else was.
Dawn doesn’t begin with the sound of an alarm.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKoXVXl5RXA
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,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNY8IJb8YLl
But from the tiny fragments of belief she gathered day by day.
She began to teach—not to flaunt knowledge,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡo39hpX8OOM
But to give her students what she had longed for: someone who truly listens.
She wrote—not as a cry for help,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDTb3vMVFpw
But to spark something in others.
She loved—not to fill a void,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtVGEa43CkJ
But to grow alongside another soul.
Someone once asked her:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSCD5DxSGZg
“Why do you still choose kindness, when life has treated you so unfairly?”
She simply smiled:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ043ebMpTvM
“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—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJxWwqZWsq6
For she understood: justice is not about equal shares,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlZ3ncqo8hD
But about the right to redefine happiness in your own way.
Her happiness was not in riches, fame, or recognition.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1W9xxkL4LO
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—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡx3HEATTRPN
Reminding her of darker days.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡy7c9GQd7kK
But this time, she did not run.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡX8plYyVmms
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZ1UWKFdmYb
It now resided in her heart—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCpup7yEZAL
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡH4dbBtpLrN
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHhrLAgz4BC
You don’t need to become someone else.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmnRo8XaJBp
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0BG8WmSaui
Nor from romantic dates.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2AGu9qCNGq
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."14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnY7CyDgYp2
But to her, each child was a shimmering fracture—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzWPLlWY4qu
a star that did not follow constellations, yet still glowed in its own light.
Some could not speak.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhipifuXWU8
Some sat rocking in corners, crying endlessly.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtqFAWjYoFu
Some hit others, tore books, even scratched her hands raw.
But she never grew angry.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDy5C2xXUnV
Because she too had once been like that—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9c7CTK67WL
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7Y79R9bcJN
She taught empathy.
She didn’t push them to excel.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡv2mpNE4FXF
She didn’t force them to conform.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡK32vnxq9p0
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxbGEcABmO1
A child who once scratched her now folded a crooked little paper crane and gave it to her.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgwYxWZ9NNV
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:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNILVJtzu2F
The world is not saved by the great.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2vS8cVDAVT
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—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYYizmAeuqK
but each word wasn’t just a story; it was a resurrection of belief.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiUhmsAMKJ1
The belief that no one is "useless."14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡew1lkQNod9
No one is born to be excluded.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡohfBxfFTIF
Not her.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9tGqExVJmn
Not her sister.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrFGxJF0mhz
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡB2nDTlPzDN
They reached out—not to bestow praise,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxGUVaIpq8N
But to listen.
"We want you to train teachers for special education," they said.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBH3XS1V0Mr
"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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAIy8IHZq56
Because she knew—she stood for the imperfect.
She stood before the class, not teaching theory.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLRuX9GZR6j
She simply told stories:
About a boy who once clawed her hand, now gently wiping a friend’s tears.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3X1pNsDLHt
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2sMX5U8CmX
We only need the courage to reach out—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwFgq0iqhhD
even when that hand is trembling."
End of Chapter:
In this life, perhaps everyone falls into a pit at some point.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFBkg8pJZAw
But not everyone meets someone willing to climb down, sit beside them, and say:
"I’ve been here too.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7ey2TMvzt5
But I got out.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKuSQhmlbC1
And now, I won’t leave you behind."
She became that person—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGH1okoNBRJ
Not because she was strong.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡphv4btBRLD
But because she had known pain.
And only those who have known pain...14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmdszFQoMBf
can truly heal.
Chapter XIV: The Seasons That Do Not Repeat
There are seasons that pass without promising to return.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ299v6Svisu
Not because the world has changed—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKyCioqgm1T
but because the heart has.
And she—after years of dwelling in sorrow that spun in loops,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMJmiBwpUuf
after reliving memories like rewound tapes—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFfTInbh2BF
finally realized something:
Not every season is meant to return.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPfM4NuSbGn
Some seasons exist to come to an end.
