Two years later, Carl Synder found himself in China as the general manager of a newly built manufacturing plant. He had not been willing, but when Darius said it was either he was going to China or Strong Industries was losing their last big client, the Synder family caved in.

The day after Carl Synder got on a plane for his new life in a different country, Alisa Synder showed up to work in a familiar outfit.

Felicia took one look and asked, “Your Mom again?”

Alisa’s whole face was beet red, too ashamed to respond.

“Is it because Carl turned out to be useless?” At Alisa’s nod, Felicia sighed heavily.

That’s right, she’d arrived in a miniskirt, high-heels, and terrible makeup. Even her hair, which was usually straight and shoulder length, had enough hairspray in it to be classified a fire hazard.

“Alisa… why do you let your Mom treat you like this?”

The younger woman sniffled, feeling extremely pitiful.

“I’m not like you,” Alisa said as tears streaked through her mascara. “I can’t just tell my Mom no. You don’t know what she’s like! If I really told her no, she’d make my life miserable.”

“Didn’t you move away from home specifically to escape her?”

“She knows my address! My phone number!”

“...you can just not let her in and change your phone number…”

“That’s easy to say!” Alisa rubbed her face, her tears and makeup mixing together into a horrendous display. “She’s impossible to ignore! If I try to avoid her, she gets more insistent! Then I don’t get any peace at all!”

Felicia was quiet. After three years working with Alisa, she heard all kinds of stories about Mrs. Synder. She was like a more abrasive, less tactful version of Kim. Having experienced living with a horrible mother, Felicia really did sympathize…

Hm?

Actually, she hadn’t heard from Kim since she moved to France.

It’s not that Kim and Felicia were on good terms again and chatting regularly. Kim held grudges and definitely hadn’t forgotten the inheritance debacle. It’s just that she switched her methods. Originally she ignored Felicia out of spite, thinking she was punishing her daughter by doing so. But when it became clear this had no lasting affect, she began talking to Felicia again.

These “conversations” were filled with either boasting or nagging. Kim would usually brag about how splendid her life was, what hot guy she was dating, the amazing places she’d been… all in hopes of making Felicia jealous. When that didn’t work, she resorted to nagging. It was almost entirely over the fact that Felicia was still single. How she was wasting her youth, etc and so on. This was just a form of belittling and venting.

Felicia naturally avoided these conversations. It was easy to do, especially once she moved out of the mansion. That didn’t stop Kim from trying. She even sent letters, as if to remind Felicia that she still existed.

But it’d been a long time since Felicia had got even a call from her… not even a postcard...

Felicia shook her head, scattering her thoughts of Kim away. Now wasn’t the time to be thinking about her own parent problems.

“Why not just quit?” Felicia asked, entwining her fingers together and resting her chin on them.

“Quit? Quit what?”

“All of this,” Felicia waved her hand around the office. “Quit this job, go back to college. Do what you always wanted to do. Be happy.”

Alisa looked startled and then her shoulders drooped.

“It’s… I can’t…”

“What? Why?”

“How could I afford to go back to college without my parents' help? I could only go originally because they were paying. There’s no way I could afford it myself, even if I got a loan and worked on the side…” Alisa had originally attended an elite college that was several times more expensive than what most people could afford.

“I’ll pay for it.”

Alisa froze, even her tears stopped. “W—what?”

“You said I don’t know what you’re going through, but actually my Mom was pretty awful. If she thought she could use me, she would. I was just fortunate I had Daddy, God rest his soul, and Darius. If not for them, who knows what my Mom would have done?” She leaned back in her chair and shrugged. “You aren’t as fortunate as I am, all you got was Carl. Ugh. So I’ll do what he should have and just pay for your college instead.”

“There’s no way— I can’t—”

“Bah!” Felicia waved her hand. “Do you know how rich I am? Getting you through college, ea—asy! My purse wouldn’t even feel an itch.”

“But that… that isn’t right…” Alisa gripped her hands tightly in front her, head low. “I’d be taking advantage of a friend.”

Felicia paused, blinking rapidly in surprise.

Truthfully, Alisa was so timid it was often hard to know whether she was a willing participant or just forced into it. Felicia would often take her out to various places because… well… Alisa was just really pitiful. Unlike Darius, who liked being alone with his nose in a book, Alisa was the kind of shy person who clearly longed for companionship and inclusion. To help her feel less like an outsider, Felicia went out of her way to invite her out.

