PROLOGUE

Bankruptcy was the beginning of my indulgence in the temptation of the forbidden fruit, the turning point in which my fate was severely twisted creating a cursed being I forever deemed myself as. My father’s dynasty was corrupted from within until its big name came to a tragic end, giving me the experience of unimaginable horror when I watched it crumble just not long after my sweet tenth birthday. I was so young and fragile and imperious, on top of the world where I knew completely nothing about hardship and wisdom, basking in reflected glory that I eventually found nothing but delusory.

Fame was like the devil’s hand and with delight I opened my mouth to the venomous honey that trickled down from it. I swallowed the lies of hereditary power, of expensive toys, of egotistical thoughts, closing my eyes and ears to the truth that time kept changing and even peace could suddenly turn into the worst nightmare. I used to be a sick little bastard and already addicted to the worldly pleasure, thirsty for attention and admiration, numb from feelings related to humanity although my mother fed me sort of religious teachings every single day. Many times I overheard people speaking ill of me for how I could be so unsympathetic and obnoxious despite my noble parents, and if they were my servants, I would make sure they mentally suffered before I kicked them out of my baronial mansion.

Back then I blindly loved myself, two-faced when I showed my parents respect. Empty, false respect. I believed that the real heaven was on earth, until the door of hell opened and I heard a whisper from the boundless darkness telling me I had been long waited for. The day my father fell from the throne was the day I didn’t belong to my parents any longer, but to the evil seducer that enslaved me in his claws.

For months headlines in both local and national media were about the mighty fall of my father, about his wrong decision and about his leaked-out financial and scandal, expanded in various types of articles but most were of critical ones, full of tones such as sympathy, pity and even disgust. I was shocked, unprepared, trapped in the irreversible predicament where shame battered me in front of those staring eyes that only sought entertainment from my family’s downfall.

After I lost the bewitching bright shine of luxury and everything I could have in one click of fingers, people I called as friends left me behind, taunted me even, showing me that they were never friends in the first place but horrendous sycophants. I was angry, I never cried. Being stripped off by all things that betrayed me at once, I became more prideful and hateful than ever, refusing to bow down before anyone who took revenge on me although they were ready with bats of scorn to break my hands and legs. I looked at my depressed father, I screamed at him for the first time, blaming him for the fairy-tale kingdom that was no longer ours. And only then I realized that I wasn’t connected to him other than by blood. Money pampered me since the day of my birth, being the manifestation of a father, buying my respect and love.

In the end of everything, even my mother’s forgiving embrace couldn’t save me. I could neither feel grace nor compassion. I came to understand my father’s sins that were spit out at my face, hating him even more when I saw a homeless man happily playing with his son in the city park. I thought I had the world in my grasp, but I was painfully wrong. When I knocked the door of my parents’ room wanting to ask him what my broken heart meant, the devil called my name once again so I wouldn’t forget.

Nine years ago, only a few months after I extravagantly celebrated my ten years of life, that man was found dead after hanging himself with a sheet, dead as a debtor and a traitor of his family. At that time, too, I couldn’t cry despite a massive scale of news. People came and left, but what I saw was only a dull gray world where clowns and murderers looked similar. I didn’t even know if there was grief because all I could feel was paralyzing emptiness.

It was a rainy day when my father inside the cheapest coffin we could afford was returned to the depth of the earth, completely without fame, without things to brag about. It was the moment I knew that he was just a human and none of his remarkable achievements in the past could save him. I felt that the devil was so close to me even when my mother prayed to God in tears, closer than before, present through surreptitious laughs and disdainful stares of people who wore sad faces as if they cared about me. Instead of facing dishonor I preferred being torn limb from limb, but as a child I unfortunately had got no control over my own life.

I clearly remembered the days I became excessively quiet and withdrawn, drowned in nothing but a meaningless fantasy, failing academically and practically. People I used to mistreat—most of them were my servants—returned to worsen my misery and let me know that I deserved it. Some hurt me verbally. And some tried to kill me out of hatred as I was the greatest villain they could see for destroying their lives. Either it was bad or good, I managed to escape death many times. I had stopped complaining about disgrace and discomfort anyhow, even stopped talking to my mother who was forced to strive for our survival after all things were taken away from us. Not dead, not alive. I ended up as a helpless loser without expensive clothes and shiny shoes.

More than a year my mother suffered from having a dysfunctional mess as a son, taking me from one place to another as the reality became too much cruel for both of us to endure. There were even times when we only ate once in a day, almost froze during winter and ran away from those who wanted to take my life. Wherever we went we only met dishonest people and more misfortune. While my mother became a fearless heroine, I remained a sculpted doll with a lifeless expression, being dragged here and there bearing scars from our fallen legacy and momentary prosperity.

