"Don't be sad by this passing, your father was a great man. A real hero."
...A real hero.
That's what everyone kept telling me during my father's funeral.
He had managed to save a pregnant woman from a traffic incident, at the cost of his own life.
I was young back then, merely seven years old, so I believed their every word.
My mother had died while giving birth to me, and both my grandparents both paternal and maternal had also passed away, so my father was the only family I had left.
He was my everything.
I was sad by his passing and overwhelmed by the void he had left behind, but I took solace in the fact that he did not die in vain.
He saved not only one life, but two.
A few years later, I started looking for the woman he had saved, hoping to celebrate his memory together.
I know it may sound odd, but I always felt a strange connection with her and her child.
It felt as though they were my family.
The only family I had left in this world.
At first, I looked online, but it was as though she had never existed.
I didn't give up, and having a rough idea about the time she was due to give birth, I went around all the local hospitals and maternity wards looking for clues.
Until one day, my search took me to an unexpected place.
"That woman? She bit the dust a long time ago."
Huh?
Inside a rundown building far from prying eyes which could only be accessed from a back alley, there was a small clinic.
All the patients in the waiting room were young women, smoking and drinking despite being clearly pregnant.
You couldn't take two steps without stepping on a cigarette butt or shards of glass from broken bottles of cheap wine.
I couldn't imagine getting my hair cut here, let alone having a medical procedure.
The doctor, or so it seemed, though I doubted his credentials, was a scrawny old man with long dirty nails and crooked yellow teeth.
"Was it seven years ago? She stopped coming all of sudden, and last I heard she had died in a car crash."
Seven years ago? That was around the time my father died.
How could she have died in a car crash when he had risked his life to save her?
"Well, it's not that surprising. People who get knocked up in her line of work only got one option. Or they won't last very long."
"What line of work you ask? She was prostitute."
Slowly, I felt the wool that was pulled over my eyes disintegrate.
Turns out that woman used to be a prostitute.
One day, she got pregnant, and the father was a high ranking politician.
The traffic incident that my father saved her from was not an accident, but an attempt at her life.
My father's death was nothing more than a little annoyance.
A temporary setback.
A real hero?
What a load of bullshit.
All those years of being picked on for being an orphan.
The dozens of part-time jobs I had to work while still studying in order to survive once my father's meager savings ran out.
That stinging feeling in my heart every time I got back home and had no one to welcome me.
All of it was bearable because I believed my father's dead was not in vain.
From that day onward, I swore to prioritize myself above all else.
Even if untold suffering that I could stop was happening on the other side of the wall, I swore not to lift a finger to stop it.
I will never turn out like him.
That's what I swore.
And that's why…
That's why I'm so mad at myself right now.
"I'm sorry ~Hiek~ I'm so sorry."
"Thank you, thank you so much for saving my son!"
In the face of those words of appreciation, I felt nothing but digust and anger.
I couldn't do it.
I couldn't look the other way.
Soon, the shock of the truck crash began fading away, and the pain it held back came surging forth.
It came demanding the payment it was due.
It came demanding my suffering.
The pain was so terrible that I gritted my teeth hard, almost grinding them to dust.
I tried to speak, but all that came out of my mouth was even more blood.
It's no good, my wounds are fatal.
Unable to handle the pain, I closed my eyes and let go, accepting my death.
...
"...Ugh."
I woke up inside a dimly lit room.
Every joint in my body felt sore, and I had a terrible fever.
My body hurt all over, it felt like I had been beaten to a pulp.
Creaak~
I looked around the room and as my eyes slowly got used to the darkness, I heard a creaking sound.
The door slowly opened, letting in a ray of light that gradually spread across the room.
"Young master, it's time. Your uncle is waiting."