Chapter 4.3: (The nightmarish past)
I remember sitting on his lap one evening as he pointed at his project.
"One day, this will change everything," he said. "And when it does, I'll buy you the biggest toy robot in the world."
"Promise?" I asked.
He smiled, kissed my forehead, and said, "Promise."
Then Mother scooped me up into her arms with a soft laugh. "Let's eat, Edward," she said cheerfully. "Let's not bother your Papa anymore, hmm?" She glanced over at Father and gave him a bright, playful smile. Then she kissed me on the cheek—warm, sweet, and full of love.
"Mom," I remember asking her once, "why do you always smile when you look at dad?"
And she laughed, ruffling my hair. "Because when I look at him, I see the boy I loved, the man I chose, and the father he tries so hard to be."
"My sweet boy," Mom also used to say, brushing my hair with her fingers.
But that was before.
Everything started falling apart after Dad's big project—Someone stole his work. Just like that—months of sleepless nights, stolen. And then, a letter came.
I remember that night like yesterday my dad came home, his face pale, his hands shaking. Papers were crumpled in his fists.
"They said I copied it," Dad mumbled at dinner, his voice quiet, his eyes staring into his food. "But it was mine. I swear on everything, it was mine."
"Now they're... accusing me of copying," he whispered. "They're fining me. Firing me."
Mom's hand trembled as she reached for his. Her fingers were warm, but weak, like she was trying to hold onto something that was already slipping through.
Her voice cracked as she whispered, "We'll fight it, okay? We're not giving up. We'll... we'll get a lawyer, we'll take this to court. I promise you, we'll get through this together."
But her eyes—those tired, tear-soaked eyes—were screaming something else. A quiet, desperate kind of fear. The kind that wife try to hide but always fail when their husband are hurting and carrying heavy burden.
*after a month the day came.*
Courtroom.
Cold wood. Sterile lights. The smell of papers and perfume covering rot. Our enemy wore a expensive silk suit and a grin so wide it stretched past morality. He had people. Power. Papers. And lies.
We sat in that courtroom like a sheep in slaughter house, while the wolves in suits devoured everything we had. They smiled. They taunt. They joked. Even the judge barely looked at our side. The lawyers spoke in riddles and empty words. Objections were ignored. Evidence was dismissed. Blueprints—his blueprints—presented as if they had been born from the minds of thieves. Every diagram, every line he had drawn at midnight while we were asleep, they held it in their hands like it was theirs.
We objected. We explained. We cried. But the judge never looked at us. Because the script had already been written. We were just actors in a play we never agreed to perform.
The gavel hit the desk like a death sentence. In the end all effort are useless.
They had everything—money, connections, power. Every word from their lawyer felt like a knife, and every lie felt heavier than truth. Our voices were silenced under the weight of their status. Our evidence, brushed aside like dust. Our pain? Ignored.
We lost.
Because money mattered more than truth. Because their hands were greased with bribes, and ours were stained with nothing but callouses and the sweat of honest work.
*Just like that.*
No appeals. No justice. No mercy.
We had... truth. And truth was worthless, infront of power and wealth.
When we returned home, it felt like walking into a haunted house. The walls were quiet. Too quiet. Not the comforting kind—but the kind that screams louder than any cry.
Mom went to the kitchen, her hands moving automatically as if muscle memory could distract her from the shame drowning her heart. The clatter of pans. The hiss of oil. The chop of vegetables. All sounded like a quite requiem.
I slid down in my chair and scooted closer to him, my eyebrows scrunched in confusion and innocence. Then I looked up and asked quietly, "Dad, what does it mean when they say... lawsuit?"
He looked at me, eyes dull "Its nothing... you can go back and play in your room."
Mom finally spoke. Her voice was so soft, it sounded like wind brushing against broken glass.
"Honey... I'm sorry..." She didn't look up.
"We couldn't afford a good lawyer. I wanted to... but every office I went to laughed when they saw the budget. They... they already had everything prepared. Even the copies of your blueprints. Even your private notes. It's like they had eyes inside our home all along."
She covered her face with her hands.
"I should've stopped it. I should've fought harder for you."
