1 

“You have got to be kidding me.” 

Hara watches her mom roll her eyes in annoyance, hands busy packing away some of the fancier clothing she owns into a huge suitcase, and she feels anger bubbling up in her abdomen because this is really happening. 

“Mom,” she tries again, arms crossed over her chest. “Are you serious?”

“I gave you three whole weeks to deal with this, you did about it, now stop wasting time and go pack your things.” 

She walks over to her dresser and pulls out her finest jewelry, fingers carefully placing them inside small, velvet boxes she then packs away in one of the suitcases resting on her bed.

Hara feels nauseous.

“I’m not packing .”

“Watch your damn language.” Hara can’t help but laugh humorlessly as she runs a hand through her hair. “Get a move on and pack your stuff. Yunho and his son are coming over in two hours to pick us up, you can leave the suitcases in the driveway for the moving compan-”

“Mom!” Hara snaps, eyes wide in anger and betrayal because this can not be happening. Her mom sighs tiredly and turns towards her, an eyebrow arched. “I’m not packing anything. I don’t want to do this.”

“Well, you should have voiced your discontent a month ago when I first tol-”

“I thought you were joking,” Hara exclaims, frowning, “you met the man three months ago, mom, three months, and you’ve decided to sell the damn house and move in with him?” 

“He is a nice man,” Hara’s mom says, looking down at her hands. The thin diamond ring on her finger glints against the room’s light, and Hara scoffs in disbelief. 

“Is that your way of saying he’s rich?” 

“Hara,” her mom warns, but she shakes her head, grinning deliriously because wow, she never took her mother for a gold digger.

“You said he is a ceo, right? Can buy you all the dad couldn’t, is that why you’ve decided to leave your dignity behind and move in with him-”

“Young lady, watch your-”

“Like some stupid teenager? Is that why you’ve been coming home late these past few days? You’ve been with him, haven’t you? You’ve been busy giving the big, bad ceo whatever he wan-.” 

Hara is sure she could’ve added some real nice and graphic details to that sentence but her speech is cut short when a hand collides with her cheek and her head is forced to the side. 

The shock thankfully masks the pain, but only temporarily, Hara knows it’s gonna sting like a when the anger fogging her brain subsides. 

“Don’t you dare talk about Yunho like that.” Her mother looks beyond furious, but Hara finds a little satisfaction in the tears gathering in her eyes. At least some damage was done. “He has done more for us than your father ever could. Now stop talking crap and go pack your stuff. It’s too late to back out now.”

Hara doesn’t bother replying and instead turns on her heel and leaves her mother’s room, slamming the door shut after her, a little too forcefully but Hara can’t bother worrying about property damage affecting the potential sale of the house. 

She enters her room and locks the door, jaw clenched in a poor attempt at holding her emotions at bay, hands clenched into fists by her sides, but nothing really helps when life keeps throwing bull at you whenever the chance arises, and Hara covers when she finally breaks down. 

To cut an annoyingly long story short, Hara’s parents got a divorce a year ago, on her seventeenth birthday because their marriage was failing and the only thing they truly cared about were their own, selfish needs.

Hara's father decided to focus on his realtor firm which he had been obsessing over since the beginning of the marriage, and before Hara knew it, he was gone. But it's not like there was any reason for him to stay when the people awaiting him at home barely knew him.

Hara’s mother had continuously expressed her displeasure but that only created a rift between the previous high school sweethearts, and multiple years of constant fighting, cold shoulders, half-hearted makeups, more fighting, a neglected child and a ton of debt later, the couple finally separated. 

Hara hates how much it affected her, still affects her, given the fact that her childhood lacked the parental touch every other child had the privilege of experiencing, but it’s not easy to ignore the hole in her chest whenever she comes down to a dinner table lacking a third set of plate and cutlery.

Dragging in a deep, calming breath that does nothing to calm her down, Hara pushes away from the door and crosses the space to her closet.

She doesn’t really have a choice, there are still four months left until her birthday. 

“Stupid child protection laws,” Hara mutters while pressing her bundled up clothes into the suitcase her mom had so conveniently placed on top of her closet. 

Hara has met Yunho once, back when he had just started dating her mom.

He looked too well kept, too refined and almost pretentiously well behaved. Hara could practically smell his wealth, but she had plastered on a smile for her desperate mother and played along.

She doesn’t hate the man, but she hates how easily swayed her mother is, and moving on from the closure she never got with her dad is not an acceptable step in Hara's agenda. Not anytime soon. 

And if that isn’t bad enough, the man has got a son. A bloody child. Hara has zero idea how old that boy is, but she knows for sure she isn’t going to become a bloody babysitter for nobody.

She just needs to play along like she always does and wait four months, just four more months and then she’s free. 

Zipping up the suitcase, Hara sighs and closes her eyes. 

She’ll pick up some kind of part time job or something and save up for her birthday.

The idea of accepting money from Yunho only to run off with it somehow does not sit well with Hara, but she decides that it’ll be a nice plan B.

As long as she can afford a plane ticket far away from here, and as long as she's got enough money for at least a month’s stay at a hotel before she finds a proper place to stay. 

“Just four more months,” Hara whispers, determination fuelling her into packing away the last of her belongings. “And then I’ll be out of their hair for good.”