Exactly one year after I had signed that promissory note, my father called me into his room.
He was sitting at his desk, and his hands trembled slightly as he opened a drawer. From inside, he pulled out a sheet of paper, folded neatly in half. He placed it in front of me with great care.
“Read it,” he said softly.
I unfolded it, expecting perhaps another bill or another note of debt. But when I opened it, my breath caught in my throat.
It wasn’t a promissory note.
It wasn’t a thank-you letter.
It was a will.
In it, my father had written that the entire three-story house in the city center—as well as a 300-square-meter plot of land in the most commercial district of town—would belong to me.
I froze. My hands trembled.
When I looked up, my father was smiling at me with warmth.
“All my life,” he said quietly, “I only wanted to know who, in the hardest of times, would truly stand by me.”
My eyes burned with tears. I couldn’t find the words.
And then—I heard footsteps.
