Am not a native English speaker, and I don't read stories much. Mostly the reason why I am at HN is to seek for tech news and learn something. But your story made a record to stuck me at a single page for 15+ mins. I need to tell you that i do have minor problem with my eyes, thus can't keep up with a almost-static screen for 5+ mins. But this one made me rub my eyes every 30 seconds but keep reading on.

I can't tell what I felt in the ending paragraph, but I can be sure of this is the strongest outcome I felt, from an web page.

Congrats, again.