Chapter 16

The Prey

Since childhood, understanding emotions had always been a hassle for me. It wasn't that I was indifferent; I simply struggled to grasp why they felt the way they did.

When my father died tragically, I watched my mother cry herself to sleep night after night. I would kneel beside her door, bothered and confused by her tears and wondering why she couldn't move on. I felt the loss too, but I believed that if we stayed mired in our grief, we'd be stuck there forever.

I became her anchor in those dark times. She called me her angel, the one who guided her through the darkness. Yet, in truth, I merely encouraged her to keep going, to not let the grief consume us. I didn't understand her pain fully, but I knew we couldn't let it define our lives. In the end, it wasn't about dismissing our loss but about finding the strength to live beyond it.

The complexity of the human brain was beyond my grasp, but he—there was not a single nerve or bone