He was speechless.

  His heart was hammering against his chest. Anxiety.

  Every time his parents fought, his grandmother or aunt would try to resolve it and make both of them give up their stubbornness.

  But this time even they were silent. It looked like their decision was final. Mara was not in the mood to talk to anyone. He just gave a quick nod to the guests, everyone other than his parents, and walked into his room.

  He wanted to bme them, but he also remembered that being together and tied up in a retionship where things constantly went wrong was always worse than living separately.

  But that didn’t mean they could just dump their child like that.

  If this is the end then why make them hear the shouting and cursing for years?

  Why have children when you cannot take care of them?

  Also why have them when you are not close to begin with?

  Mara buried those questions in resentment.

  Mara walked toward the single bed, looked at Muyang, and then sat down on the floor with his back leaning against the bed.

  The feeling could not be expined or expressed, so he simply closed himself off again and again, trying not to shed tears for things that were not worthy enough.

  He remembered his grandmother’s and aunt’s expressions. They were too tired and speechless because of his parents’ behavior, and maybe a little embarrassed too.

  Mara knew that this was for the better. He would take care of Muyang and move to the suburbs, living a peaceful and quiet life without shouting, cursing, or the heavy burden of expectations.

  But will he be able to take care of him? Will he be able to fill the space of parents inside Muyang heart?

  These unwanted thoughts surrounded him again. But he shrugged him off cause he knows he can even if he die he will. He is doing this for years so he can.

  And Mara also knew that if he didn’t take Muyang away now, he would never be able to sleep peacefully again—and Muyang would grow up no better than him. He didn’t want that.

  So for the next five months, Mara and his parents started to live like a real family for the first time.

  No fights.No cursing.But neither of his parents talked to each other.

  Once the closest, the next second strangers.

  But that saying didn’t fit his parents, because they were never once close to each other in the first pce. Their retionship had always been more like two distant pnets accidentally sharing the same orbit.

  Time passed like water from an open tap

  quiet, constant, and impossible to stop.

  Mara’s eighteenth birthday was exactly one month ter: December 19th.

  Today was November 19th, his maternal grandfather’s birthday. Seeing their situation, his grandparents were both angry and helpless, so to lighten the mood his grandfather hosted a small party and invited all of his grandchildren. He rejected any adults joining, other than his wife, so the gathering could remain a pure children’s party, without adults ruining it with their “mature” yet strangely immature thoughts.

  Muyang, after hearing there would be cake, became the most enthusiastic participant. Mara, on the other hand, was… so-so.

  They both left the house with a small gift in hand, wearing T-shirts and casual pants.

  Why wear such clothes in November?

  Because the region that once had the highest probability of snowfall was now scorching red under the bzing sun.

  For the past five months there had been no decrease in temperature. And even though the meter did not go down, it certainly did not mean it politely stayed where it was.

  For the first three months the city’s temperature fluctuate unpredictably, and in the next two months it continued to rise, Celsius by Celsius, without ever going down.

  The weather report had basically given up trying to sound optimistic.

  With unusual weather comes food crises. Though energy stones can help farmers pnt seeds, they cannot grow them.

  A seed needs soil, water, oxygen, sunlight, and suitable weather to sprout.

  But now that had become nearly impossible.

  The food supplied in the cities was expensive and came straight from government project sites.

  But in the end, it was a project site, not a vast production nd.

  So the price of food on supermarket shelves kept increasing. And so did the strange behavior of animals.

  Ethologists said in their reports that it was because of the hot weather. Strangely enough, some weak animals were behaving unusually strong, yet they did not die, while the strongest animals were dying from heat.

  This situation became quite hard to expin for the ethologists.

  While birds from the northeast should have migrated south during the month of November, where there is no snowfall but happy greenery, they simply did not migrate.

  Instead, birds from the south migrated to the northeast.

  The reason was simple.

  The condition of the south was worse than any other region. Climatologists state that the temperature has risen up to 55 degrees.

  The once green and lively south was now barren.

  People were not dying from heat yet.

  But they might die from bills.

  Mara was walking while reading these blogs on the internet. Muyang was sleeping soundly in his arms, hugging him as if his life depended on it.