That summer—the one where she curled up on a hospital floor,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbaHXcOdVrn
bathed in cold white lights and the heavy rhythm of heart monitors—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbizAxAJiJE
will never return.
Because now, instead of merely surviving,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJ2fLboKPFu
she knows how to live.
That autumn—the one where she sat outside the school gates,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1HMz5YNXW7
watching classmates holding hands on their way to extra classes14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5OtEHpZefY
while her name was struck from the roster—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNIUXfL3l0s
will never return.
Because now, instead of waiting to be accepted by others,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8ujtw1eJxd
she accepts herself.
That winter—the one when she thought of ending it all,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqUS3XKnaUY
stood by a high balcony, wondering,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQs6p4U1Ena
“Would anyone cry if I disappeared?”—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxjikq0bXVn
will not return either.
Because now, she would be the one to cry for herself14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3HOvpZVM32
if ever again she dared to let go.
And this spring—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡx8D0iMcBox
the first spring where she no longer has to pretend to be strong,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjZB4OmQbBK
no longer has to force joy—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ70L9WTBLsh
has arrived.
She has begun to love the little things.
The first rain of the season.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNt5xhkw3Lt
A slow, unhurried afternoon.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3WNaAB3Uwj
A book left half-read.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlVZN6Rzw0y
A spontaneous smile14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHRAdSxnJHp
when sunlight filters through a crack in the door.
She is learning to live in the present—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsU2OC1Ckpb
not to forget the past,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgJoEqyUkkX
but to stop depending on it.
The past is a chapter in the book of life—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡc1tdHMGhFm
it needs to be read,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXiYyaWmhDs
it deserves to be cried over—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVUuPfGw2ex
but it must be turned.
Once, while teaching, a student asked her:
"Miss, if someone has been hurt too much,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡK9UJSfqvGH
do they still have the right to be happy?"
She looked at the student, her eyes glistening,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡADvuMbSDm1
and simply smiled:
"Not only the right.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxEFDnR4LJh
You need to be happy.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡntU0yyEI4j
Because those who’ve known pain—deserve healing more than anyone else."
Each season holds its own sorrow.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGVmzMLN1Bt
Each year leaves new scars.
But like the sun that always rises,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJOGd3pradO
no matter how long the night—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2neBSvYiLN
hope always waits at the end of the road.
Not blind faith.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4ntaizFUwi
But faith that has once been broken,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaByNEUu5yF
and now knows how to rise14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzCioH5zLTd
on the strength of its scars.
End of Chapter:
The seasons that do not return are not sorrowful ones.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlNP963O47c
They are proof of growth.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6YVjZTgdqQ
Of a life truly lived—of pain endured, of falls survived—and of still being here.
She knows there will be more fears.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2OlKHSumLf
There will be days of confusion.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡh34UWYlSDb
There will be moments when lovers fall silent,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIzetrLleeX
when friends turn away,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3x0qzsl0yf
when the world feels cold.
But she also knows this:
No one can take away the seasons she’s lived through.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMuzkvQ851U
No one can erase the light that once bloomed within her heart.
And if any season must not return—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJryyfiN71V
let it drift away14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAhpoBwD9ZL
like a petal falling at the perfect time,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZMQubGKMGZ
like the closing note of a well-ended song,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtOCFio9H9H
like a part of her life once marked by pain...14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRYulb8SnR9
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡU4hGhFmx3q
A place with a warm light at the door,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwRJd1Xo4Wo
a bowl of hot rice,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8U6iBvkxy9
and someone waiting to hear the words, “I’m home.”
She was once like that.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQpWv4nj7UA
She used to believe that a home was a physical place—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwb7kZslOaZ
an address, family inside,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAR0haJ81xm
framed photos hanging on the wall.
But through many losses, she came to understand:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrJX5nKGBRS
Some homes are not outside.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqFFhMOS4eH
They dwell within the chest.
