A young soldier was set to return home after his stay in Vietnam during the war. The night before he was going to go home, he called his parents.
“I’ll be coming home tomorrow,” he started nervously, “but I have a
friend who has nowhere to go. Is it okay if I bring him home with me?”
The parents were so thrilled with the news that their son would be coming home that they immediately agreed to house the guest.
“There’s something you should know about him…” he continued, listening
to his parents’ tears of joy. “He stepped on a land mine and lost his
arms and legs… But I really want to bring him home with me.”
With that, the parents went silent for a moment.
“A few days is fine, but we can’t handle taking care of a cripple,” they
replied. “We can help your friend find a place to live while he’s with
us, but we have our own lives. We can’t be bound to care for him
forever.”
Upon hearing this, the soldier silently hung up on his parents.
The next day, they received a phone call from the police. The young soldier had fallen off of a building and
died. When the parents saw their son’s body, they broke down crying.
•••
A.N. My apologies for the sensitive topic about suicide. I did want to put a trigger warning in the beginning, but that would equal giving away the major hint, so I set that idea aside. Please just take out the substantial moral lesson and stop debating about the rest. x
So, there’s that. I wonder if you guys have the subtle closure figured out or not. It might’ve left you hanging, like typical horror stories from Okaruto. I hope you didn’t cheat by seeing its ‘solution’ on the OP. Hehe In spite of it, a large portion of my friends whom I’ve told this story to can guess it correctly, perfectly on point. That means it is not that hard to solve, is it?
In a nutshell, the son had supposedly lied about that one handicapped friend during the phone call with his parents. The motive? Could be to test the waters with them, since in the hurtful truth, it was just a story he made up. Or that background story could be true, but the buddy whom he talked about was, simply nonexistent.
’Cause the soldier who had lost his limbs young at the war zone turned out to be no one but him. I reckon we know which words from his parents that might need to be highlighted. "We can’t handle taking care of a cripple," these exact words proved that words really can kill like a knife without making one bleed. They torn the son apart and lead him to taking is own life.
When my parents said no (for similar reasons to his parents’ above) to my pleas of adopting a baby kitten, I welled up and threw tantrum. I don’t wanna imagine knowing my own parents actually want to disown me. Knowing that they think of me as a burden they “can’t be bound to care for forever.”
Ah, my eyes are profusely sweating. :( Am I reading Okaruto, or peeling off a bowl of onions???
So, there’s that. I wonder if you guys have the subtle closure figured out or not. It might’ve left you hanging, like typical horror stories from Okaruto. I hope you didn’t cheat by seeing its ‘solution’ on the OP. Hehe In spite of it, a large portion of my friends whom I’ve told this story to can guess it correctly, perfectly on point. That means it is not that hard to solve, is it?
In a nutshell, the son had supposedly lied about that one handicapped friend during the phone call with his parents. The motive? Could be to test the waters with them, since in the hurtful truth, it was just a story he made up. Or that background story could be true, but the buddy whom he talked about was, simply nonexistent.
’Cause the soldier who had lost his limbs young at the war zone turned out to be no one but him. I reckon we know which words from his parents that might need to be highlighted. "We can’t handle taking care of a cripple," these exact words proved that words really can kill like a knife without making one bleed. They torn the son apart and lead him to taking is own life.
When my parents said no (for similar reasons to his parents’ above) to my pleas of adopting a baby kitten, I welled up and threw tantrum. I don’t wanna imagine knowing my own parents actually want to disown me. Knowing that they think of me as a burden they “can’t be bound to care for forever.”
Ah, my eyes are profusely sweating. :( Am I reading Okaruto, or peeling off a bowl of onions???
