Bluer Than the Ocean

Unlike Nadya, who are low educated, I entered the best schools and universities before I finally got bored with college assignments and decided to start my own business.

"I'm stuffed up with the assignments from my professor; I was had enough. It's time for me to give up on university education and go to real-life education. I want to start my own business, Mother."

That's what I told my mother at the time. My mother, Jayna Brando, supported my decision to start my own company. It's not a big problem because my mother has always supported my decisions as far as I know. My mother said:

"You can do whatever you want, Erwin. Be a rich man and destroy the self-esteem that your abusive father had built this far."

It's true what she says. Father is the natural source of torment and trouble. I hate him more than I hate the aggressive female lecturer who used to give me extra assignments to get my attention. The real problem came from my father. Although I had grown accustomed to my father's rudeness, my blood boiled when he expressed his disapproval of my plan.

My father, Alvaro Brando, I can say he was not a good man, not a good husband, and not a good father. My face is quite similar to him. My father is not from this country. I have forgotten which country he is from. Maybe everyone thinks this is a blessing because they see my father's good looks on my face, but this is nothing more than a disaster for me. I'd rather have a physical appearance similar to my “ordinary” mother than my "handsome" father. It's a pity that the face of that drunkard and bouncer are imprinted on mine.

Since my childhood, my father has shown signs of madness. He monopolized our family property to the point of making my mother miserable. He often beat me and beat my mother. When I was less than 10 years old, I woke up from my sleep because of a scream coming from the kitchen. It was the sound of my mother's screams when she was being beaten. I couldn't do anything against it; on the contrary, I made it even more difficult for my mother. She was trying to protect me from him.

Not only was he violent to my mother and me, but he was also challenging in my academic life. My father pressured me always to be the best in all classes and all subjects. Well, I may have managed to be the best in the schools I went to, and I also made it into the best universities in utopia. Still, I didn't do it all to fulfil his wishes. I moved to the capital city of our country, called a utopia, to enter university. The university was named "The university of utopia."

My father, the man who raised me to brag, boiled over when I said that I would not continue my education to master's level. A few days ago, I had graduated, and my father asked me to apply for a job at a famous company while he asks me to continue my studies. I didn't do what he said. My dad got back to his habit, he swung the baseball bat at me, and I parried it. At that time, I was already 21 years old; I was no longer a child who couldn't fight him. I grabbed the baseball bat from his hand and said:

"Old man, how long do you think I'll go along with your wish?"

I said that while looking into his eyes. Now, I'm taller than him, and his eyes look up when he looks at me. He was afraid.

I didn't expect that my father's rejection of the plan ended three days later. My father was found dead on the banks of the Krystal River. He didn't drown; they said he looked like he just fell on the bank of the river. In fact, only most of his clothes were wet. He was found on the bank of a river by a couple who were out for a walk. His body was found two days after he was reported missing.

The angry man, the drunkard, the bouncer, who was my father, no one knows for sure why he died so suddenly. So many oddities on the corpse. He was not killed because he did not have any wounds on his body, nor did he commit suicide because if he had intended to kill himself, he would have drowned his body in the river. Moreover, the Krystal river is too shallow to kill people; there is no history of students committing suicide due to stress with their grades recorded in this river. The authorities who tried to unravel the mystery of my father's death finally concluded in despair: "Maybe he died of a heart attack."

The end of my father's life was a new beginning for my life and my mother's life. We threw away dad's things along with his funeral, especially the damn baseball bat he always used to beat us up. My father's only thing was none other than my face, which resembled his. Although I realize that I don't have all my facial features from him, some come from my mother. This face brought some problems in my life.

Since I was a child, I have been so used to compliments:

"You're handsome."

I don't look like most men in this country; I have blonde hair and blue eyes. They paid too much attention to my blue eyes. Back then, when I was in school, the girls from the other class would always peek at me from the classroom window while whispering to each other. All I remember, they said: "His eyes are bluer than the ocean."

Everything was quite uncomfortable for me when girls from other schools came to see me, the girls who passed me would stare at me from my head to my toe, and then they would scream at each other. Even though it was uncomfortable, I couldn't do anything. I decided to ignore them.

Finally, I was struck by an accident that I still remember to this day. The memory comes in the form of a scary nightmare. At that time, I was only 13 years old when a woman tried to touch me.