Happy Ending ((TENYA IIDA X OC))

Chapter 33

"This is completely unnecessary."

I had been complaining for the last hour and a half as my mother fussed over my hair. It hadn't even been three days since I was released from the hospital and she was already insisting on dragging me off somewhere.

She had neglected to tell me exactly where she planned on taking me, and only revealed that my sister and Aizawa were already there waiting for us.

It was late into the afternoon by the time my mother got home with a dress bag, and taking by how much the damn thing cost and how frantically my mother was trying to quickly make me look nice, I could only assume that wherever we were going was formal.

I hated formal events. I hated dresses and having to pin my bangs out of my face. The makeup Mother was caking onto my face made my cheeks feel icky and I had this perpetual urge to smear the baby-pink lip gloss off of my lips.

I eyed my mother through the mirror as she applied the finishing touches to my hair, noticing how different she looked with blushed cheeks and shadowed eyelids. Her long hair was braided back into a bun, and she had her bangs falling over her forehead as she usually did. Her thin figure was currently being hugged by a black, knee-length dress with a modest slit going up her right leg. The dress on its own reminded me of what she wore when she was a villain, but I decided not to say anything; she was still adjusting, after all.

As I watched her focused face, I couldn't help but think back to what Dream Walker had told me; how she didn't actually love my dad at all. It made me wonder how she felt about me, since I was quite literally forcefully conceived by the 'quirk' that was corrupting her.

"Mom," I said finally, prompting her brown hues to meet my blue ones in the mirror. "I need to ask you something."

"If it's about why I'm dressing you up, I already told you that it's a surprise." She replied quickly, going back to my uncooperative hair.

"It's not that," I justified, fiddling with my fingers as I gazed down to them. "It's about Dad."

I felt her fingers hitch as she slipped a bobby-pin into place. I couldn't tell if she was looking at me again, but by her prolonged silence I could tell that she was waiting for me to continue.

"Did you love him?"

Again, silence.

I could feel the hesitant tension rising in the air, but she was quick to finish what she was doing before moving away to take a seat on the edge of the bed. I forced myself to turn in my seat, and slowly I looked up to her.

Her thin eyebrows were knitted together, but she didn't look angry or displeased by my question; she almost looked confused — unsure. I didn't want her to tell me what I wanted to hear, and I hoped that that showed enough in my expression.

She opened her mouth. "I did, at the end."

I raised a brow. Urged her to go on.

"The relationship between your father and I was complicated," she continued, standing up to fetch the dress bag hanging in the closet. "At first, I was forced onto him. But when we had you... everything changed."

I breathed out my nose and slowly stood up, feeling the discomfort in my still sore bones and muscles as I leaned my weight against the side of the vanity.

I very clearly wasn't excepting that answer. I wasn't even aware that my mother was even in the slightest bit of control when she was fused with Dream Walker. She seemed so foreign to how she is now. She's kind and warm and her smile can light up a room, whereas before she was malicious and insane. Back then, her smile made my skin crawl and stomach jump.