Whenever he lost, he'd come home demanding money. If I didn't have any, he'd beat me and threaten to make me quit school so he could sell me off for bride price money.
To continue my education, I would wash dishes after school. That pitiful wage held all my hopes for the future.
But as his gambling debts grew, I had no choice but to start selling my blood.
Eventually, he got caught up in a police raid, and I finally had a brief respite when he was sent away.
In college, word spread about my gambling-addict father, and everyone started avoiding me.
That's when Jeff, who was a student counselor, took notice of me. Over time, we became close.
After hearing my story, he held my hand tenderly, saying he'd give me the loving home I'd never had, making up for all the love I had missed.
But then Ida came back from abroad, and I learned that she was his high school sweetheart.
Just like the cliché in a novel, Jeff drifted away from our family and gravitated toward Ida.
He even abandoned me when I was pregnant, causing me to miscarry.
While I was grieving the loss of our child, he was with Ida, supporting her during her livestreams.
Yet because of my mother-in-law, I never divorced him.
He gave me a very good mother, and after we got married, my mother-in-law treated me like her own daughter.
I experienced motherly love for the first time in my life.
I couldn't let go of the man I once loved deeply. I thought if I just waited a little longer, if we had a child, if enough time passed, he would come back to the family and become the husband who once treasured me.
I clung to the love Jeff had given me, praying that he would return to my side.
But I waited and waited, and all I got in the end was my mother-in-law's corpse and the news that Jeff was appearing on a dating show with Ida.
Now, the last person in this world who loved me had been killed by her own son!
Jeff's chest heaved as his eyes, bloodshot, locked onto mine.
Suddenly, he grabbed my throat. "I used to think you were just manipulative," he growled.
"But now, you dare put my mom's picture on an urn."
Breathing became more and more difficult, and tears—this time from the lack of oxygen—streamed from my eyes.
After several years of marriage, my husband, whom I loved deeply, was now full of doubts about me.
Despite the suffocating grip around my neck, I looked at him and smiled bitterly. "Since yesterday, has Mom appeared even once?"