Seeing how her tactic worked in getting a smile from Nora, Xiu tried once again saying, "Do you know I can jump higher than a tree."
"Huh? No, you can"t," replied Nora stubbornly.
"Of course, I can!" said Xiu with conviction.
"How"s that possible?" asked Nora while crossing her arms before her chest in a challenging manner.
Xiu pinched her cheeks and said, "Because trees can"t jump, idiot! Haha!"
Her burst of laughter made Nora roll her eyes at her as she nudged her lightly and said, "If you didn"t give up on such lame jokes, I"m gonna kill you."
"Such a bad temper!" grumbled Xiu like an annoyed kid.
Just as they were goofing around, they heard the sound of door unlocking and looked at each other with a horrified look as Xiu pushed Nora and whisper yelled, "Get your dumb a.s.s to the shower. If your mother saw you like this, it won"t end well."
Nora nodded her head and ran towards her room while Xiu cleared Nora"s browsing history before shutting down the laptop. It was never a good idea to let Clara Cartwright know that her only daughter had been shopping for fun. And it didn"t take a genius to know that only Nora"s mother had access to their apartment.
As Clara entered through the door, she found Xiu sitting with a magazine in her hand. She eyed Xiu as she placed the food basket in her hand on the table and said, "My little Xiu, why are you reading it upside down?"
"What?" Xiu closed her eyes and bit her tongue as she realized how she had been holding her magazine upside down.
"Something"s on your mind?" asked Clara as she caressed Xiu"s head and sat beside her. Xiu shook her head and snuggled in the warmth that she felt around a mother figure. "If everything is fine, why are you acting like a clingy baby? Not that I don"t like it but you rarely act like this." She tucked Xiu"s hair behind her ear and added, "Wait for a second, how come you"re up so early? I thought Sat.u.r.days don"t even exist for you since you always end up sleeping till Sunday."
Xiu pursed her lips as she didn"t know what to say to that. She indeed always skipped Sat.u.r.day. "Well, Clara mom... You can say that I have had the best sleep in years last night."
Clara raised her brows in question at her and asked, "Did you finally try my aromatherapy?"
Xiu thought back how she nuzzled up against Darren and felt calm in the presence of his overwhelming and peculiar scent. A smile formed on her lips as she replied, "It"s definitely aromatherapy. Worked like a charm."
Clara eyed her suspiciously but didn"t say anything as she got up to set the table with breakfast dishes she had brought with herself. "Clara mom, why did you make so much?"
"Felt like doing it," replied Clara with a shrug of her shoulders nonchalantly.
"Were you stressed over some case? Because you love doing stress cooking," said Xiu in an obvious way and Clara ended up nodding. Xiu shook her head but didn"t say anything since she herself loved to do baking whenever she was feeling down.
While Clara was setting up the table, she suddenly realized that there was a person missing around her. "Xiu, where is that no good daughter of mine."
Xiu wasn"t surprised at how Clara called Nora as a "no good daughter" but rather she was surprised at the consistency of these insults. "She"s taking a shower."
"For this long?" asked Clara and shook her head in disappointment saying, "This girl is really giving me a lot of stress these days."
"I don"t give you stress, you love taking the stress all on your own," came Nora"s voice who stood at the entrance of the kitchen with an unamused look. "Besides, I"m old enough to take care of myself. Why do you worry for no reason?"
Clara pulled Nora"s ear and said, "I"m your mother. If I won"t worry about your future who else will? Would the neighbors come to worry about it?"
"They might," replied Nora but ended up screaming in pain when her ear was pulled with even more force. "Mom, stop it. It hurts."
Clara let go and sat down at the dining table with Xiu. Nora also silently took a seat while rubbing her ear which had been a.s.saulted by her own mother. While the conversation over the breakfast was really simple and light, Clara suddenly said, "I recently read in a study that people who take long and hot showers are actually lonely inside and they try to add warmth in life with hot showers."
Nora looked down at her skin which was still red from her long hot shower and said, "Okay mother. I wasn"t expecting to be attacked on a personal level."
"When did I attack you? I was just sharing my knowledge with you since you"d never pick up a book to read on your own." There it was another attack on Nora making her want to shrink or vanish from mother"s sight.
"Mom, what really brought you to our humble abode so early on a Sat.u.r.day morning?" Nora tried to stir away from the topic of conversation to avoid further verbal attacks from her mother.
"Early? Darling, it"s 10 o"clock in the morning. How is that early?" asked Clara strangely.
"Mom, that"s not the point here," Nora said or more like whined.
Clara got up from her seat as she said, "I was cleaning your old room which you both used to share back in high school and found some stuff. I thought I should bring it to you."
Now that got both Xiu and Nora"s attention as they looked at Clara expectantly. With a paper bag in hand when Clara came back towards them, she pulled out a vintage wooden box that had "Destiny" carved on the lid. She pa.s.sed the wooden box to Xiu and said, "That"s the only thing of yours that I found. And since you always kept this box close, I thought it might be important."
Xiu eyed the box strangely before taking it from her and looking it up and down. Then Clara pa.s.sed the paper bag to Nora saying, "That"s your collection of comic books, I really wanted to burn it but your father got in the way."
Nora hugged the paper bag like a baby and said, "Mom, how can you even say that? These are my babies."
Clara slapped her head saying, "Idiot! This is your age to think about your real babies!"
While the mother and daughter were busy with another argument, Xiu"s whole concentration was on the box in her hand. It felt weird holding it in her hand.