Sometimes I wonder what Mother is thinking when she agrees to things.

I mean, her decision to move in with my aunt? That was a complete train wreck of a thought, because there's no way we can fit in this concrete jungle of department stores, wide roads filled with metal death traps, and convenience stores... Everywhere. I'm completely out of sync and, apparently Mother was finally beginning to catch onto this fact. It only took you a week, I thought bitterly as she walked around my room wringing her hands in a nervous gesture. She was looking around at my blank, undecorated walls and boxes of  unpacked belongings and was at last, putting two and two together.

"Are you really unhappy here?" She asked me suddenly, facing my dressing table, where my only piece of unpacked belonging sat: A picture frame showing my smiling face surrounded by my closes friends on my seventeenth birthday. A reminder of what I've had to leave behind, among many. But I'd purposely left it out to prove a point.

"What makes you think that?" I asked back, my tone dripping with sarcasm.

She turned around and I got a full view of her tear filled eyes and wobbling bottom lip and immediately, my heart shattered. There's nothing worse in this whole world than seeing your mother cry, and believe me, I've seen enough of her tears to leave an impression on me for probably the rest of my life. Seeing her now, it literally took another piece from my already battered heart. 

I released a breath and my shoulders sagged, relaxing my stiff 'prepared-for-a-confrontation' posture. 

"It's just all so new to me," I explained, picking at a lose thread on my duvet. Anything to avoid seeing her so upset. "I'm not used to any of this. The apartments so compact and the buildings are so tall. I'm beginning to wonder how the hell they fill them - how anyone would want to live in a tiny concrete box, and have you seen how many convenience stores there are, mum? And they're open twenty four hours, too. I can literally get strawberry milk whenever I want it!" 

Mother chuckled and wiped an escaped tear. "I thought that would be a good thing, a perk about moving here. You love strawberry milk."

"Not at 4am!" I fake-raged. "But I suppose it beats waiting for our monthly trip into town, anyway," I admitted. "The rest... I suppose I'll adjust with time, but at the moment..."

"You're missing home." She smiled sadly. 

I nodded and clenched my jaw to stop from crying. I didn't want her to feel any worse than she already did, despite my earlier intentions.

"I know this is a big change." She sighed. "What with us uprooting and moving countries and you having to finish your senior year of High School in a whole new school, leaving behind your friends and making new ones but... We had to." She reminded me gently. "You know I couldn't afford to run our farm on my own, not when all our saving went to... To..." Paying for dad's medical bills and eventual funeral expenses, I finished in my mind what she couldn't say aloud. "We'll, you know, but we're lucky your Aunt Yoo-Ji was willing to let us stay here for free." 

I nodded.

My aunt lived in an extremely quaint little three bedroom apartment in one of the most sought after parts of Seoul; Gangnam, which made this apartment a serious luxury, despite my reservations about it. My room was a double, as were all three, and the apartment had a kitchen, dining, living and study room. Each bedroom had its own simple bathroom and even a very small walk in wardrobe, though at the moment I was using mine as a storage room for the rest of my boxes. But compared to our huge farmhouse with it's five bedrooms, huge conservatory and rolling fields? This place, despite it's 'luxury', just didn't compare in my eyes. I wasn't a city girl and never had any aspirations to be.

"I know. Honestly mum, I'm sure