4:00 am
When I woke up, it was already four in the morning.
Four in the morning and my face already hurts.
Now I know that today is going to be a bad day.
I had many things to do today so I couldn’t stay back home and greet the girls.
Plans needed to be enacted and they needed to be done in a hurry.
Blood drained from my face by just imagining how many people I would need to beat just to get her father’s approval. But the goal in the end is to get Rosa off the pre-arranged marriage. Not to get married.
Within one hour, I brush my teeth, exercise, bathe, changed my clothes and prepared a bag of what I needed.
‘5:00 am huh…’ I thought to myself. ‘Not much time to do much for now…. I’ll just make some food and then leave.’
By the time the girls woke up, Jin already left the house with food prepared for them. They wondered where he’d went but he didn’t even leave a note.
“I guess Jin left early?” Meracle thought out loud. But they couldn’t really be bothered by his disappearance. They too have lives and needed to continue their way. They all ate and left around seven or eight as usual to their own respective work place. But strangely, they missed the smiling face a bit in the morning.
Rosa came to her father’s company around five o clock in the afternoon to check up on things. To her surprise, her father was not there. When she’d turned around she saw that her uncle was standing right behind her. “Rosa? What are you doing here?”
“Uncle Joe? I was trying to find dad. Do you know where he is?” She tried to find an excuse.
Uncle Joe furrowed his brows. “Me and your father just had brunch. But for what reason did you want to see your father Rosa?”
“I… Uh… just wanted to see him.” Rosa ran along with the excuse.
“You see him every day at home! Why the need to see him today?” Her uncle said. “Oh wait... You are interested in that… Houyi guy right?”
“Houyi? Who is that!?” She didn’t even know what her uncle was saying.
“… You don’t have to hide it. He kissed you yesterday in front of the company entrance. You were completely out even when you were on the job! I saw the whole thing through the camera you know. It was my voice on the loud speaker.” The uncle gave a smirk hinting that she already fell in love.
Rosa blushed. Her face had a confused look because the person she liked indeed kissed her yesterday. But his name is Houyi? “I think you got the wrong person Uncle. His name isn’t Houyi.”
“Oh? That was not his name? Then what is his name?” The uncle was interested now. It was clear that Jin testified his name as Houyi but never told him his real name.
Rosa fidgeted with her fingers because she really was nervous to tell her uncle. But she still told him anyway. “Remember the guy I bullied in middle school?”
“What about him? All I know was that you practically humiliated the guy, made him run in school naked, and raped his lips. Which, by the way, I do not condone!” the uncle snorted.
“… That’s him… His name isn’t Houyi… It’s Jin…” Rosa shamefully admitted.
The uncle’s jaw dropped. “T-that boy? He? The!? What!? You!? HIM!?”
Rosa nodded.
“NO!” The uncle screamed to the top of his lungs. “NO! I WILL NOT APPROVE OF YOUR MARRIAGE WITH HIM! HE’S GARBAGE! EVEN IF HE PASSES THE CHALLENGE I STILL WON’T APPROVE!”
“!!!? Uncle, what challenge?” Rosa asked him.
The uncle flinched. ‘Damn… Should’ve never spoken that out loud…’ He tries to ignore Rosa by turning away but Rosa firmly confronted him with determined eyes. He had to give in the end.
“… Your father set up a challenge for him and the three other candidates. We gave them all one hundred thousand D in suitcases. The challenge was to get three signatures from different companies and come back with them on their own two feet by whatever means. The time limit is by midnight. We even gave them six predetermined companies to get signatures from which can only be given once. These signatures represents sealed deals and the candidates have to ‘negotiate’ with these business heads to get the signatures. If it comes down to only two people with three signatures each… well… Then your father and I have to test the two. But I’ll tell you know, I do not approve of that Houyi guy.” He said. “But… I am going to be fair…”
“… Alright then. But tell me uncle. Was it you on the loud speaker yesterday shouting or my dad? Both your voices sounds the same…” She asks him.
The uncle turned away and said, “… That was me.”
“!!! So he didn’t meet my dad yet!? Then!!!” Rosa had her hopes up.
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“… You should know your father is similar to me. He most likely won’t approve of that Houyi or Jin guy. He is hiding too much. Even I can see that his shadow and back carries too much secrets. As an uncle, a business man, and a person who helped rasied you, I ask of you Rosa. Don’t ever go with him because he has too many secrets. It is best if you don’t go with him Rosa.” The uncle sternly said.
“Eh? How would you know uncle?” Rosa was shocked to hear her uncle speak of Jin like that.