But Felicia often wondered if Alisa actually liked being around her or not. The younger woman so very rarely spoke her mind, it was hard to know.

She suddenly laughed.

Perhaps.... Yes, perhaps Alisa could be a kind of friend. The relationship couldn’t be too deep. After Mr. King, she was still afraid of getting too close to people but… a regular friend. That would be alright.

“Heh, what are you saying?” Felicia rubbed the bridge of her nose, feeling a little shy. “Don’t friends help each other out?”

This implicit acknowledgement of their friendship seemed to loosen something in Alisa’s heart.

“How about…. How about I get a degree in Commercial and Advertising Art?”

Felicia furrowed her brow. “Why not your original major?”

“Honesty, the only part of this job I’ve liked is anything related to designing products and advertising. Instead of just giving me money to go through college, you could sponsor me. Then, when I get out, I would go directly into King Enterprises and work for… for you and Mr. King.”

“Hm…..” Felicia rubbed her chin.

“You could take a portion of my pay back to compensate—”

Felicia waved her hand dismissively. “How about… you just have to work for us for a minimum of 5 years after graduating and call it even?”

Despite still looking like a disaster, Alisa’s whole face lit up with hope.

“If you’re going to do this, are you prepared for the fallout it’ll cause with your family?”

“The… the worst they could do is disinherit me.” Alisa looked a little sad as she spoke, “If I’m sponsored by you, they wouldn’t do anything else. They wouldn’t dare.”

Felicia leaned forward and gave a slightly mean looking smile, “Don’t think of it as a bad thing. Getting disinherited means they won’t want anything to do with you. That’s good. In fact, make them so angry that just the thought of you makes them sick. That way, you’ll be totally free of them.”

Alisa was silent for several seconds, her hands clenching and unclenching. Felicia guessed that Alisa was struggling with the idea of cutting herself off from her family. No matter how bad they were, family was family after all.

Finally Alisa said in a low but firm voice, “Yeah… that’s a good idea. I’ll do that.”

Later that day, Felicia brought Darius lunch directly to his office. To force him to stop working, she made sure his food always required a fork and a knife to eat. She also stayed to chat with him while eating lunch herself, forcing him to eat slower.

“Hey Dee, has Mom contacted you lately?”

Darius raised his eyebrows, “Why would that woman want to talk to me?”

Felicia sighed, “That’s what I thought but… I haven’t heard from her in a long time...”

He gave her a long stare.

“What?” She asked uncomfortably.

“I was under the impression you were… glad… when she walked out of our lives.”

She made a face, feeling frustrated. It was only Felicia that was relieved, her host wasn’t the same. The emotional friction caused by remembering Kim’s absence had slowly gotten more unbearable as the day had gone on.

“It’s not like I want to be close to her or anything, I got… I just got used… used to her contacting me occasionally…. I guess I’m just worried.” It made her host feel better to have Kim call or send a letter, even if it was all with malicious intentions.

Darius put down his fork and gave a very rare sigh of exasperation.

“You still feel attached to her? Despite everything?”

“Not… not attached exactly…” Felicia poked at her food, looking and feeling pitiful.

Darius gave her another long stare before stiffly stating: “She’s fine.”

“Huh?”

“That woman… is fine.”

Felicia felt even more confused by his statement.

“O… okay?”

“She hasn’t contacted you because she is… busy.”

“How would you know?” She asked and then raised her eyebrows, “Wait, are you… are you keeping tabs on her? Why?”

“That woman is clever, in her own way. It’s better to know what she’s doing and not be caught by surprise.”

Felicia nodded slowly in response. Kim managed to worm her way into Mr. King’s heart, despite not being in the same circles as him, and then kept his affection the entire 10+ years they were married. All this to gain his wealth and without developing even a drop of love for him. That kind of skill was really extraordinary in it’s own way.

“She hasn’t contacted you because she’s busy with her own life.”

“Doing what?” Felicia couldn’t help be curious. Kim had gone all over the world yet always found time to harass her daughter.

“Fee.”

“Yeah?”

“You know how I said I trust you, even if you’re being unreasonable?”

“...yeah.”

“Do you trust me?”

“Of course!”

Her instant response seemed to release some of the tension in him and his face relaxed slightly.

