Kyuu! - 1

"For real now?" I look at her with an unamused face, "You are the one who gave it to me." This feels like she is desperately trying to insult me, therefore, finding limitless excuses for that.

"What's with that face? I can't see any excitement in your eyes." She complains to me as if nothing ever happened.

'She's one weird woman.' I mean I am excited…very excited but that doesn't mean I will pop out my pupils just for that.

"Anyway, where is the breakfast Mom?" I look at her with hungry eyes, "I don't want to get late!" I woke up so early for today's occasion…I was unconscious but still.

"Yeah, yeah, I have it prepared, so stop blabbering." When some outsider sees her treating me like this, it probably looks like domestic violence but regardless, it's not at all contradictory.

We enter the living room together and I sit on the dining table, looking at the empty plate, tempting my hunger. The kitchen is directly connected to the living room and is not that big so basically, you can see everything going on inside.

Mom enters the kitchen and comes out with a casserole and a big glass with something cold filled in it. She slams them on the table resulting in a creaky but light sound from the table.

"What if the table breaks Mom?" I ask her about her careless feature but I already know the answer.

"All these things that you see here, from the clock to this table are all almost invincible since I am the one who bought them," Only time will tell that. She still hasn't experienced any incident like that so she thinks that they are invincible or whatever, "And it took quite a money to buy such a quality product."

'Not that I can argue with it. Need to start my day with a cleansed mood.' I open the casserole and find some circle-shaped flatbread puffed inside the box. I have never tasted something like this before but the steams coming out are tempting me to do so.

I take out some of those bread on my plate and put the chilly glass beside the plate, completely ready to devour everything.

"Ow!" As I tear a part of the flatbread to have a bite, the caged steam ooze out and almost burn my fingers. "What's with these fillings inside? They are making it hotter than it already is." I have a look inside the bread and see the yellowish-white fillings inside, almost like cheese in a pizza.

"It's a new dish I found from the television yesterday." Oh, there's another enthusiast right here, reminds me of someone, "It's an all-season star directly from the Qidalyn region."

'Leaving the talk aside, this thing is somewhat alluring me. I don't know if it's the irregular spots on its baked flour bread or it's the filling inside that's making it fluffy.'

I take the rived part of the bread…or whatever it's called and have a bite.

All of a sudden, Mom's face appears in front of mine with glittering eyes, not at all like her, looking for the response.

"So?" She says with a long pause.

"So?" She needs to complete the sentence.

She gives me a sharp look but then, why would anyone ruin the mood for nothing, continues, "So, how is it?"

"It's…" I gulp down the bit that I had taken from before and look at her with a bound expression.

"It's?!!"

"It's…"

But there's a limit that should not be crossed.

"Did the brunch get cemented in your neck? Don't taste my patience!!" I should have known that she is a short-tempered lady and fictional instances are off-limits for her.

I stop for a bit and then go for the chilled glass beside the plate. It's a little bigger than the normal ones but that just means more load to pack in. Mom's gaze is still centered at me in a wrong way so I should just gulp it down together.

"Oh?! It's buttermilk." I speak it out loud in glee as I look at the spicy white drink giving out bubbles on its surface. It's my favorite because I have some precious memory of it. The combo of black pepper and the right amount of salt in the plain buttermilk while shaking it to the point where it's ready to provide mortal bliss.

Her expression shows some change but it's still stiff. I didn't get the taste of the last bite so I grab one more bite from the flatbread, the fluffier one, and have it together with the chilled buttermilk.

As I gulp both of them down together, my nerves start to bump with the skin, pumping out the state of adrenaline from my brain to my body. As the chilled drink passes through my neck together with the hot bread, every inch of my body starts to feel the splash of the cold breeze of the atmosphere, as if merging me together with it.

"It's yummy!!!" My body shivers with it, "It's just too yummy!!" and I am not kidding. Is my Mom a master chef or what? But I never really tasted something this good before. Maybe this is the prestige of the culinary land 'Qidalyn'. I would like to visit that place sometime if this dish is legit from there.

Mom's face loosens up and I can feel that gratitude feeling towards her but we both hide it a little, we are humans after all.

I start eating the rest of the breakfast quickly since I can't be having a good time when I know that the time passes by quickly. I look at Mom while sipping the buttermilk, but she looks uninterested in all this jazz as her eyes are diverted towards a photo frame hanging on the wall.

"What are you thinking Mom?!" I look at her with a wondering face although I have some idea of it.

"Nothing much." She moves towards the frame and touches the man in the image with her fingers. "I just thought that how proud he would have felt if he had been with us today." She finishes the sentence in a dismal and bitter tone.

I gasp for a second and stop eating the food. That image is a past memory of this family. I have looked at it before but it somehow makes my stomach feel butterflies, I don't know why, so I didn't really buzz around it that frequently.

But it's an entirely different case for Mom since it's her family. With Mom in the center, caressing the hairs of a kid standing in front of her, and a man standing right beside her with his hands held around her shoulder comprises the frame. That's the dad of this body and his family, around a decade ago.

And because he is not with us anymore, Mom's attitude sometimes changes while she thinks about him. I kind of try to understand that feeling but I cannot. Since I haven't experienced any of that tragedy, I don't know the emotions that have to be triggered to respond to it.

If nothing, it makes me feel a little bit sad for mom since she lost her husband and her real child, which I am supposedly impersonating right now. I don't have any past memories to link any of this or to emotionally connect to these people but I can at least pretend to do so because I don't have the tendency and courage to disrespect their cherished feelings.