Chapter 8: The Cost of Change

14.

I’d always thought dying at 26 in a car accident was a waste.

But my mom only lived to 17 in her last life.

She never knew a single day of happiness, struggling through 17 years of poverty and hardship.

I listened quietly as my mom told her story.

Only then did I understand that what you read in books is always shallow.

A few short lines in the history books were their entire lives.

Only a handful of people are remembered in the glorious annals of history.

Most, like my mom, were crushed beneath the wheels of history, becoming ashes in the smoke of turbulent times.

She was a courier back then, delivering messages and intelligence for the resistance.

“When the fighting first broke out, I was scared too.”

“But my father died, my mother was thrown into a ditch after being attacked, and my younger brother was stabbed to death, his insides spilling everywhere.”

“After that, I wasn’t afraid anymore.”

The sparks of rebellion slowly reached her, and she joined without hesitation, becoming a courier.

I asked her how she was executed.

“They caught me, wanted me to reveal the Underground’s hideout. I refused. So they pulled out my nails, then my teeth, nailed my hands, and finally cut open my belly.”

Her voice was flat, almost detached, but her hands shook as she spoke. She twisted her wedding ring, eyes fixed on the wall, as if seeing it all play out again. It was the kind of story you only hear in war documentaries, never expecting it to belong to your own mother.