  Well, why not?

  He was the most enthusiastic during the party, and he was also the one who got the biggest piece of cake.

  Mara first thought that his grandparents were doing all this for him, to comfort him.

  But he was wrong.

  Because when the party came to an end and all the grandchildren were leaving, his grandmother, with a calm smile on her face, asked him to go inside his grandfather’s study.

  Muyang, who was quite sleepy, was in his arms, but his grandmother quietly took him and started patting him gently into deeper sleep.

  When Mara walked inside the study, he was greeted by his grandfather, who gave him some energy stones, money, and a pure wooden box.

  Mara tried to open the box, but it would not open no matter how much strength he used.

  “What is this?” he asked his grandfather, who was already looking at him with an inquiring expression.

  “Oh. You also cannot open it. Hmm, that is weird. Anyways take it, take it. I am not the one giving this to you. It was given to you by your uncle…”

  The conversation drifted, and in the end both of his grandparents simply told him that if he needed anything he could come to them, and that they were sorry for his mother’s behavior.

  While they were contempting how they could have raised such a child, Mara was thinking about the box.

  His mother had quite a number of siblings.

  His grandfather had married twice in his life. After his first wife died and his children were still quite small, he married again—his current grandmother.

  From the previous marriage he had four children: three sons and one daughter.

  With his current wife he had five daughters and one son.

  His mother was the first daughter of the current wife and the eldest among them.

  While his aunt was the eldest daughter of the entire family.

  These details surrounded Mara’s mind. It was not that he wanted to draw a family tree—it was that he was thinking about the one who had given him the strange box.

  His uncle.

  He had never really met this uncle, or rather he had not been old enough to remember meeting him. His grandfather said that this uncle was the one who had arranged his mother’s marriage with his father.

  He was the youngest son of his grandfather’s first wife.

  All Mara knew about him was that when he was born, this uncle had been the happiest person in the family.

  And then, one month after Mara’s birth, he went missing.

  From what Mara heard from his grandfather today, strange things had started happening when he was born.

  His uncle had come to his grandfather and given him this box, asking him to give it to Mara when he turned eighteen.

  Though he was not yet eighteen, he would be soon, so his grandfather handed it to him.

  Mara walked slowly along the path, juggling the box in his hand.

  After a while, they reached home.

  A home that would be sold in a month.

  All his and Muyang’s belongings were packed in cardboard boxes, ready for transport.

  Both of them would be leaving tomorrow for the suburbs.

  Yes, Mara was leaving tomorrow.

  His parents had said they would not divorce until he turned eighteen. That did not mean they would continue living in the same house until then.

  The buyer wanted to move in as soon as possible, so the packing had already begun.

  It was already dark outside when they reached home.

  Mara was too tired to move, so he simply y on the ground, trying to get some coolness from it.

  Even with the air conditioning on, the room remained unbearably hot.

  The marble on the floor was much cooler than the mattress. Mara was comfortable.

  And that was when his consciousness slipped away.

  He fell asleep and failed to notice the wooden box flying straight into his forehead.

  Green buds started to surround his body.

  It happened in a second.

  Then everything returned to normal.

  At the same time, far away, surrounded by clouds, there existed a forest that had never once been captured by human satellites.

  A woman whose face was covered by a veil opened her white pupil eyes.

  Her long ears twitch as she stood up from a tree branch.

  The leaves of the tree caressed her hair as her lifeless eyes began to drip crystal-like tears.

  Meanwhile, in the west, deep under the ocean, a mermaid whose eyes had been gouged out tilted her head and looked back.

  Her faded scales were now shining with radiance.

  Though she was a bloody mess, she did not look disheveled. Her long ocean-blue hair twirled as she tried to swim upward, but heavy chains bound her.

  “She… she is crying? She is crying! The boy has reached the age! The disaster is bound to happen!”

  A st roar of a lion, the cry of an eagle, and a cool wave of the ocean reached the woman whose face was covered with a veil.

  She stumbled down and fell to her knees.

  Her white pupil eyes then turned toward the exceptionally bright moon as she gave a sad smile.