A true home isn’t the safest place—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnBHE7M67Q0
but the place where you are most fully yourself.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3D3OaH464a
Not a place without conflict—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡG7vQEaS9bd
but where people choose to stay after anger has passed.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzdp7kSMhxB
Not a place of perfect comfort—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡL0FoVoeaWI
but where you don’t have to pretend to be strong.
She began building that home—within her.
Each brick was an old wound,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBFxVvDIZzF
washed clean with tears.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDU2IIsoDYc
Each door was a new belief,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFp88l6tSJu
opened after years of being shut.
That house had no concrete foundation.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtB6RP4KcBu
It was built on compassion—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡL56R28vh8i
for herself.
She learned to speak to herself each morning:
“It’s okay. You’ve done really well.”14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGjtlHAgOy5
“If someone hurts you today, come back here—this heart-home will hold you.”14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ76a5uX2YoV
“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,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCGLoAaYLr5
she began seeing homes everywhere:
– In the glance of a stranger meeting her gaze with a smile.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡW7bB8lQnvK
– In the rustling sound of a stray cat outside the door.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzupZWX6FJb
– 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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiZOlVJi0ty
But now, I am the home for my own soul.”
Then she remembered her mother.
The mother who once stood silent through her injustices,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ02CxOvKBNs
now marked by wrinkles.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡa7LDzkMhoj
The mother who once couldn’t protect her,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFRQCr4ktYZ
now looked at her with eyes full of sorrow and regret.
Once, she had wanted to scream,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbs0YsAj5ol
“Why didn’t you protect me?”
But now, she simply looked at her mother and said gently:
“You may not have been my home.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLyaZJETkSO
But I will be your home—when you grow old.”
And so, she forgave herself—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRmAu0kXd4p
for her moments of weakness,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPfuFDpODYA
for the times she almost let go,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqec5FeLnt2
for loving the wrong people and trusting the wrong places.
Because the home in her heart wasn’t a space only for the beautiful.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGfvtgO7hz7
It was a shelter for cracks and foolishness too.
End of Chapter:
Perhaps no one teaches us how to build a home inside.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡq0j3U0Gums
But each of us can learn—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQcUMKpv8BU
from ruin,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnvMkcQ5P2L
from winters spent unwelcomed,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6VKNqv4nQi
from moldy rented rooms,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaPHTWRI4Sb
from dreams cut short.
And once we learn to become a home for ourselves,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKfhHKW3WyC
we no longer fear being abandoned.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3kzdb2h8Ks
Because we already have a place to return to—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrW8nPbDcie
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡepZA042vpE
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpoEeWBVwtz
Not the fear of someone leaving.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPYTskr4cGc
But the fear of not being enough.
Not good enough.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtuqprdv2wB
Not strong enough.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDnf3sn4d3o
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡymm5M4TL0M
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡn1fTjpU0je
Tears welled up—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLc1PRT7eMQ
not because someone had insulted her,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgiR8FU6iR6
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEJ3OMsWTGM
But where was the child who once believed that if she just tried hard enough, people would love her?
That child—was still there.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMYVaDX1NV5
Trembling.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0EgfgWgRjx
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…14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7zcgNH6JHv
she wrote to herself:
“You don’t need to prove anything anymore.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡexOevvFhkV
You have the right to be tired.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkuZAu1lpBa
You have the right to be wrong.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyFTa7RxASH
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvBlrds3i9i
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡI83oiBZb5m
Not to expose everything…14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpsVYbchvE1
But to feel lighter.
She walked in the rain without an umbrella.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcIbh8twDM9
She sent an apology to someone she had upset.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwaMv3spqQ6
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOTZOK9m7HZ
The fear was still there.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3uyYC1RKsI
The insecurity was still there.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7KcvN1W83I
The feeling of being abandoned, misunderstood, rejected—still lingered.
But this time, she embraced it.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzZzlpuIl1s
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwXUQm1vpF7
Not perfect.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSUd6T4k5Ns
Not pretty.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1umReLyVj1
But exactly where it belonged.
End of Chapter:
People aren’t incomplete because they lack good things.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBRrVr4eZRd
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5W6gQPC6qd
But now, she chose to mend herself with truth.
