Chapter One: Phone call from Home

The moment his mobile phone rang and he saw his sister’s name appear on the screen, he knew it was going to be a bad day. How he ended up with that expectation, he could only attribute it to years of experience: his elder sister only ever calls him at this time of the night when something urgent comes up. This ‘something’ would usually involve his Mother.

So with great reluctance, he picked up his phone and tried to sound as enthusiastic as possible when he answered hello, “Hey, jiejie*! Haven’t talked to you in a while, eh. What about mom now?” Well, he tried. He couldn’t help it if there was that noticeable edge in his voice. The very reason why he decided to move to another country was because of his Mother. He loved the woman dearly. Truly. But ever since his Father’s accident, the one that left his old man crippled for the rest of his life, his Mother had decided to meddle in everything regarding her kid’s affairs. And when he said everything, he meant it literally, not figuratively. It came to a point where it was so suffocating, he just wanted to up and leave. So he did.

“Kris, don’t be like this,” his sister replied wearily. He felt a smidgen of guilt upon hearing that. He did, after all, left his sisters to ‘The Meddling Monster’. Just a smidgen, though.

“Sorry,” he mumbled back. “Force of habit, you see.” His sisters did tell him their Mother has lightened up considerably the past year or so. Not that he would know.

“You need to come back home. Very, very soon.”

That caused Kris to suddenly sit up straight. This seemed serious. “Are you guys okay? Is it dad? What happened?” He barked out one question after another.

“I’m getting married!” His sister squealed over the phone and despite the warbly quality of communication via mobile phones, Kris could tell that his sister was very happy over this news and for that, he relaxed back on his white leather couch.

“That’s wonderful, sis! Who’s the lucky guy, huh?” He teased. Of course he knew who the groom would be. His sister had only ever dated one guy her entire life.

“Haha.” Was his sister’s sarcastic reply. “Like you don’t know I’ll be marrying Michael.”

Kris smirked and said, “Well, you could have been dating someone else behind his back for all I know…”

He could practically see his sister’s indignant face and glare when she replied back. “Yah! How can you even? Ugh. I hate you, you know. I shouldn’t be inviting you to my wedding. If it wasn’t for Michael insisting that I actually call you-”

“You wound me, dear sister.”

“No really, I didn’t wanna invite you.”

“You know you love me.”

“I’m serious, Kris!”

“What? I’m your brother. Your only brother, in fact. You can’t hate me that much to not want to invite me to your wedding. Why would you not want to invite me?” His puzzlement over Kat’s statement made Kris drop his playful tone immediately.

“Because…”, his sister paused and Kris just knew this had something to do with their Mom. It almost, always does.

“What did Mom do?” He asked, standing up and trying not to panic. Already, he could imagine what his mother would do. A lot of damage, he mused. But there’s this one thing that’s at the forefront of his mind that he refused to acknowledge. Let alone think about.

“It’s not so much as what Mom has done,” his sister began carefully. “But what she would do. You remember the Victoria incident, right?”

Kris groaned, “Kat, please tell me she’s not gonna try to set me up with someone again. I gave in that one time and look how much a disaster that en