Lisa thought those sad memories would cause her mother to treat her with indifference again.
However, to her pleasant surprise, her mother just pursed her lips and said, "He's been dead for so long, why bring him up? I'm happy today, let's just enjoy the food."
Naturally, the other women all changed the subject upon hearing these words.
During the dinner, when Lisa went to get some more rice in the kitchen, Haruto quietly followed her in.
"Noona, forget those old ladies. They're super gossipy like that."
"I know, already forgotten."
"That's good. You don't seem to be too busy these days, right?" Haruto asked his sister.
"Yeah, the hospital gave me three days off so I don't have much to do."
"That's good! If you don't have to go to work today, sleep here tonight. You haven't stayed overnight in a while." Haruto looked at her with puppy eyes. He adored his sister; when they were young, he and his sister often played hide-and-seek under the old tree in the yard. When they were tired, he would fall asleep under that tree, and Lisa would recite Grimm's Fairy Tales to him.
His sister was a genius; Grimm's Fairy Tale is a very thick book, and back then, Haruto couldn't even recognize all the words, but Lisa recited it like it was her own.
He was always so proud of his sister.
Even after his birth father died because of his sister, he never blamed her, not one bit.
Lisa, on the other side, always thought that her brother was a warm and outgoing boy. He was carefree and innocent, and she wanted to protect him.
Especially after Uncle Watanabe's death, she couldn't bear to let anything happen to Haruto.
"Okay." Lisa thought about his request and nodded her head in agreement.
"Yay, awesome!" Haruto was overjoyed.
After dinner, the other women left, and Lisa helped her mother clean up the plates and cutlery.
As she was washing the dishes, she quietly mumbled, "Mom, Mrs. Oh came looking for me a couple of days ago, and she asked me if I wanted to go back."
"Nothing good comes from her contacting you."
"It was about the Oh family's civil war - the wife and mistress are butting heads."
"That's good, I hope they fight to the death. I hope that heartless bastard dies." her mother's heart was filled with resentment at the thought of Lisa's father.
After all, she used to be a celebrity. She had a bright future in front of her and never thought that bastard would ruin her entire life.
In the end, he wouldn't even acknowledge his own child and gave that sly vixen Sooyoung an opportunity to take advantage of the situation.
"I won't go back, I'm not interested in their inheritance or anyone in that family." Lisa told her mother how she felt.
Her mother stopped what she was doing; she turned around to look at Lisa.
"It's rare for you to think that way."
"I don't want to go through the pain that you went through. I don't care about money; more money, more problems. I just want to spend the rest of my life with you and Ruto peacefully. Once our Ruto gets married, I'll take you down south, country side. We'll have a chance to go see our country's beautiful mountains and rivers."
Lisa's words touched her mother's heart...
Since the death of Haruto's father, she always blamed Lisa for everything that happened. The truth was, she didn't really hate her daughter.
She just never learned how to face the ugly truth.
"You're not so young anymore, you'll have to get married someday. Keep on a lookout and find a good man to spend your life with. Not a rich guy, he'll look down on us, and you'll have a rocky relationship."
Lisa's heart filled with guilt when she heard her mother say this.
If her mother found out that she had married Jungkook, she would go crazy, right?
" Mom, your health isn't as good as it used to be. Why not close the grocery store? We can sell this house and buy an apartment in the city, you can enjoy your retirement." Lisa wasn't so financially strapped anymore. She wanted her mother to sell this place. She could provide a down payment for a new apartment in the city, where the three of them could live together.
"No, it's fine. I've become accustomed to living here over the years. I don't want to move to a new place, since I'm already familiar with the neighbors here. The other women all have big mouths, but they're not bad people. They've been a great help to the three of us over these years without your Uncle Watanabe. I like it here. In the future, after you and Haruto both start families, come visit as often as you want to. If you don't, at least I won't be bored here."
Her mother seemed to have let go...
"Mom... I'm sorry." Lisa lowered her head in guilt.
