Eun Hae's POV

I woke up a few hours later and found Lu Han gone. I sat up groggily and looked around the room. I couldn’t see him anywhere.

Where did he go?

Then when my mind was able to register what was going on after taking that nap, I heard voices that seemed to be coming outside from my room. Who is here?

I frowned. “Lu Han?” I called out.

A few seconds later my mother came inside my room and I remembered that she and my dad were coming at twelve. I looked at the time. It was twelve-fifteen.

Oh, well, it was a no wonder that she was here.

I looked warily at my happy, beaming mother as she came over to sit next to me on the edge of my bed. I didn’t know what to think. I still couldn’t decide whether the feelings I have for my own mother was positive or negative. I really didn’t know. I was . . . you could say, confused.

She smiled gently at me. “Thank you so much for calling us,” she said. “I was starting to think that you wouldn’t call and we were too late to ask for your forgiveness.” She looked down, looking really guilty.

I shrugged, not sure of what to say to that because I still haven’t forgiven her just yet. “Well, I had to call eventually to decide whether or not you guys were sincere about your apologies, right?” I replied.

She nodded. “That’s absolutely true, and you should know that we are absolutely sorry for what we did.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Really now?”

She nodded. “Of course.”

I eyed her outfit. “Umma . . . since when did you get those fancy clothes? I don’t remember you ever liking that kind of taste,” I asked her. I thought she was too poor to afford those types of branded clothes.

She flinched as if she was hoping that I wouldn’t notice that she was now wearing such nice clothing. “Well . . .” she hesitated. “I will be honest. Ever since we kicked you out, we always had extra money. So instead of spending it, we saved it. And then your dad got a promotion in his job and business was good. I guess we earned a lot and got more than what we needed.”

“What did you do with all that money?” I asked, an aching feeling in my heart. Because I was no longer a burden, my parents’ dream of becoming filthy rich came true. I guess once you’ve smelled the filthy rich air, you’d be stuck as one of them forever. And that happened to my parents.

“Well, we renovated the house and we changed our wardrobes, and we even got maids to clean the house for us now,” she said happily.

I sighed, shaking my head. Leave it to my mother to be filled with this kind of air once it hits her. Her dream of being rich finally came true. Honestly, it was a bit disgusting to see that to a woman who never had much.

She held out a flash hopefully. “I prepared porridge for you,” she told me as she started to twist the cover open to give it to me to eat. “That’s why I came now, instead of earlier. I made it just the way you like it.”

“Chicken?” I asked eagerly. I loved the chicken porridge she would always used to make for me whenever I was sick. I could eat a whole lot of it because that was how much I loved eating the porridge.

She nodded, handing it out to me with a spoon. As I drew it to me, I could smell the deep, yummy and delicious aroma of chicken porridge that awaited my mouth and my stomach growled hungrily in anticipation. I took the first bite and as the mushy food were swallowed, it ran over my tongue, leaving its burning taste on my tongue.

“Ah,” I sighed happily, savoring the taste.

As Umma watched me eat the porridge she had made for me, she beamed happily, glad that I accepted it. She reached out to my hair softly. “You always did love it when I made chicken porridge for you,” she said gently. She smiled, glad she remembered my favorite.

I nodded. “I didn’t think you’d remember.” I mean, it’s been years since I last saw her and the last I remembered; she didn’t exactly want to acknowledge the fact that I was alive.

She nodded vigorously. “Of course I remembered,” she replied softly, brushing away the strand of hair that was falling down my face. “How could I not remember my daughter’s favorite food?”

“Gee, Umma, I really don’t know,” I replied scathingly as I put the flask of porridge down on my bed. “Weren’t you trying to forget about my existence?”

My mother frowned at the tone of my voice and I worried about whether I’d gone too far. “That’s not fair, Eun Hae, I am trying my best here” she replied.

Okay, maybe I didn’t.

“Fair?” I echoed and she winced because she knew that she had said the wrong thing.

Too right she had.

My anger was beginning to boil and suddenly my vision started glowing red. How dare she say it like that? She wants to compare the fairness?

“I —”

“Fair, was it that you kicked a mere, defenseless twelve-year-old out on the streets because you couldn’t afford to pay for her living?” I asked her bitterly. “Was it fair of you to choose wealth and money over family?”

