“And my mother?” I finally asked. “Does she know you’re eating like this?”
Hue slowly raised his head, and in his eyes I saw something I didn’t expect: not fear, but a kind of weary resignation.
“Yes…” he replied, and that simple word fell like a stone inside my chest, plunging me into a reality I didn’t want to accept.
I felt my whole body tense up, as if every muscle was trying to reject what I had just heard.
—What do you mean by “yes”? —my voice was no longer calm—. Does she give you this?
Hue shook his head, but his gesture did nothing to alleviate the situation, because the truth seemed more complicated than my mind wanted to simplify it.
“She says we have to save… that money isn’t enough… that you don’t understand how difficult everything is,” she explained slowly.
Each of his words was like a piece of a puzzle that I didn’t want to complete, because the final result scared me.
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