People aren't born evil. What sane person wakes up in the morning and starts their day by saying, "I'm going to do this evil deed today"? People aren't born bad; they are raised to be bad or they are broken. If we were born evil, the fault would be ours; yet those people we hate every day are actually just victims. But have you ever blamed yourself?
"I don't think so."
Because I don't blame myself either. For as long as I can remember, it has always been easier to find someone else to blame. Glenn Jones wasn't born evil, just like the rest of us. So, when did everything start to change? To find the answer to that question, we need to go back to Glenn's childhood, to that breaking point.
October 7, 2014
Glenn Jones was growing up as a child who had everything: a loving family and an environment every child would dream of.
His mother, Edna Jones, had worked as a nurse in a private hospital before Glenn was born. After her son came into the world, she left her job to devote all her time to him. She was a woman who always radiated light with her black hair and blue eyes, never missing a smile from her face.
His father, Drew Jones, had known Edna since childhood. They had been head over heels in love ever since Edna's bold proposal one night while she was drunk.
Drew was a man with black hair and green eyes who ran his own cafe. His only focus in life was his family; however, he carried a side to his soul that was prone to melancholy and depression. The only time you could see him truly happy was when he was working at his cafe.
07:00 AM
It was an ordinary day. Glenn had woken up early and was watching his mother prepare breakfast in the kitchen. Edna was dancing joyfully to "Stay With Me" and "Chandelier," the popular songs of those days. Glenn finished his breakfast and dashed out to the street to play with his friends.
Edna, as usual, headed to the cafe. Drew would open the place before sunrise and wouldn't close it before midnight. Although Edna was sometimes jealous of her husband's extreme passion for his work, she didn't speak up because she knew that he only escaped his depressive mood there.
That day, Edna was going to leave work early to visit her old hospital friends. Before leaving, she stopped by Drew's office:
— "Sweetheart, I'm going to visit a girlfriend today."
— "Should I drop you off?" Drew asked.
— "No, it's within walking distance. I won't stay long, then I'll head home. You know Glenn, if I don't call him in, he'll stay out until evening."
Before leaving the room, Edna planted a light kiss on Drew's lips. This was the last time they would see each other.
06:00 PM
It was starting to get dark, and Glenn's playmates had scattered back to their homes one by one. When Glenn was left all alone on the street with all the impatience of an eight-year-old boy, he started walking toward home, sulking. He had only one reproach in his mind:
"How could my mother forget to call me home?"
When he entered the house, he found his father by the phone, dialing a number with trembling hands. The other side wasn't picking up. The fear in Drew's eyes made the silence inside the house feel heavy.
— "Dad, where is Mom? She forgot to call me today."
— "I don't know, little man... I don't know."
A few minutes later, the phone was answered. While Drew expected to hear his wife's voice, he was met with the ice-cold voice of a police officer:
— "Do you know the owner of this phone?"
— "Yes... I'm her husband."
— "I regret to inform you that the owner of the phone died at the scene after a drunk driver drove onto the sidewalk."
Drew held onto the wall to keep from collapsing. He hurriedly dropped Glenn off at his sister's house and rushed to the hospital. All along the way, he prayed to God for it to be a nightmare. But when he saw his wife's lifeless body, the world stopped for him.
After the funeral, Drew sank into a deep silence and a dark depression. He didn't know how to explain to Glenn that his mother had died. He found the solution in escaping through work. He slept only three hours a day, spending all his remaining time at the cafe. It wasn't actually the cafe he loved; he felt Edna's traces there, living as if the door would open at any moment and his wife would walk in.
Glenn, on the other hand, began to change in this silence. There was only one emotion taking over his soul:
Anger.
He felt anger toward that drunk man who took his mother away.
He felt anger toward his father, who couldn't get work out of his head and had turned into a living ghost.
But most of all, he felt anger toward his mother for leaving him.
He found the only way to suppress this anger was through violence. At seventeen, he was severely injured in a massive fight and was waiting for death while bleeding out on the sidewalk. At that moment, a woman passing by stopped. She wasn't afraid of him; she touched his wounds and helped him.
Glenn fell in love at first sight with those hands and that face reaching out to him on that bloody sidewalk. That woman was the math teacher, Lily Taylor.
After 그날, Glenn began to love Lily obsessively. And he began to hate every student Lily showed interest in—especially Richard. Because in Lily's eyes, Richard was a student; Glenn, however, was afraid of remaining nothing more than a "freak who needs to be saved."