“Sia, I’m sorry.”
Those were the last words she said before leaving me. I was only 9 years old at that time.
“Eh, a young person suffering from annoyance every day. In the end…”
“Hagi, you’ve had a lot of problems before you got married. Your wife and children are weak.”
“Fine. I’ll listen.”
Mom’s funeral hall was full of people I didn’t know. Except for the relatives, people dressed in black constantly came to pay their respects. But none of them were interested in me alone. No, not just them, but my dead mother too. All the attention of those who came was focused only on the father and grandfather.
“Follow me, I knew it was going to be like this. I know, I didn’t stop you in the first place.”
“…”
“If you had married the women who I told you to, this would’ve never happened. Why did you bring that poor, less-than-deserved child into the house…”
“This is the funeral home, father…”
The surrounding area became quiet as my father stopped talking to my grandfather.
An unwelcome marriage in spite of family opposition. It was a common and romantic narrative in dramas, but not when it becomes reality. Nonetheless, my mother’s health, which was particularly weak, worsened day by day due to the pressure and suffering people put on her.
My birth probably also contributed to that.
‘Sia, thank you always for coming to see this weak mother.’
Mom would always whisper that to me before going to sleep. In my memory, she was like that: a warm, sweet, and affectionate person. After she died, my father rarely came home. He always worked late at night, came home after I fell asleep, and then went to work before I got up.
We only ever spoke three or four words to each other every month. In the meantime, as I grew older, I became more dry. I knew my dad wasn’t a warm person to begin with. But after mother died he became more… crazy.
My grandfather regarded me like a thorn in his eyes and did not recognize me as his granddaughter. Plus, my relatives said it was all my fault that my father did not remarry. How insensitive. They didn’t even notice when I left.
I had always lived an exemplary life. But I began to wander around when I became a high school student. That was the first time in my life where I hung out with so-called bullies.
I didn’t do anything bad, I just learned to play games all night in the PC room. Well, my wandering ended quickly because playing games became my hobby.
After I became a college student and got away from my family, I enjoyed a full-fledged game life. Meanwhile, I started to play {Nectar Electric}.
“The graphics aren’t even good, who even plays games like this these days.”
That was my first honest impression of the game. Even the controls were difficult to grasp, so the entry barrier seemed very hard.
“It’s not that interesting… let’s play for a little more.”
I remember saying that, and it’s been 3 years since. Who would’ve known that I would fall in love with such a poor game.
***
“Once upon a time, there lived a very wicked devil in the north.”
Tina sat beside me, her eyes glistening as she focused on the story. She looked completely different from when I first saw her. I found some children’s dresses in the castle, washed and cleaned them for her to wear. There’s no other little princess as cute and as lovely as her now.
