Crossroads

Chapter 10

Chapter Ten (The Painful Past)

Beng laughed loudly and said, "Is that all you have? You scared me for nothing."

Nami began to sigh slowly and crawled toward the tree, leaning against it, sitting down and looking up at the sky with his beautiful blue eyes as he recalled his memories.

There was a five-year-old boy in one of the villages, with soft skin and a short stature, appearing younger than his age, with black hair and blue ends, covered in a robe over his entire body, walking while carrying a bucket larger than him filled with water, crying, and a woman was hitting him with a thin bamboo stick. Although it was thin, it left a severe red mark on the child's white skin, and she screamed at him, saying, "Who asked you to fill the bucket? You filthy monkey!" She continued to hit him until he reached the well, and she ordered him to return the water to the well, but he couldn't lift the bucket any higher, so he climbed onto a plank and barely managed to lift the bucket up, throwing the water along with the bucket into the well. He looked at the woman with a gaze full of terror and fear, covering his head with his hands to protect himself from the woman's blows, but just before she could start hitting him again, a boy of the same age came running with a mischievous smile, pushed him into the well, and he began to fall inside, shocked and scared, looking up, his eyes pleading with the woman to save him. He was very afraid of falling into the well, as the place was dark and deep.

A child's voice appears: "Mom, I didn't mean to drop him into the well." The woman replies, "No, dear, I know you have a good heart and didn't mean to drop him. Don't worry or be sad, my dear, he is trash that no one cares about."

Then a loud thud is heard.

The child appears lying on a bed, with both his feet and right leg broken and bandaged in plaster.

The woman talks to a man: "What does this mean now?" The man replies while sitting on the couch in the living room: "You fool, this means I've been fired from my job, I can't secure our daily bread, and we have nothing left now." The woman responds, saying, "What then will we do with this boy?"

The man: "We will definitely throw him out."

The woman: "Oh God, I still need him to help me with the housework, but he is no longer useful now that he is broken."

The man: "Come on, throw him from the bed to the floor; the doctor has gone, there's no need for him to stay on the bed."

The woman: "Alright, but come help me move the bed back to the room; it's the best bed we have."

While all this was happening, the child was lying on the bed between them in the living room, as he had no room of his own.

The woman approached the child on the bed, and the child said to her, "Thank you for treating my wounds." The woman looked at him with disdain and said, "Yes, you should be indebted to us for that." The child replied, "Yes, I will make sure to repay the debt by working here." Then the woman grabbed him by the edge of his robe and threw him to the ground.

The child then began to scream from the pain in his leg and hand. While he was doing that, the man and woman moved the bed back to the room, and then the man returned to lie down on the couch, annoyed by the sound of the boy's screams, telling the woman to silence that filthy child.

The woman screams at the child, threatening him to be quiet, or else she would punish him, but the boy couldn't stop crying due to the severity of his pain, so she pulled him by his hair forcefully, putting her eyes in front of his and telling him, "Be quiet, or I will throw you into the well myself this time."

The scene then shifts to nighttime, with one of the men in the house along with the woman and her husband signing papers, then the man says, "Well, the charity will send someone to take him tomorrow morning, now that your family is unable to provide for him, and thank you for taking care of him all this time." The woman says, "No thanks necessary, I treated him like one of my own children, but what can I do? This is life."