Sensible Son Requests Boarding School, Danmaku Yells at Me to Run

1: 1

My son suddenly announced he wanted to go to boarding school.

Ever since Dad died, Mom, you've had all four of the old folks to take care of by yourself, and me on top of that. It's just too much for you.

I've already got the boarding school arranged. After dinner I'll take a car over on my own. You just remember to send me my living money on time.

My whole face warmed with relief. My boy had finally grown up, I thoughtand then a row of comments came drifting across my vision.

No! He's not going to boarding school to lighten your load. He's going so he can fake evidence that you abused him and threw him out of the house!

Your husband isn't dead either. He's hiding out with his old flame, waiting for your own son to nail you as mentally ill with fabricated proof!

Then they'll have you committed to a psychiatric hospital, where the orderlies will torture you to death, while he runs off to that pair of adulterers with your inheritance!

Even your parents' retirement savings will be conned out of them, under the excuse of paying your medical bills, until they're left picking through trash to survive!

The chopsticks slipped from my fingers and clattered to the floor. I picked them up as if nothing were wrong and reached over to ruffle my son's hair.

"Since it's your first time boarding, how could I let you go by yourself?"

"After dinner, I'll go with you and help you check in."

"That's okay, Mom. Everyone goes on their own. If I'm the only one with a parent dropping him off, that's kind of embarrassing"

My son refused right away.

Before, I would surely have thought he'd grown up, that he was being considerate.

But now, watching those rolling lines of comments in front of me, all I felt was a cold dread.

"It's fine. Other people are other people. You're you."

"It's your first time at boarding school. I won't feel easy about it otherwise."

My son wanted to say something more, but I'd already stood to go wash the dishes.

Seeing that, he immediately grabbed the bowls and chopsticks and rushed for the kitchen.

Not only did he wash up quickly, he wouldn't even let me help pack his bags.

Watching him bustle back and forth, I sank into thought.

Would my son really do what the comments saidframe me, have me committed to a psychiatric hospital?

Was my husband, Sebastian James, not dead at all, but off with his old flame, waiting for our son to pull it off so he could con me out of my money and vanish for good?

No. I didn't believe it.

For one thing, Sebastian and I had been married twenty years, and he'd doted on me like I was the apple of his eye.

He didn't have any old flame at all.

We were each other's first love, from schooldays to the wedding dress, more than twenty years of devotion.

If it hadn't been for that sudden car crash, if he hadn't shielded me with his own body, he wouldn't have died on the spot the way he did.

And my son, even more so.

Top of his class, obedient, sensible.

Plenty of friends and relatives had come to me asking how I raised him.

How could he possibly team up with his father and some other woman to have me locked away in a psychiatric hospital?

Someone had to be playing a joke on me.

I drew a deep breath, and noticed my son had left his asthma medicine on the dinner table.

I picked up the bottle to take it to him. In the bedroom, just one door away, his voice suddenly dropped low.

"Don't get me started. That old woman's lost her mind today, insisting on taking me to boarding school herself."

"Grandma, in a bit you call her and say Grandpa's having a heart attack, that she needs to take him to the hospital"

My head went off like a bomb.

The comments were actually telling the truth!

My hands shook with rage, and before I knew it I'd shoved the door open.

My son quickly hid his phone, looking at me with guilt written all over his face.

Just as the demand rose to my lips, the comments began to scroll again.

Don't ask! Your son has hidden cameras in every corner of the house, all to record your every move.

Blow up now and you're handing him ammunition!

Keep him calm first. Find your husband, the one faking his death!

My gaze landed on the little blinking red light in the corner, and I forced the anger back down.

I dragged a smile onto the corner of my mouth and held the medicine out.

"You silly boy, always so careless with your things."

"What if you got to school and realized you'd left your medicine behind? What would you do if an asthma attack hit?"

2: 2

2.

A flicker of hesitation crossed my son's eyes, but he still took the bottle from my hand.

"Thanks, Mom."

Once I was out of the room, I started going over the house carefully.

The living room, the kitchen, my bedroom, even the bathroomthere were cameras in all of them.

Tiny red lights blinking on and off. If it weren't for the floating warning comments, I never would have noticed.

I didn't know when the cameras had gone up, or how long they'd been there.

But I knew that from today on, the family and the son I'd been so proud of were rotten through and through.

My son had already packed and was waiting by the door.

Seeing how white my face was, he asked, out of instinct, whether I was all right.

"Mom, are you not feeling well? Maybe I should just go to school on my own?"

