XG 34 - Why are you so afraid of a small, weak, and pink butterfly?
"Only my memories travelled through time."
Adjusting her gaze down in fear her emotion could be seen, Wong Xue Guo released a deep, shaky breath as she fought to sound calm. "Okay. I will wait here."
Although she had thought of it, it was another thing to confirm it. To think it was true that they would finally look at her only after she died. That explained why her mother would suddenly show this much affection to her. She does not know whether to be happy that her dream comes true, or cry that only her death could change her mother.
“Guo Guo, lock the door, okay?” Suzie Yap told her daughter worryingly.
“I will. Be careful of those zombies.”
“Don’t worry, it’s unwelcomed thieves that sneaked into our house. Our country’s military force isn’t that weak, and the virus spreading won’t be that quick to reach our compound. It should take a few days for the virus to reach here.”
Obediently locking the door after her mother leaves, she sat on a chair heavily, her eyes staring unfocused at the door.
She thinks she was now at a worse stage than Chen Yibo. The innocent Chen Yibo believed that one day his father would look at him. She had mocked him that it could only happen after his death, but unknowingly it actually happened to herself.
Karma really bites hard.
A year after the kidnapping incident, she finally comes to terms with the reality that her parents would never look at her properly. Then, she learned to respect them, love them, and place them as the highest priority on her list without asking anything in return.
Love could not be forced, just as she could not stop her love from flowing towards them.
Between her and Chen Yibo, she was the actual nut job that invited abuse even after being slapped by truth twice. The ironic thing was the third time being slapped with facts still does not change much of her mind.
A seventeen-year-old girl sat on a two-seater sofa while hugging her knees, staring at the muted mini TV with the announcer talking about the bombed Diamond shopping mall.
The mall had only started operating for less than six months, poor thing.
Surprisingly, the government told the truth that the shopping mall was bombed to curb the infection. The cameraman poured oil into the fire of people's hearts when the lens zoomed onto the crying family members of the victims that were not allowed to approach the shopping mall. Some were caught by the camera, scolding the soldiers for being heartless and the hysteria protesters were restrained before they started being physical to vent their agony.
The news does not help much in distracting the weak chicken Wong Xue Guo from imagining what was going on outside the room. She felt no pressure in not rushing out to help with whatever it was, letting the bodyguards do the job they were paid.
Her counting of how many gunshots she heard was fired was disturbed again when her mind constantly wandered. Her mother had better not get injured!
She rested her face between her arms and sighed heavily. Thinking of her mother always made her suffer complex feelings that often had her wonder if she was bipolar. She only dared to explore the love for her mother but refused to confront the dark corner of her heart where she might actually hate her mother.
If it was any consolation, at least her mother did a 180-degree change after her death. It means her mother did love her, right?
To the teachers that said your parents love you the most, I guess I can retract my curse from you.
Wong Xue Guo consciously rubbed her mouth that curved upward after thinking through the matter positively.
Speaking of rebirth or time travel, her mother must have died, just like those protagonists in order to trigger that event. Her nose felt sore thinking about it.
The future must be a terrible and hard place to survive. That might explain how her mother resembled a fearless terminator with no ounce of hesitation to kill those scary zombies.
But it was a matter to ponder on why her mother was angry with her father. It must be something that her father had done in the future that annoyed her mother and the grudge was brought back in time when her father was still innocent of the crime.
Yawning, she rubbed her tired eyes under her glasses, resisting her sleepiness as best as she could. Thinking that drinking some water could wake her up, she walked to the water dispenser installed beside the TV and grabbed a cup from the tray.
But her hand accidentally hit the other cups while doing so and her mind immediately went wide awake from the false scare. Patting her racing heart while subconsciously holding her breath, she was glad she had not overturned the cups or broken anything.
Recalling the similar action she had done inside the shopping mall’s cubicle, she laughed at her own timidness. Her heart was about to calm down when her ears caught a strange noise. In the silent room with a carpeted floor, the sudden noise of fluttering easily reached her ears.
It sounded like an insect with wings.
Locating it to be coming from the tiny gap of the not properly closed bathroom, she slowly approached it. It was silly to be on high alert against an insect, but the zombie exposed Wong Xue Guo does not dare to lower her guard.
To reach the bathroom, one needs to walk into the walk-in closet. Coincidentally, there was a table mirror placed on a small table inside the walk-in closet and she took it with her.
Patting her thumping heart to steady herself, she did not push the door gap wider and instead placed the mirror through the gap, using it to look around. She moved the mirror around quickly as her heart thumped fiercely in fear to avoid spotting the danger too late.
She bit down her lower lips to contain her urge to shriek when the mirror caught onto something moving. The mirror was shaking so badly from her surprise and fright that it took her some time to recognize what she had seen. Recognizing what it was, she sighed in relief.
"Just a butterfly…"
...Wait. How did a butterfly get into the bathroom that was without any window? The ventilator cover would not be big enough for a butterfly to sneak in.
Wong Xue Guo's pupil narrowed, wondering if it was her active imagination to think that the butterfly saw the mirror in her hand… and… now flying towards her!
Unexplained fear overwrote the command of her body that had her scramble for the doorknob with the mirror dropped inside the bathroom with a sharp clank. Pulling the door closed with a loud bang, she did not pull away from her grip on the doorknob, ready to resist any pressure from the other side. With her crouched-down body and inconsistent breathing, she wondered if her reaction was too extreme.
Why are you so afraid of a small, weak, and pink butterfly?
Her breathing hitched when she heard the sound of glass breaking from the bathroom. It sounded too close, as if just right behind the door. She had not seen her parent’s bathroom interior but by common sense, aside from the glued mirror that was installed on every bathroom wall, there should be no other mirror.
The only exception was only the mirror she had dropped earlier.
But the timing was wrong if it broke from the fall.
...No, it sounded like someone stepped on it!
Dread crept over her heart when she felt the doorknob in her hands move. It was a tentative trial at first, but upon meeting resistance, the doorknob was fiercely turned in order to dislocate the resistance.
There was someone inside the bathroom!
Unfortunately, the door could not be locked from the outside and her bandaged hands could not stop the aggressive twisting. She could already feel her cuts were protesting from the pain.
Shit! What should she do?!
Who would have thought that she, who had actively stayed away from danger, would have danger come to her personally?
What kind of bad luck was this!
She could save energy from playing stop-the-door knob-from-turning, but she doubted she could run out of the room before whatever was inside the bathroom would get her.
"Xue Guo? It's Yibo." The knocking and Chen Yibo's voice were like a ray of sunlight in the dark cave.
Unfortunately, it was also at that moment she no longer had enough strength to stop the doorknob. Gritting her teeth, she scrambled to her feet as soon as her hands gave away and dashed out as fast as she could while yelling, "Help!"
