Chapter 2 The Promise She Kept

At the time, she said, "There's a certain drive in that kid. He reminds me of you when you were young."

So, that was what those more than 2,600 hours had been. For the entire past year, she had been sharing the world inside her earphones with someone else. Not me.

"Honey? Earth to Chase Foster! It's getting late. We should head home." Regina's voice reached me, slightly slurred from the alcohol, yet still carrying that familiar tenderness.

I put away her phone, closed the music app, and looked up, smiling. "Coming."

My stiff smile lasted until Regina fell asleep leaning against the passenger seat.

The heater filled the car with warmth. The only sounds were her steady breathing and the occasional crackle of fireworks outside the window.

As I watched the black road illuminated by the headlights, my thoughts slipped uncontrollably back more than a decade.

…

Back then, we had spent nights traveling along roads like this too. The difference was that we did not have a million-dollar luxury car, nor did we have the polished, respectable lives we have now.

We had met in middle school and started dating right after graduation.

My father was a low-level government employee, while my mother ran a small grocery store. We were not wealthy, but I had grown up comfortably enough.

Regina's family, on the other hand, had a father who was a drunk and a compulsive gambler. Her mother survived by scratching out a living in the fields and collecting cardboard for money.

Her family had been desperately poor. Even after Regina and I were accepted into colleges in the same city, my parents had firmly opposed us being together. To force me to break up with her, they even cut off my allowance and tried to keep me locked at home.

Despite my family's condemnation, I secretly bought a ticket on the same old regional train Regina had taken to college. The seats in the economy carriage were cramped and painfully hard, covered in worn vinyl that offered no comfort at all. I could barely stretch out my legs, and by the time the train had been rumbling down the tracks for hours, my whole body ached.

Amid the choking smell of cigarette smoke and sweat, the train thundered through the night. The clatter of the wheels nearly swallowed Regina's uneasy voice. She told me that she knew her family was poor, but she still wanted to pursue music.

I had heard her.

I wanted to make sure no one would ever look down on her again, so I took part-time jobs whenever I was not studying. On weekends, I worked three jobs a day. I hauled bricks at construction sites, delivered food, drove for hire—anything that could bring in money quickly.

I even lied to my mother about landing a good job in the city after graduation, all so Regina and I could stay there together.

The years of exhaustion, combined with drinking with clients while helping her secure investment, wrecked my stomach. But back then, I had not thought much of it. I was young. I believed nothing could bring me down, and I could handle anything.

Until one day, I collapsed after vomiting blood in our rented apartment.

…

At the hospital, I was diagnosed with a gastric ulcer accompanied by severe perforation, and years of malnutrition had left my condition critical. The doctor told me that if I had arrived any later, it could have progressed to cancer.

That night, Regina held the diagnosis in her hands and cried helplessly as she held me in the shabbiest rental apartment in the city. "Chase, I'm sorry… I'm useless. I'm the reason you've suffered so much…"

Her tears fell in heavy drops against my neck, hot enough to make my heart race.

From that day on, she got out of bed before dawn.

Every morning at four, while I drifted in and out of sleep, I could smell the bitter herbal tonic simmering in the kitchen.

During that brutally cold winter, she would stand over the electric hot plate, breathing warm air onto her frozen hands as she carefully watched the pot. She spent two hours every morning preparing the herbal tonic she believed would help settle my stomach.

Every day.

Without fail.

That winter was especially cold. She rode a battered bicycle, its only silent part the broken bell, accompanying me to hospitals across the county as we searched for doctors and medicine.

Standing in the biting wind, she had sworn to me, "Chase, as long as I'm alive, I'll never let you suffer like this again. I'll give you a good life. I'll make sure you have a beautiful home, and you'll never have to worry about what anyone else thinks of you."

The Regina I knew now had indeed kept that promise. I wore a luxury watch worth hundreds of thousands. We lived in a villa in the heart of the city. Everywhere we went, we had a chauffeur.

But where had the girl who used to wake up at 4 a.m. to brew medicine for me gone?