0. Prologue

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Mothers usually tell their tales, without the application of psychological proficiency, believable for their children.

The children would be told during their movement to adulthood most of these stories hold no relevance to society, but as if barred by forged steel the stories related by the motherly kind of storytelling live on and pursued.

For my part, I was often related to sightseer chronicles.

She takes me places I've never been before─not impossible locations─but where she had set foot before.

As a disclaimer, she wasn't the exact tattletale, a woman who definitely doesn't know how to weave her words like I could. She has credibility, everyone from my neighborhood could certify how her words were the solid truth without anyone complaining neither front end nor back end. Because before becoming an impoverished Sparks, my Mom was part of the wealthy Stromeyer conglomerate from Moscow─and her travels, given an influential person, were featured in several issues of well-known magazines. Only the sad thing involved here is that she didn't become popular─from crude sentences, as you've been given the context.

She'd start from her chronicles in England where she first met my father. In her words, the waft of romance in the air doesn't compare to Venice as it was more ecstatic. Typically, it triggers the sarcasm of a kid and tells her it's only because of my father. She wasn't kind enough to accept my offer for reconsideration, though. And also, I haven't seen any of these countries that I can't speak for myself.

True enough, I haven't been to London nor Venice.

Throughout twenty-one years of my life, it was all situated in New York─mostly Brooklyn, partly Manhattan and Hell's Kitchen.

It also adds up the inevitable question of how our family ended up in America if my parents were Russian and British. I never asked them. Surely, they'll tell me─but I can already predict it would be dramatic to a certain fault.

Other than being a romantic getaway for mom, she also talks a lot about Big Ben.

Actually, I don't remember much after all these years.

There are only fragments left in my memory, which I hold so dearly that I wanted to traverse the places.

In her stories, there was the picturesque beauty of the Swiss Alps. While South Korea is home to one of her business enmity, she has high regards for their environment. I still remember that departing via ferry at Busan would take one to Shimonoseki in Japan. The temples in Kyoto were confusing to remember by names that she accidentally revisited Kitano-Tenmangu Shrine the second time around a later trip when she ought to find Nishiki-Tenmangu Shrine. Alas, the Philippines has amazing beaches and waters that it couldn't have been bad living her life there as a local.

There were no fantastical relations like ghosts and goblins─not any fairy tales extracted for my bedtime stories like a popular work by Dr. Seuss or Hans Christian Andersen. Hereby relating my Mother didn't believe in otherworldly existences, which on my reasoning, has no relevance to the current society established for a clockwork configuration. Sightseer chronicles and dreaming of setting foot to a physical place wasn't, and shouldn't be, permissible to ridicule by rules of common sense.

While I know it's not applied to the majority, it was the case for me.

As a person of logic, you'd usually let other people dream their logical dreams─and later seize it in the form of truth. Depreciation should be cast aside, and keep the cheers going like it's a wholesome game of baseball by the Koshien Stadium where the teams rake in crowd recognition regardless of placement. But reality was cruel enough to not adhere to the ideal thought, and the townsmen canceled my dreams of setting foot someday in a faraway country. Sometimes, you just ask in grave wonder why people worry about the otherwise meaningless─and I might be clicking my tongue over disdaining attributes.

You wouldn't get enough of the feeling you'd mashed the sentiments of people, but determination outruns poverty by the mile.

Now, I'm an accomplished bestselling author living with royalties from publication. What not a regular author can achieve, I achieved─I can even be complacent not writing another book again. I'll not worry about falling down the poverty line─although it's practically setting a red flag, now that I think about it but well, whatever.

I'm living the life.

No longer does my family live in a ridiculous neighborhood.

...But don't get the order and genre wrong─only what you've been shared with until now was the foreplay.

A long prologue, and a rather senseless one, so to say.

Heck it doesn't even give you the features you would like to know, and to make matters worse, the author is aware.

Because this isn't about success and motivation.

At forefront, I'm not telling anyone they should spin their lives to the best of their views. And also, I'm not encouraging anyone to laugh back at people who laughed at them before achieving their goals. Clarifying how it went for me and my family, we never had those instances, say, brought up in conversations or simply have ulterior impulses.

In its best description, a "gone wrong" chronicle about how I met a werewolf at the golden age of my career.

He─that unfathomable son of a moon─set the career in discourse, and led a completely different life away from what was expected.

The most vexing detail of all, I met him in London too.

Precisely in a standstill, engulfed in stale air without the ingenuity of a meaningful encounter. I missed my train all due to my punctuality deserving several punches, whence I stood at the platform out of breath as always featured for my daily life. The difference was that I'm not in Brooklyn─I wasn't used to everything, and I already checked out my hotel room.

I have nowhere to go.

That was all there is to it.

I can also say Warwick showed up at a time not foreign to me.

He only stood besides me, not having sneaked nor appeared out of a portal. He was startled, to be fair, and hotfoot he moved a tile aside that I couldn't help but notice. If only he didn't initiate a talk with me, we would have missed each other and no werewolf story occurs aligned for the books I write. Primarily, I would like you to foreshadow the first compliment he said to me─but I change my mind and drop its freshest essence.

"Of all maidens I met, your blood has the sweetest scent."

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