After the meal was over, my mom held Mateo's girlfriend's hand and kept praising how pretty and elegant she was and how well the two of them matched. "Oh my, Mateo, you have such a good eye! Your girlfriend is so elegant and beautiful! The two of you are a perfect match! You're truly a golden couple. Good! Good! You've done better than your cousin."
Mateo's fiancé blushed and said bashfully, "Auntie, stop it! You’re making me shy. It’s all thanks to Mateo's talent. He shined at the seminar and that’s how we met! If he were not so outstanding back then, I never would’ve had the chance to date such an amazing man."
Mateo who was sitting beside her, squeezed her hand. His face was full with a smile. "I’m the lucky one, really. Sometimes I feel like I don’t deserve my little princess.”
They were sitting on the sofa. Usually, he would sit slouching on the sofa, but at that moment, he sat up straighter than I’d ever seen him before, back straight, full of pride.
Tia, who sat across the room, let out a giggle while her eyes glued to her phone. I turned to look at her.
I had been a top student all my life. I had been accepted to Albertine University and planned to build my future in Albertine City. However, in the end, I married Tia, the daughter of a local landlord who made a living collecting rent.
That year, I should never have married her.
After my dreams of studying abroad were crushed, I did not give up because I shifted my focus to the civil service exams. However, when the background checks came out, someone deliberately reported me.
Gossip spread like wildfire among the neighbors and then my mother forced me to kneel at my grandfather’s grave. "Swear to me," she had said, "that you’ll never take the exams again whether it is for postgraduate entrance examination or the civil service examination. Never do anything that embarrasses me again."
I secretly rented a place and tried studying for graduate school entrance exams. However, when she found out, she burned all my study materials and she nearly set fire to the entire apartment.