Before Her Very Eyes

Chapter 6

4 years ago...

"Mom, who was that?" Arin saw the face of the man in her mother's bed, and it was definitely not her stepfather. Her stepfather had broad shoulders and always donned the most formal attire, but this man was thinner and wore wrinkled t-shirt and sweatpants. Her stepfather lacked confidence and always looked weak around her mom, but this man stood with his chin in the air, proud and stout.

"You can't tell anyone, Arin? Do you hear me?" her mother said.

"What you're doing is wrong," Arin told her.

"I know, honey. I know."

-

As soon as the old tenant left, she rushed down the stairs to the eighth floor with her cleaning supplies. But when she unlocked the door to the apartment, she was surprised at what she found.

Although she expected to see trash on the floor and alcohol stains at every corner, she actually found that the apartment was already mostly clean. The walls were already repainted, and the floors had already been wiped. Perhaps the drunkard tenant had the decency to clean up after himself before he left after all.

She did not let the relief slow her down though. Immediately, she began the cleaning process.

Arin was the kind of person that, when she is assigned a task, she has to follow through it perfectly. When she set it upon herself to become an idol, she left no stone unturned in achieving her dreams and worked on every aspect of herself. Now that her idol dreams were over, cleaning became her thing, and it was no exception to her commitment to perfection. Although she had little cleaning experience when she first started working, she was quick to learn the ins and outs of the craft. She mastered all of the techniques and knew all the right equipment and brands to use. And so every single task that Jeonghan ever assigned her, she would complete perfectly with no complaint from him whatsoever.

She was proud of that. Jeonghan had always struck her like someone who wanted to find faults in her work, but never did she give him reason to criticize. If he wanted to criticize, he would always just make fun of how easily her phone distracted her when she worked. There was nothing else he could pick on.

And so even now as she was tasked with cleaning this apartment, she went above and beyond what he had probably expected. From clearing the drains to scrubbing the carpets to wiping every crevice in the wall—she was determined to make sure that this task was carried out to perfection. Of course, she took a minute or two every once in a while to check Chilli updates, but everyone needed a break.

"Hey look, Mingyu's going to a fashion show!" Arin beamed excitedly to ~, who had just arrived to help her clean.

"Mingyu's the tall attractive one, right?" ~ asked as she wiped the windows.

"Yeah! The one you said was your favorite."

"That's great, Ar. Good for him," ~ said.

If there was one thing that Arin didn't like about ~, it was that she was so indifferent about Chilli.

Arin tried to convert her into a fan, but it just did not seem like ~'s type of thing, which made Arin feel quite lonely in her fangirling. ~ tried to pretend to be interested for Arin's sake, but Arin saw right through her and became self-conscious talking about them to her. It was sad that she had no one she could talk to face-to-face about Chilli, no one to share her enthusiasm and passion for them like Minghao used to.

When the short fangirling break was over, Arin delved right back into cleaning.

"You don't have to do all this, you know?" ~ said as she wiped the windows and watched Arin scrub the bottom of an upside-down table. "I'm sure your boss doesn't really give a damn if the bottom of the tables are spotless or not."