The truth that she had been weak.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHaBeMNFQXL
Made mistakes.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9OK8Zw44Qj
Felt envy, harbored resentment, tasted despair.
But also the truth that she—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMNF0LsOLZ0
was the only one who never let go.
And if she had to live another life,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7ihYVZpMNm
she would still choose to be herself—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡahMSNv6xY0
with every single piece.
Chapter XVII: When a Flower Chooses to Bloom on Its Own
She once believed:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2QUySLF2cv
To bloom, one needed fertile soil.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfkteaTBVS7
A gentle caretaker.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbv7HoZ5LlM
Water, protection, eyes that see, and voices that affirm.
So she spent her youth searching—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSZkWGhSHu4
for a tender hand,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdLXRLYQmqj
for a roof wide enough,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡd1nNyj60bq
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAkNThpr6zF
It crushes.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡliZTpxyH3m
It suppresses.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0nFUp5zeJc
It throws the softest seeds into the harshest gravel and stone.
And then… she realized:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡovmTiqE3Bm
Some flowers don’t get watered.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUsKDqfzSVe
They bloom because there is no other choice but to live.
They called her “thorny.”14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtTkiNSfnSg
They said she was “so strong, she became cold.”14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXTADDFBRyA
They said, “She’s strange. Not like the rest.”
But they didn’t know that what they called “thorny”14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡn2NSuoUCkm
was the result of once being tender—until pain made her numb.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ49GqraP0NZ
That what they called “cold”14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ26pc2UCae7
was the echo of once caring too deeply—until she was left without a word.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkLLJvwD6Q2
That what they called “strange”14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡk34gHkEt3b
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—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsetw9KLndJ
She bloomed.
No stage.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPmctf5eZNJ
No spotlight.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfixsqaAEmZ
No audience.
She bloomed quietly—like a small miracle.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1eSptAPWz2
She bloomed because she had survived.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ19Bdjkn7vB
She bloomed because she no longer waited for permission.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNRdZ3AIkSo
She bloomed because she had learned:
“I don’t need to look like any other flower to be beautiful.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4zTNcGP8W9
I only need to be me—and that is enough.”
From that moment on, she did everything with gratitude:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEWjAAxxirr
– Ate a meal slowly, without rushing.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrexKy72l9Z
– Wore a dress she loved, even if no one complimented her.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqnbCA94UzJ
– Sent birthday wishes to someone who once hurt her.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6yddb4u1wb
– Forgave someone who never knew they had wounded her.
She told herself:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ92lvugKrC6
“If a flower only blooms when someone is watching, then it’s not a flower—it’s a tool.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvw7EUQmxaA
But I—I am life.”
Someone once asked her:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYpZTpUm2sX
“How do you keep living without anyone’s support?”14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhPfWKOXIkQ
She smiled:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvEYEhU4VQ4
“Because I waited for a very long time…14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlDoAsqdKRe
Until one day I understood: if I wait for a prince to come before I live happily,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEjXeh1Xlpv
I will die of old age in a tower built from my own fear.”
So instead of waiting, she lived.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGWBsznILtd
Instead of hoping someone would come back, she moved forward.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyW70X1pa1j
Instead of demanding justice from those who never understood the meaning of “hurt,” she learned to hold herself and say:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDVncPjRvwD
“It’s okay. We still have each other.”
End of Chapter:
A flower chooses to bloom—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGZYx7rAcZu
not because spring has come,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhglmralUPG
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzfdohJbOpP
Doesn’t need to be lifted up to know she’s standing.
Because she has become someone…14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ24fk3e2M9y
who does not bloom to please the world—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡX54qtjFWoH
but blooms because she is worthy.
Chapter XVIII: Naming the Things That Were Lost
She once tried to forget.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4f3yGubRX5
Tried to fold the past into a drawer with no key,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQmESkmnrTt
locked it with a smile,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡE1StDKUQ5q
sealed it with busyness.
