A beautiful woman.

She had brown skin like polished copper, with long black hair braided into dozens of small knits falling over her shoulders. Her eyes were dark, but peaceful, like the darkness of the night.

That beautiful woman became a single mother because of a foolish mistake in her youth, when she gave herself to a man who promised her the sky and the stars as the surplus after their wedding.

She let him into her fragile heart, went against her parents who had warned her not to be with a man before marriage…all for the sake of love.

But love is blind, as people love to say.

Especially when it's your first love, your first real contact with the opposite gender. You'd think this was the promised one, the one sent directly by God for you and you alone.

So you stick with him, ignoring the obvious red flags because…

"No one is perfect."

Right?

That was what Halima lived. And because of her naivety — born from being sheltered all her life — she accepted the ridiculous request of sleeping with the man before the official wedding.

They did it two days before the date of the wedding. The man succeeded in convincing her that it was not so different, that there was nothing to worry about, that they would be married in two days anyway.

Foolish, she accepted his persistent insistence.

She lost her purity.

And two days later, she lost her dignity and honor, as the man never came to the marriage she had painstakingly convinced her disapproving family to attend.

The world crumbled under her frail shoulders, her breath choking on itself as she realized the painful truth, that all she had lived with the man called Abdoulaye was nothing but a fake dream.

An illusion of love and affection.

And she was only a tool, a means to satisfy the ego of a man who wanted nothing more than to lure and steal the purity of women too bright for this wretched world.

After that day, she changed completely. Her beautiful black hair lost its luster, her brown skin dulled and cracked, dust clinging to it from lack of care. Her eyes lost their innocent shine and turned hollow, dead inside.

The beautiful and always-smiling Halima was no more.

Her parents did not abandon her, they still kept her in their home, still gave her food and water. Yet their relationship grew cold and distant, awkward, but not beyond repair…

…until the day she realized she was pregnant. As a woman, her mother was the first to notice it.

The shock was immense.

Their family held purity sacred, believing deeply that only a husband could see a woman naked, only he could take her purity. It was their tradition, their faith.

So when they discovered that Halima had lost her purity and now carried the child of a man who had deceived her, it left them paralyzed in silence.

Her mother, already old and frail, saw her health decline even further until she was hospitalized, her life hanging by a thread.

The life of Halima, only twenty years old, became hell on Earth.

Her family scorned her, their eyes heavy with disdain, not only for what she had done to herself, but for the shame it brought upon them in the eyes of their neighbors. To them, Halima hadn't just forsaken herself… she had forsaken them all.

In that tradition-bound world, the sight of Halima's growing belly became one of the greatest humiliations and deepest pains her father could bear.

To him, it was a living proof that he had failed in the education of his daughter, that he had failed his duty as a man, as a father.

That realization broke him, leaving him bedridden, rarely stepping outside his room.

Halima felt that pain deep within her, and combined with the difficulty of pregnancy…

She could barely endure it.

She didn't know how many times she had thought about ending the life inside her, or even ending her own and finding peace at last. She wanted it desperately. She craved that release.

But Halima might have been naive, she was never weak-willed. She might have made mistakes, but she was the kind of woman who would bear the consequences of them, even if they killed her.

So she accepted it. She accepted the child of the man she loathed with every fiber of her being, because she had no right to end the life of another.

Life was sacred, as her tradition had taught her. To end one life was to end the life of all humankind.

No human had the right to take a life.

No one.

It was not their place.

But Halima knew she couldn't stay in her house anymore. Her child would never be raised in a loving environment that way, so she did the only thing she could do at that time.

She took all the money she had earned by working as a housekeeper, babysitter, and English teacher, something she excelled at.

With all that money she had been saving to help her future husband buy a house for them…

Halima took a plane and went to France — to Paris — to start a new life, pregnant and alone, leaving behind only a few simple words of goodbye:

"I love you. You have not failed me. I have failed you."

And she departed.

Her new life began, and soon she gave birth to her child, a son she named Brandon, in homage to an old white man who had helped her find work when she had nowhere to go, allowing her to carve out at least a small space for her baby.

Their life together began. Brandon was loved. His mother might have been too busy juggling multiple jobs just to put food on the table, but he received all the love he needed to grow healthily.

His mother played both roles, mother and father, as best she could. Brandon, the old man, sometimes helped, but Paris was a harsh place to live, and everyone had their own burdens to bear.

Still, his help was appreciated by both mother and son.

Brandon grew up healthy and strong, and when he turned eighteen, he didn't hesitate. He began working small jobs for his mother, who had grown old and could no longer keep working as hard as before.

She was ill, her body worn by years of stress and countless ignored ailments, all because she had prioritized feeding her son and keeping him warm through the winters.

Yes, Halima had done her duty as a mother.

It was Brandon's turn to do his as a son. But fate denied him that chance.

Soon after he started working and began paying for her treatments to help her recover…

…she died.

It was as if the only thing keeping her alive had been her will to see her son stand on his own.

She was exhausted. She was tired. She was… utterly spent.

Brandon was eighteen at the time.

That day — October 3rd, 2023, in Paris, 19ᵉ arrondissement — he lost his mother, and with her, his entire world.

He became alone in the world, drifting through life with bleak thoughts and no motivation for the future. And that continued… until he met one girl…a girl who pulled him from despair, who gave his life meaning, only to snatch it away again.

"Hahah…" Noah laughed brokenly, as visions of Halima's life flooded through his mind the moment he touched the tombstone.

Tears streamed down his cheeks faster than he had ever experienced, he was overwhelmed by emotions he thought he had long outgrown. Emotions only mortals were supposed to feel.

And yet here he was, kneeling on the muddy ground, clutching two pictures tightly in his hands, weeping like an abandoned child in a crowded marketplace before a tombstone.

He had never known his mother went through all this. She had never told him, and when he asked his father…

She only said he died before he was born.

His mother had borne the pain of being made a fool, the agony of being shunned by her family, and the burden of raising a child in a foreign land, all alone.

All that…while giving all her love, all her care, all her life… to the child she never asked for.

"You have done your duty," Noah whispered, his voice barely audible between choked sobs.

"You have loved me. You have protected me. And you have educated me."

"You gave birth to the man I am now. You are the origin of everything. Without you accepting my birth…"

"…then Noah Vaelgrim would have never existed."

And for that…

"Let me do my duty upon you. I might no longer have your blood within me…"

He smiled crookedly.

"But I have a piece of you in my soul. So, Mother…"

He paused.

"…let me do my duty as a son."

If you still consider me as such.

Then…

His heart pulsed.

Earth paused.

—End Of Chapter 367—

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