The only sound was the ticking clock. Like it was counting down to something we didn't want to face.
Father stared out the window. Still. Like a statue.
His reflection in the glass didn't even look like him anymore. Just a shell of his former self.
He didn't speak for a long time, then... finally... his lips moved. "No," he said, a whisper. Hollow. Shattered.
"It's not your fault..." His voice was trembling. But not from rage. From the weight of being a man who couldn't protect what he built.
"It's not your fault," he repeated. "It's mine. It's... all mine."
Mom's head shot up. "No—don't say that, please don't—"
"I believed..." His voice cracked. "I believed that if I just worked hard enough... if I just built something good enough... it would be safe. That the world would recognize the truth and my handwork."
He laughed. A sound so bitter that it stings.
"But the world doesn't care about truth."
He looked down at his hands, the same hands that once held pens, rulers, dreams.
"These hands... they were supposed to create a future. They were supposed to give you two something more. Something better."
He clenched them slowly, as if he could still feel the blueprints that had been stolen from him.
"But now they're just empty. Just hands that gave it all away."
Mom was crying. Quietly. The kind of cry that breaks the soul in silence.
"You tried to build something good," she said. "You wanted to give us a legacy. That's not wrong..."
"But I lost everything," he said. His voice was louder now, shaking. "I let them take everything. I let them step on my name, spit on my work, turn it into theirs. I didn't fight hard enough. I couldn't fight."
His shoulders hunched forward, he looked at us and said. "I failed. As a father. As a husband. As a man."
I wanted to speak. To scream, To tell him he was wrong. But I couldn't. Because somewhere deep inside, I knew... someone like him would never believe to a clueless child like me. And that was the cruelest part of all.
After He was fined. Fired. And shamed. something inside him broke. Quietly. Like a glass cracking inside a drawer no one ever opened.
And that's when mom started crying in the bathroom every night, thinking I couldn't hear her.
And Dad? He started disappearing. First for hours. Then for days.
I asked him once, "Where do you go, Daddy?"
He looked down at me and forced a smile.
"To fix things. I'm going to fix everything."
He drank. He bet money. He borrowed more. And the people he borrowed from didn't wear suits — they wore knives in their smiles. That day I began to understand that he wasn't fixing anything. He was drowning.
As days went by, the house got quieter and quieter.
Not the peaceful kind of quiet, not the sleepy silence after a long day, but the kind of quiet that wraps around your throat and chokes the breath out of you. I lay on the thin mattress, staring at the cracked ceiling, pretending to be asleep. But sleep never came easily anymore. Not since the shouting started. Not since the smell of whiskey became part of the air I breathed.
I heard her again.
Soft. Choked. Like she was trying not to be noticed.
Mom.
I crept down the narrow hallway, barefoot on the cold wooden floor. The air was heavy with something sour and bitter. I peeked around the corner.
There she was—kneeling in the dark kitchen, the only light coming from the hallway. Her hands gripped the edge of the counter like it was the only thing keeping her from falling apart. Her face was buried into her arms, shoulders trembling with the kind of sobs that don't make sound. She was holding her breath—like even her pain had to be rationed. Like crying too loud would cost too much.
"Mom?" I whispered. But she didn't hear me.
And then, from the dark corner of the living room, came a voice—raspy, muttering, half-mad.
"Just a little... just a little more... to make up what we lost..."
Dad. Talking to himself again.
His eyes were wild, fixed on nothing, like he was seeing ghosts that hadn't arrived yet.
"Don't worry," he mumbled. "I've got this under control."
But he didn't. God, he didn't.
Because two nights later, men came.
Men in black jackets. They didn't knock like normal people. They *slammed* the door with their fists, like they were breaking into our lives on purpose. I ran to the hallway and peeked around the frame.
Mom opened the door.
One of the men—he was tall, pale, with deep lines around his mouth like he'd never once smiled—looked at her with cold eyes.
"Your husband owes us," he growled.
Mom stiffened, her arm instinctively pulling me behind her.
"Tell him we want our money," the man said.
"Or else."
Her voice cracked. "Or else what?"
