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[N-no! Absolutely, absolutely not.]
Her gaze shifted toward Sienna, who was sitting at the center table. Sure enough, Sienna was glaring at Jiyu with a deeply scowled expression.
[She says she hates me. I asked her to go out with me, but I got shot down,] Hunter replied nonchalantly.
Silence fell over the entire table. Chloe’s jaw dropped, and she began to hiccup.
Shocked by Hunter's sudden revelation, Jiyu shouted without realizing it.
[Hunter! Are you crazy?]
Philip burst out laughing, wheezing. Hic, hic. Chloe’s hiccups followed along like the rhythmic accompaniment of castanets.
[You're joking, right?] Philip asked.
[I'm not,] Hunter answered indifferently, turning his head toward Jiyu. Then, he asked in a tone as if inquiring about the weather.
[Do you want to date me?]
[Why are you suddenly doing this!]
Horrified, Jiyu looked around with a flushed red face and scolded him in a hushed, urgent voice. Hunter shrugged his shoulders toward Philip.
[See? Shot down again. That's twice already.]
He chewed and swallowed a piece of chicken, then pointed his fork sequentially at the friends sitting around them.
[I think the reason she won't date me is because she hangs out with idiots like you guys.]
[Hunter, please stop...]
With a face dyed bright red, Jiyu desperately pleaded, tugging on Hunter's sleeve. He shifted only his eyes to look around and then slammed the table with a loud thud.
[What are you looking at? How rude. Do you think I can even swallow my food while you're all staring like that?]
Whether it was lunch or not, the children who had been watching blankly in a daze all turned their heads away at once.
Jiyu was speechless.
He had been eating just fine.
[Eat,] Hunter said in a dull tone, pointing to the sandwich Jiyu had placed on her tray. Fearing he might say something strange again, she quickly picked up the sandwich and took a large bite.
In her haste, a piece got stuck in her throat, and she began to choke. Chloe, having stopped hiccuping, quietly pushed a glass of water toward her.
After gulping down the water in one go, Jiyu shook her head as she watched Hunter's expressionless face as he dipped a piece of chicken breast from the tray and brought it to his mouth.
'What on earth is he thinking?'
It was only later that she realized that because of Hunter, she had spent the entire lunch hour forgetting her usual state—where she always swallowed her food with a bitter taste.
After that, Hunter began appearing in the Aster School cafeteria almost every day. And no matter where she was, he found her and sat beside her.
The friends he led along followed suit. No matter how much she denied it, they treated her as Hunter's girlfriend. Whenever they crossed paths, they acknowledged her and greeted her.
Just because he visited every day didn't mean a miracle happened and the bullying completely vanished. Sienna and the Popular Clique were still eager to tear her apart whenever they saw her. However, the frequency of the harassment was cut in half.
Jiyu began hanging out with Chloe again.
She had lost everything and been cast into hell, and though she had only regained Chloe, her school life shifted from hell to purgatory.
Before long, she started eating lunch with Chloe again at the two-person table they used to use. Hunter didn't go out of his way to approach her when she was with Chloe. Gradually, the frequency of his appearances at Aster School decreased.
A sense of relief and a sense of disappointment. Conflicting emotions arose.
Sweet and salty.
Hunter really was like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
✾ ✾ ✾
Ae-jeong put the house on the market.
Buying and selling a house involved a complex process that took three months at the shortest and six months at the longest. Even if there was a buyer, it took a long time to apply for and be approved for a mortgage.
Between waiting for mortgage approval, legal review of the contract, and inspections, it could be as early as June or as late as August before everything was finalized.
While waiting for the house to sell, the remaining cash was being drained in large chunks to pay the bank interest.
"If I had known it would be like this, I wouldn't have bought this house. I emptied everything—stocks, insurance, even the pension..."
Ae-jeong belatedly regretted overextending her cash to prepare the down payment. If the house went to auction because she couldn't pay the mortgage interest, there would be no way to pay off the credit card bills that were maxed out with loans for renovations, funeral expenses, and living costs.