I said no. "It's fine. I'm just a little tired."

I rinsed my face quickly and took him out.

I'd barely flagged down a cab and loaded his bags into the trunk when my phone rang in my pocket.

My mother-in-law's voice came through, thick with tears.

"Mattie, it's badyour father-in-law's having a heart attack, come quick and take him to the hospital!"

My son's eyes settled on me too.

"Mom, Grandpa's sick. You should take him to the hospital."

"You're not coming?" I asked him.

He shook his head. "The teacher said I have to check in tonight."

I didn't push it.

I walked over to the driver and got his number.

I sent him a hundred bucks over Venmo and asked him to keep an eye on my son.

The second the cab pulled off, I texted the driver again.

Five hundred this time, to text me the address where my son got out.

Once that was arranged, I hailed my own cab straight to my in-laws' place.

My father-in-law's face was flushed and pink, healthier-looking than mine.

My mother-in-law insisted on getting him to the hospital anyway.

A full workup wasn't enoughshe wanted him admitted for a few days of observation on top of it.

I didn't argue. I ran up and down settling the bills.

I offered to stay the night at the hospital.

Once my father-in-law was asleep, I checked my phone.

The driver told me my son had reached the school.

But partway there he'd handed the driver two hundred for lost time and had him pull up outside an upscale complex.

Said he was going to a classmate's place to pick something up, and made a point of telling him not to tell me.

"He went up for an hour and came down looking pretty pleased with himself."

"If you ask me, your boy's got himself a girlfriend."

"Kids that age start getting ideas. You'll want to keep an eye on that."

But I was staring at that address, lost in it.

Unit 701, Building 3, Sunnyvale Gardens. The apartment I'd wanted to buy five years ago.

I'd wired every cent to Sebastian, and he'd told me the place had already been sold.

I didn't cry. I looked up the owner's information online instead.

Marina Pruitt. The transfer date was the exact day, five years back, that Sebastian told me the place was sold.

Then I got the bank to pull the transactions from that same day.

Seven hundred thousand for the apartment, down to the last cent, deposited into Marina Pruitt's account.

The floating comments started scrolling right then.

Yes, yes, yes! Your husband's old flame is named Marina Pruitt!

They've been together forever. Your husband spent a fortune on her.

Your son isn't yours eitherhe's Marina and your husband's. She was born with an underdeveloped uterus, so they had to do IVF!

So the betrayal had started far earlier than I ever imagined.

I barely slept all night.

Come morning, my mother-in-law was still working out an excuse to keep me at the bedside another day.

The sight of my ashen face startled her.

She told me to go home first and catch a few hours' sleep.

I didn't refuse. But I didn't go home either.

I took a cab to Sunnyvale Gardens.

Following the floating comments, I sat down in the coffee shop across the street.

Ten minutes later my dead husband, Sebastian, walked into the breakfast place opposite, holding a woman's hand.

3: 3

3.

At home, Sebastian wouldn't even right a spilled soy sauce bottle. Here he was pulling out a chair for the woman, ordering for her, mixing her dipping sauce.

She said something coy, and he reached over and gave the tip of her nose a little tap, the picture of a middle-aged couple who loved each other.

With me, out in public, we couldn't even eat a meal without keeping three feet apart.

He always dressed it up as being mindful of appearances in public.

So it wasn't about appearances at all.

It was that the person he went out with wasn't the one he loved.

My heart was already dead. Calmly, I took out my phone and started taking photos for evidence.

Sebastian and the woman finished their breakfast too.

The two of them drove off in an expensive SUV.

I hesitated a moment, then hailed a cab and followed.

They went to my son's boarding school.

After picking up my son, they went to the mall.

They bought a lot of things I'd never even dared to look at before.

Among them was a bag that cost thirty-eight hundred.

I'd wanted it for a long time, but the price had always stopped me.

Sebastian bought it too, and handed it to Marina.

Marina slung the bag over her shoulder, delight practically spilling out of her eyes, and still she made a show of hesitating.

"Honey, does this bag look good on me? Isn't it too expensive"

Sebastian's eyes were full of love for her.

"As long as you like it, it's worth any price."

"Exactly!" my son chimed in.

"Mom, you deserve the best!"

"Tomorrow I'll call the police and say that old witch abused me, then hand the forged psychiatric report over to the cops."

"Once she's locked up in the psychiatric hospital, her car, her house, her savings are all mine. Then, Mom, you can buy as much as you want!"

Coaxed by father and son, Marina was over the moon, and she planted a kiss on each of their cheeks.

