~Mia~
To be honest, I was scared about entering junior high.
Who wouldn't be, a new place and new people?
I wasn't used to wearing a hijab but entering my new phase of life kinda braced me for it.
With some low-cost K-drama (Ann calls it that) and the Covid-19 outbreak, I graduated from high school.
A month before Ann began her University life, I began mine.
Trixie went to Japan to continue her studies.
It was on my second-semester break, and I had saved enough to go on a Holiday, so I decided to go visit Trixie and maybe also get a tattoo.
We were in the middle of Tokyo.
Jumping from one store to another.
I was texting Miyaze.
Trixie found a tattoo shop hidden in an alley.
Was it coincidence or some crazy law of attraction?
I saw a man in that dark alleyway standing underneath the neon signboard smoking an e-vape.
His sleeves rolled up exposing his tattooed arm, he had a few rings shining on his fingers.
I felt the wind blow at my nape, he must have felt the wind.
Our eyes met.
Trixie called out for me.
I turned to see her.
We went to the tattoo studio.
I got my first tattoo underneath my boobs...
A year and 4 months later, Miyaze broke up with me.
He quoted out philosophy.
"Some love affairs don't last long but their memories last an eternity because they are beautiful."
Our relationship was beautiful.
He helps me accept my mother's hysterical personality as a part of her.
He helped my mother see through me.
He got along great with my mother.
My mother had a boyfriend and then got married to that man as his second wife and then divorced him after 6 months.
Muslim men can marry up to 4 wives if they can support them from the financial and sexual aspects.
They don't even really need the wife's permission to marry another woman.
I introduced Miyaze to my dad.
Miyaze introduced me to his mother.
I guess our histories were alike.
Like he said some love stories don't last long but that doesn't mean they should not have happened.
1 year later, Ann ran off to Japan being sponsored by Aran after graduating with her diploma.
She just turned 22.
At times I wonder what is the nature of their relationship.
They can breathe each other air.
If my eyes weren't playing tricks on me, I saw them kiss once.
I saved up to continue studying in Thailand but then, the University Ann ran off to have it cheaper when I checked the currency rate.
So I picked Japan and I got accepted.
Then again I saw him, Miyagi Renji.
He was waiting for Ann, Ann's aunt wanted her to drop by the label studio.
He is the lead guitarist of a British-rock genre 4-person group called Kingdom of Souls.
He was deputed under the label that somehow was owned by Ann's distant aunt.
Was it a coincidence or some weird irony?
He also is 5 years older than me.
Ann introduced me to him.
I was 4 months into being 21 when Miyaze broke up with me.
I was 2 months into 23 when Renji asked me to go out with him.
It felt weird to me, our age gap.
According to Ann, I was kind of conservative.
But within 2 months, Renji's courting worked.
He asked me to wait a little longer for him.
He wanted to build a home.
He proposed to me when I was 25.
We got married at 26.
I worked as an administrator and law consultant in a law firm after graduating from university.
I did work part-time as an administrator while studying for my degree in business law.
I miss home a little, so I took a break.
Besides, it has been years since I last visited my dad.
And I think Ann needs to visit her mother.
Nyx ran off on the first chance she got.
Aran, her best friend works as an animator at an animation studio.
Aran wants to be a mangaka one day.
In his 3 years of working, Ann has drawn 15 frames for Aran.
Nyx did and still does a lot of part-time while studying for her degree in TESL.
Teaching English as a Second Language.
At the age of 23, Ann suddenly declared she was pregnant and keeping the kids.
Turns out, that the first implantation of in-vitro fertilisation didn't work out for her because she freaked out.
Hence her second attempt did.
Nyx's IUI procedure was paid for by her and Aran.
She was 24 when she gave birth.
Now 26, with 3 kids. (Helios and Selene are her biological, and Hoshi is her lover's kid who is at the moment in Japan)
She slept on the couch, cuddling the stitch doll, which Selene placed in her arms as she dozed off.
Both Helios and Selene are also sleeping.
It's nap time for the kids but Nyx also wanted to take a nap.
She has a weird way of raising kids.
First, she declares only Helios and Selene her kids, now Hoshi is also on that list.
Nyx did visit her mother and I also paid my mother and father a visit. Mother is still alive and got married for the third time
"Hey, Abba...look at your grave, it is covered with grass....let me pluck them out and clean your grave....oh the flower I planted grew beautifully, I have to water it.
Abba, You still remember Miyaze right, after he broke up with me, I used to have dreams when we were married and had 3 kids,2 girls and 1 boy, the kids were all named by me, following the moon eclipse.
I was heartbroken by those dreams but they were beautiful, maybe in another life, it happened but this one. I went to Japan. I got courted by a man 5 years my senior, we got married after he bought himself an apartment and I bought a car.
I want to have a kid, maybe 1 or 2 but not 3, Ann's weird ways have scared me.
Abba, I will bring Renji to meet you soon. You would love him too."
I cleaned my dad's grave, plucked out the weeds and watered the flowers.
One day I will bring my kids here and introduce them to my dad but first need to ask Ann what with her obsession with red spider lilies, she went and planted one at my dad's grave, I didn't even know when she visited my dad.
I guess it was recently because the weeds weren't as wild and grown as I expected them to be.
1 year or so ago, she visited my dad.
************
Turns out she did when she when grave hunting for her bastard of a father who is yet to be dead.
She had seen my father once, but she didn't have the guts to approach him, she wanted to visit his grave and thank him for me.
Weird but like I said, she has gotten weird, she prefers the dead over the living.