A reflective tale set in the town of Evershade, this story follows Yun as he grapples with suppressed childhood trauma in therapy. Despite a privileged upbringing, his emotionally immature family left him scarred in ways he never understood until adulthood. The tale explores introspection, unexpected romance, and an inevitable tragedy.
How did it begin?
I had always wondered if life had a way of balancing things out. If you had plenty in one hand, did it always mean the other was lacking? On days when the rain kissed the cobblestones of Evershade, I would ask myself: why did I feel so... incomplete?
Evershade, my hometown, was a jewel nestled between two rolling hills. Picture a place where the air always carried a faint trace of lavender, and the streets wound like serpents, lined with homes so quaint they seemed to have leapt out of a painting. The town’s pride was its orchard—a vast expanse of apple, pear, and plum trees that bloomed with such ferocity in spring that the sight alone could make poets weep. But to me, those trees always held a darker shade. They whispered secrets only a child with suppressed wounds could hear.
My family—oh, they were something. My mother, Helena, was a vision of elegance, her auburn hair swept up into a chignon so precise it could rival the symmetry of a Grecian column. Father, the ever-dignified Charles, was a man of few words and even fewer hugs. Our home was a grand house perched at the edge of the orchard, its windows forever aglow with warm light. If you squinted, it looked like happiness.
But inside? Inside, it felt like walking on eggshells.
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What was wrong with perfection?
“You have everything a child could need,” my mother would say, her voice sharper than her pearl earrings. “A roof, food, education. What more could you possibly want?”
I was eight when I realised I was different from my friends. Not because I wore polished leather boots or attended fencing lessons. No, it was the way they could talk to their parents. The laughter. The softness. At home, I learned to gauge the temperature of a room before I spoke, to cater to their moods before my own.
“Yun,” my father would say in his baritone voice, “you will be a great man if you learn to suppress emotion. Logic, son. Logic is power.”
I wanted power. But at what cost?
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When did therapy begin?
Fast forward to adulthood, and there I was, sitting on a plush velvet couch in Dr Rosalind’s office. The room smelled of chamomile and old books, with sunlight pouring through heavy curtains. I had started therapy at my fiancée Clara’s insistence.
“Yun,” Clara had said one evening as we dined by candlelight, a dish of Pasta between us, “you are carrying something heavy, and it’s not your fault. Let someone help you unpack it.”
Dr Rosalind was kind, her eyes crinkling at the corners as she spoke. But the first time I mentioned my family, I broke down.
“I can’t,” I had said, tears streaming. “I had a good life. I shouldn’t feel this way.”
“Yun,” she replied, her voice like honey on a cold day, “you were a child. A good life is more than material things. It’s feeling seen, heard, and safe. Did you have that?”
No. No, I didn’t.
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How did love change things?
Clara and I met in the town’s library. She was everything I wasn’t—freckled, chaotic, and fiercely unapologetic. While I arranged my books by genre and author, Clara’s shelves were a beautiful mess of paperbacks and half-empty wine glasses.
One summer evening, as the orchard’s trees shimmered in golden light, she pulled me under a plum tree and kissed me.
“You feel too much, Yun,” she said, brushing a strand of hair from my face. “It’s beautiful. Stop hiding it.”
Her words felt like sunlight breaking through a storm. With Clara, I learned to laugh without restraint, to cry without shame. But even she couldn’t mend what was broken.
One summer evening, as the orchard’s trees shimmered in golden light, she pulled me under a plum tree and kissed me.
“You feel too much, Yun,” she said, brushing a strand of hair from my face. “It is beautiful. Stop hiding it.”
Her words felt like sunlight breaking through a storm. With Clara, I learned to laugh without restraint, to cry without shame. We would sit by the orchard at twilight, sipping spiced wine and sharing the secrets of our pasts. Her laughter rang like bells, filling the silences I had carried for so long.
One evening, as we lay on a blanket under the apple trees, she traced the lines of my palm with her fingers.
“Yun,” she whispered, “if we’re ever apart, promise me you’ll keep feeling. Even when it hurts.”
I promised. But promises, I’d learn, are fragile things.
What did the orchard reveal?
One fateful autumn day, I ventured into the orchard alone. The air was crisp, filled with the earthy scent of fallen leaves. I stopped by an old pear tree, its bark gnarled and scarred.
“Yun,” a voice called out.
It was my mother. She stood there, her face etched with years of unspoken regret. In her hands was a basket of apples.
“I tried,” she said softly. “I tried to be what you needed. But I didn’t know how.”
For the first time, I saw her not as a mother but as a flawed human being. And though it hurt, it gave me a sliver of peace.
Why did tragedy strike?
Life has a cruel sense of irony. Weeks after that conversation, Clara—my Clara—was taken from me in a car accident. The pain was a storm that ripped through my soul. For days, I wandered the orchard, her laughter echoing in the wind.
The night before her funeral, I found a note she had slipped into my book. It read:
“Yun, love isn’t about never breaking. It’s about piecing yourself together, again and again, with the memories of those you hold dear. Keep feeling.”
Dr Rosalind’s words came back to me. “Grief is love persevering,” she had said. And in that grief, I found clarity.
How did I face the future?
The days following Clara’s death were a blur of grief and memories. I returned to therapy with a new determination to honour her advice. “Keep feeling,” she had written, and I clung to those words like a lifeline.
One cold morning, I revisited the orchard where we had spent so many joyous days. The trees stood bare, their skeletal branches reaching skyward as if in mourning. I carried a blanket and Clara’s favourite book—an old, leather-bound copy of Wuthering Heights.
Sitting under the plum tree, I began reading aloud. “Whatever our souls are made of, hers and mine are the same.” My voice cracked as I spoke the words, but the weight of sorrow felt lighter somehow. I imagined Clara laughing at my dramatic reading, the sound of her voice weaving through the wind.
My mother joined me later that day. She placed a hand on my shoulder, an unexpected gesture that carried more weight than words ever could. “She would want you to find joy again,” she said softly.
“I will,” I replied, though my heart doubted it. Yet, in her touch, I sensed an unspoken promise—that we would both try, in our own imperfect ways.
The final scene of this story is of Yun standing under the orchard’s plum tree, holding Clara’s favourite book. He whispers, “I’ll carry you always,” as the sun dips below the hills, painting the sky in hues of sorrow and hope.
I doubt that would happen. Do you?
Author: Tushar Mangl—Healer and Author—writes on personal finance, vastu, mental health, food, leisure, and a greener, better society.
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