Chapter 81.


    <b>Chapter 81. Irene. (6/7)</b>


    <span style="font-weight:400">“It’s as I suspected, Ran. You live alone after all. Where are your parents? Did you run away from home? Are you squatting here or something?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“No, I do live here. I pay rent by myself and everything.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Your parents?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“One dead mother at 12, the other abandoned me at birth.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I… see… so it was something like that.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Now that your curiosity has been satiated, can you please leave?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“The eyes you looked at me outside with… they weren’t the sort of eyes a child at your age should have.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Well, sorry for being born with such eyes.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“They’re the same sort of eyes I see when I look in a mirror. We’re honestly... not that different… you and I.” She made such a im.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“...” I remained silent, unsure of what she expected me to say.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“We both have the eyes of irreparably damaged goods. Maybe that’s why I’m fond of you and feel closer to you than the others I see on a daily basis.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Haaaah.” I let out a sigh.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I met my husband Alexander while working as a hostess when I was only 16. I was lying about my age and pretending to be older than I really was back then so I could work there. It’s my second job I still do to this day. One where we serve patrons drinks and chat with them. We only listen to their problems, we don’t provide any sketch services. But all sorts of peoplee in. Some to talk, others to ogle and look at women with lecherous gazes to their heart''s content.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“One day I met him as a patron I attended to. He fell in love at first sight and proposed to me on the spot. I naturally coldly rejected him right away, but he was persistent and continued to pursue me every single day for three months straight. Eventually, his persistence and devotion got through to me. He reached my heart.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“We ended up together and got married. He was three years older than me. I was only at the tender age of sixteen when I got pregnant with Alicia. My beloved daughter whom I love to death to this day. I had my precious son when I was neen. Alexander was a loving good father, but his life was cut short in a car ident on a snowy night exactly like this two years ago. When I received the call, I was devastated. Broken-hearted and destroyed. I sunk into a dark world. I despaired.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I mourned over his death for a long time. I cried and cried in secret, inplete silence, without letting out a single sob. Breaking down further with each passing day. But I couldn’t stop moving forward. I had two children to raise. I didn’t want to move from the home Alexander and I lived together, so I started working three jobs to be able to afford our home and raise our two children. For my children, I will do anything. They are the only things left for me to love in this world.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">I don’t know why she was telling me all this. I had nothing to do with any of this.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“The happiness of my children is the only happiness I have left.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">Was she just here to unt her happiness in my face? I don’t get it.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“But in the end, even when I have them, even if I put up an act, it doesn’t change the fact that I am broken. Just the same way you are.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“So what? What was the point in telling me all this?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“There was no point. I just felt like opening up and telling you.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“What? You expect me to do the same?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“No. If you don’t want to, you don’t have to. I don’t expect anything.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Haaaaah. I really don’t understand you at all.” I let out a sigh and told her that.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Hey, you’ve been having thoughts of breaking up with your girlfriend, haven’t you?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Am I that easy to read?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“No, it was just women''s intuition.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I really hate that cursed thing with a passion.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Haha, I’m sure you do.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Why did you suddenly bring that topic up of a sudden though?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Well, you’re looking for a reason to break up, but you don’t have one, right?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“That is… true. If I try to break up, I''d want to give her a proper reason for doing so.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I can help provide you with a reason, but I’ll want something in exchange.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Something in exchange? What exactly?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I’d like for you to spend the rest of winter break together with my family and Rosa at my ce. If you do so, you’ll be able to break up with Rosa with minimal difficulty.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“How exactly?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“You’ll only find out if youe over.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I see.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“So, would you be a good boy and follow me home?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Fine. If it will let me bring an end to this little game of house.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">She led me by the hand back to where her car was parked. She brought me back to her ce where I was confronted by Alicia and Rosa again. They seemed to be doing just fine.


    <span style="font-weight:400">There was a warm meal waiting for us when we arrived. Everybody ate together while chatting happily among themselves while I maintained my silence. The four of them looked like a happy family. Two sisters, a younger brother, and their mother. As for me, I couldn’t see myself as part of that happy family. It was a foreign sight to me.


    <span style="font-weight:400">I was given the free room to use for myself while Rosa slept together with Alicia in her room. As soon as I hit the bed, I fell asleep. In the end, I hadn’t figured out what Irene meant and it seemed she wouldn’t tell me anytime soon with the aloof way she’d acted when we arrived. She’d kept her distance from me the entire time.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Women were impossible to understand. One moment they were friendly with you, the next they were cold.


    <span style="font-weight:400">...


    <span style="font-weight:400">It only happened when it was the middle of the night when everyone had already gone to bed. I heard a light knock on my door which woke me from my slumber.


    <span style="font-weight:400">When I stood up and unlocked it, I was greeted by Irene. She had a short skirt on and a silk top that revealed quite a bit of her skin.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Do you mind if Ie in?” She said with a strangely alluring smile. Completely different from the way she’d acted when we arrived at her ce together.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Uh… sure… but should you really be paying a visit to me at such ate hour? Doesn’t this look kind of bad?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Oh? Does it? Don’t you think it looks bad for my daughter and your girlfriend to spend the entire night out together with you? You seem to be doing a bit better than you were before after sleeping it off a bit.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Sorry.” It was an apology for both things.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“You know, I still haven’tpletely forgiven you for that. I was worried to death.” That? Which one? Her daughter or my grouchy mood?


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Again, I sincerely apologize.” Like she’d said, my head had cooled down a bit by now after having slept off the rut I’d been in. My mood yesterday may have in part been due to being tired. It was just one of those days where you felt like shit.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Hmm, that’s really not going to cut it, a simple apology that is.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“A simple apology?” I raised a brow and rified, “you mean there’s a way that you’ll forgive me?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Hmm… there might be.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">She raised her dainty hand and stroked the side of my cheek.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“How exactly?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Well… how about you help me relieve some pent-up stress I built up from worrying about my daughter all night yesterday. It will take something major for me to forgive you.” She looked at me in a suggestive manner.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Pent up stress? Uh… how exactly?” Something inside me stirred seeing this woman at thiste hour. She was a truly experienced vixen, a hostess, one that knew exactly how to rile a man up with a single nce. At some point, she’d found a way to sneak into my heart without me even being aware of it. Had it been a result of the story she told me about her husband? Did I feel a sort of connection to her now after she opened up to me?


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Well… let’s see, how indeed?”