The three of them walked off hand in hand to some upscale restaurant they'd reserved.

I took one last photo, saved the recording of their conversation, and only then hailed a cab home.

The family portrait of me, Sebastian, and my son was still hanging by the front door.

All I felt now was how much of a joke it was.

I called the police and reported that several cameras of unknown origin had been found in my house.

After I got the report receipt, I dug my son's toothbrush out of the bathroom.

I sent it in with a sample of my own for a paternity test.

When I saw the words on the report"blood relation: zero, parent-child relationship excluded"

the last scrap of feeling left in me disappeared completely.

With all the evidence saved, I went to the hospital.

My in-laws were chatting with the others in the ward.

The moment they saw me come in, all of them went quiet.

I pretended not to notice and stepped out to get water.

The talk started up again behind me.

"So that's the daughter-in-law of yours, the one with the mental illness who beats people?"

"She looks pretty normal, honestly. Such a shame"

My in-laws joined right in.

"Isn't that the truth?"

"She wasn't like this before, really. It was my son's sudden death in that car accident that shocked her into it"

This time, I didn't hold back. I turned around, pushed the ward door open, and said,

"Dad, Mom, isn't Sebastian alive and well?"

"Cursing him like thisaren't you afraid something might actually happen to him?"

4: 4

4.

My in-laws hadn't expected me to double back.

They froze for a second, then dredged up a fake smile.

"Mattie, you're talking nonsense again. Sebastian's been gone three months now. How could he possibly still be alive?"

"We know you're hurting inside, sweetheart, but you can't keep refusing to move on..."

I looked at the two of them and their polished little act, and felt nothing but cold.

I pulled out the photos I'd taken and asked right there.

"Then how did I see him this morning, eating breakfast with a woman right outside the gate of Sunnyvale Gardens?"

Their faces changed in an instant.

My mother-in-law recovered first.

She slapped her thigh and wailed at the top of her lungs.

"What did I ever do to deserve this! My son's barely dead and now my daughter-in-law's lost her mind!"

"Running around all day with some AI-faked photo claiming my son isn't dead, and the second anyone tries to talk sense into her, she flies off and starts hitting people."

"You all should get out of here, before she takes a swing at you."

Every face in the ward changed.

My mother-in-law seized the moment and shot my father-in-law a look.

But I snatched the phone right out of his hand.

And held up for everyone to see the eight words he'd just sent: "Situation's changed. Move the plan up."

"I'm not mentally ill, and my husband Sebastian isn't dead."

"This is all a trap their whole family set, so they can swallow up my assets and let them and his mistress live it up!"

The people in the ward saw the words on the phone.

The way they looked at my in-laws changed completely.

My father-in-law panicked too, and scrambled to cover.

"What I meant was, my daughter-in-law's having an episode, so the doctor should hurry and come take her away."

"Otherwise, once her madness really kicks in, there's no telling how many crazy things she'll do!"

They even came over and grabbed at me, trying to drag me off to see a doctor.

We were still locked in the struggle when my son walked in.

He shoved me hard to the floor, shielding my in-laws as he spoke.

"Mom! If you want to hit someone, hit me. Grandma and Grandpa are old, they can't take you tormenting them like this!"

"I already don't have a dad. Do you want me to lose my grandparents too?"

Nothing pulls at sympathy like a child's tender little voice.

And with the rows of injuries showing under his deliberately rolled-up sleeve, the whole room turned on me in a heartbeat.

Someone reached out and shoved me.

"Are you even human? Beating a child like this."

"Even if you can't accept losing your husband, you don't get to take it out on a kid."

"You've tormented two elderly people into the hospital. Why can't you just accept treatment and get better?"

I still wanted to argue, but the psychiatric hospital doctor my son had called was already coming into the ward.

Just as they had hold of me, about to force me into the car, the police arrived.

"Who called this in?"

My son stepped forward first, raising his hand.

"I did."

"Officer, my mom's had a breakdown, she's lost her mind."

"She's abused me for a long time, sent me off to boarding school, and now she's beaten my grandparents into the hospital too."

"Our family had no other choice. That's why we decided to have her committed to a psychiatric hospital."

"This is the evidence of her domestic abuse against me, along with the certification from the psychiatric hospital."

My son handed the evidence over to the police.

The officer took it, and his brow furrowed deeper and deeper.

Just as he raised his hand to have the psychiatric hospital doctor take me away, I pulled out another set of evidence and held it out.

"Wait. The one who's really sick isn't me. It's my son and my in-laws!"