Naturally, she expected to receive Alan's life insurance payout, but she couldn't.
As the company's management deteriorated, the CFO had unilaterally stopped paying the insurance premiums without the employees' knowledge. Since the three-month grace period had already passed, the insurance company notified her that they could not pay the benefit.
Though her face clearly showed her shock, Ae-jeong tried to remain composed in front of Jiyu.
"Don't worry. Once the house sells, everything will be resolved. I'll pay off the debts first. Jiyu, keep this in mind. You must never, ever go into debt! It's the fastest way to have your blood run dry and your life hit rock bottom."
Jiyu occasionally earned pocket money by working as Daisy's babysitter.
This was because Rosa, who had gone to Guatemala to visit family, announced her retirement, saying she had to look after her grandchildren. As the days Rosa came to work decreased, Lauren asked Ae-jeong if Jiyu could help out until a new nanny was found.
It seemed to be taking some time to find a new nanny because Daisy, who had been going through a lot of emotional hardship recently, was being difficult. The child relied heavily on Jiyu and liked it when she read books to her, just as Hunter used to.
Ae-jeong also looked for a job.
Since it was the only thing she knew, she looked into senior modeling, took new profile photos, and registered with modeling agencies, but there had been no significant contact yet.
Office work was impossible as she had no experience and her English was lacking. She looked for simple labor jobs, but even those were not easy to find for someone without experience.
The furniture in the house began to disappear one by one. One day the round marble dining table vanished, and the next day the sofa was gone.
Ae-jeong picked a day over the weekend and swept the luxury bags, watches, and clothes filling her closet into large suitcases and took them to a consignment shop.
When spring arrived, only the built-in closet and the mattress remained in the master bedroom that Ae-jeong and Alan had used. Only a fake masterpiece painting in a luxurious gold-leaf frame lonely guarded the empty living room.
The only thing that hadn't changed was Jiyu's room. Whenever Ae-jeong was suggested to sell the desk or bed, she shook her head without hesitation.
"Don't talk nonsense. Your things aren't worth much anyway. Just live like the daughter of a rich house until we move. You'll find out... what poverty is soon enough anyway."
In the refrigerator, a couple of bottles of soju in green bottles took the place of champagne and wine.
The night she sold her most cherished one-carat diamond earrings—the push gift she received from Alan after giving birth to Jiyu.
Around the time Jiyu went to bed, Ae-jeong took out a bottle of soju, sat in front of the kitchen island, and sobbed until dawn, thinking Jiyu was asleep.
"Oh, my wretched life... A wretch with no luck with parents, do I even have luck with a husband? Seong Ae-jeong's life is back at square one again. A filthy, smelly, beggar-like orphan, Seong Ae-jeong. What did I do so wrong to end up like this again...?"
Jiyu, who had recently developed insomnia, cried under her covers while listening to Ae-jeong's tearful lamentations.
'If only we hadn't bought this house, things wouldn't be this hard...'
Her heart broke with guilt, thinking that it was because of her that Alan and Ae-jeong had overextended themselves to buy the house.
It was even more shocking to learn about the past Ae-jeong had never revealed. Jiyu had only known that her grandparents passed away before she was born and that she had no remaining family in Korea.
And so, Jiyu watched as the only life she had ever known slowly lost its light.
The life she had lived until now, tender and shining brightly, slowly faded away, unable to resist even once while knowing the grip around her neck was tightening.
The unknown future was as terrifying and horrific as searching for a place to die inside a pitch-black cave where not a single sliver of light leaked in.
Soaking her pillow under the covers, she realized.
The period where it was okay to be young had come to an end a bit too early.
Because I don't want to, because I'm scared, because I'm shy.
The protective shield she had hidden behind using such luxurious excuses vanished along with Alan's death. Now, she had to do it even if she didn't want to, and she had to do it even if she couldn't.
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