Chapter One — The Beginning: A Lonely Childhood
Chapter One
The Beginning: A Lonely Childhood
Lily was the eldest daughter in her family.
Her life had been filled with hardships and pain since childhood—pain that most people never knew about.
She had never really had a true friend. She tried many times to get close to people, make friends, and do whatever she could to make the people around her happy. But most of the time, when she needed someone, no one thought about her.
The people in Lily’s life always came and went.
Whenever she became attached to someone, sooner or later, they would leave her, and Lily would be left alone with a broken heart.
Because of that, she slowly learned not to depend on anyone.
She learned to keep her distance.
She learned to smile, even when she was broken inside.
Lily always tried to make everyone else happy, but very few people ever asked how she felt.
Silently, she had been hurting more than anyone could imagine.
Her world slowly became smaller—a world made of music, stories, and her own imagination. She had a place inside her mind where she could escape whenever reality became too heavy.
On the outside, Lily looked strong.
But inside her lived a tired and broken girl.
And this...
was only the beginning of her pain.
Lily once had a happy family.
They spent time together, laughed together, and made beautiful memories. To Lily, her family was her whole world. She believed those good days would last forever.
She didn’t know that her happy childhood was about to end.
She didn’t know that the laughter that once filled their home would one day become nothing more than memories.
And she didn’t know that the carefree smile she wore would soon be replaced by pain that no child should ever have to carry.
When Lily was six years old, her parents separated.
Her father tried for a long time to bring the family back together. He wanted his daughters to grow up with both of their parents beside them. But Lily’s mother no longer wanted the relationship.
Lily was too young to understand what was happening.
She only knew that the family she had once known was falling apart, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
Her father was a kind man. He loved Lily and her younger sister deeply.
In the end, he left the girls with their mother because he wanted them to have their mother’s love too. He did not want his daughters to feel as though they had lost their mother as well.
But leaving them did not mean that he stopped caring about them.
Every month, he sent money to take care of his daughters and make sure they had everything they needed. Sometimes, he came to visit them too.
Still, money could never replace a father’s presence.
Lily missed him.
She missed having her father close to her. She missed knowing that if something went wrong, she could run to him.
Eventually, Lily’s mother took her and her sister somewhere far away—somewhere even farther from their father and from the love Lily had always felt from him.
Lily learned to live with it.
She went to school. She studied hard. In fact, she was one of the best students in her class.
From the outside, she seemed fine.
But inside, she felt lonely and confused.
As the years passed, Lily watched other children celebrate their birthdays with their families. She saw them laughing together, spending special days with their parents, and receiving warm hugs from the people they loved.
Lily smiled when she saw them.
But somewhere inside, she wondered what it would feel like to have a life like theirs.
The birthdays.
The celebrations.
The simple family moments.
And most of all, her father’s warm embrace.
She had lost all of that.
Still, Lily tried to be strong.
She loved her father more than she could explain, and sometimes she wished she could simply live with him. But she knew that her father could not take care of two daughters on his own.
She did not want to become another burden on her father.
So she stayed silent.
Three years passed.
Lily grew older.
Then, one day, something happened that she had never expected.
Her mother decided to marry someone else.
Before making her decision, her mother asked Lily what she thought.
Lily was still young. She did not fully understand what the marriage would change.
She only knew one thing:
She wanted her mother to be happy.
So she agreed.
She thought that if her mother was happy, maybe she could be happy too.
But there was something Lily did not know.
Her mother did not want to take her daughters to the wedding.
She was afraid that the families on both sides would talk about her for bringing her daughters to the wedding.
So Lily and her sister were sent to stay with their aunt in another place.
Their mother told them she would come back for them in two days.
Two days.
That was all she said.
Lily believed her.
She and her sister stayed at their aunt’s house, waiting for their mother to return.
Neither of them knew that those two days would become the beginning of something they would never forget.
