His Second Life

by Tsutsuhyakari

Shan Fu had died many, many years ago. Xu Shu happened to be born on that day. He threw away everything from his past and tries to live his life anew. But his demons from his past route deeper and the angels in his future fly farther away than death. A certain angel that appears will come and go a little too quickly for him.

1. Prologue: The Death of Shan Fu

"Shan Fu!"

My mother had called out to me, causing me to rise up from playing with my sword. She waved to me from our house porch and I ran over, happily, to her. She had an unwavering smile, and even more so will. She raised me on her own, financially, physically, and emotionally. She struggles due to the work she has to do and the markets aren't easy to sell goods, specially with so many successful shops around, but she tries her best and never stops smiling.

'That's my mother' I found myself thinking that so many times, throughout the years.

Throughout everything my mother stood taller and stronger than anything, As I grew, the more she worked and the more I tried to support her. Even when I was asked to help take revenge on someone. I was offered so much money for a simple job that I had to try.

'For my mother.' I thought, 'For my mother!'

Back then, I didn't realize what it had meant to take a life. The consequences, the guilt, the misery, the pain, all that came with crime was blinded by my devotion to my mother. But the day I was caught and carried on a carriage. The day the officers tried to have me identified, I saw my mother again.

She was old and gray, wrinkles from past smiles staining her pale face. But for the first time, on that day, I saw her weep. My mother wept as she saw me be arrested and paraded around for identification. She wept when she found out that I had killed a man, for money. She wept not for herself, not even for my arresting, but for my actions. My blindness and willingness to do anything caused me to take a man's life, a man I didn't even know.

When I was finally freed by my friends, I went back to my mother and asked why she didn't identify me. When I asked, she looked at me with eyes of pain and said-

"I couldn't identify you, for you were not the son I once had known. And now you will never be."

My mother still loved me, I know this. But my mother couldn't accept what I had done. I couldn't accept what I had done. That was the last time I saw my mother, the very next morning I left her, So she wouldn't have to have suffered living with a man she didn't know.

With a murderer she didn't know.