A Path to Nowhere

Chapter One

JUNG

The weather's a bit nicer today. I thought to myself, looking out into the roads from the balcony of the small-town house I now lived with my parents in. I noticed that this place was a little cooler temperature-wise than back home. I haven't really explored Edinburgh. I haven't really been anywhere besides the airport, a restaurant, and this house since we arrived in Scotland—

"Jung, are you listening?"

I squinted, narrowing my eyes before looking over to my side. The live-in maid, an older noona in her fifties, was staring down at me. She looked worried. Weird. She'd only known me for two weeks, but the way she looked at me and frequently jolted me back into reality made me know she cared about me in her own little way. Or maybe she didn't, and my parents had filled her in on the fact that I was depressed with their decision to move here and made her keep an eye on me.

Fair, I didn't hate her for that if that was the case. I did have a habit of slipping away. I did it a few times—no, more than that. It was my coping mechanism. Things got so overwhelming that my first instinct was to pick up a bag, grab a credit card and disappear for a few days.

So, it wasn't odd that I was being kept captive in this house since we got here.

"Jung, are you listening to me?" my noona asked me again, this time pulling out a seat so that she could sit down too. She was frowning now—Witt a raised brow and pursed lips.

"S-sorry," I got out. The English felt heavy on my tongue. I only spoke enough to pass back in high school, and I read English more than I spoke it back at my college in Seoul. "I was thinking about something else. What were you saying?" I asked, remembering that she had been telling me something before I had spaced out the first time.

"Your mother wants you to look into the colleges and universities here." My noona paused, reaching out to touch my hand. "You've been here for a while, and she thinks it's best if you get enrolled as soon as possible. She said that transferring credits can be hard, or some have a time limit, and you should work on that as soon as possible."

"Oh, okay," the words left my lips before I could finish processing what she was telling me. "Something about enrolling in a new school?"

I frowned a little before my eyes flew wide open and I let out a little gasp. I was supposed to continue my theatre and costuming degree somehow, but I hadn't been given the specifics, and I hadn't even had a chance to talk to my previous performance arts college about dropping out and transferring grades. I bit my bottom lip, squinting my eyes as I thought about what a chore it would be to start applying to schools here. Why couldn't my parents do it? They brought me here. I didn't ask. I begged to stay back home. I actually enjoyed school—which was a first because I had almost flunked out of high school and needed to go to cram school three days of the week to keep up with schoolwork, but there was just something about costuming that had spoken to me, and I had managed to have good grades in college. I made friends—not many of them, but they existed. I liked studying, and I had been looking forward to graduating and moving away from my parents as far as possible.

And then they did... this.

They ripped me out of my happy place in my third year and hurled me over with them to Europe like an afterthought in their packing. I had known my father had been given a new position and needed to move, but I hadn't known my mum would be tagging along or that she had expected me to follow especially after everything—after all that had come out and was still coming out...

I blinked, clenching my jaw as I forced myself not to think about it. I licked inside my mouth when my back teeth started to hurt from the force. I blinked a few more times, hoping my noona hadn't caught on to my lack of focus and odd behavior.