Chapter 5

The call was hung up coldly.

I stood there, stunned in the pouring rain, gripping my phone as icy drops streamed down my face.

Mom was in critical condition.

I needed money. I needed to get back home right now.

But I couldn't even afford a plane ticket.

Despair wrapped around me like a suffocating net, making every breath feel like a luxury I couldn't afford.

Suddenly, a pair of shiny black leather shoes stopped in front of me.

I slowly looked up and saw that familiar and hateful face.

Eugene stood above me, holding a black umbrella, gazing down as if he was savoring the ruin of something he'd destroyed himself.

Rain matted my hair and stung my eyes, making it impossible to see his expression. All I could hear was his cold, emotionless voice.

"Miss Walters, do you need help?" Eugene said.

He pulled out a wad of cash from his pocket, picked out a few bills, bent down, and tossed them onto the wet ground in front of me.

The pounds were instantly soaked and muddied, looking like filthy scraps of paper.

"That should cover your ticket home," he said, straightening up, his tone laced with condescending pity. "My boss is generous. He doesn't want your mother to pass away without seeing you one last time."

One last time.

Those three words pierced the most vulnerable part of me, like a venom-tipped dagger.

I looked at the money lying in the mud, then glanced up at Eugene.

Suddenly, a fierce wave of nausea rose up in my gut.

I pressed my hand to my mouth, dry-heaving uncontrollably.

Nothing came up, just the bitter burn of bile in my throat.

Eugene frowned, stepping back with a look of obvious distaste.

I braced myself against the wall, barely steadying myself as the world spun. A strange, unfamiliar cramp twisted in my lower belly.

Something was seriously wrong with my body.

Suddenly, I remembered that my period had been delayed for way too long.

An absurd, terrifying thought struck me like a bolt of black lightning, cutting through the haze in my mind.

I stood frozen, and in disbelief, I slowly moved my hand to my lower belly.

It was flat.

But right then, my whole world shattered.

I had no idea how I managed to leave that alley.

Eugene's words and the money on the ground were like poisonous thorns, leaving me battered and bleeding. The strange cramp in my belly and that absurd thought hit me like a sledgehammer, crushing whatever was left of my sanity.

Scraping together my last few coins, I managed to get a quick check at a local clinic.

When the foreign doctor, her hair streaked with gray, told me in a gentle, sympathetic voice that I was eight weeks pregnant, everything around me faded into silence.

"I want to... get rid of it," I heard myself say, my voice dry and hollow, echoing from somewhere far away.

The doctor shook her head, pointing at the results on the report and explaining in medical jargon I could barely grasp. "Miss Walters, your body is extremely weak. You're severely malnourished and anemic.

"It's very dangerous to have the procedure now." She paused, then delivered the most devastating part. "And according to the law, you've already missed the legal window for the operation."

As I stepped out of the clinic, the endless rain in Suham City seemed to swallow my whole life, as if the sun would never shine for me again.

I was trapped, by a life inside me that never should have existed, by the laws of Flioland, and by poverty and despair. No matter what I did, there was no escape.

I couldn't die. If I died, who was going to take care of Mom?

I have to go back to Jodonia.

I didn't touch the money Eugene threw on the ground. That was my humiliation. I'd sooner crawl home if I had to than take his charity.

For ages, I hovered outside the Jodonian aid center on Shemvale Road. Eventually, I pulled myself together and stepped inside.

There, a kind-hearted aunt listened to my cut-down story of me "getting kicked out of school and was broke."

She sighed, rallied the folks in the community, and together they scraped up enough cash to buy me the cheapest one-way ticket they could find.

Before boarding the plane, I tossed my foreign phone card into the trash.

Everything from my past, including all the innocence and dreams that the name Claire Walters once carried, died in that rain.

I didn't go back to my home.

I was terrified of Mom seeing me like this, and even more terrified she'd find out about the bastard growing inside me.

After that call from Aunt Ingrid, it was painfully clear that in their eyes, I was already the family's disgrace.

I ended up in a small, unfamiliar coastal town in the south, using the last of my money to rent a basement that never saw the sun.

The air was always heavy with the ever-present smell of mold, and water stains spread across the corners like an ugly map.