Yearning For A Home

Samantha snapped her head up. Her lips were pressed tight, her eyes so dark they looked like black holes.

I knew her well. She had grown up poor, and whenever money was involved, she carried a deep sense of inferiority.

During those years in university, every time she saw the relatives and neighbors who had lent her money, she humbled herself to the dust.

And for all these years, she and her mother had lived almost entirely on what I earned.

"Adam, I used your money. I wronged you," she said. "How do you want me to make it up to you? Is this life enough?"

With that, she pulled a folding fruit knife from her backpack.

Without hesitation, she drove it into her lower abdomen.

Blood burst out in a horrifying spray. Zane screamed and shouted for an ambulance.

The people around us panicked, and chaos erupted.

I stood there in a daze, my vision flooded with red.

The woman I had loved through my entire youth held her wound with one hand and reached up with the other to touch Zane's face, soothing him softly.

"Don't be afraid. I'll give this life back to him. From now on, he'll have no reason to hate you."

Zane was sobbing uncontrollably. He glared at me with bloodshot eyes.

"Adam, we truly love each other. Why can't you stand to see us happy? We've already apologized. Why won't you let us go?"

The alarm clock suddenly rang. I jolted awake, drenched in cold sweat.

It had been a long time since I'd dreamed of that day.

At school, while the other teachers were in class, Thomas cornered me and pressed me to tell him what happened afterward.

When he heard that she had answered her betrayal with suicide, he squinted in disgust.

"As if you forced her to die. She was just feeling guilty."

Yes. She was feeling guilty.

But I was treated as the murderer and sent to prison.

In that country, I knew no one but Samantha and Zane. I had no money for bail and could only hope Samantha would remember what little feeling we once had and help withdraw the case.

She didn't.

I was nearly flayed alive inside before the police finally proved my innocence.

By the time I was released, two years had passed.

I was deported home, only to learn that the school had expelled me and that the small place I rented had been taken back.

Samantha's mother had been moved away. Everything in the house was thrown out, leaving not a trace behind.

I refused to give up. I asked around everywhere about Samantha.

Until one day, a former classmate told me that after I was arrested, the two of them had returned to the country and gotten married.

Everyone praised them as a perfect match—her talent, his looks, made for each other.

One had studied abroad yet remained filial; after succeeding in business, the first thing she did was hire full-time care for her mother.

The other opened an art gallery, and at its very center hung a painting he had done himself: a family of four.

Samantha. Zane. Samantha's mother. And a two-year-old girl.

"So while you were suffering in prison, they had a child! They didn't help clear your name—they stepped on your efforts and leaped straight into wealth!"

Thomas was so furious he jumped to his feet and slammed his ruler hard on the desk, cursing nonstop.

I felt helpless and wanted to tell him that I no longer cared—that there was no need for him to upset himself over it.

Just then, someone knocked on the door.

Samantha stood at the office entrance, looking at me uneasily.