He had never wanted it to happen this way.
For years he had told everyone that his father was dead. It was easier. Safer. No one asked questions, no one looked at him with pity or suspicion. At school he was “the quiet boy,” the one who didn’t talk much, who kept his head down.
The truth was different.
His father had returned from the war… but he had never truly come back.
When he left, the boy was ten years old. His father had promised he would return soon. That he would walk him to school. That he would protect him from everything. Then came the years of silence, the nights of fear, the muffled screams behind closed doors.
That day, in the school courtyard, everything collapsed.
A man in a military uniform walked through the gate. His steps rigid. His gaze cold. The teachers froze. The students turned around. No one understood what was happening.
He did.
His legs gave way.
He dropped to his knees in front of everyone, clutching his face in his hands, unable to breathe. His classmates formed a circle around him, confused, motionless. His backpack fell to the ground, notebooks scattering across the asphalt.
The man stopped in front of him.
He didn’t pull him up.
He didn’t say his name.
He only said:
“Get up. Don’t make a scene.”
Those words struck him harder than any of the screams from the past.
In that moment he understood something he had always tried to avoid: it wasn’t the war that had changed his father. He had always been this way. And he had never been safe.
That day he didn’t cry because his father had returned.
He cried because he realized his father would never become the man he had waited for all those years.
Sometimes, the return you fear the most…
is the one that confirms all your fears.