"Never mind it. I can't really blame you for what happened. A few days ago, I went to light incense at the temple and listened to a monk explain Buddhist scriptures. I couldn't understand the deep stuff he talked about, but I did understand when he said 'so long as humans are born into this world, everything is a cycle of cause and effect'. The death of your Uncle Watanabe was his fate; even if he didn't pass away to save you, he probably would still have met with some other disaster."
"Mom..." Lisa was surprised to hear her mother speak of these words.
Moreover, she actually understood it... the knot between them seemed to loosen up quite a bit.
At least her mother no longer blamed and hated her for Uncle Watanabe's death. This comforted Lisa, as she felt like a weight had been lifted from her shoulders.
"Your salary isn't high, but it's enough to live off of. You don't have to give Haruto money all the time, I saved up quite a bit over the years. Since Haruto is graduating soon, we'll need to help him find a wife and start a family."
"Mom, don't worry. I will help him find a wife and buy an apartment."
"Just help what you can. He's a man and needs to learn to do things on his own. It's not like he doesn't know our family situation."
"He will, Mom, Ruto is a good kid. He never spends money that he's not supposed to."
After Uncle Watanabe passed away, Lisa hadn't had the chance to peacefully converse with her mother in years.
She was deeply touched; it was a feeling she hadn't felt in years...
That night, Haruto was too excited to go to bed, and he chatted with Lisa as they sat in the rocking chair inside the yard.
Suddenly, she got a WeChat message...
Nervous, Lisa took out her phone and sneaked a peak.
It was from Jungkook...
"Where are you?" Jungkook asked.
"Home." Her reply was short.
"I'm home too, but you're not here." Jungkook thought that she was at Imperial Park.
"I'm at my mother's, the old house. It's her birthday today so I won't be going home. I'm staying the night."
"Oh." Jungkook showed his acknowledgement with one simple word.
He was going to take her to the new seafood restaurant in the northern end of the city, but sadly didn't see her when he arrived at home.
Upon hearing that Lisa wasn't coming home, Jungkook didn't have anything else to do. Therefore, he drove back to the company.
Assistant Lee was getting ready to go home when he saw the president come back to the office. He was instantly alert.
"Boss, is something wrong?"
"No, I'm just going to work for a while."
Assistant Lee pulled a long face; he told his wife that he would go to the movies with her and just now, she had informed him that she bought the tickets. If he didn't go, his wife might skin him alive. After all, being stood up was despicable.
"You have plans?" Jungkook noticed Assistant Lee's struggling expression.
"Boss... I heard that a new movie just came out. It's gotten good reviews," Assistant Lee slowly eased in.
"So?" Jungkook asked Assistant Lee.
"So would you mind if I left first to go watch that movie with my wife? She already bought the tickets. If I don't show up, she will kill me."
Obviously, Assistant Lee was terrified of his wife.
"If she knew that you might be fired for going to a movie, would she still kill you?" Jungkook asked faintly.
Assistant Lee was close to tears, "Boss, please don't..."
"Which movie theatre?" Jungkook randomly asked.
"Near hongdae street," Assistant Lee looked at his boss with a bitter face.
Jungkook got up, "Let's go, I'll drive you."
"What?" Assistant Lee was immediately dumbstruck; was he hallucinating?
"Go on, unless you want to work overtime?" Jungkook asked with an icy expression.
"No, I don't."
Assistant Lee suspected that he ran into lady luck today... So lucky that his boss was driving him to the movies.
But here's the problem - if he got onto the president's Maybach, then what's he supposed to do about his Sedan?
It's fine to leave his car in the company parking lot, but what about tomorrow morning? Was he supposed to take the bus to work?
That's not the problem here. The problem was that, for some reason, he had the honor of being driven by his boss, the president of JC.
Of course, what he didn't know was that Jungkook was only driving him because his wife was at her mother's, and he was extremely bored.
Plus, driving his assistant meant that he'll be able to see a movie as well.
Once they arrived at the movie theatre, Lee's wife's face lit up with surprise when she saw another man with her husband.
