Astrid Fraser has been looking for her soulmate since she received her soul mark at 10. After 18 years, she began thinking she'd never find him... until fate decided to step in.
Will he accept her knowing that she is different?
Will he accept her...
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24 November 2020
It was a normal Tuesday morning for me: pole dancing to wake up my sleepy muscles and breakfast with my adorable daughter before she was dropped off to school on my way to work. We had a well-orchestrated routine, which was made so we could eat together in the mornings. Family breakfasts and dinner were important to my mum, which is something I had insisted on having with Sophie. It was our own little family tradition that made us feel closer to each other.
I was the office manager at KPOB 93.4FM, a local Brisbane radio station. Having parents who were musicians, it was clear that the love of music flowed through my veins. I had started there three years ago, helping to turn the once struggling radio station into one of the top dogs in Brisbane. KPOB 93.4FM, before me, had no real target audience; it had been a community station with dwindling numbers, but I saw the potential. Based on my recommendations, the big bosses turned it into a niche station specialising in all things K-Pop and K-Rock, which was rivalling the top three big stations in the city. Prior to the change, there had not been a station in Australia that catered solely to the lovers of Korean music.
My dual Bachelor degrees in Communication (Entertainment Industries) and Business, along with the Masters in Business I'd earned, helped me to turn the radio station into a viable and profitable one. My boss often joked that he wanted to clone my brain, claiming that I was indispensable; he dreaded the day I would turn my resignation in.
Sitting in the courtyard on my break, I enjoyed the warm spring sunshine. I really loved the Brisbane weather in late November; spring weather here was hot, but not scorching. While I loved the sub-tropical climate, I wasn't a fan of the high humidity we got in summer. We had the best of both worlds here – mild winters and nice hot, sunny summers. When talking to international artists, I often described the Brisbane climate similar as the one in Florida, which many of them understood easily.
Looking at my calendar for the month, I noted the meetings coming up and the fact that Sophie only had a couple of weeks left of the school year. I loved how the Australian school year started in late January and ended in late November or early December. I liked it when things were neat, and the northern hemisphere school years to me were not neat.
Thankfully, with Shell being a school teacher, she had the summer holidays off and offered to look after both our kids. I thought about where I'd like to take my daughter on our annual summer holiday, something I'd started a couple of years ago after my pay increase. As I was contemplating destinations, a notification for an email came across the phone screen. Opening the app, I saw it was from HYBE. Wanting to wait to open it with Sophie, I closed the app and crossed my fingers.
'Please let it be good news since there was an email.'
Returning to work with a spring in my step and a smile on my face, I was excited to see my daughter for more reasons than just missing the girl.
To say Sophie was excited when she got home from school would be an understatement. On the car ride home, I hinted about the email from HYBE. My daughter tried using all of her charms to get more information out of me; however it was fruitless. The poor girl had to wait another two hours to find out as I had called my friends to come over for takeaway and to reveal the email – we would all be there to celebrate together or to console each other. Unfortunately, we had to wait for those whose work days finished later – particularly Candice and Todd, who each had meetings that didn't finish until after 5pm.
