The truth was, she had been there from the very beginning.
She had simply been making her way through the street market when one of them shouldered past her. A rough, careless bump that she thought nothing of at first. But that was not the end of it. The group, led by their giant of a man, turned toward her. Their eyes dragged over her with a look she knew too well. Then the grins started.
A whistle cut through the market noise.
"Hehe, boss. Good find we got here."
"Don't be scared." Another sneered, stepping closer than he had any right to. "I promise we'll go one at a time."
Disgusting laughter swelled and spilled across the bustling market. And yet, with an irony that never seemed to grow old in this place, not a single one of the many people passing by turned to look. Much less help.
Then, one of them spotted something. A short, scrawny brown-haired boy huddled at a corner of the street. The leader's face contorted. Whatever amusement had been there curdled into something uglier, and he filled his lungs and roared.
"Oi, BRAT!"
A sudden, sharp jolt of familiarity struck her the moment her gaze found the boy. She could have sworn she knew him. Or at least, that she knew someone who looked very much like him.
But fear had a way of making the mind stupid. She was too rattled to think straight, and the boy did not match anyone in her memory clearly enough for her to linger on it. All she could do was thank him quietly in her heart and mean it.
Unironically, that was simply how one survived in a place like this. Mind your own. Don't reach into someone else's misfortune. It was not cruelty. It was arithmetic.
One thing escalated into the next. Before she had fully registered what was happening, the poor boy was being roughed up with a thoroughness that made her stomach turn. And just when it seemed like they were done with him, the leader ordered one of his men to strip the boy of everything. Every crumpled note. Every last coin.
Her heart clenched as she watched the boy's limp frame get picked over.
But that was all it was. A feeling. One she silently prayed could be transmuted into something useful, like money.
It could not. So she ran.
She ran until her lungs burned and her legs threatened to give out beneath her. The market noise fell away behind her, swallowed by distance. And eventually, after enough running, the familiar silhouette of another kind of misery came into view.
Her so-called home.
The moment she stepped inside, the stench hit her first. Stale alcohol, thick and sour, saturating every corner of the cramped space. Bottles of beer and worse were strewn across the floor in the haphazard arrangement of someone who had given up the pretense of caring. She exhaled slowly, thought of her son, and started picking them up one by one.
She moved carefully. Deliberately. Every motion considered, every sound suppressed. Because behind one of the rusted metallic doors — the only bedroom in the entire house — the monster slept.
Snore.
Snore.
It was only after she had finished clearing the floor that she noticed her son was not home. Odd. It was nearing night, and he should have been back well over half an hour ago. She settled onto the worn couch to wait, which was where she would have ended up anyway. Nobody with a choice spent time near that bedroom door.
Before long, she heard footsteps she recognised approaching outside. The door opened without ceremony. But the presence that entered with him was impossible to ignore. He announced himself in a tone she honestly found a bit too forceful to be genuine.
The moment her eyes landed on him, her whole body went rigid.
The signs were plain. The particular way he was holding himself. The bruising already darkening along the edges of his face. She had seen this kind of damage before. Or rather, she had seen it on someone. The recollection came slow, then all at once.
She did not even realise her hand had moved until it connected with his head. Deciding it was too late to take it back, she let the nagging follow naturally, steering him onto the couch so she could properly assess the damage. He refused, of course. She had expected that too, and tore open his worn clothes without pausing to negotiate.
Which, to her genuine surprise, revealed that he had not been entirely dishonest. He had wrapped himself with real skill. Bruises and open wounds both accounted for. But the injuries themselves were not normal by any measure. They were, without question, the worst he had ever come home with.
She knew that with certainty. She had been the one patching him up all this time.
She could not conceal the shock in her voice as she demanded an answer. And yet, before he could give her one, the quiet place at the bottom of her heart had already supplied it.
He denied it. Looked her straight in the face and lied with the confidence of someone who thought she was too dull to see through it.
She wanted to be furious with him for that. She almost was.
But the guilt was louder. It had been building since the market, pressing against the inside of her chest like something that needed out. What kind of mother stands in a crowd and watches her own child get beaten to the ground without flinching? Without even crossing the street?
The worst kind. That was the answer, and she already knew it.
So she crumbled. Apologies spilling out of her in a low, broken murmur, the words doing nothing to offset the weight behind them. She knew they were useless. She said them anyway.
She was just about to admit to him that she had been there when the air in the room shifted. Became heavier in the particular way that it always did right before something went wrong.
"Shit!" A rough voice barked from behind the thin metallic door.
Bam!
The door burst open with enough force to send a tremor through the walls. And there he stood in the frame of the only bedroom. Chest heaving in a ragged, beastly rhythm. Black hair shot through with veins of white. Those blue eyes stretched wide with a fury that had no visible bottom to it.
His gaze swept the floor. Frantic. Searching for a bottle, something solid and heavy he could turn into a weapon.
She had already seen to that.
The absence of it sent him past the edge. His brown skin flushed a deeper, mottled red. And then he was simply gone from where he had been standing, crossing the room at the terrifying velocity of a Stage 4 Green Core before either of them could so much as flinch.
He materialised in front of her and swung.
Crack!
The sound of it in the small living room was obscene. Her head snapped violently to the side, the rest of her body following in a helpless arc of momentum that carried her off the couch entirely.
Boom!
"Bitch!" He roared down at her. "How many times do I have to tell you to shut your dirty mouth!?"
His voice reached her muffled and distant, as though arriving through water. Her vision lurched and tilted. But she had been hit in the face enough times that her body had learned, without her permission, how to recover from it quickly. The world steadied itself.
What now.
The answer came before the question had fully formed. The same answer it always was.
Endure.
She curled herself into the corner. Made herself small. Pulled her knees up, tucked her head down, became as compact and unthreatening as something that only wanted to be left alone. She had done this before. It usually worked. Give the predator nothing to hunt and eventually it lost interest.
But today was not usual.
She was still bracing herself when she heard it. The sound of a fist meeting resistance. Flesh and then bone. Somewhere to her left. Somewhere that was not her.
Her head snapped up.
Her son's already broken body took the first punch without warning. Then the second.
Boom.
"Stupid son of a bitch."
Boom.
"You're the same as that whore of a mother you've got."
Boom.
Crack!
She had always made herself the target. Always. She would position herself, do whatever she had to, just to keep him away from the boy. And yet here they both were.
"S — Stop! Please, stop!"
She crawled to his feet. Actually put her hands on him and begged. And mercifully, he did stop.
Then his hand came down and clamped the back of her neck, hoisting her off the ground as easily as one lifts a small, indignant cat.
"You whore." He spat the words directly into her face.
Her hands trembled. She did not know what came next. She rarely did.
She did not have to wait long to find out. He drove her head down into the sharp corner of the rotting wooden table. The table gave way on impact, splintering apart and sending jagged fragments scattering across the floor. Several drove themselves into her face.
Mmph!
The sound that came out of her was small and muffled and she was already trying to swallow it back before it had fully escaped. She would not scream. Screaming only ever made things worse, and besides, it needed to stay on her. All of it needed to stay on her.
So she endured. For long hours, she endured. She clung to consciousness with a stubbornness that surprised even herself, refusing to let go, because the moment she went under was the moment nobody was watching the boy.
Eventually, even that grip slipped.
Plop.
He dropped her onto the floor like something he had finished with.
"Hah.. hah.. Stubborn bitch. Tch."