Chapter 26: Graduation Day (6)
After rushing off to the bathroom, Aria found herself lost among the hallways of Nine Heavens. When she was nearly about to give up and call Aika to come find her, she bumped into a waiter as she turned a corner and called out.
"Excuse me, where is the bathroom?"
Once the waiter recovered from the shock of being bumped into, she smiled at the customer and thought for several moments to point to the nearest one. "If you follow this hallway until it ends, there will be a right and a left turn. Go left and then on the left there will be the bathrooms."
Arriving at the bathroom, Aria looked down the hall and felt a bit embarrassed, she had apparently gone in a huge loop because she could see the doorway to their room from where she was.
On he way back from the bathroom, Aria bumped into a group of 4 who were about to enter the room slightly down the hall from hers.
She stepped back and was about to apologize when she realized who it was she had bumped into, through a stroke of bad luck she had walked right into her own family.
Immediately, she felt the familiar feeling of being looked up and down in judgement by everyone there. As uncomfortable as her family's gazes left her, the one that made her shiver was Christian Thomas.
Ever since they were young, he had stared at her with his terrifying black eyes like he wanted to catch and eat her. Even though it wasn't really the case and she knew that, she also blamed him for her family's dislike of her.
When she and Emma were 5, the Thomas's had moved to B City in order to build connections with more wealthy individuals and attempt to expand from their position in the oil market. Unfortunately for her, they had come to her father in hopes of engaging their 9 year old son to one of his daughters in order to build strong ties between the families and use her family's several decades of reputation and power in the city to get what they wanted.
Naturally, he had chosen to engage his favored daughter, Emma, to their little son Christian. At the time, Aria had been extremely grateful because her 5 year old self already disliked the older boy.
Everything would of gone smoothly, if not for Christian deciding that he liked her more and trying to demand that he be engaged to her. Both sides of parents had disagreed and she had thought that everything was settled.
However, that night Emma came into her room and was about to shave her head when she woke up from the noise and kicked at her jealous younger sister. Of course, that wasn't how her Father and stepmother viewed the incident. They saw it as their jealous older daughter who they both resented taking out her anger on her younger sister.
It was only made worse when Emma started crying and said that she had kicked her down and then was about to shave her head.
Shortly after that night, her father sent her to boarding school in South Korea in order to "teach her everything she needed to know to succeed." Thought he had referred to it as boarding school, it was in truth her being taught privately by several harsh tutors. She had spent the majority of her life in that school, being lectured day and night on proper behaviors and topics far too advanced for someone her age.
Eventually, on her 16th birthday, she managed to complete all of the courses that the awful school and her father wanted her to complete, and enrolled in Maple-leaf academy. From then until August 7th, 2018, her 18th birthday she had never once spoken to her father. On her 18th birthday, her father had called her to inform her that he had calculated that she owed him $4,530,000.
Apparently, he had been keeping a tab of every dollar her spent on her and if she didn't pay him back, he would publicly disown her "like the disgrace she was." Even now, she still had no idea what she had ever done to make him so hateful towards her.
Lost in her memories, she didn't notice that they had attempted to speak to her until she felt someone shake her and heard Emma call out to her.
"Older sister? Are you listening?"
Aria shook her head feeling guilty for not listening to what they had been saying. "No, sorry..."
"Oh, well, I asked what you were doing here." Emma blinked her eyes and seamlessly slipped into her role of the innocent and caring younger sister.
"I'm having dinner with the girl who was my roommate, Aika Suzuki, and her parents..." Aria spoke quickly and quietly, wanting to leave already.
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