After the first incident, life did not fall apart all at once. It continued in pieces, stitched together by routine.
His father still went to work. His mother still cooked and cleaned. School still happened every day. From the outside, it looked like a normal family trying to manage in a small space.
Inside the room, though, things were careful.
His mother spoke less. When she did speak, her voice stayed low, controlled. She avoided questions that could turn into arguments. His father acted as if nothing serious had happened. He laughed sometimes, talked about work, and expected things to return to how they were.
The child noticed everything but understood very little.
He noticed how his mother flinched slightly when his father raised his voice, even if it was not in anger. He noticed how she waited for him to finish speaking before saying anything. He noticed how silence became a solution to problems.
He also noticed himself changing.
He became more aggressive in small ways. He talked back. He refused to listen. When his mother corrected him, he felt annoyed instead of comforted. He did not understand why he was acting this way. He only knew that something inside him felt unsettled, like he was holding onto anger that did not belong to him.
One day, his father took him to the police office.
He said it was because the child was sick and he needed to take a day off. The child did not question it. He liked going to the office. It felt official and important. His father bought him a soft drink on the way and told him to wait while he went inside.
"I'll be back in a few minutes," his father said.
The child sat where he was told to sit. He held the bottle carefully and drank slowly. Around him, people walked past…policemen, visitors, strangers whose faces he would never remember. He finished the soft drink and waited.
Minutes passed.
Then more minutes.
He looked around. His father was not there. His mother was not there. The office felt large and unfamiliar. Panic did not arrive suddenly; it crept in. His chest felt tight. He stood up, holding his chappal in his hand, and started walking.
He thought he could find them if he just looked hard enough.
He walked outside. The noise of the city hit him immediately. Vehicles passed, people shouted, horns sounded. He did not know which direction to go. He turned once, then again, trying to recognize something...anything.
Nothing looked familiar.
Eventually, he reached a traffic chowk. Policemen were standing there, controlling vehicles. He stood at the side of the road, unsure of what to do next.
One of the men noticed him.
They asked him questions ..his name, his father's name. When he answered, their expressions changed. They recognized him. They knew whose son he was.
They kept him there until his parents arrived.
His mother was crying when she found him. His father looked shaken. People talked over each other. The child stood quietly, watching, trying to understand how waiting had turned into something so serious.
Later, it became a story people laughed about.
He had gotten lost before. Three times, to be exact. Each time, adults joked about it, calling it funny or careless. No one thought much about what it meant for a child to be left alone like that.
He did not find it funny.
Around the same time, things between his parents became worse.
Money was always a problem. One room was all they could afford. His father sometimes gave money, sometimes didn't. Arguments became more frequent. His mother tried to leave once, carrying him on her back.
It was raining that day.
They got on a bus without knowing where it would take them. His mother was anxious, struggling to decide. She kept looking out the window, confused.
He spoke up.
"Take whichever bus," he said. "We'll see later."
He didn't know where those words came from. He was still a child, but in that moment, he felt older than her.
Before the bus could take them far, his father came running. He apologized. He begged. He promised things would change.
They went back.
Forgiveness came easily to his mother. It always did.
Life continued again, unstable but familiar.
Then one day, it rained while he was walking home from school with Sumikxya.
They walked together, laughing, water soaking into their clothes. Her house was close to his. As they passed it, he pointed at the pipe on her roof, where rainwater poured down.
"How does water come down like that?" he asked.
She smiled at him.
"I'll tell you one day" she said.
"Promise?" he asked.
"Promise."
They both promised.
Not long after that, her father was transferred.
He never got to say goodbye.
There was no phone call. No message. His mother did not have a smartphone, only a keypad phone. His father later broke it during another fight. Contact with Sumikxya's family ended quietly.
Soon after, his own father was transferred too.
This time, there was nowhere to go.
His father did not give money regularly. His mother asked her brother for help. He gave them a place in Lamahi, in Dang district , which was an old house made of sand and brick. It was not modern, but it had trees around it. Guava, mango, papaya, amala, and large lemon like fruits grew in the yard.
It was a new place.
A new beginning, people said.
But for the child, it felt like another ending.
He carried with him a broken sense of home, a missing friend, and a promise about rainwater that would never be explained.
And without knowing it, he stepped out of his childhood innocence and into something much heavier.