Absinthe

Chapter 3 : Peanut Butter

It had been a month since I left Kimchilandia, and I still hadn't started looking for jobs. I don't want to make excuses or anything, and I know this will sound totally lame and unacceptable but... I was so in love with my new apartment.

I now lived in a penthouse in BGC. Faye had outdone herself. She had bought the unit for me and had had it completed—retrofits and furnishings and all—in under a month.

Faye really does know me well. She knows exactly what theme, furnishings, and activities I love, and she had taken them all into account while searching for my new home.

I had an infinity-style plunge pool with a Jacuzzi at the end. It was where I kept finding myself spending most nights in, holding a glass of wine and indulging in a platter of cold cuts and gourmet cheeses.

Faye had converted one of the three bedrooms into a library-office hybrid space and had gone further by adding titles I had always wanted to read but never had the time for.

And the best part of my pad? The kitchen. It had all the elements I needed to do MasterChef-style cooking. There was even a vertical green garden and a mini produce farm on the rooftop for my herbs and spices.

Instead of meeting up with headhunters and recruitment specialists to put my impressive CV out there, I was spending all of my time inventing desserts, honing my plating skills, reading book after book after book, and binge-watching Netflix and Hulu in the Jacuzzi area.

It would have been impossible to do all those things in Korea. My official working hours had been the usual 8 to 5, but there was an unwritten rule that the lower your position, the earlier you arrived and the later you left.

Unfortunately, our CEO would come to work at exactly 7 AM, so the VPs and the Directors arrived a bit earlier at 6:45, managers like myself clocked in at 6:30, and most other staff came in at 6:15. Meanwhile, entry-level employees and interns were practically in the office 24/7.

As for clocking out, let's just say that one of the reasons my skin got fairer and fairer was because I never saw the sun. The earliest I had left the office was at 10 PM, and that sort of thing happened only once in a blue moon.

Remembering all that, I started feeling angry again. I had slaved for that company for 10 good years, and they had just thrown me away like unwanted garbage.

With all the crying and drinking I had done back in Seoul after getting fired, it's a wonder I was able to settle things and move back to Manila. It was all thanks to Faye, again. I'm grateful to have her as my pillar. She had flown to Korea and had handled the messy affair of uprooting my life over there and replanting it here. She ended up selling or donating most of my stuff, but I didn't complain. It wasn't like I had good memories with them or something.

Mom called from time to time. She kept pushing me to get my ass out of the pool and get a job. I understood that she was worried. I was 31, and I still had my whole life ahead of me. Still, I wasn't ready to take the next step, whatever that was supposed to be.

I was confident that it wouldn't be difficult for me to get another high-paying job—well, not as high-paying as Samsong, but still—because of my credentials and achievements. I thought finding a new job should be a breeze.

I didn't want to hide my sexuality anymore, either. I wanted a job where I could take my significant other along whenever there's an event where families are invited. I wanted to be able to post Instagram photos of our picnics or date nights together without feeling the need to block every single person from the office. I wanted to be me.

That was the scary part, the part that was making me think twice about applying for this company and that. I didn't want another BJ-gets-fired-for-being-gay incident.