But some nights, the wind slipped through her fingers,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvjr0pYAfi5
and in the sound of her own sigh,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTZNnVdPAFP
she heard something no one else could:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTGwhjpfJJK
The voice of the things that were lost.
Not loud. Not resentful.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzwaUXOfagA
Just whispers that once were flesh and blood.
Someone once asked her:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2xMnrBSzFO
—“Why do you keep remembering sad things?”14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1P6NcD4gZh
She replied:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ90l7DTb3TI
—“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—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBAhsCjlIB6
not to hold on,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡF2ocuFC4lm
but to say goodbye, like one would to a former love.
She named her first fear:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4PCbpVNlxb
Abandonment.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIPP1cdHlSn
She once clung to her mother’s shirt in the schoolyard while other children gathered in groups.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡS0ayi6yDmO
Startled awake at night when the house was too quiet.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKQSzKG22VV
Once wondered: If I vanished, would anyone notice?
Then she named the first teacher who shamed her—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdlKQveugeH
for not being “pure” enough.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZZqoHYC5Mv
She remembered his eyes—colder than winter.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMwVAf3xeBx
The way he judged her,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwnCPEIHa8N
as if she were an unforgivable flaw.
She once resented him.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7yEQvHtopB
But today, she whispered:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHKOYj3JyIQ
“Thank you, teacher. Because of you, I learned to stand—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8Bz3bMaCCy
even when no one stood beside me.”
She named her first love—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ68M5qPketp
the one who claimed to love her for being “different,”14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBwwcewsMNw
but left when that very difference stopped being “charming.”14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmnAQOs7YhJ
She once wrote hundreds of unsent messages,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMzDIi9PN9w
wondering what she had done wrong.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWTZcJ5Blzp
Now she knows:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSAExdKL6S9
She was never wrong.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡk4sSpmYl0k
He just didn’t have a heart wide enough to hold all the layers of hers.
She named an old dream:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡA1GDkjPQLe
To be seen.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9mqd6H6RnH
As a child, she thought if she studied hard enough, people would love her.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdbc8mOnptd
As she grew older, she replaced that dream with degrees, titles, and posts that racked up likes.
But in the middle of that glow,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡH2nhg8QWqj
she felt empty.
And she whispered to that dream:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8BKXpqnGl1
“I’ve done my best.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6EbmW7BXjq
But now, I don’t live for recognition.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdOdOyBxmUH
I live for peace.”
Finally, she named something formless—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFWLROV9rVF
A version of herself that had died.
The child who loved the color yellow, believed in fairy tales, and called her father “Superman.”14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYPFPTRWKTA
The teenage girl who wrote journals in purple ink and texted her crush just to ask, “Have you eaten yet?”14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3pRvPnthSn
The girl who once believed everyone in the world was trustworthy.
She cried when she named that former self.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUnJ58fp99K
Not out of regret.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjvCOyGqcL8
But gratitude.
Because without all those versions of herself—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZmmP2Byylw
there would be no woman standing strong in today’s storms.
End of Chapter:
To name the things that were lost14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡx7U245mRs8
is not to dwell in the past,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjVKUwq6rWC
but to say a final goodbye—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4BgfpKrSsq
like the way one sends off a loved one into the beyond, without lingering guilt.
Because she now understands:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡecZpsEVfDG
What’s lost is not always a loss.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3kuK7HXVSJ
Sometimes, it’s the price of growth.
And when we are brave enough to name our pain,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkRmYPpfyr9
we become capable of naming joy—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡObpDYpE9Qp
when it comes.
Chapter XIX: And Finally, I Chose to Stay with Myself
No one is chasing me anymore.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgIYyFdDV4p
No one is abandoning me anymore.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlovAz8o20g
No one needs to love me just so I can feel worthy.
Because for the first time in my life, I sat down,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ02aJOEYhdI
looked deep into my own eyes in the mirror,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2z4JHO6vBC
and no longer saw a seeker—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡP1xLNOnF9R
but someone… who has come home.