She quietly asked her husband, "Who is this?"
"My boss."
"Pre... President Jeon?" Lee's wife was shocked as well.
He nodded his head...
"Boss, ha, we're here. Thanks. You should go home, we're heading in now," Lee beat around the bushes when they arrived outside the theatre.
"I want to watch it too, get me a ticket." Then, Jungkook grabbed a few hundreds from his wallet and handed it to Lee.
"Um... It doesn't cost this much." Lee was almost sure that his boss had never been to the movies before; why else would a person be unaware of movie ticket prices?
However, Lee soon came back with his head down.
The reason? Tickets for that movie had sold out; it was full.
"Boss, ha, why don't you watch something else? Captain America is showing in the other auditorium later, and it's really good."
"What movie are you guys watching?"
"Finding Mr. Right 2. My wife likes romance, and I didn't have a choice. And I also enjoy breathing without the aid of a tube." Lee looked at him helplessly.
"Then I want to watch this too," Jungkook said stubbornly.
This made Lee's life difficult; there were only two tickets for this movie, and President Jeon was set on watching it, so one of the tickets had to go to him.
However, Lee couldn't let his wife go watch the movie with his own boss. He knew that President Jeon wasn't going to hit on his wife, but the point was, his wife might be tempted to hit on his boss.
Finally, Lee bit on his tongue and came to a compromise with his wife.
He and his boss would go and watch Finding Mr. Right 2, while his wife was to suck it up and watch Captain America with tears in her eyes.
She was a head-to-toe Korean housewife who had no interest in American superhero films, but there was nothing more she could do.
Neither of them was brave enough to piss the President off.
After the movie, Jungkook was so happy that he offered to drive the couple home.
In addition, he gave a greeting present to Lee's newborn.
It was a packet containing few hundreds.
Lee's wife was elated at the sight of the packet filled with money and completely forgot about the movie ticket fiasco just now.
She kept exclaiming, "Your boss is really nice, he's so generous."
Lee rolled his eyes at his wife and said, "Weren't you the one who called him a third wheel behind his back just now and was pissed off at him for stealing your movie ticket? I can't believe you've changed your stance already. Women never say what they mean."
"Of course, a movie ticket isn't worth much," Lee's wife replied happily.
On his way home, Jungkook was in a good mood too.
This was the first rom-com he watched, although to be honest, it was a little awkward that it was another man that accompanied him throughout the movie.
However, he liked the contents of the movie. Therefore, as soon as he drove home, he searched up Finding Mr. Right 1 on his computer and watched that.
He enjoyed that one as well. Suddenly, he wondered if he should take Lisa to watch Finding Mr. Right 2 again tomorrow once she was back.
As he was thinking, a local news alert popped onto his computer screen, grabbing his attention.
"Breaking news. The Asan medical center has involved itself in a doctor-patient scandal. According to our sources, a pregnant patient was sent to the emergency room in the middle of the night, but the on-call doctor wasn't there. As an experiment, a nurse performed surgery on that patient, who afterward experienced postoperative complications. The pregnant patient and her newborn are now suffering from severe side effects, and the hospital ignored her family's complaints. The hospital protected the nurse and tried to shut the entire thing down, so the patient had no choice but to sue the hospital. The patient's family was extremely emotional and caused a scene at the Hospital today. The hospital sent security to control the scene, but chaos erupted instead, and, as a result, many patients were unable to see doctors. The nurse-in-question did not show herself, and director Jung, has yet to comment on the situation. According to speculation, this is the first time in years that the hospital was burdened with a scandal. Everyone's attention is on this incident; stay tuned, we will shortly provide a follow-up report."
Jungkook frowned as he shut off his computer. Lisa was in trouble...
As soon as news outlets exposed something like this, more often than not, the situation would become uncontrollable and unpredictable.
He immediately picked up his phone and dialed a number, "Stop the media from reporting about the incident at the Asan medical center in 30 minutes. Don't even let one station follow-up on it."
