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Time rewinds itself several years in the past, as a young little boy with aquamarine eyes and chestnut hair glances at her mother, kneeling in the ground while vomiting.
"Nnggaahh…!"
"Mom… A-Are you okay?" he asked, approaching her sickly mother, only to receive her rage.
"Get… Go away, you pest!" she screams, as the little boy falls to the ground in fear.
"Ungh…!"
Her mother begins to squeal in the ground as she begins to shriek in pain. Her stomach felt as if it were about to explode, and the burning pain within her liver could not let her sleep for hours as she used to do so after drinking liters after liters of alcohol.
"Mom! Are you really okay? I will call an… an ambulance…!" said the young boy, running out of the house as her mother shrieked in agony.
"Aaaagh…! Haahhh… What… What have I done with my life…?" she muttered, glancing at the ceiling of her minivan as she fell unconscious.
Her son ran out of the minivan as she went to look for any stranger that could lend her a hand, after several tries in many minivans, a young woman answers the kid's call for help as she quickly calls an ambulance for her sickly mother.
"Mom! She's here! Here!" cried the kid, as the ambulance and the paramedics quickly grabbed her mother and put her inside the ambulance, carrying the child inside as he seemed to have no familiars on his home to stay with.
"She's… Her stomach…!"
"Her liver was about to burst?!"
"This is terrible…"
"Quickly, administrate sedatives and painkillers!"
"Administrate her Anti-inflammatories through the intravenous process!"
"She's… stabilizing!"
The kid glanced at the medics quickly administrated countless chemicals into her mother's veins for her safety, she seemed to be suffering from intense pain, because of her liver being intoxicated with too much alcohol. And due to her various other bad habits, her liver was about to burst, which would have led to her imminent death.
However, she had somehow survived, and was hanging on life, barely.
Not too much afterward, the boy found himself waiting within the hospital's halls, alone.
He was crying, although his mother treated him terribly since his father left them, he still held her on his heart as her mother, one of her parents, and someone dear to him over anything else…
"Sniff… Sniff… Mom… Mom…"
"Why…? Why did you drink so much alcohol…?"
"The medics said that it was all because you had an overdose in alcohol, you drank so much that you were pretty much poisoning yourself…"
"What will I do?"
"What can I do?!"
The boy's eyes cried streams of tears as his mind began to slowly break apart, his entire life has been filled with hardships and suffering, but nothing like this had ever happened to him.
He was completely hopeless, although his mother had 'stabilized' the medics themselves admitted that it was all a gamble, it all depended on if her liver could resist or not for her to survive the next couple of days.
If she were to stabilize by then, she would slowly recover more, as long as she never drank another drop of alcohol.
However, the chance for her to die was very huge.
The looming shadow of death began to slowly creep below his mother, as he was left powerless and hopeless over such fate…
He was now not only sad but also alone.
And if his mother were to die…
He would be alone forever.
"No… Mom… Mom…"
The sight of a little kid crying desperately while clinging to himself in a fetal position made many of the medics around concerned.
After a few hours, they managed to call a relative of the boy, and also of the mother, his grandmother.
A woman who had taken care of him in the past a few times, but after his father disappeared, his mother never went to visit his grandmother again, nor she gave her any direction or phone number for his grandmother to visit the two.
After one year since then, the boy finally glanced at his grandmother… the only other family member that he remembered he had.
An old yet gentle old woman, with a gentle smile, aquamarine eyes, and blonde hair made into braids.
"Oh, Frank…" she said, as she embraced the boy in a tight hug, her tears slowly flowing on the boy's back.
Warmth.
The warmness of a hug filled with love and the maternal acceptance that the young boy always desired was given to him by his grandmother, as he broke not even bigger tears.
"Grandma! Grandmaaaaa…!"
"I am so sorry, this is all my fault! I should have… I should have tried to contact you two! Even if I could not, I should have tried to look for you two…! Ooh, you went through so much, my little angel…" she cried, caressing the little boy chestnut-colored hair as she began to imagine the horrors that the boy went through due to his own daughter irresponsibility, and also her own due to not have tried to be more responsible with her daughter and grandson, despite her daughter already being a grown woman, she still had the mind of a teenager.
"I will always be with you, okay? Remember… that I will never let you go now, okay? I will always… be at your side, Frank... You'll never feel alone, ever, ever again…!" she cried, as Frank couldn't help but cry even louder, the words that his grandmother mustered were filled with concern and love, she was genuinely worried about him, and seemed to love him dearly.
"Mom… Mom will…" muttered the boy, as he tried to contain his tears.
"Your mother… Let's pray for her, okay? Let's hope for the best… If things… I things go well, I will make sure to help her as much as I can…" said the boy's grandmother, giving him a gentle kiss on his forehead as she cleaned the boy's tears from his eyes.
"Let's calm down now… Are you hungry? Let's go eat something okay? Anything you want," said the grandmother.
"A-Anything…?" wondered the boy, 'anything' he wanted also meant normal food and not the junk that he would eat often.
"Yes, anything, let's go, the medics here need to work in silence…" said the boy's grandmother. She and the boy walked through the halls of the hospital as the boy grabbed his grandmother's finger with his little hand.
The scenario suddenly begins to fragment as the figure of the grandmother and boy begin to turn into particles of white light, as darkness quickly takes hold of everything.
Frank opens his eyes as he is woken up by his alarm clock.
"Haaahh… I wonder how's grandma doing…" he wondered, as he quickly grabbed his phone while cleaning his eyes. Looking through the Whatsapp application, he founds the number of his grandmother, leaving her a small message.
"I haven't messaged her for a while… damn it, I am such an imbecile…" Frank thought as he moved out of his bed and began to stretch for a bit.
Suddenly, a little, red-colored lizard emerges from the blankets of his bed, Ruby.
"Grawr!" she said, her little body was of this size after she used the 'Body Size Alteration' Skill.
"There you are… I really need to find you some Stealth Skill… well, stick with me and remain in silence, okay?" said Frank, as Ruby smiled and nodded.
Frank quickly went to take a bath, leaving Ruby out of the bathroom, inside of his room, of course. And when he finally was done with it, he was called by his mother.
"Fraaaaaank! Breakfast!" she said.
"Coming!" said Frank with a happy and spirited voice, as Ruby jumped into his arm and crawled her way inside of his uniform.
Yet another day started in Frank's life.
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