“If you trust me, then don’t ask anymore.”

Felicia’s mouth dropped open, eyes turning wide as saucers.

‘Hey, hey, hey— isn’t that a super sketchy thing to say? What did he actually do to Kim?!’

[It is better for the user not to know. The host won’t like it.]

Felicia mentally nodded in agreement with DARS. She actively despised Kim, so whatever Darius did, she didn’t care. How could she care about a woman who drove her daughter to suicide? As for her host…

Though she didn’t have a lot of experience with hosts, this being her first one, it seemed to Felicia that they could be… trained, emotionally. While her host’s love for Kim couldn’t be erased, it could be reduced. On the flip side, the ambivalence her host initially had for Darius had changed into a real sibling affection. This was thanks to Felicia “training” the host, emphasising one relationship over the other over many years.

Darius was trying to force her host to make a decision about which relationship she valued: Mom or Brother.

If it’d been in the past, her host would have immediately picked “Mom”. But today there was hesitation and doubt. Felicia was pleasantly surprised to see that, for once, her host wasn’t stupidly throwing her life away for a Mom that didn’t love her.

Channeling that doubt and hesitation, Felicia closed her gaping mouth and cleared her throat. “You… you said Mom was fine?”

“Yes.”

“You promise she’s ok?”

“I promise she’s living exactly the life she deserves.”

‘Kim must be so miserable right now!’ Felicia mentally rolled around in glee, not feeling even a tiny bit of pity for her. It wouldn’t take much to make Kim miserable. Just by forcing her to live an ordinary “commoner” life would be enough for that greedy woman to hate life.

Outwardly, Felicia gave a relieved sigh and then smiled genuinely, “If you say so then… I believe you. I won’t ask about her anymore.”

Darius smiled so widely that his eyes squinted slightly.

Felicia felt like she’d been given a visual punch to the face. He was handsome already but rarely showed emotion on his face. The most she’d ever gotten was a small smile, more a lifting the corner of the lips than a genuine expression of happiness. Suddenly getting an earnest and carefree show of joy was like finding a box of diamonds in the attic, wonderful but really surprising!

‘Holy frick— my eyes! My eyes!’ Felicia was physically blinking from the emotional shock she was receiving. ‘This guy’s smile… an unprepared person could die! If I hadn’t been raised with him— yikes, I might get paralyzed! Ah…. I want to capture this memory… why don’t I have a camera? Someone get me a camera—!’

Just as her mental squealing had revved up to ridiculous proportions, the smile vanished and was replaced with the usual ambivalence.

‘Aw………’ She inwardly pouted. As quick as it came, it left.

“I heard Miss Synder made a fool of herself this morning?” He said, changing the topic smoothly.

Felicia jolted out of her revere. “Don’t say that, she’s my friend.”

Darius’ eyebrow rose ever so slightly. “My apologies.”

“Oh, but she did do something crazy! Let me tell you—”

Felicia then began her retelling of earlier events. Darius listened with interest.

When Alisa went home that night, she felt a little confused. Two big things happened that day: She’d decided to split from her family and… Darius was friendly to her. She wasn’t sure which left her head spinning more.

He was usually aloof but polite. Unless talking to his sister, Darius King never said a word extra than was absolutely necessary to the people around him. But today he went out of his way to include her in conversations, even inquiring about her general wellbeing as if he really cared.

When Alisa first joined King Enterprise she’d had a small crush on Darius King like every other girl in the country. But after working for him over the years… the glamour had long since worn off. As a Boss, he was exact and demanding, difficult for someone as sub-par as her to work alongside. There were many nights that she went home in tears, both in frustration and embarrassment of not being able to meet his standards.

Nor was she moved by his sudden softening towards her. Alisa wasn’t foolish enough to believe she’d suddenly caught his attention, romantically speaking. She suspected Felicia had spoken to him over lunch and something her friend said had changed his general view of her.

But him going from polite to friendly didn’t do her any good in relation to work. He was still as demanding as ever, just… friendlier about it. Furthermore, those who worked with him also noticed. Though they should have known better, quite a few women still openly pined for Darius King. When they saw him suddenly being friendly to Alisa… their angry jealous stares gave her goosebumps.

She was thankful she’d be leaving King Enterprise soon. Jealous women could be really scary. She knew because she’d seen it first hand from her mother.