All my life, I thought I had to belong somewhere:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡl6tJ7WBD1n
– A family that was whole,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlzEdap20v7
– A community free of judgment,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXTwEov7zx5
– A love without conditions,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLymdSk5UrO
– A title accepted by society.
I once ran from East to West,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡs6NB2eMOIe
from homeland to foreign land,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡu5OTAZ7jHB
from childhood to the present,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIJKMzjhdnO
from one wound to another,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBq7TwnaHHy
just to find a "home"—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkATJn6N9iG
a place where I could be myself without being rejected.
But then I realized:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJw7BOGFXpE
Nowhere is home if I don’t stay with myself.
Staying—was the hardest thing.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMSTEZBLimB
Harder than forgiving others,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJRGyR1C4NV
was forgiving myself—for being weak, for being blind, for having endured.
Harder than searching for love,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡH542uBRlXZ
was learning to love myself—even when no one cheered, no one applauded, no one waited.
Harder than surviving storms,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTwFjHtCIWe
was standing still—to accept that:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqUuO3N7KWK
“I don’t need to go anywhere. I just need to not abandon myself.”
I no longer need anyone to call me “worthy.”14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡboquWvShoT
I don’t need to reach some peak to feel “enough.”14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡeFWL4j16Yl
I don’t need to defeat anyone to know my life has meaning.
All I need is to wake up each morning,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmfNweDlh7V
see sunlight filter through the curtains,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDhqPaapXbS
brew a cup of warm tea,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡssWHZfwm1r
and smile at the reflection in the mirror:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡR5GOAM9sSC
“Today, I’m still here. And that is enough.”
I used to fear being alone—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4FjW7tipg5
so much so that I forgot the voice inside.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡd1Z8tkbrTS
But the farther I went, the more I understood:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrpPHiIWREL
Loneliness doesn’t kill.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzjTDQDhpwf
What kills slowly is not daring to live truthfully.
When I stayed with myself, I heard things I thought were lost:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡphnYcyHgAv
– The voice of my heart wanting to love again, but not in haste.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡicq61nX4hG
– The song of my soul, once broken, still humming.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsJMpzH4N43
– The sound of silence—not empty, but deep like a spring.
And at last, I understood:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwrUGrCbpv4
I don’t need to be saved.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmSKiIjfvrT
Because I was never truly lost.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7kMdNFdNMs
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKhAsU26JiN
Some stories just need to end with the truth.
And my truth is this:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgObztgGMc9
I have walked through many people, many dreams, many wounds…14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡt2XgYzScgm
To return—and remain—with myself.
I no longer seek the “perfect happiness.”14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyEAbCypcwN
I only need a quiet corner in my heart—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsUeoqOyHts
a place where I can breathe,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9jh6SRkQgU
where I no longer have to pretend,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2fgg6Te8Fl
where I don’t need to prove anything to anyone.
And if someone asks:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvbsPueyJyZ
– “Do you still want to be loved?”
I will smile and say:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡt6dnNzlkys
– “Of course. But this time, I’ll start with loving myself.”
Because…14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiBNznmh3GW
When someone learns to stay with themselves,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEaaMuBz6Ou
they can never be abandoned again.
Final Chapter: Lessons Wrapped in Silence
Not every story needs to end with applause.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoxONZhPcXA
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—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTyh7PVpLO3
a girl born between East and West,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡi6S7zNP9NH
a girl carrying wounds carved by history, society, and her own personal trials.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqKtGNEJfWQ
She has journeyed through many lives, many layers of pain and love.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPQiht1TEIu
And yet, in the end, what she leaves behind is not tears or resentment—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlS0q5ZFb5r
but light.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ82VBUFFUzM
Small, perhaps,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7hKHIWUDPE
but enough to guide others out of darkness.
Below are truths that no school ever teaches—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzQ5AcjvrOJ
but she learned them with blood, tears, and unwavering faith.
1. No one is born to fit perfectly into every mold.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡP3sD72Wrb5
She was once rejected—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡteUBYfvmRA
not because she did anything wrong,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡobqcOZzqCB
but because she was different.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDMjbDboUGk
And in a world built on standards,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOnOxDiYfkI
anyone who doesn’t match the majority is labeled “flawed.”