“Because Rosa. If you’d ever looked into his eyes, his real eyes, you could not even see a glimmer of light. They may be yellow and he may look like a blissful person. But beyond that shining façade is a demonic being that even scares me. No one on the first day would try to piss off another person’s father.
Especially if they are powerful as your dad. Even if he didn’t know your father or me, he didn’t have a care in the world. No, he could not even care. People like him are dangerous Rosa. I can only urge you to stay away.” The uncle grimly said.
“… Is he that bad uncle?” Rosa didn’t want to believe it. Jin indeed has a lot of secrets. But he often acts nice and only is evil when it came to Meracle. Well, as far as she knows anyways.
“Rosa. You are smart and can judge people only so far. But his…... Unique character… Even I have a hard time judging.” He said. The uncle pulls out a remote from the desk and pushes a few buttons. The wall inside the room rotated and on the walls were a bunch of monitors.
The uncle then points to one of the monitors specifically. “See this Rosa? If we go back one hour… *Whirl* we see that I’d just initiated the challenge for the three. Fifteen minutes in, they just walked out with Jin or Houyi or whatever his name is… Walking out last from the company. I switched to another camera to see a slight surprise.” He then points to another monitor. “This here. Is where he was walking. As you know, your father and I are powerful people. So we can watch people going down the streets even a few miles down. But as far as I see it, this man was walking down streets eating non-stop! But that was not the problem.” He continued and shifted to another monitor. “In this one here, he was pulled over to an alley way by a few people and walked right out the other side practically fifteen minutes later!”
“? What is so surprising about that uncle?” Rosa didn’t get it. She thought that those people might’ve been people asking for some help or if they were thugs, they would’ve let him go easily.
“… When my men went there to check… He was getting beaten up. Badly. He was bloody all over and so my men left. He even had his suitcase stolen! But what this monitor is showing me is that he was not even injured nor did he lose his suitcase! Moreover, the guys who pulled him over vanished!” the uncle growled. “Later, when my men followed him, they met with unparalleled accidents! They got hit by cars, signs, and even ridiculous flying baseballs from the park which the man walked through! They even fell down manhole covers for god’s sakes but still didn’t die. Maybe it was because they were tough that they all lived. Maybe it was all a coincidence. But I sure know that the Houyi guy isn’t normal. He is the walking billboard of evil karma! Yet… Not one hit him!!!”
“Maybe god is watching over him? Heh heh” Rosa weakly laughed.
But the uncle stared at her with red eyes. “… Rosa. Look at this now.” He points to one of the other monitor to show that Jin was walking into a super market, buying a truck load of food and donating them into homeless shelter all around.
“He is a nice guy Uncle. Believe me. He is usually doing good deeds every day that I have known him so far.” Rosa said simply.
“… You are missing the point. Look at what he is doing…” the uncle’s face fell.
“I don’t…” Rosa began to say. But the more she watches the monitors, the more she began to realize what he was doing was repetitive. He was buying food and donating them to shelters all around the city. “Doing a lot of good deeds?”
“… His movement is almost mechanical… But in one of them. Didn’t you notice that he lost the suitcase and was a lot slower in one of them?” the uncle tried to show her.
“So what? What was wrong about that uncle?” She really was lost.
The uncle sighed at his niece’s ignorance. “*Sigh* Later, when we asked around what’d happened, we heard that someone tried to snatch the suitcase. But got hit by a truck instead. Your friend performed surgery in the middle of the street on the guy and saved his life. He even brought him to the hospital and donated money for all the patients in the hospital. Later, we found out the thief was hired by someone…”
“I said that he was a good person uncle. What is wrong?” Rosa was getting agitated because her uncle was trying to downgrade Jin.
“You still don’t get it!? All this time, not once did he go to the companies we’d designated for him! Not once did even cared about going to those company heads to negotiate! He didn’t even care for the competitors! Those who so as much tried to hurt him had many bad things happening to them! Don’t you find that odd? If coincidences like these stack up like a tower of cards, then that might not be a coincidence!” the uncle shouted and scared Rosa. “… Sorry. Just that this man gave me a headache through-out the day… *sigh*”
“Oh… okay then… Then I’ll... just leave uncle.” Rosa was more nervous if her uncle blew a fuse if she’d stayed around. She already knew what would happen if he did.
“Alright Rosa. But come back before midnight. Then we can evaluate your… boyfriend.” The uncle nodded and waved her off.
She left the company a little stiff. ‘Houyi? Why did he have to falsify his identity with my uncle? He wasn’t the type to lie in school…’
Rosa didn’t know what to think. What she knew about him from school and what she knew now was a little more different. But she was more dishearten because she heard that Jin didn’t try to even win the challenge. ‘… You disliked me that much?’