"Those mixed feelings are difficult to explain," Aasia said, stopping her story. She looked at the girls sitting before her, their young faces so open and unguarded. With a gentle hand, she brushed her fingers against Isha's cheek. "Even if I try to explain them, you two are too young and too innocent to understand."
As she pulled her hand back, Isha smiled and said, "I know that mixed feeling." Aasia raised an eyebrow. Isha continued.
"You feel happy that nothing happened. Really happy. But at the same time, you feel like you did something wrong. You want to congratulate yourself for having the courage to take that step, but you also feel guilty about something you didn't do and something that didn't even happen. You try to figure out what you did wrong, and the answer comes right away, but you don't want to accept it because you don't think you are that kind of person.
You keep looking for a different answer, but no matter how hard you try to convince yourself, you get the same one each time. You were disappointed that the terrible things you imagined didn't happen. In short, nothing you imagined became real.
You feel like you wanted it to happen. Like you were hoping for it without realizing. And that is what makes you feel guilty.
But after a while, you accept it, even the disappointment. You start reasoning with yourself, blaming it on the environment you lived in. You keep trying to push it away, but in your mind a voice keeps shouting, 'You are not a good person. You are a bad person.' The harder you fight it, the louder it gets.
And in the end, you accept everything. You realize there is a side of you that you didn't know existed. And when you accept that, you feel like you gained a hidden strength, and suddenly your heart feels light and everything falls into place again. Isn't that what you felt then, ma'am?"
Aasia stared at her, shocked silent. Isha called softly, "Ma'am? Ma'am?" Once, twice.
A few moments passed before Aasia returned to herself. When she finally spoke, her voice trembled with awe. "Who are you?" she whispered, looking straight at Isha.
Obero answered before Aasia could even blink. "She is everything I'm not. For now, she is the heart and I am the mind."
Isha jabbed her fingers into his lap, making him yelp loud enough to echo. Aasia let out a short laugh, maybe because she truly found it funny or maybe because her mind needed something, anything, to steady itself again. When the laugh faded, she drew in a breath and continued.
"I might not have said it as well as you did. But yes, I went through those mixed feelings. And before I could make sense of them, everything started changing. Dad was released from police custody. The three of us moved to a new house in a remote village, forest wrapping it on two sides. It all happened little by little.
During that time, dad didn't say a single word to us. He didn't touch mom. He didn't ask us to help while he moved things into the house. He even walked to a local school and admitted me there himself. But through all of that silence, we could feel the rage rolling off him like heat.
A week after we settled in, dad turned into what we called the level five monster. That was the name mom and I came up with for his transformations. Level one was dad hitting mom while drunk. Level two was hitting her while sober. Level three was beating her with the belt. Level four was beating her with the whip.
Aasia gave a hollow smile. "What was stranger than the names was that mom smiled while we were coming up with them. She actually smiled.
In level five, dad tied mom to the pole in the backyard and whipped her exactly on the spots he hit the previous day. The whipping never lasted more than ten minutes. After that he left her there, tied up, for the entire night.
I tried countless times to break the lock and free her. But every time, somehow he caught me. And every time I managed to break a lock, he came back with a new one."
She paused, her fingers brushing gently over the lotus in the glass box.
"Months later, like always, dad tied mom to the pole before we left the house. But when I returned from school, she wasn't there. The rope was sliced clean in two.
At first I thought she had escaped. I felt so relieved I almost cried. But it lasted only a moment. It shattered when I saw her jumping over the backyard wall.
She didn't feel the deep cuts on her feet. She didn't notice the thorns digging into her skin or the blood soaking through her dress. She just ran toward me, holding a flower."
Aasia lifted the lotus box slightly, pointing. "This one.
It is so beautiful that it feels like someone could live their whole life just by staring at it. But compared to mom's bleeding feet, it meant nothing to me then. I was angry, ready to scold her for hurting herself even more. But before I could say anything, she said 'Happy birthday, my dear' with the warmest smile and placed the flower in my hand.
I fell to my knees. I cried until I couldn't breathe. And then dad came home. Seeing mom, who should have been tied outside, standing inside hugging me… he hit her again and tied her to the pole for two days straight."
