She Belongs To The Devil

The moment the door opened wide enough for Kenneth to see the woman's face, he almost instantly felt as though his heart dropped to his stomach. His eyes widened in shock, his heart rate accelerated at an unprecedented rate, and he even forgot to breathe.

Damien almost dropped the suitcase that he was carrying to the ground.

"What in the pandemonium!" Damien exclaimed in his head because the resemblance between Kenneth and that woman was uncanny.

She had bright big eyes like that of Kenneth. Just like his, her nose was also thin and long, and her cheeks were slightly thinner. And what more? Her lips looked exactly the same as that of Kenneth's.

Without asking a single question, and without exchanging a single word with the woman, Kenneth understood that he was indeed in the presence of his birth mother.

"It's her!" a soft and weak whisper escaped from Kenneth's lips.

Within a split second, thousands of questions that he had buried deep inside his heart came pouring out. He wanted to ask her why he was abandoned; why she never looked for him again; and if she ever saw him as her son, even if it was just for a brief moment.

He wanted answers to all of his questions from her. But at the same time, he simply wanted her to look him in the eyes and acknowledge him as her son, and nothing more.

Kenneth was feeling like a lost child who was waiting for his mother to come running to him and hold him dearly while calling his name.

"What is this aching that I have never felt before?" He gulped hard.

And he was so overwhelmed by all the emotions that were pouring into his heart – the mix of happiness, distress, sadness, confusion, and anger that he felt like his head and his heart would explode.

He wanted to scream in exasperation while his eye rims started to fill with tears.

However, he forced himself to keep himself together and not overreact because he didn't yet know what to expect from the woman who finally stared in his direction.

Kenneth was hoping for some kind of immediate reaction when she directly looked at him. But sadly, he did not.

Scarlett had opened the door because she wanted to stay on her porch for a while. And she was only noticing the two gentlemen who were standing in front of her garden.

Unlike Kenneth, she didn't immediately recognize who the young man was. Kenneth was standing a little too far for her eyes to clearly see his face.

Unlike the boys, her light brown eyes weren't that sharp.

Seeing those men facing in her direction, she assumed that they were travelers who wanted to ask for the direction or get some kind of help from her.

"Good afternoon, gentlemen! May I help you?" she asked the boys in her melodious voice as she stepped out in the midday sun.

The blonde color of her hair immediately shone as if it had captured all the warm and golden rays of the sun.

Damien slightly raised his brows and looked to his side to see Kenneth's hair. Even the color of their hair looked exactly the same.

"It's his mother, alright," he thought to himself and hoped that everything would go smoothly. He didn't want Kenneth to go through another tragedy again.

"He has had enough of misfortune in his life," Damien thought to himself and closed his eyes. And he didn't know why but he prayed for the man who had grown on him recently, "Holy Goddess, if you are seeing this then please bless him with your kindness. Please don't let his heart break again."

Scarlett took a step into her garden and then asked the men again, "Did you perhaps want to ask the direction?"

"Or, I can offer you some water if you are thirsty," she offered with nothing but the good intention in her heart.

Unaware that she was unable to see his face clearly, Kenneth frowned and curled his lips in disdain. "Is she for real?" he scoffed.

He ground his teeth in disbelief and wondered if coming all the way there was a mistake after all. "Does she hate me so much that she is even pretending not to see her own reflection in me?" he voiced out his anger in a suppressed whisper.

Damien held his breath and uncomfortably shuffled his gaze between Scarlett and Kenneth. He wondered if Scarlett was saying such things deliberately or not.

He furrowed his brows and thought to himself, "I am not getting any malicious aura from her though."

Nonetheless, he could clearly see that whatever she was saying was having a very negative impact on Kenneth. Thus, he prayed that Scarlett wouldn't say anything that would hurt Kenneth.

When both the gentlemen didn't answer her, Scarlett roofed her eyes with her palm from the bright sunlight and slightly squinted her eyes, while also simultaneously closing the distance between her and those two gentlemen.

"Umm… do I know–"

"Damien! Take me back!" Kenneth suddenly interrupted Scarlett and shouted, unable to take in the 'pretentious act' of the woman in front of him.

"Huh?" Damien was surprised when Kenneth made such a request without even having a proper conversation with the woman who he was desperately looking for all his life.

Kenneth aggressively grabbed onto Damien's arm and repeated his request again, "I said, TAKE ME BACK!"

Damien kept on looking at Kenneth with a stunned look on his face and softly asked, "But at least talk with her first…"

The frown lines on Kenneth's forehead deepened when he instantly growled, "I'm done expecting things from the woman who aban–"

"My son…?"

Kenneth suddenly stopped growling in anger when his ears caught the softest of voices. At first, he didn't even shift his glare from Damien, thinking that he was imagining hearing things.

But the look in his eyes instantly softened and his anger settled down when he heard the same voice again. This time, he was sure that he wasn't having any auditory hallucinations. He was indeed hearing what he had wanted to hear for years.

"My dear son! It is really you!"