In Yura's experience, the first days in a new house are the worst. It's the time when people who want to seem decent try to make her comfortable and include her in their lives. They put on a show so she lets her guard down. Then they tell her what's expected from her if she wants to keep living in that house and receiving meals. After all, nothing is free, and this isn't an orphanage. She always has to earn her stay.
Yura glances at her opened suitcase on the floor in the middle of her room. It's a little scuffed from all the use it's seen, but that, along with her backpack, are the only two constants in her life.
And, wow, thinking of it in that way is more depressing than she expected.
Lying back on the bed—not her bed, just a bed—Yura stares at the plain ceiling above her. It's a gentle cream color. Unassuming. Impersonal. It isn't hers, and it's not meant to be.
It's nobody's.
Just like her.
Time passes in a blur. Yura watches the rays of sunlight shift on the ceiling as the shadows grow longer and the hush of dusk blankets the world. Occasionally, she hears the shuffle of slippered footsteps in the hallway. There are a few times when they stop outside her door, and she braces herself for somebody to enter and break the illusion of being welcome here by telling her what job she'll need to fill if she wants to stay.
But her door never opens. When somebody pauses outside, they don't enter or even knock. They just wait and then start moving again.
As the sun starts to set, she hears the clatter of wood and glass outside her door, then footsteps fading as whoever was there leaves. Yura counts in her head. A full minute. Just in case whatever was left outside her door was a mistake that they'll come back to take away.
But there's only silence.
She opens the door slowly, not seeing anyone in the hall. Then, she glances down and finds a wooden tray filled with a meal, each dish separated into little glass bowls.
It's easy enough to take the tray and retreat back into her room. While it's nice that she's given a meal that looks better than what she's used to, she can't stop wondering if this will be the normal routine of her life in the Daesun estate.
By all rights, she should be hungry after the long trip from the Quin house. Her feet are still throbbing from the walk and the fact that her old sneakers provide minimal support. Before that, her meals were simple. Rice. Vegetables. Maybe a bit of meat or fish if she was lucky.
And yet, with a full meal in her hands, Yura struggles to find any sense of hunger. If she's hungry, it must be hidden behind the way her anxiety about the uncertainty of her future is twisting her stomach into knots. Still, she should eat at least a little bit. After all, consistent meals have rarely been part of her life.
Yura looks at the food on the wooden tray, then at the cream-colored carpet covering the floor of the room. She's usually not a messy eater, but she doesn't want to risk staining the carpet on her first night in this new house. Well, for the sake of not taking risks, Yura carries her tray into the attached bathroom and sits on the tile floor with it.
With her legs folded underneath her and the tray on the floor in front of her, Yura slowly eats. She isn't sure what each dish is, but they're good. It's a shame that she doesn't have any desire to actually enjoy the meal. Not with her unknown future looming over her. After a half-dozen bites, she takes the tray and places it back where she found it outside her door, uncertain about the rules here.
Checking her phone, Yura isn't surprised to see that her only messages are from the friends she left behind at the boarding school she was abruptly pulled from when the truth about her identity was revealed.
Even without expecting to see any final words or a simple goodbye from the people who were her family for sixteen years, to actually see their indifference about her leaving stings. Well, for a family that treated her like a plague, silence is the only outcome that makes sense.
Still, it would've been nice to know that someone will notice her absence. To have her existence in their lives acknowledged before she left. But they hadn't bothered to send her to the Daesun estate with their driver or give her money for a cab, forcing her to walk that last stretch of distance.
With a sigh, Yura sets her phone on the nightstand beside the bed and looks out the window. The sun has set, leaving the city in the light purple and blue of the early night hours. She decides to take a bath, using the products she saw stocked on the bathroom's shelves while eating on the tile floor. If nothing else, the bath foam's herbal scent might help dull the edges of her fear about what will happen next in her life.
Yura sinks into the warm water, trying to think logically. If she's sent back to the boarding school, she'll be with her friends. Being exiled from her real family the same way she was from her family would be depressing, but she knows what to expect from that school. She knows what she needs to do and what she needs to avoid in order to be a model student. In that way, it's comforting.
It's strange to consider the possibility that she'll get to stay in this estate and be a wanted part of a family for the first time, but without knowing the Daesuns beyond their public reputation, she can't even guess as to how they'll treat her or what they'll want from her.
Because of that, Yura tells herself that it won't be all bad no matter what comes next. If she can survive for just a few more years, then she can move away for college and form her own path for the future.
It's a comforting thought, of course.
She just wishes that she can feel loved and like she belongs at some point on that path.