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A piercing brake sound rose in the crowded street... Hundreds of footsteps suddenly stopped. This silence was the silence of shock. In such situations, no one knows what to do at that moment. Time stands still for a while. Some are terrified, some quickly recover and rush to help....
I'm lying on the ground. The yellow taxi just drove away from my body. I make eye contact with a woman holding her own child in fear. The way she pulls her child to herself and closes her eyes makes me feel the depth of the incident. I look at the palms of my hands for a moment. A few small rocks had punctured my fingers and there was some dirt and dust... It's strange that I didn't feel any pain, but I have never felt such deep fear. What was I afraid of, even with my small body? I was afraid, of course. Even though I was only 6 years old, I knew that what I should be afraid of was not death, but the account that would be given to my father. Oh, poor mother, who knows who will blame you now for not taking care of your little child. After all, is there any ownerless person bigger than you at this world?
I was a mischievous little kid. Running around with a slice of watermelon in my hand and a blue brief on my backside, I was uncontrollable. I used to break our neighbor's window and fill their house with dirt and rocks. At that age, I didn't understand the meaning of foul language and violence, but I could feel it deep in my bones. The worst part was seeing it in my mother's eyes every day. Being a mother was a tough job, protecting us from the evil that surrounded us, everyone had their way of doing it. And today, she had failed
I opened my eyes in a stark white room. The smell of a terrible medicine had filled the entire room. (Oh, what a huge loss, my ice cream fell from my hand.) As I glanced around, I locked eyes with my mother. Her eyes held a cry of pain, and her lips were trembling. Deep, purple circles of sorrow had formed beneath her eyes. I had never seen her in so much pain before. At that moment, I realized that she blamed herself more than anyone else. I placed my hand on her face, her cheeks were burning, and she couldn't stop sobbing. Everyone who came and went had blamed her so much that my poor mother was crying silently with shame. The accident didn't hurt me, but my heart ached inside, even though I was child. I wished I hadn't eaten that ice cream. "But it was such a beautiful, colorful, and ice-cold ice cream, you should have seen it!" I said to my mom. She smiled silently and gestured me to be quiet. Oh, mother... If I were the age I am now, I would hug her and apologize, crying.
I didn't know that this was just a beginning... It was a burden lighter than all the troubles that would weigh on my shoulders in the future, but I was unaware of what was to come. I still had dreams that I saw while running on top of the clouds at that age. Even today, I remember those dreams and smell the cotton-white clouds...
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