YAAN UNDER THE FULL MOON
On a full-moon night with a bright sky, in a place far from the noise of the city, there was a thick forest. A forest no one ever reached. In that endless, long-stretching forest, a woman and a man were running, scared of someone. The woman was weak, extremely weak. With one hand she held her swollen belly, and her clothes were filled with bloodstains. With her other hand she held onto her husband. He was trying to lift her and run. He kept turning back again and again to make sure no one was following.
“Mark…” she called. “I can’t run anymore… the pain is getting worse. Let’s sit here…,” she insisted.
“Mia, we’re not safe here at all. We have to run a little more. Come fast,” he said, lifting her in his arms and running.
“Aah…” she screamed loudly.
Mark froze. “What happened?” He put her down and asked.
“The pain… it’s coming again, just like before…” she pressed her stomach and froze. “Mark… there’s a movement in my stomach… like a baby.”
Mark rejected it immediately. “A baby’s movement? Never. That will never happen,” he said firmly.
“You know it, right? Father told us we have only one baby. Father is a doctor. He can’t be wrong. He told us this after checking the scan,” he argued.
She took his hand and placed it on her stomach. A baby moved inside. Mia’s pain increased. It was unbearable. She screamed. He held her and tried to calm her.
“Push… push…” he urged her.
With unbearable pain, right in the middle of that forest, she gave birth to a baby.
The baby cried loudly, announcing his arrival. Mark’s eyes filled and overflowed. He lifted the baby into the moonlight and said, “Mia… we have a son…” His eyes were overflowing.
Mia held the baby close. Mark hugged both of them.
In another part of the forest, a few men were searching for Mark and Mia with flashlights. One of them made a phone call.
In a dark room, a landline rang loudly. A middle-aged man picked it up.
“Hello… did you get them?”
From his voice, his anger was obvious.
“No boss, we didn’t. They’re not anywhere here,” the man replied.
Hearing this, the middle-aged man threw a glass in anger.
“Then where did they go? Did they disappear? I need them tonight itself! This forest is not small enough for them to escape easily. I want them immediately. Otherwise… you know what I’ll do to your family.”
After saying this, he walked to a cradle. A small baby was sleeping inside.
He said to the baby:
“Your father and mother will come here now, my son. Don’t worry. But I can’t promise they’ll come alive. Sleep peacefully.”
He laughed loudly.
Suddenly, the window glass shattered and fell near him. He froze in shock. Then he quickly left the room and told the workers to clean it. At first he didn’t understand why the glass had broken, but then he realized it. He felt very happy about it.
Mark and Mia looked at their son. Mia was extremely weak. The delivery that happened at the wrong time had drained her mentally and physically. Mark understood this. He comforted her.
At that moment, Mark saw flashlights in the distance.
“Mia, get up fast. We have to go. They’ve reached here.”
Mia froze. She forced herself up through the pain. Mark carried the baby.
They tried their best to escape. Mark understood Mia couldn’t walk anymore. He quickly saw a huge tree. He knew if they hid behind it, no one could see them. They went there. Poor Mia almost fainted. Somehow he managed to hide both her and the baby behind the tree.
Mark checked if the men were nearby. Luckily, they passed right beside them but didn’t see them because of the huge tree trunk.
Mark hugged Mia and the baby. He knew they couldn’t survive the cold.
“We’re safe for now… but they might find us anytime,” he said.
“I can’t take even one more step, Mark. Let’s stay here tonight,” she said weakly.
Mark looked at the baby’s face in the moonlight.
“He’s so lucky to be alive with us… What will we name him?” Mark asked.
She looked up at the full moon and said, “Yaan.”
Mark asked, “Why Yaan? It’s a name I’ve never heard.”
She replied, “It’s the name I always wanted to give our son.”
In that moonlit moment, he named him “Yaan.”
“Mark…” she called. “Why did you force me into that experiment? Because of that… we lost our baby, didn’t we…?” she cried.
Mark had no answer. He comforted her.
“Sorry…” he said sadly.
Seeing his sadness, Mia’s heart softened.
“It’s okay… we didn’t know it would turn out like this. Let it go,” she said.
“But why did Father say there was only one baby in the womb?”
They both pushed that thought away for the night.
Again the landline rang in that room.
The man lifted the baby from the cradle with one hand and answered the call with the other.
“What happened? Did you find them?” he asked seriously.
“No boss… they’re still missing.”
“It’s okay. Stop for today. Start again in the morning,” he said and hung up.
The baby in his hand wasn’t moving, but he was breathing. The man noticed.
He realized something had gone slightly wrong in his experiment.
He understood that Mark’s second baby would be alive.
Immediately he took the phone again.
“Don’t stop! I want them tonight itself! They won’t go far. Now they’ll have another baby with them. They can’t go far. I want them tonight! Otherwise… I will kill you.”
He screamed loudly.
