Requiem of The Godfather: Price of a Memory

Ch 13. The Lost Memory

The world in Eduardo’s eyes felt like an old television broadcast that had lost its signal. Everything appeared gray, flickering, and filled with a deafening hiss of static. He could feel violent jolts, his back slamming against the stiff car seat, and the sharp smell of gasoline mixed with sweat stinging his nose.

“Boss! Hey, Boss Eduardo! Wake up, damn it! Don’t die in my car. I just cleaned the seats with my spit this morning!”

Gord’s voice sounded very far away, as if it were coming from underwater. Eduardo blinked his eyes, which felt glued shut by thick fluid. He touched his own face. Wet. Cold. When he looked at his palm under the dim glow of the streetlight, the color was not red.

It was black.

Pitch black, like bitter squid ink that smelled of rotten copper.

“Hah... hah...”

Eduardo jolted upright, his body shooting up so fast that his head slammed into the roof of the battered sedan.

THUD!

“Whoa, easy, Boss! You just passed out for ten minutes after we ditched the shop. I thought you’d actually crossed over to the other side!” Gord shouted as he jerked the steering wheel left, avoiding a sudden road construction barrier in front of them.

Eduardo clutched his throbbing head. The pain was no longer like needles stabbing into him. It felt like a power drill boring mercilessly through his skull. He tried to focus.

He remembered the shop.

He remembered the safe.

He remembered the big bag of money on the back seat.

But when he tried to dig deeper, something was missing.

“Gord... stop,” Eduardo whispered hoarsely.

“Huh? Stop? The cops are still behind us, Boss! I saw their tires blow out when they ran over a bunch of spikes that fell off a truck. My luck is insane. But they’ll circle back any minute!”

“I SAID STOP, YOU BASTARD!”

Eduardo roared, his hand gripping the dashboard so hard that the hard plastic cracked apart.

Gord flinched and slammed the brakes with all his strength. The tires shrieked across the asphalt, leaving long black streaks on the empty roadside before the car finally screeched to a halt beneath a dark overpass.

Eduardo threw the door open and stumbled out, collapsing onto the rain-soaked pavement. He crawled toward one of the bridge pillars and vomited violently.

Black liquid poured from his mouth, splattering across the cold asphalt.

[Warning: Memory Extraction Complete.]

[Compensation “Bullet Time” (LV.1) Acquired: Concept of Mother’s Face.]

[Mental Status: 45%. Approaching Madness Threshold.]

“No... no way,” Eduardo muttered, his voice trembling.

He squeezed his eyes shut. He tried to summon the image of the woman who had always appeared in his childhood dreams.

The woman who sang lullabies when he was afraid.

The woman whose warm hands gently stroked his head.

He remembered she wore a floral house dress. He remembered she smelled like baby powder and garlic.

But her face...

Every time Eduardo tried to form her nose, her eyes, her lips, the image melted into blur. Like an old photograph burning away in flames, leaving behind a hollow black void.

He knew he had a mother.

But he no longer knew what the woman who gave birth to him looked like.

“DAMN IT! YOU CRAZY OLD BASTARD!”

Eduardo slammed his fist into the concrete pillar with all his strength.

BANG!

The concrete cracked, dust scattering everywhere. Eduardo did not feel any pain in his hand. The only pain he felt was the unbearable ache tearing through his soul.

“Boss... what the hell is wrong with you? Did the ghost from that shop possess you or something?” Gord approached cautiously, holding a bottle of mineral water he found under the seat. “Here. Drink this first. Your face looks like a corpse that refused to stay buried.”

Eduardo snatched the bottle, drained it in seconds, then splashed the remaining water onto his face. He stared at Gord with watery eyes, a sight that sharply contrasted with the bloodthirsty aura he had shown in the shop earlier.

“Gord... do you remember your mom’s face?” Eduardo asked, his voice trembling.

Gord scratched his head.

“My mom? I got dumped in front of an orphanage in a cardboard noodle box, Boss. I don’t have a mom. The only face I remember is the head nun who used to beat me senseless whenever I stole laundry.”

Eduardo let out a short laugh, filled with despair.

“You’re lucky, Gord. You’ve got nothing to lose. Me... I just sold my mother’s face for dirty money back there.”

Gord fell silent.

He might have been crazy, he might have been a scumbag blessed with ridiculous luck, but he knew when someone had reached the lowest point in their life.

He leaned against the hood of the car and watched Eduardo sitting weakly on the asphalt.

“The world’s a bastard, Boss,” Gord said quietly, without his usual joking tone. “Sometimes you gotta burn your memories just to buy enough gas to keep moving forward. If you keep looking back, you’ll get hit by the truck coming from the front.”

