Hi, @Jayna.

@joeylim story is, as you put it, "devastating"; it is really touching. It made me remember what I felt the first time I read Naipaul's "The Maternal Instinct"; I felt a punch in the stomach when I read the famous line, “It good. It better that way,” which was Laura’s answer to the news: her oldest child, Lorna, had drowned with her baby. No doubt, it was terrible, but to Laura, it was better than Lorna’s going through a life of suffering because of the same mistakes she had made. Why @joeylim makes me remember this? Well, it is the ingenuousness conveyed in the oral text fragment: as a reader, you are face to face with the character in his entire candor. It is just so true.

Great contest. Perhaps my head can produce something for this round XD