Prologue

I love your mother, and you know I love you as well.

He had that statement planted firmly in mind as he grew up. As a child it was a reassurance that even though they had different blood running through their streams, they were still family. But as he grew up it became a simple reminder that though being a family meant how it’s spelled, different still meant different.

It was pretty easy and fun, growing up as a child with only his mother. He had all the attention any other child would have traded for them to experience. The undeniable gaping hole whenever the topic of a family was brought up was covered with bright smiles, big hugs and an exchange of I love you’s even from the lips of a still learning to talk child.

He was a pretty smart child. He knew something’s missing in the picture and he saw it on other children’s hands while in the supermarket. He stared at his right hand where his mother had a tight grip on him and on his left hand where he carried a light bag of vegetables, and he smiled up at his mother. Holding her tightly, knowing too well not to ask.

So when he received a rare visit from a man who introduced himself as his mother’s friend, he just nodded his head and played along.

He loves his mother and brother, and his respect for his step father was undeniable as well. They never let him feel he’s unloved, materially speaking. Everything his brother had, they made it sure he had too. But that’s not really what he’s asking.

During Sundays when they’d go out to eat or buy groceries, in his mind he would trade all the toys he had on his left hand to switch places with his brother even just for an hour, sandwiched between their parents, his left hand holding their dad’s, and his right, their mom’s. But he knew when to keep quiet, and he knew where to draw the line between dreams and reality.

Maybe that’s when he started to feel more different. His brother's their parent’s son, and he’s his mother’s son born out of wedlock. And still they loved him, maybe a little different, but that’s what they said, and that’s what he believed.

Until he graduated high school and his step dad talked to him, telling him the couldn’t afford to shoulder his school fees for college anymore. It’s not like he’s the only person who didn’t have the chance to go to college. So he stopped for a year, working, saving money for his tuition the next year.

He’s still loved. That’s what he thought until he heard them.

They’re moving out, and they didn’t want him with them. His mother protested, but didn’t risk losing her son and husband fighting for her other son.

They’re the vision of the perfect family he had in his dreams. And now being an adult, he saw what he hadn’t when he was still a child. That they still let him join, and let him feel he belonged, they still tell him they loved him, and smiled with a hint in their eyes that said, it’s up to you to figure it out.

So he moved out first before they could even think of leaving him alone while he’s asleep. He told his mom he loved her, hugged his brother, and nodded to his step father.

They waved at his retreating back from the front porch of the house, looking more like a family without him on the picture, and they went back inside the house with smiles on their faces from a joke let out. He disappeared in their lives faster than he intended them in his.

He was on his way to the small apartment he rented with his hard owned money, sitting at the far end of the train with his bags and luggage beside him with a sigh and a smile from the old lady in front of him.

He’s living a new life, without empty promises and false reassurances. He will work hard, meet a lot of people, study and graduate, he’d find another job to cover his needs, he’d live peacefully in his small apartment, and maybe he’d buy a puppy to keep him company.

That, and he almost missed his station.