Elda Sonet’s health began to fade as the years passed. Her once-strong hands, the same hands that rocked Smile to sleep and wiped away his tears, now trembled with weakness. Her cough grew deeper. Her body thinner. And though she tried to hide her pain behind warm smiles, Smile could sense it—he always did. He had learned to read sadness like language.
One rainy night, when the house was quiet and the oil lamp burned low, Elda called Smile to her side. She held his hand and whispered, “You are not cursed, my child. You are my daughter’s greatest gift. Never forget that.” He didn’t respond. He simply held her hand tighter, as if that could keep her from slipping away.
But by dawn, she was gone.
And just like that, Smile lost the last person who had ever loved him.
There was no funeral crowd. No neighbors offering comfort. Only a silent burial and the cold indifference of a town that had always believed Smile brought death. He was now completely alone in the world—orphaned for the second time. The whispers returned, sharper this time, louder. People no longer just called him the "mother-killer." Now they said he was cursed. A bad omen. A shadow that took everyone close to him.
Smile didn’t argue. He didn’t cry. He didn’t run. He simply stopped expecting kindness.
The walls of his small home closed in like a coffin. Nights stretched into silence. Days into numbness. His mind became his only companion—where he often heard the echoes of voices long gone: his mother's name, his grandmother's stories, his father's silence. He started talking to himself, building imaginary worlds where people didn’t hate him, where Sarah and Elda were still alive, where he was allowed to smile.
But real life was cruel.
He began to suffer in ways no one could see. Psychological stress took root like weeds in his mind—he couldn’t sleep, couldn't eat properly, couldn’t find meaning in anything. He would stare at the mirror and ask himself, “Why am I still here?” He was only a teenager, but his eyes looked like they had lived a thousand lives.
And yet… a faint ember still glowed within him.
Maybe it was Elda’s words. Maybe it was something buried deep within his spirit. But one night, with the last coin in his pocket and the ache of hunger clawing at his stomach, Smile looked at the sky and said quietly, “No one’s coming for me… so I’ll have to come for myself.”
That night, he chose not to die. He chose to live. Alone—but alive.
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