1 Home sweet home

I woke up late as usual. As I was contemplating the utter failure of my whole life as a woman, I decided to finally get up on bed, had a long shower to grab a coffee at the corner of the street.

As I walked and looked at the neighbourhood, everything looked exactly the same. I was gone for almost 3 years and yet it seemed like I never really left at all. Same houses, same gardens, same cars, same me. The usual me. I left this place as a failure hoping to finally chase my dreams of getting rich and start a family in a foreign land but I went home and still failure, with no one else to blame except myself.

I went to my good old coffee place. I have so many memories on this shop. This was the place where I did lots of studying, chatting, daydreaming.. this was like a sanctuary where I used to sit as long as I could, with a warm coffee in my hand and a little cake at the table. I ordered the same stuff and I looked for the farthest empty couch. Slowly sipping my coffee, I noticed a long line of people waiting outside this new shop outside the window. I asked the barista about what was going on out there. " Oh it's the House of Fairies. My is obsessed with that shop" he explained.

" House of Fairies? What a crap" I whispered to myself. There was no way I would waste my time to fall in line and see what? Rabbits and butterflies?" I decided to go back home to once again spend the day on my bed. " Is that you Emily?" asked by the lady in front of me. It's me Jem! You silly" To my surprised, I almost dropped my coffee. Jem was an old classmate of mine who was bullied a lot when we were young because of her rough skin, frizzy kinky hair and her manly figure. But the woman in front of me was slim, flawless, gorgeous with perfect hair. Still in shock, I said she l wouldn't notice her at all because she seemed so different. She just smiled and pointed that shop outside and said "I owed everything to the soapmaker. She gave me a new life's" .

What kind of sorcery can transform a realistically ugly and hopeless woman to a swanlike goddess? It was unbelievable. I wasn't buying it, maybe she had surgery. Those are the thoughts running inside my head as I left the coffee shop and walked back home to unpacked some boxes that arrived earlier.