She swallowed hard, her voice turning quieter.
"Some days later, something changed. Dad didn't hit her. He didn't scold her. If it were the old us, we might have believed he had changed. But after everything we had seen, we knew better.
We knew it was the silence before the storm. We tried to prepare ourselves for his next transformation. But the sixth level wasn't something we anticipated. It was something we couldn't have imagined at all.
That evening, while we were having dinner, a low growl came from outside. Dad stood immediately and went to the door. I followed him. Mom came right behind us. And the moment she reached the doorway, dad ordered her to close the gate and once she walked halfway, he slammed the door shut.
I was terrified, but curiosity dragged me forward. I ran to the window and pressed my face to the glass. Mom was walking toward the open gate. She closed it, turned back, and then I saw him.
A man. Handsome, broad-shouldered, more muscular and far hairier than any man I had ever seen. He stood in the middle of the path with a smirk that seemed to slice through the quiet. The moment he grinned, a hungry intent rippled through the forest. My hair stood on end. Somewhere deeper in the trees, animals shrieked. Birds burst from the branches above, screeching as they scattered across the sky.
He took one step toward Mom. Then another.
And then he ran.
Mom stumbled back, startled. As he sprinted, he dropped to all fours, his limbs bending and moving like an animal's. His speed exploded. With every step he took, his body shifted more. Hair spread along his legs, then up his arms. His beard thickened, then his jaw twisted. His face rippled, bones shifting beneath the skin.
And right in front of my eyes, he morphed into a wolf.
A huge white wolf, its eyes locked onto Mom like prey.
It charged, full force, and in seconds it reached her. It slammed into her so hard she fell sprawling across the ground.
I screamed for help, hoping the sound would distract it, but dad rushed to the window and slammed it shut. He locked me inside my room before I could even blink. Half an hour later, he opened my door. Around the same time, he opened the main door as well.
Mom walked inside.
For the first time in my life, I saw Mom crying. Tears streamed from her eyes as she stepped over the threshold. Her clothes were torn, claw marks visible under the rips, blood seeping along her skin. Her legs bled and she couldn't walk properly. I tried to go to her, to speak to her, to hold her, but dad stopped me and pushed me back.
The next day, he returned to being level five again. It continued like that for days. We never saw the wolf again.
Time crawled by, and soon it was the final day of school, my graduation ceremony. Dad left early that morning. He did not tie Mom to the pole. Mom didn't wish me good morning or congratulate me, and she didn't smile. She looked sad, as if something heavy sat behind her eyes. I pretended I didn't see it and went to school.
At school, I watched my friends laughing with their parents, families hugging, smiling, celebrating. The air felt full of joy, but to me it felt suffocating. I suddenly missed Mom so badly it hurt. I tried to imagine her smiling face, but all I could see was the face she had the night of the wolf incident, crying.
I left before the ceremony ended and ran home.
When I tried to unlock the door, that familiar dread flooded me again, the same feeling I had the day the polis cars were outside our home. But by then my heart had hardened. I didn't hesitate. I opened the door and stepped inside.
Out of habit, I glanced at the backyard pole while walking through the hall. It was empty. Dad had not tied her that morning. Something in my chest tightened, but I forced myself onward, opening each door as I passed.
I was too scared to look inside any room for more than a second. I took quick glances and moved on.
When I opened Dad's bedroom door, I saw the bathroom door inside standing wide open.
Every step I took toward it made my skin crawl. My heart pounded so loudly it drowned out everything else. Still, I walked. Still, I pushed down the fear.
I leaned in for a quick look.
And I saw Mom.
The image hit me so hard my lungs forgot how to work. My knees gave out and I collapsed onto the wet bathroom floor.
I remember everything, every detail, as if the memory carved itself into my bones.
Red water flooded the tiles. A half broken mirror clung to the wall, the other half shattered across the floor. Tiny shards floated in the water. The largest shard lay in Mom's hand.
Mom was lying naked in the bathtub. The water around her was deep red. One arm hung out of the tub, holding the bloody mirror piece. The wrist of her other hand was cut open.
Her face looked peaceful. Happy, even. Her lips seemed frozen in a soft shape, whispering to me, "Aasia, I tried my best to not show you my crying face."