When I woke, I was on a hospital bed. The nurse explained that something had struck the back of my head and caused severe bleeding. I asked her to take me to Jack.
He was breathing normally. When I touched his hand, he woke up and looked at me.
I hadn't noticed I was crying until he wiped a tear from my cheek with his tiny fingers and whispered with a small smile, "You look funny, mom."
Watching him smile, I smiled too. Then the smile turned into laughter, trembling at first, then louder, until I found myself laughing like an idiot as the nurse gently guided me out of the room.
I did not understand why I was laughing, but the nurse who held my arm seemed to. She gave me a soft smile, guided me back to Jack's room, and left me alone with him even though visiting hours were long over.
A week later, we were discharged. When we reached home, an old man stood waiting by the gate. He said he needed to speak with us.
I would not have let him inside if he hadn't been the one who had given me a lift to the hospital that terrible night while I was running down the road with Jack in my arms.
When I unlocked the door, the mess inside didn't surprise either of us. It had become routine, so Jack and I simply began picking things up and setting them back in place. We even played with some of the items, laughing together as we cleaned.
To the old man, though, it must have looked strange, maybe even unsettling, to see two people with bandages wrapped around their heads laughing loudly while tidying a wrecked house that had been locked from the outside. He stared at us, amazed or confused, until eventually he knelt to help.
After we finished cleaning, he introduced himself as the owner of a news channel. He explained at length how he could help me, though most of what he said flew past me. What I did understand was that he was offering me a job. As he left, he asked me to write an article about anything related to what had happened, and said, "If you do, you will understand the power of the media."
I did not think much of it at the time.
But the next evening, stones hit the windows again.
We were terrified. Neither of us slept. It continued for two more days. The air outside felt charged with anger, and we did not dare leave the house even to buy food. By the fourth morning, we were starving.
When Jack finally slept, I sat beside him and wrote the article.
I wrote about grandpa, about how he had complained of his pain and how the officials insisted he drive the train anyway. I wrote about how he had been forced into the engine on the last days of his career, about how Jack had nothing to do with the accident yet was hated for it. I wrote about the stone that struck him, about how he bled, and about what it felt like to hold him and believe he had died.
I wrote everything I could remember.
That evening, I handed the pages to the old man. He cried while reading them, praised them again and again, and asked me to work for him. I refused. When he asked for my bank details, I thought he wanted to pay me for the article. I protested, but he insisted until I yielded.
I did not know he would print those details in the newspaper along with the article.
The article spread quickly. People who were moved by it began depositing money into my account. I had prepared furious arguments to shout at him for revealing my details, but I barely lasted ten minutes arguing with him. He was too good at softening anger and turning it into something else.
But after the article was printed… the stones stopped. The taunts stopped. Within a week, Jack returned to school. Within a month, everything felt normal again.
By then, the amount in my bank account had reached two Quads. I opened a new account and never touched a single silver of that money again.
After grandpa died, Jack was the only reason I stayed alive. I raised him as my son, and he never knew I wasn't his real mother. No one else knew either.
Every year on his birthday we traveled somewhere, just the two of us. That year we went on a two week trip. We had the best time, but when we returned, I realized our savings were nearly gone. If I didn't find work soon, we would run out of money.
So I went back to the old man and asked for a job.
He did not question me or scold me for refusing before. He simply hired me on the spot. Not as a clerk or an assistant, not some minor job in the printing press… but directly as a news reporter.
It was hard. In the first month, I could not find a single story. When I asked him what to do, he said, "Show the world to the world that it has never seen."
At first, I thought he was teasing me with a tongue twister. But gradually, I understood what he meant.
And the first thing that came to my mind… was the village, Vager.
I chose it as my first report. I disguised myself as a villager, easy enough, since the creature people had never seen my face clearly during that night, and I had changed over the last five years. I wasn't afraid of returning. Not even sad. The colosseum did not shake me. The memories of that night did not break me.
But whenever I remembered my parents burning, a hatred rose in me so strong that once, I almost forgot my disguise and attacked one of those animal turning people. Somehow, I managed to hide myself again.
When I finally returned home, I wrote my article and submitted it. The old man read it, then told me to prepare a full report on it as well.
The investigation became a kingdom-wide incident. Within a month, the Queen spoke with the King of Noida and sent the polis to arrest them. But not a single one was found.
Still, the evidence proving those people lived in Vager confirmed my report, and the Queen awarded me for it.
After that, I forgot about those animal turning people.
I wrote many reports on countless incidents across the kingdom. I met all kinds of people, witnessed all kinds of lives, and all those experiences shaped me into one of the kingdom's better reporters.
Meanwhile, the old man raised my salary quickly, from ten thousand silver to one gold in three years, and within two more years, to four gold.
Five years ago, the old man, the one who had saved me and later gave me my purpose passed away. His son put the channel up for sale. I bought the entire thing with the money I had saved, along with the donations in my untouched account, which had grown to nearly ten Quads by then.
Since that day, Jack and I have led the channel together. Our old tradition of taking a one week trip for his birthday became something bigger. I created a rule that, during the final week of his birthday month, the entire staff would join us in shifts, one third of the staff will join us for first two days, then the next third, then the last. And after that, one extra day just for the two of us.
On his twentieth birthday, he brought Lisa, his girlfriend, along. I had heard him talk about her often, but that was the first time I saw her in person. He even brought her to the one day trip meant only for us.
It was enough for me to understand how deeply he loved her. I was so happy for him. The pair looked as though they were matched by the Great King himself. She was beautiful, kind, gentle. I truly believed they would build a happy life together.
But it did not last long.
Last year, a few weeks before the trip, Jack called me while I was out of the city for work. He was crying, struggling to breathe, whispering, "Mom… I saw her cheating on me."
It took me a moment to understand what he meant. I had watched them both for a whole year; I knew how much they loved each other. As soon as I comprehended his words, something cold and ominous pressed into my chest. I told him I would come home immediately and hung up.
I abandoned my work and started the two hour journey back. By the time I reached the house, night had fallen. Jack wasn't inside. I searched every room, every corner, then stepped outside into heavy rain. The ominous feeling grew stronger with every passing second.
Without meaning to, I began remembering that night in Vager.
I called him again and again, but he didn't pick up. I took the car and searched the city. Nothing. I called my colleagues; they joined the search.
Half an hour later, while I was dialing again, someone finally answered. But it was not Jack. It was a stranger who had found the phone under the bridge.
I drove there as fast as I could. And then I saw him, walking calmly on the far side footpath. He looked normal, unharmed. My heart eased for a moment. I thought about running to him, hugging him, telling him everything would be fine. But maybe because that ominous feeling loosened its grip, I didn't.
Instead, I drove to the end of the bridge, turned around, and headed back toward him.
By the time I reached the spot again, he was no longer on the footpath. He was standing on the railing.
I didn't understand what he was doing. I jumped out of the car and shouted, "Jack! Jack! Jack!" but the rain swallowed my voice.
He turned when he heard something, maybe not my words, but my presence. He looked at me. He smiled.
A bright, heartbreaking smile.
"Sorry, Mom," he shouted through the rain. "I am a bad son."
I didn't even have time to respond. He stepped backward.
Toward the edge of the bridge. Toward the flooding river. Toward a place I could never reach.