They didn't answer. They didn't *have* to. Their silence was louder than words. The look in their eyes said it all: *We'll take what we want. We don't care what we destroy.*
They turned and left without another word.
That night, I saw Dad trembling. Not with fear. With withdrawal. With desperation.
And the days blurred. Dad's gambling grew like a disease. Silent at first. Then constant. Daily. Every evening, 8:24 PM, like clockwork, I'd wake to voices—quiet, angry, broken.
One night, I heard everything.
"I just need to win it back, just this once," Dad said, pacing like a madman. "If I win tonight, we're in the clear. Just one lucky hand—"
"You said that last week," Mom's voice was brittle, like dried leaves. "And the week before that. And the week before that. You've lost everything, do you even understand that?"
"I'm doing this for us!"
"No, you're doing this for *you*! For your pride! You can't admit you lost! You can't stand being the man who failed!"
"I haven't failed!" he screamed, eyes bloodshot, voice shaking. "I'm still fighting! I'm still trying to fix it!"
"You're destroying us, not saving us!" she cried. "You've turned our home into hell! Our son can't even sleep even once without hearing his parents break apart!"
The silence that followed was worse than the yelling.
It was the silence of someone realizing they were past saving.
Then Friday came, date August 5th, current time 8:21 AM. The men came back as they said.
They didn't knock. They opened the door. Like they owned it. Like they owned the house and us.
Dad stood in the living room, pale and shaking.
"You pay by tonight," one of them said, his voice colder than before. "Or we take what's ours."
Dad didn't speak. His lips trembled, but no words came out.
"Do you understand, Mr. Hasling?" the man asked again, slowly, as if he were talking to a child.
"I... I'll get it," Dad said, voice so small I almost didn't hear it. "I swear. Just... give me one more night."
They left. But they didn't have to say anything. They'd be back.
After they were gone, the shouting started again.
"I begged you" Mom screamed, her voice hoarse. "I *begged* you to stop. But you didn't listen!"
"I'm trying! I'm trying my best!"
"Your *best*? THIS is your best? Look at our son! Look at him! He's scared all the time! We made him so scared, he barely speaks or smiles anymore!, what kind of parents we become!?."
Glass shattered. A plate thrown against the wall. A door slammed.
The shouting between my parents got worse after that. Plates broke. Doors slammed. Sometimes, I covered my ears and hummed until I couldn't hear them.
That night, I found Mom in the living room alone. No lights, just moonlight spilling through the cracked window.
She sat on the floor, arms wrapped around herself, her eyes empty. Her lips moved, but no sound came out. She was crying—but there was no voice left. She had cried so hard, for so long, she had *lost her voice*.
I wanted to hug her. Tell her it would be okay. But I couldn't lie to her and give her false hope or to get pushed.
On the evening of August 5th, at 7:00 PM. The loan sharks arrived to collect the money, they were terrifying. Always shouting. Always threatening. I peeked from behind the curtain and saw one of them punch my dad in the stomach.
Dad didn't say anything. He just lay there on the pavement, clutching his side. I wanted to run out and help him, but my legs wouldn't move. I was only nine.
In the end, because we couldn't repay the debt, they took the only thing we had left — our home — just to cover what Father owed. They forced us out, made Father sign the contract against his will. Now, all we have left are the clothes on our backs and a small amount of money — just $3,400 — the last of my mother's savings.
Our house was gone, taken from us, and we had no choice but to move into a cramped apartment on the city's edge. The place was small and cold, its walls thin enough to let the winter seep straight through. Dark patches of mold crept across the bathroom tiles, spreading no matter how much we tried to scrub them away. At night, when everything grew quiet, the silence was broken by the scratching of rats inside the walls, their tiny claws scratching through the darkness.
"I hate it here," I told Mom the first night.
She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. "We'll make it home," she said. "We just need time."
More days pass mom and dad fought all the time.
"I believed in you!" she screamed. "I stood by you! And now what? You're just going to drown us all in your failures?"
Dad didn't yell back. He just whispered, "I didn't mean for any of this. I was just trying to build something for us."
Then... one day, he was gone.
No goodbye. No note. No explanation.