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.

to her mother before her body hit the ground. Just as Jeslyn was about to

her ribcage. What she saw in her dream scared her so much that even though she knew it was just

about to get down from bed, her nose took in a

loved in her childhood. One that her mother stopped her from eating

the tip of the small drawer closer to the bed was a tray with a few dishes on

this?‘ she thought.

the floor–to–ceiling window-

one left through

the

moved closer to the tray and opened the lids of the dishes. On some

in it was a chicken breast with spicy tomato sauce

yummy

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

and never lets her go close to it would make

three days, Ms. Alice would start asking her what she ate within the last three days, what she did, what she didn’t do, and

Ms. Alice everything and the woman would blow up, yelling at her to stop eating spicy food

woman who kept giving her what the woman hated would

is the same food here?

and Pink walked in with a bottle of wine and two glasses.

smiled and closed the

as she squinted her eyes at

nodded slightly. “Mn… Your husband told me you were here, so I came to keep you company.” Seeing that Jeslyn was a little skeptical, she pointed

delicious.”

between the food and Pink.