Contract Marriage: The Replacement Groom

306 Jeslyn’s heartbreak

Jeslyn was seen in her room, standing by the floor–to–ceiling window as she stared at space, lost in thought. 1

The thunderstorm from the horizon, coupled with the rain that was slapping against her window jolted Jeslyn back to reality. At that moment, the rainborite stone on her finger shone brightly, but this time, it was a pink light that shrouded Jeslyn for a fleeting second before it disappeared again. Jeslyn looked at the ring for a long time. She realized yesterday that the rainborite stone does not only shine when the temperature changes but also does that when her mood changes. Another thing she observed was that, when the stone shines, she starts to feel relaxed and dizzy. Jeslyn yawned and returned to bed. In no time, she fell asleep.

In the middle of the night, Pink entered Jeslyn’s room and sat beside the head of her bed. Looking at her daughter who was sleeping peacefully, Pink took Jeslyn’s hand in hers and slowly started to massage it while talking to herself.

“Child. I’m so sorry for everything I’ve made you go through for so long. I’m also very sorry

for not telling you the truth a little earlier. I tried to speak to you, but I couldn’t. It was too much for me to tell you… I’m scared you’ll get angry and run away from me. I’m deeply sorry, child.”

The next morning…

Jeslyn saw her mother smiling and running towards her with her hands spread out to hug her.

“Mom?”

“Child, Mom is back!”

As her mother was running over, before she could close the distance between them, a gunshot was heard, causing both of them to freeze.

The next thing Jeslyn saw was a line of blood trailing down from her mother’s lips.

her mother before her body hit the ground. Just

her ribcage. What she saw in her dream scared her so much that even though she knew it was just a nightmare, she still couldn’t calm down.

from bed, her nose took in a whiff of

mother stopped her from eating despite being the one who

froze and slowly turned her head to the side of the bed. Sitting on the tip of the small drawer closer

this?‘ she

brows furrowed and she glanced at the floor–to–ceiling window- it was

one left through

to the door, it was

and opened the lids

it was a chicken breast

looked yummy and

she was growing up, Ms. Alice hated for her to eat spicy food because Ms. Alice doesn’t like spicy food either.

the same woman who doesn’t eat spicy food and never lets her go close to it would make her spicy chicken breast

ate within the last

and the woman would blow up, yelling at her to stop eating spicy food because

giving her what the woman hated would still be the one yelling at her while

why is the same food here? Who brought the food here?

was thinking, the door clicked open and Pink walked in with a

smiled and closed

here?” Jeslyn frowned slightly as she squinted

here, so I came to keep you company.” Seeing that Jeslyn was a little skeptical, she pointed at the food in the tray. “I made you something

delicious.”

between the food and Pink. “Y- you