Eduardo wiped his eyes roughly and stood up. His legs felt like jelly, but his gaze sharpened again. Cold. Calculating.

The system was taking over once more, suppressing his grief for the sake of survival.

“Let’s go,” Eduardo said. “We need to get back to the motel. Emily is waiting.”

“Got it, Boss. But seriously, that black blood thing... you should see a doctor or a shaman or something. It smells like a clogged sewer,” Gord muttered as he climbed back into the driver’s seat.

The ride back to the motel felt much longer for Eduardo.

He sat silently in the passenger seat, hugging the bag of hundreds of millions of rupiah as if it were his mother’s corpse.

He got what he needed.

He got the power to take revenge on Claude.

He secured financial safety for his family.

But every bill inside that bag felt heavy.

Very heavy.

After a long and suffocatingly silent drive, they finally arrived at The Last Rest motel just as the sun began creeping over the eastern horizon.

Eduardo told Gord to stay in the car.

“Guard the money. If anyone tries to touch it, you know what to do,” Eduardo ordered coldly.

“No problem, Boss. My luck will make sure anyone who touches that bag gets struck by lightning. Or at least run over by a meatball cart,” Gord said with a thumbs-up.

Eduardo stepped into the motel room.

It was eerily quiet.

He saw Emily sitting at the edge of the bed, staring at the door with swollen eyes. Chloe was still asleep in her arms.

When Emily saw Eduardo walk in, she immediately stood up. She wanted to run and hug him, but she froze the moment she saw his condition.

His clothes were torn. His face was pale. Dried traces of black liquid stained beneath his nose.

“Edu... where were you?” Emily whispered nervously.

Eduardo did not answer.

He placed the large bag on the shaky wooden table and opened it, revealing the massive stacks of cash inside.

Emily gasped and covered her mouth.

“Money... where did you get this much money, Edu? Did you rob someone?”

“This is our money, Em. Money for us to run. For Chloe’s school. For a peaceful life,” Eduardo said flatly, as if he had just bought groceries.

Emily approached the table carefully and touched the money with trembling fingers.

Relief washed over her, but so did deep fear.

“Eduardo, look at me. What did you have to pay for this? Why does your face... why do your eyes look so empty?”

Eduardo looked at Emily.

He wanted to hug her. He wanted to cry on her shoulder and tell her he missed his mother’s face.

But the moment he tried to reach for that feeling, the system rang sharply in his mind.

[Status: Humanity Threshold Declining.]

[Recommendation: Maintain Emotional Distance for Operational Efficiency.]

Eduardo took a deep breath.

He ignored Emily’s question completely.

“Eat something. Take Chloe out for a good meal today. I need to rest.”

“Edu, wait!” Emily grabbed his arm. “I had a dream earlier... I dreamed about your mother. I remember you telling me about her chicken soup that tasted amazing. You... you still remember the recipe, right? We could cook it later when everything is safe.”

Eduardo froze.

The question sliced through his fresh wound like a knife.

Chicken soup.

Mother.

Recipe.

He tried to remember his mother’s kitchen. He remembered steam rising from the pot. He remembered the rich taste of the broth.

But when he tried to remember his mother tasting the soup...

There was only fog.

Cold, silent gray fog.

“I... I don’t remember,” Eduardo said stiffly, his voice cracking.

“How can you not remember? It was your favorite meal, Edu! You said it was the only thing that made you feel like you had a home!” Emily stared at him in disbelief.

Eduardo yanked his arm away.

“I said I forgot, Emily! Forgot! Stop asking about the past! The past is trash! What matters now is that we have money!”

Eduardo walked to the corner of the room and sat on the floor, leaning his head against the stained wall.

He stared at the moldy ceiling.

Deep inside, he knew he had traded away his most precious treasure for this pile of paper.

Emily stood frozen in the middle of the room.

She looked at the bag of money, then at her husband who now looked like a hollow shell rotting from the inside.

“This money... it smells like death, Eduardo,” Emily whispered.

Eduardo did not respond.

He closed his eyes, trying to find his mother’s face in the darkness.

But all he heard was the distant laughter of Grandpa Antonio echoing through his mind.

“Ghosts don’t have mothers, you miserable grandson,” the voice whispered.

“Ghosts only have revenge.”

As the sun fully rose and filled the motel room with pale morning light, Eduardo realized he had not only lost his identity as a living man.

He was also beginning to lose his roots as a human being.

He cried in silence, without tears, mourning a face he would never be able to see again.

Not even in his dreams.