Chapter 2Spring Breeze Caresses the Wild Grass

During her moments of clarity, my mother told me she used to play the piano.

But all ten of her fingers had been smashed and deformed. She couldn't even hold my hand properly.

For as long as I could remember, she was locked in the pigpen, a long iron chain fastened around her neck. She would often scream like a madwoman, muttering in a foreign language I didn't understand, her words eventually dissolving into sobs.

She ran away every chance she got.

At first, she would try to take me with her. I wasn't wanted in that house either.

I was a girl, and because of that, I was despised from the moment I was born.

Growing up, the man I called Father only ever called me "Worthless Girl."

When I was eight, he finally took me to get registered. The clerk at the office asked for my name. "Worthless Girl," he grunted impatiently.

The clerk looked at him in disbelief. "Are you sure? Once it's on the certificate, it's not easy to change."

"She's just as worthless as her mother. She doesn't deserve a good name."

The clerk, furious, scribbled "Lynn" on the paper and asked if that was correct.

My father couldn't read. He assumed it was the name he’d given me and nodded dismissively.

I huddled by the counter with my head down, only breathing a sigh of relief when I saw the name on the official document.

As we were leaving, the clerk slipped a hundred-dollar bill into my hand. I looked up at her with gratitude. When we were far enough away and my father wasn't looking, I turned back and gave her a deep, long bow.

That night, after he got drunk, I took the money and the key to the pigpen.

It was the dead of winter. My mother was wearing nothing but a torn tank top, shivering in a corner. Her hair was a matted mess, and the skin on her neck was a thick, dark red callus from the iron chain.

"Mom, take this and run." I expertly unlocked the chain and gave her the money.

She stared blankly at the banknote. She had been cut off from the world for so long she didn't recognize the new currency. Suddenly, her eyes filled with suspicion. "You're lying to me. You're his child. You must be trying to trick me."

Her mind was a fractured thing back then, her words disjointed and confused.

I coaxed and pleaded until I finally got her out the door. But we hadn't gone more than a few steps before we ran into a neighbor on his nightly patrol.

The villagers came after us with torches and dragged us back.

That time, we were beaten black and blue. They smashed a rock against her head, leaving a deep gash. The blood soaked through the straw in the pigpen. When she woke up, the only thing in her eyes when she looked at me was hatred.

"It's all your fault. If it weren't for you, I would have escaped."

"Please, sweetie, can you help Mommy get away?"

"Your family are all demons. Please, just let me go."

Her mind slipped further and further away.

Around that time, a charity began sponsoring our village, and I was sent to the town school. As I learned more about the world, I began to understand. My mother had been kidnapped.

I was the child of a human trafficker.

I told this secret to my only friend. The next day, the entire class ostracized me.

"Your mom's a psycho, your dad's a monster, and you're no better."

They threw trash at me, spat at me. Once, they shoved my head into a toilet.