My Adopted Family

Evadne, Ryker's Mother Point of View.

After Ryker left, the room felt particularly spacious and empty.
It felt like the warmth I was feeling just a moment ago was an illusion.

"Ryker… … ."

Unable to overcome the loneliness that tightens my heart, I call out his name.

But no answer came back.

I must have forced Rye to leave, so why do I feel so much regret?

I swore several times to stop doing this, but I ended up doing it again because I was driven by desire.

While I was face to face with Rye, I felt happy, as if I was dreaming.

But when it was all over, the feeling of guilt washed over me like a tide.

"I'm sorry, Rye…"

I am a woman who does not deserve to be called a mother.

I shed tears endlessly as I buried my face in the clothes that Rye had left behind.

* * *

The first time I saw Rye was on TV news.

A child abused by his biological parents. He was covered in mosaics, and only his silhouette was visible on the screen.

At first, my only feelings were anger toward the parents who had abused their son and sympathy for the abused child.

But that feeling didn't go away even after a week, and it didn't go away even after a month.

As if someone had forced it into my head, the news came to mind no matter where I did or what I did.

Eventually, when it started to interfere with my daily life, I decided to investigate the child in more detail.

Surprisingly, the child was nearby. I was actually able to meet him at a child protection shelter close to my home.

And the moment I saw Rye in person for the first time, I burst into tears.

Seeing Rye just sitting quietly on the bed and looking out the window, I felt a pity that cannot be put into words. It was not just a simple emotional shake but a feeling that shook my soul.

And I immediately started looking for a way to adopt that child.

Of course, my husband was against adoption. My husband was a film director 14 years older than me, and we had two daughters at the time. There was certainly truth to my husband's statement that he could not afford to bring in and raise someone else's child.

However, I pushed ahead with the adoption, and my husband, who could not overcome my stubbornness, had no choice but to accept the adoption.

And subsequent adoption will have a decisive impact on our couple's divorce.

Rye, who suffered severe heartache, was always unstable and afraid of everything in the world. In order to take care of Rye, I had to devote all my time to him.

Fortunately, the two daughters understood me, but the husband did not. Our relationship, which had been bad before, completely disappeared, and considering Rye's mental state, the number of times our family went out together decreased.

My husband couldn't bear the situation in the family where everything revolved around Rye, and he became increasingly irritable. The object of his anger was always Rye.

"You bastard, the house has been a mess since you came!"

My husband gets drunk and yells at Rye. 

Rye, traumatized by being assaulted by his biological father, was curled up in a corner, shivering.

I fought with my husband to protect the Rye, and in the process, I was hit in the face by him.

When Rye, my eldest daughter, saw this, I barely stopped her from taking a bat and going on a rampage to kill her father, and the youngest daughter, Lye, who used to follow her father well, began to completely ignore her father from this point on.

Ultimately, because of this, my husband became isolated from home. In an instant, he went from being the head of his family to being treated as an outsider.

And perhaps due to the influence of that incident, my husband started having an affair. The scandal between my husband, a film director, and a young actress was good fodder for the media. Newspapers and news stories talked about my husband's infidelity every day.

In some ways, that was lucky for me. Thanks to this, we were able to divorce under favorable conditions in all aspects, including custody and property division.

My husband seemed to have regrets about his family until the end, but neither I nor my daughters had any regrets about my husband. After receiving a lot of alimony, we divorced.

It's not that we don't appreciate him or anything. At the start, there was love, but then it decreased, and when Rye got into our house, he became more irritable and yelled at everything. It was still okay, but the moment he got physical, that was the point where we broke up.

All of this was still fixed up if he tried to understand me and wouldn't interfere in my way of helping Rye, but he went on and had an affair.