Lisa, on the other hand, was sound asleep, completely unaware that her world was about to flip upside down.
After Jungkook exerted pressure on the media, attention on the incident seemed to die down.
However, someone somehow created an account on the local KakaoTalk and exposed the scandal in a post.
This was the information era. Because of all the online users and popularity of the KakaoTalk, a little rock was able to create giant waves. As soon as the scandal was posted, people immediately began to like, comment, and repost. In the end, the scandal still blew up.
The person who posted it claimed to be the family of the patient and stated that the Asan medical center was corrupt because it asked a nurse to pretend to be a doctor, just so the hospital could dupe the patient's family out of money.
Moreover, it pointed out that the TV stations, which were originally supposed to report this incident, stopped doing so because the hospital went through its connections and forced them to stop.
The manipulation here was clearly obvious...
What they didn't know was that the Asan medical center didn't do anything to stop news outlets from reporting Lisa's scandal.
Rather, it was her husband, Jungkook. He felt bad for her and didn't want his wife to suffer from gossip and pressure.
Therefore, the name of this post was, "Asan medical center, one of the most prestigious medical center of seoul is heartless. Not only did it allow a nurse to operate on a pregnant patient, the black hands behind the scenes pressured the media into ignoring it, causing commoners to have nowhere to complain."
A post like this immediately caught the attention of all walks of life, including the Seoul. Metropolitan government and other administrative offices.
Even the Ministry of Health called Director Jung of the Asan Medical center again and again, in an attempt to demand what happened.
Lisa had just enjoyed a night at home, but when she woke up, she realized that the whole world had changed.
When she goes to bed, she had the habit of turning her phone to silent so it wouldn't affect her sleep quality.
Therefore, when she picked up her phone in the morning, she thought that her phone's system had crashed.
There were more than a hundred missed calls, not to mention countless texts and WeChat messages.
"Unnie, something bad happened, where are you? Why aren't you picking up?" Wonyoung sent.
"Lisa, call me back, it's an emergency," the head nurse sent.
"Girl, did you see the news? I think it was talking about your hospital. What happened?" Chaeyoung messaged.
Lisa flipped through her phone to realize that Jungkook had called her a couple of times as well.
Something really bad must have happened, why else would everyone be frantically looking for her?
"Noona, you're up," Haruto walked in with a glass of warm milk, which he placed in Lisa's hand.
"Yeah."
"There's something that I want to tell you, but I'm not sure if I should."
"What's wrong?" Lisa frowned when she heard the hesitation in her brother's voice.
Haruto thought about it, then he passed his phone to Lisa, and showed her his WeChat friend circle.
It turns out that news traveled really fast, and the KakaoTalk post had already been reposted on people's WeChat friend circles and other social media sites.
Someone even vowed to conduct a thorough internet search on Lisa.
A few of Haruto's friends knew that Lisa was his sister, so they sent him the link to the post early this morning.
He was in a bad mood after reading it but was also afraid that it would make his sister sad.
However, he knew that he wouldn't be able to hide it. His sister would find out sooner or later.
After calmly reading it, Lisa returned the phone to her brother.
"Noona, what happened? I don't believe that you would do something like this. Someone set you up, didn't they?"
Truth be told, after Lisa found out what happened, she wasn't surprised. The patient's husband had already declared that he was going to fight Lisa to the grave.
Therefore, being exposed wasn't surprising; what surprised her was the fact that media outlets hadn't reported anything. Instead, this post blew up through KakaoTalk.
"Don't worry, it'll be okay. I'll deal with it," Lisa said as she left the room to wash up like everything was fine.
She left after saying goodbye to her mother and brother.
When Lisa arrived at the hospital, she saw from afar all the people standing there, clogging up the hospital's entrance.
There were even giant banners that said, "Heartless hospital, heartless nurse. Give me back my health, give me back my justice."
Just as Lisa made up her mind to walk up to them, someone suddenly pulled her off to the side.
Petrified, Lisa turned around...
(a/n- are you guys ready for Jimin's entry?)