Anyone But Him | JJK ✔️ (Completed)

Chapter 30

My mother was unusually quiet, which could be understood after her cry fest last night. I hadn't expected her to recover that quickly, not after knowing her undying feelings for my father.

What pained me to see the most was how overwhelmed and unfocused she'd become. She didn't seem to be the strong-hearted mother whom I looked to when I needed support and advice, but someone that needed support and advice herself. I was the one who needed to encourage her to keep going now.

My mother was just drying her hair in the bathroom with a hair dryer, the whirring of it greeting me when I stepped into the suite. She was wearing a white hotel bathrobe with the jjimjilbang logo on the corner, which must have been freezing for her if it wasn't for the AC keeping the room warm and snug.

She smiled tiredly, saying, "I've bought Panda Express for you. I know the food's not that delicious, but we have to make do, now that..." She didn't need to finish the sentence for me to know what she was talking about.

We didn't have my father to give us financial aid anymore. We were on our own, with some of the money he generously gifted us as a parting gift, but other than that, we had nothing more. I doubted our relatives would take us in unless they were on my mother's bloodline.

Even so, I was highly uncertain about their response. They were already disapproving of my parent's marriage. What would be their reaction if their haggard sister and her daughter turned up on their doorstep in a mess, begging for a place to stay? If they were sympathetic enough, they'd probably hurry us in, but if they were still cold to my mother because of her marriage... I don't know what they might do.

And so what if they did invite us in? They wouldn't possibly allow us to stay there for months until my mother could find a suitable apartment for rent online. It would be worse if they turned us down and said they didn't have a spare room or something.

Also, we surely couldn't stay at the jjimjilbang forever. This place wasn't a permanent accommodation for homeless or divorced spouses, neither was it for their daughters. The day that we'd have to leave this safe sanctuary would come, and I didn't know when.

It had been two days since the drama in our house. I wasn't sure if my mother was looking for apartments for rent or not, but I hoped so. It was hard, if not impossible, to be able to find apartments for rent in a shocking two days.

I pulled off my school shoes without even undoing the Velcro straps and jumped into the hotel disposable slippers. The AC was whirring. The table attached to the wall below the TV was quite cluttered yesterday, but I guess my mother must have taken the time to clear off some of the junk.

We didn't unpack everything, just our daily essentials, because repacking them would be a real hassle. Who know when some hotel staff would barge right into our room and demand us to leave because we'd been staying for a very long time?

Plastic boxes and containers of takeaway were laid on the table, with two chairs for the two of us. I didn't know how hungry I was until I'd seen the food.

My mother joined me a few minutes after I'd dug in. She'd wrapped her hair into a towel, which made her look like she'd just come out from the beauty salon. I used to joke about it a lot when my friends came over (back in Gwangju), and coincidentally, my mother had just finished her shower. Oh, don't mind her, I know she looks like she'd just come back from the salon or spa or something, I'd say matter-of-factly, and my friends would all giggle. Of course, my mother was not the least flattered, but she kept quiet and scowled at me before tending to my friends.

I wished my life right now could be as carefree and ordinary as my childhood, but sadly, being a daughter to the ex-wife of the CEO of one of the most successful electronic companies in South Korea — who also had the extremely irritating habit of being negligent and cold —, ordinary didn't seem to be in my life dictionary.