How I came back to my senses, however, was a story I would remember until my last breath. It was a sizzling hot day when I heard the noise of my mother crying in a plea for the landlord’s mercy. That old scumbag slapped my mother after she reminded him that it wasn’t the deadline to pay the rent, but he gave no damn and kept threatening her to give him the money. When he became out of control and tried to my mother, I knew that something evil brought me back to life and the next time I snapped out of my hazy memories, the shell of rejection that held me captive for a long time suddenly cracked and broke apart. A surge of realization terrified me as my surroundings were getting clear. I was breathing—I finally realized I was still breathing. Then I found myself in the kitchen, holding a knife with a shaking angry hand. I remembered that I ran back to the living room without hesitation. I remembered that I really wanted to kill that old man for harassing and groping my mother, but to my shock she stopped me before it happened, her imploring eyes and tears overwhelming the devil inside me.

I was angered. I didn’t expect her disapproval. Even though I was her flesh and blood, I couldn’t understand her. She was in mortal dread but still could think of others. She was given cold shoulders, trampled, betrayed, but she remained the same person I always knew—the very same person who embraced me lovingly when days turned harsh and nights turned cold. This time I couldn’t see eye to eye with her. A tooth for a tooth. Evil for evil. But my mother, with tears welling up in her eyes and a smile, told me that she had forgiven them all.

On a cold starry night my mother and I left our inconvenient flat in a low-class cramped neighborhood, far away from the metropolis we used to live in, heading to somewhere we didn’t even know. Hungry, fearful, abandoned by the whole world. And whenever I heard my mother praise the Lord I wanted to hiss at her. She prayed all the time, but I witnessed how we became even more miserable than the last time we decided to abscond from our ugly flat. Whoever she worshipped, nothing changed. The outlook for our lives was bleak. My spirit was once again caged in gloominess. She said something divine strengthened her, I considered it absolutely ridiculous. I acrimoniously kept my mouth shut, following her wandering the streets with no place to return to and almost nothing to meet our biological needs.

I was however waiting if a miracle suddenly came to break that hellish journey, waiting if the God my mother had great faith in showed Himself to us, but the darkness seemed to be the only friend that held my frozen heart as I skeptically watched the reality and fell into deep dismay. Soon I was reminded again of a homeless small family I saw a couple of years ago. They only had the sky as their ceiling and the road as their bed, but why did they seem more blissful than I who once owned everything perfectly under my feet? What did these penniless father and son have that I didn’t? I was searching for the answer but ended up stuck as a clueless fool. My father was once very well respected in the business world, but then everybody knew that he fell from grace and shockingly met the end of his life on a deadly tight knot of a sheet. And my mother was a faithful believer, but I couldn’t see her God when she swallowed the bitterness of humiliation and disloyalty. Just why?

Then one day, I took the devil’s hand that offered me a promise.

I stepped out of my mother’s wings that always protected me and secretly went to a 24-hour store to steal some bread. It was a decision I made with full rationality. God wouldn’t come to save us so I had to do it my way. Without experience in crime I tried my best to escape the vision of the guard, but one small mistake gave me an unforgettable lesson that day. I received curses and hits on my body, but the impenetrable wall of pride made me unable to feel afraid and sorry. With blood pounding hard on my cheeks I glowered back at the owner of the store, telling him that he was a ing useless head.

When my mother found me, we were in the police station and she burst into tears after learning of what I had done. She had got a perfect reason and timing to slap me on the face and tell me that I was a disgrace, but obviously I was nothing but a know-it-all. She made me stunned in silence as she caressed the bruises from my sin and looked at me with pain in her eyes. She said nothing when holding my dirty fingers, leaving me flustered in an attempt to reject her dangerous presence that the other half of me couldn’t stand. Then I was engulfed by unanticipated warmth that barged into my soul, petrified when she told me with a reassuring smile that I would be alright, that she wouldn’t let me get hurt anymore.

No, she never looked at me with pity. She didn’t preach to me about heaven and hell aside from the declaration that her joy was from God. In fact, she was giving all of her to me hiding and restraining nothing, so willing to take all the pain and my sins away from me even though she was untainted and untied to the real demon inside me. Panic spread through me as my mother reclaimed me in her arms. I couldn’t let her go but I was afraid of the moment she came face-to-face with the darkest side of me.

She was pure, I was condemned.

And I gave up understanding her when she pleaded with the owner of the store and the policewoman to put the blame and punishment on her.