Kali was born in the capital of the kingdom from an average family. She had no siblings so she lived her life alone with her parents. Being their only daughter, her parents naturally doted on her greatly and made sure to pamper her as much as they could.
Her father was a merchant and her mother was a housewife. Both were very kind and peaceful individuals that treated their neighbors with good and made sure to be upright civilians in the capital.
Kali admired her parents greatly and saw them as her role models and the people she adored the most. She grew up to be a kind, cheerful and generally energetic girl that had many friends and was very sociable.
Everything was good and well, until one day, her dad fell ill in unknown circumstances. His body turned completely red and he had dangerously high fevers. He was unable to move nor do anything apart from sleeping on the bed. Naturally, many doctors came to check up on him. However, none of them were able to identify his illness nor find a cure for it.
Week after week, Kali and her mother would grow more and more perturbed as they got the same answer again and again. What made it even worse was the fact that his condition was getting worse day by day at a rapid pace.
Since the family relied on the dad to keep them alive, when he got sick, their sole income was cut off so Kali's mother had to go out and start working so that she can pay for their expenses and also search for a doctor that could treat her parents.
At first, Kali was simply worried about her father's condition and nothing else. After all, she was too young to be able to understand the harshness of the world. As time moved, Kali started noticing that her mother seemed to be losing weight visibly. Her beautiful face was also turning gradually pale, sick and very tired.
Whenever Kali would ask her if she's fine, her mother would force a smile on her face and try to brush it off. However, the little girl knew that this wasn't merely a simple matter. So, she decided to do something.
She started using her free time to help her mother at doing chores. For a girl of her age, such things as chores weren't things that she was supposed to do but she still insisted to do them.
"I'm gonna help mommy!!" Each day, she will declare with a smile in front of her flabbergasted mother.
"Hey! Put down the broom!"
"No, hehehe!"
"You…" Her mother sighed as she facepalmed. "You don't have to do this, Kali! You're still young! Go out and play!"
"But, wouldn't doing this… help daddy?" Kali asked with a timid expression when she saw her mother's expression.
That response made her mother's face freeze. She tried to open her mouth to speak and yet the only things she uttered were whimpers as she covered her mouth. Tears flowed down from her eyes before she fell to her knees, weeping silently.
"Mommy…" Kali ran toward her crying mother before she hugged her.
"I'm sorry, sweety… I'm sorry… Your mother is helpless…" She whispered as she hugged her daughter.
Kali didn't understand at first what her mother meant however she was able to link things together to reach a conclusion.
"It's ok, Mommy! I will find the cure to dad's illness myself!"
"Kali…" Her mother opened her eyes and stared at her daughter.
"I will work hard to find it and then get him back on his feet!" She smiled widely as she patted her mother gently. "So don't cry, ok?"
Those words weren't merely a naive declaration from a child. Kali was determined to actually do it. So, aside from helping with chores, she stared borrowing books from the library about medicine and illnesses to study it.
What she quickly discovered was that these books weren't like the books she gets to read at school. They had no illustrations nor did they use simple words that she could understand. In other words, they weren't made for someone like her to understand them.
Realizing that, Kali felt fear crushing down on her consciousness. If she didn't learn how to cure her dad, he might stay sick and her mother would stay tired. She needed to learn and quick.
So, even though it seemed like an unsurmountable wall, Kali still did her best as she started to study these books every single night for hours and hours on end. She used every ounce of her energy and focus left from the tiring day to learn these books herself.
Time passed like that and surprisingly, Kali was making slow and steady progress. It wasn't fast but she was still satisfied with it.
Her mother did noticed that she was studying some kind of books and she tried to stop her since she was clearly exhausting herself.
"I promised to heal daddy so I will do it!"
Until, one day, when she was coming back home from school as usual, she found the door to her house open and many of their neighbors standing there.
"Why is everyone here?" She murmured as she approached the gate. When the neighbors noticed her, their faces paled and their eyes quickly averted from Kali.
"Good evening!!" Kali smiled and greeted them. However, nobody answered. Kali looked confused for a second before she started walking toward the entrance of the door since nobody seemed to want to talk to her.
There, she found her mother sitting on a chair with her face covered with her hands. Around her were the women of the neighborhood.
"Mommy?"
Hearing her daughter's voice, Kali's mother quickly looked up with shocked eyes before she rushed toward her daughter and wrapped her in a tight hug.
"Kali! Kali!!" She called her daughter's name as she cried audibly. Kali had never seen her mother cry this hard before even when she was alone at night after a long day of work.
Kali did notice that she cried next to her father's sleeping body as she murmured some incoherent words that the little girl didn't understand.
So, the girl didn't know what to say or do other than patting her mother's head.
"What's wrong, Mommy?" She asked.
However, her mother didn't respond or perhaps she couldn't respond. Instead, one of the women spoke first.
"Your father… is gone, Kali." She said with a serious look.
"Hey, what are you trying to say to a little girl?" Another woman grabbed her arm and said.
"I'm telling her the truth. Or what? Are you going to keep her in the dark? She has the right to know!"
Then, the woman yanked her arm and turned to look at Kali.
"Gone? Gone where? And when does he come back? The doctors said he shouldn't move a lot." Kali asked with confusion.
"He isn't going to come back, Kali. He's… dead."
Kali seemed confused for a second before her eyes started to widen with realization of what that word meant. Her body froze and her breathing stopped.
"Huh…?"
Everything around her completely halted and all she could see was darkness now. Even the words that the woman continued to say didn't reach her ears.
'Dead? What does she mean dead? Dad isn't dead? He was fine today when I went to school. He couldn't be dead.'
"Kali…" Her mother noticed the change in her daughter's expression and looked at her.
"Daddy is already back to work, right? I'm going to go and check on him! I didn't tell him about my daily progress on finding a cure for him." The girl said with her shocked face as if she was trying to convince herself.
Tears rolled down her mother's face as she shook her head. "No… He's…"
"He's not that! Daddy is fine!"
"Listen to me, Ka-"
"No! I made a promise with him that I will cure him! He can't break his promise! That's not fair! He will swallow a thousand needles if he does!"