But the lesson is this:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJ8SJ0IPvNp
Being different is not a flaw. It is a form of courage.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtab4HhXByc
The courage to live authentically.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡeeacfvCoZM
The courage to not distort oneself for others’ approval.
2. Love is not always protection.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsHc5J9kmwx
Sometimes, people love without knowing how to love.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmF7wgM5pd9
Parents may stay silent—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQTbUGp0huM
not out of hatred, but out of fear greater than their capacity to bear.
Loved ones may hurt us—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFCYByOqMuT
but that doesn’t mean they haven’t hurt watching us in pain.
The lesson is:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhoCLWqgQTr
Forgiveness is not for others. It is for your own freedom.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8WnlUxZeGC
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfQvWQsG4Am
She was once disrespected for studying online,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtJHXpqWkb3
for being biracial,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZnM2W0WR1x
for not attending a “prestigious” school.
But what she accomplished—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9W3riKx2bc
every lesson, every exam, every sleepless night spent chasing a deadline—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaypB5dB2fy
proved this:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡskf3Kvs5GT
True value lies not in the paper, but in the journey taken to earn it.
A bought diploma is paper.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSC7iHfekCA
A hard-earned one is part of a lifetime.
4. No one can truly love you until you learn to love yourself.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfcvnxjK7rW
She used to chase validation,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbM2H7vK715
used to try so hard to be accepted.
Until one day, she looked at herself and said:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtiLGJ1YkT2
“I don’t have to prove anything anymore. Living is already enough.”14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXwZPugNbkt
And from that moment on, she was free.
5. Sometimes, simply surviving is a kind of miracle.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡM2mRYpjal9
In a world that only values success through status, wealth, or fame,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1oJoW3cgOf
she chose to define success as this:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡruwXMQpoCV
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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡeFwCbDq6Iy
She was once the abandoned child,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡonop0lLu3e
the sister who carried all the scars,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnebcFK6HTy
the expelled student,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfrjn8IjzuY
the one scorned for being “impure.”
But in the end, she was not a “victim.”14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6wZa4kslLa
She was a survivor.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡi6Dd441B3B
And more than that, she was someone who finally understood:
No one owes us happiness.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDeu4kdZaCQ
We must be the ones to write our own ending—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBWYVnhVhaF
even if our story began as a tragedy.
Epilogue:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡK4Lg2Hltj1
Her story doesn’t need to be made into a movie or printed in textbooks.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3MGrwsL8jU
It only needs to be remembered—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuCyrZzguHj
by someone who once felt lonely,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvRbjipxjko
understood—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpx3ljJw4IY
by someone who was once seen as different,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSC79vY0dGA
wept over—14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2DK8EcxhfF
by someone who once struggled to survive.
And if you are holding this book,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWQimWtOxsj
reading to the very last line,14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZePcXihGZs
then please hold onto the simplest truth she ever came to know:
Life is a long, challenging journey.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdiUSjnwBSh
But if we remain gentle enough14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5R5vKJprz3
to not become the very thing we once feared—
then we have already won.
APPENDIX
I. Symbolism Explained
- Two Winds: A metaphor for dual identities—two cultural currents, East and West—coexisting within one soul. It also represents internal conflicts between past and present, gender and selfhood.
- Strange Blood: Symbolizes genetic memory, societal prejudice, and the invisible force of “karma”—a realm where no one chooses the blood they bear but must live with its consequences.
- The Twin Sister: Represents the “humane ego”—a soul that has been copied, replaced, and distorted in its desperate hunger for love.
- Lotus and Rose: Contrasting images of traditional beauty (lotus—resilient, silent) and modern flamboyance (rose—popular, adored).
- The Final Wind: Liberation. Acceptance of impermanence. Letting go of the victim identity to live as a free spirit.