“Eun Hae —”

“You have no idea the hell I was put through ever since you abandoned me and the only reason why I’m still alive is because I have my sanity with me. I was bullied endlessly by the people I thought who cared, and abandoned again by them.”

“Nothing is ever fair in this world, Eun Hae,” Umma answered softly. “You have to know and remember that nothing is ever fair in this world.”

I so agree.

“You are definitely right, Umma, nothing is fair in this world, and you and Appa were definitely not fair to me, your own flesh and blood,” I snapped back at her sourly. “Here’s a thought for you about your sudden to decision to suddenly want me back: if I come back to you, wouldn’t I be more of a burden and might ruin that happy life you and Appa created for yourselves ever since I left?”

“No, we have so much to share, that it’s enough for you to come back to live with us!” Umma protested.

Did she now?

“So you only want me because you have enough to take care of kids and you loved taking care of people but too old to have anymore?” I asked sarcastically. “Wow, gee, that makes me feel so much better and it totally convinced me to come and live with such selfish and money-greed people like you two.”

“That was mean.”

“That was true,” I shot back. “You didn’t want me because I wasted your money —”

“Well, you did.”

“I was a sick child and you knew that right from the beginning!” I nearly shouted.

“We thought we could make it work,” she replied feebly.

“Well, it didn’t,” I retorted.

She recoiled. “We tried, Eun Hae,” my mother said, hurt.

“If you were already so poor and you knew that I was going to be a burden for you in the beginning, why didn’t you think of giving me away for adoption, huh?” Tears stung my eyes but I wiped them away furiously. “Wouldn’t that be better for the both of us? You didn’t spend twelve years wasting your money and I wouldn’t have to remember my parents’ faces abandoning me growing up!”

“Darling —” She reached out to touch me.

“Don’t ‘darling’ me and don’t you dare try to touch me,” I snapped, leaning away from my mother. “You have no right to call me that, even if you are my mother. Did you honestly think that riches and a simple ‘sorry’ would make me change my mind and come back to live with you?”

“Don’t tell me you’ve never wanted to come back.”

“I will be honest. I did wanted to come back, but I was hoping that you wouldn’t want me back only because you were bored with your happy life.”

“I’m not bored,” she replied calmly. “I just want my daughter back. Is it so hard to believe that I am truly sorry for what I did? For what Appa and I did to you? Everybody makes mistakes.”

“But not everybody are stupid enough to revolve those mistakes around family,” I retorted.

“You shouldn’t judge a person by what they’ve done, but by what they’re doing now. And right now, what we are trying to do is to convince you that we’re truly sorry and we want you back.”

“Well, you’re doing a really poor job,” I replied sourly.

“Eun Hae, think about it,” my mother pleaded. “You could have so much. We can pay for your school fees instead of burdening my sister for paying for someone else’s daughter.”

“Don’t put the blame on Aunt Yu Jun,” I growled, defending my aunt. “She has been like what you should have been to me all these years.”

She winced. “I know, I know. But, as I was saying, we can pay for your school fees, and your medical bills, as well as you can even live comfortably.”

“I think I’m already living comfortable, thanks,” I rejected coolly.

“Well, we can help pay for the rent here, too,” Umma said quickly,trying to persuade me. “We’ll help pay half, or a quarter, so that it would lighten the load of your shoulder,” she went on as I opened my mouth to tell her that it was fine, “and when you graduate from high school, you don’t have to take a year off to earn enough money for college. We can help you with that. As for your work, instead of using half the money you earn to pay for your food and apartment, you can save it up and buy whatever you want with your full, own, earned money, along with the pocket money I will give to you every month.”

I looked at her. “Money isn’t everything, Umma.”

“But don’t you agree that it makes life so much easier?”

I had nothing to say to that. Sure, perseverance and thinking positively helps, but I cannot deny the fact that everything she just said was very tempting. But I didn’t want to give in just yet. “Umma —”

“Darling, if you want us to be in your life, to show you how much we love you and that we really want to make this up to you,” she said, “we are willing to try. Why else would we be here, begging for forgiveness?”

I hesitated. No, I must not relent.

“At least think about it,” Umma asked of me.

I sighed. “Fine, I’ll think about it.”

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Yeah, her mother just gets ier and annoying every time she appears ._.