7 Chapter 6 - Reflecting Upon my Mother

"Don't care too much about work. Girls just need to get married well and they're set for life."

My mother spoke at the dinner table to the 8 year old me.

"Read books, study well, sure, but at the end of the day, for your future, just try to live like a regular girl. Much less trouble."

In her words, my mother never meant any harm or had any malicious intent. As a matter of fact, she was one of the wisest women I've ever met in my life. She seemed to love doing handyworks around the house, and would watch random boring soap operas airing on TV while slowly eating through her favourite brand of salted potato chips. She was from Korea, immigrated to the UK when she was around 11 just before graduation. She was short in height and added on a bit of weight throughout my time of seeing her, but her skin was always glowing, with her eyes as deep as mine and her hair also as fair. I got her DNA, and needless to say most of my beauty came from her.

She was normally very gentle, an ideal mother. But I hated her point of view. I despised it. She didn't quite care if I did well in school work - which I excelled in - and on the weekend evenings she'd often go through the boring process of teaching me how to cook basic dishes before my dad came home. I found the whole process very tedious. I absolutely hated cooking. The boring, specific instructions that I needed to follow in order to make a bunch of food that would be gone in a time no longer than 10 minutes or so was so pointless in my young point of view, and so unlike most of the kids in my class, I absolutely hated the weekends.

I, instead, enjoyed school work. The precision of mathematics. The creative stimulations by subjects like art or literature, even my worst subject, French, I enjoyed simply for the sake of keeping me entertained by the interesting pronunciations of words and structures of the sentences.

Naturally, I was extremely frustrated when my academic endeavors never caught the attention of my mother. She was more interested in apparently turning me into a 'good potential housewife', and as much as I genuinely loved her I denounced the idea.

But in retrospect, the so-called 'housewife training' wasn't so bad. After all, that same exact recipe to make a good 'potential wife' was a recipe in luring and trapping my prey in, turning me into a versatile woman. I could be a strong woman if my puppets needed me to be, I could be a fragile woman, with a mother-like nature as well. That did a great deal of good in my endeavors. I knew how to meet demands. I was clever.

Every man was a challenge for me. A riddle waiting to be solved. I needed to get their attention, keep them for as long as I wanted for my benefit, and let go at the right time. That was my winning condition, and as my mother said - which I first admittedly rejected at a young age - the final winning condition would be to just marry someone with financial superiorities balanced with good masque and personality. I'll marry well. Men disgusted me - for a reason that I don't want to think about right now - but they sure were interesting at the same time.

So the boy at the bar frustrated even more. I couldn't quite understand how to get through him. Maybe it was my clothing that day. I couldn't change from my office clothing due to Haruki's sudden phone call, so maybe what I needed to do was to fit myself into a more luring set. He looked messy, he looked short. I couldn't quite imagine him with a lot of woman, so perhaps I needed to highlight the sex appeal of my body a little bit more.

Off shoulders. Bras that give a slight cleavage. Hot pants, pantyhose. Earrings with big loops, my hair could be tied up in a bun to show off my neckline a little bit more. It sounded solid. I'll go next time, see his reaction, and if I manage to get his interest and attention, I'll drop out right away. After all, the only thing A grade about him was his riddled attitude towards me that I wanted to solve.

As I finished devising the plan in the silence of my living room in my ivory sofa, my smartphone rang loud.

'Haruki again?' I frowned. I was done with him today.

Thankfully, it was another face.

'Ben.'