II. The Character’s Hidden Timeline
- Past Life I: A Vietnamese man—husband to a Western woman—discriminated against while living in the West.
- Past Life II: The Western woman—dies of illness, her soul merges into the body of a Vietnamese boy.
- Present Life: The reincarnated soul exists in a male body with a female soul—born as a child carrying “two winds,” rejected by both East and West, and becomes a victim of prejudice, abuse, and power games.
- Social Rebirth: The character matures through education, experience, and the conscious decision to let go of bitterness and live for themselves.
III. Quotes Marking Transformation
- "I was once your wife. Now I am you." — The Western Soul
- "Blood transfused, hatred inherited." — Fate
- "If love is born to hurt others, then it is poison." — A message to the family
- "We live not to assimilate, but to understand. We love not to possess, but to liberate." — Final Chapter
IV. Spiritual References and Creative Inspirations
- Teachings on rebirth in Buddhism and East Asian cultures
- Personal experiences of gender discrimination, mixed-race identity, and exclusion in education
- Literary works with similar themes:
- Giấc Mộng Phù Hoa – Nguyễn Tuân
- The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy
- The Color Purple – Alice Walker
- I See Yellow Flowers on the Green Grass – Nguyễn Nhật Ánh
V. Symbolic Spiritual Family Tree
Narrator (Main Character)
An
Vietnamese male body, Western female soul; divided across lifetimes
Western Woman’s Soul
“I was once your wife”
Deceased Western wife who entered Vietnamese boy’s body via blood transfusion
Vietnamese Husband (Past Life)
“You”
Vietnamese husband exiled in the West, discriminated; the narrator’s previous incarnation
Twin Sister (Symbolic)
A Nhi
A mirrored soul and embodiment of lost emotions
Vietnamese Younger Brother
Nguyên
Embodies conservative, purist views on bloodline and national honor
Vietnamese Older Sister
Linh
Manipulative, injected drugs to take over the narrator’s social identity
Parents
Not named
Represent silent, traditional generation—sacrificed child to uphold family honor
VI. Reincarnation Map (Three Lives – Three Forms)
- Life 1:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPBlT2Sqb4p
Vietnamese husband → Discriminated in the West → Dies quietly14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVoO6K9q18n
→ Reincarnated through blood - Life 2:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡweJnfYVeO1
Western woman → Wife of Vietnamese man → Dies of illness → Blood transfused into Vietnamese boy14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwnQfkx9y9A
→ Spiritual merging - Life 3:14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOBfWmnHduq
Vietnamese boy with a Western soul → Rejected by both East and West → Faces violence, abuse, and exploitation14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡP0ILiKbCPc
→ Becomes the “One Who Carries Two Winds”
VII. Recommended Music & Films While Reading
Suggested Soundtracks:
- “Experience” – Ludovico Einaudi14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCrahiS3tUc
→ Soft, evocative of memory and inner life. - “Nuvole Bianche” – Ludovico Einaudi14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡH7VL0WZvuz
→ Ideal for chapters on loss and rebirth. - “In This Shirt” – The Irrepressibles14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxwPx5J6qsI
→ A haunting song about gender, identity, and the pain of living outside norms. - “Breathe Me” – Sia14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUIz2qTLeMX
→ Perfect for the story’s ending—survival, loneliness, and the yearning to be understood.
Complementary Films:
- Cloud Atlas (2012)14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡB1yk5IVSpL
→ A film about reincarnation, multiplicity of being, and soul connections across time. - The Danish Girl (2015)14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHGMxkSbZuW
→ The journey to reclaim one’s true identity across gender, society, and compassion. - A Silent Voice (2016 – Anime)14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPDMNJZDVmz
→ A story of atonement and healing among those who once inflicted pain. - The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick)14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRdHgqBhhV1
→ 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.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRLiCY7y8e0
Thank you—for enduring each wound with an open heart.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡP6qUESdVZy
The story may have ended. But the journey of loving, understanding, and forgiving continues.
Author: Pham Le Quy
14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfDGfY63hQN
14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgkmZtjxjdB
