Prologue: Annie and Star

Annie woke up to her obnoxiously loud alarm set everyday at 6:00am, almost destroying it with her fist. Annie didn’t have much to be thankful for in life, with her 8 step-sisters always harassing her for some unknown reason and the rest of her family which also hated her too for reasons beyond her control, however, she was glad that she could at least be thankful for one thing in her life. Suddenly, the door slammed open and a joyful little boy came rushing into her room to greet her, his hair a messy wreck of blonde curls and his sparkling blue eyes shining as always. “WAKE UP MOMHLJKFXGGH;JKTFSHG” the boy yelled at fucking 6am in the goddamned morning. Annie bolted upright in shock just as her son flew into her arms. The five year old boy was named Star, and greatly resembled Annie with their shared blonde locks and light skin, their only mismatched attribute being her brown eyes and his blue ones. Annie, in all honesty, thought his name was fucking stupid, and would have never named her son this. However, it was Star’s father who decided that having such a cringey name would be beneficial for the child, even though Annie knew deep inside that this would definitely get the poor boy bullied at school.

‘Bzzz, bzzz, bzzz…’ out of the corner of her eye, Annie noticed her phone buzzing signalling that somebody was attempting to call her, on the screen flashing an ominous name. Annie rolled her eyes and simply turned her phone off, not bothering to listen to another one of her step-sisters complaining about how poor and ugly she was, even though Annie was actually fairly attractive and everyone else around her just looked either insanely plain or exceedingly beautiful for some reason. Annie decided that now would be a good time to get out of bed so that she and Star could get ready for their day. After all, today was a fairly important day as it was Star’s first day at school.

“C’mon Star, let’s get ready for school,” Annie yawned and got herself out of bed. Being a single mother was not a luxurious nor enviable position, the fact that Star had woken her up 3 times during the night was a grim reminder of this fact. And yet, this still did not change the terrible reality which was that Annie inevitably had to show up to work, regardless of the permanent fatigue that parenthood had bought upon the young lady. Shortly after preparing a simple breakfast of toast and peanut butter for herself and Star, Annie took her son to his first day at school. The school which Star was enrolled in was nothing fancy as Annie did not have the funds to pay the tuition fees of a well-renounced school, however, as long as she knew that her little boy was taken care of properly, Annie felt that she could rest a little easier.

“Be a good boy for your teachers, ok?” Annie smiled at her child. It had seemed like only yesterday did she have the little bundle of joy cradled in her arms blissfully, ignoring one of her many step-sisters which had come to taunt her about her lack of a significant other. Annie didn’t really like to admit it, but Star had been the product of a one-sided romance involving her and an old schoolmate. Annie hated to admit this even more, but this one-sided affection had originated from her falling for a cold and mysterious classmate, who she happened to run into during her college days after being out drinking with friends one night. Annie had always thought she had forgotten the emotions she held towards him, however, whenever she stared into those deep blue eyes, she had always ended up falling back into her bottomless obsession… actually, now that she did think about him, she felt like she would gladly smash his face in after he promised to take responsibility for their kid before promptly ditching her and Star once he was born. In fact, if she had the chance to right now, she felt that she would definitely hospitalise him and make him feel an amount of pain similar to what she had felt during labour. Alas, no such luck.

After bidding farewell to her child, Annie began to make her way towards her part-time job. Since she never finished college, Annie had a hard time finding jobs that she could work that would allow her to both look after Star and provide for the two of them. Ironically enough though, the only jobs she should seem to find that would fit these conditions were waitressing jobs at high-end restaurants, which somehow still only payed her the bare minimum wage. For another odd reason, Annie would always seem to attract unwanted attention from handsome and wealthy young men, whether it be one of her step sisters trying to frame her for attempting to sleep with one of these people, or simply an unenviable amount of sexual harassment. In fact, Annie usually got more money off of the court cases won from these unfavourable situations than she did at her part-time jobs, thanks to most of the perpetrators being rich and horny bastards.

Upon her arrival at work, Annie was promptly met with the bloodthirsty gazes of her fellow coworkers piercing through her skull. Annie found that no matter where she worked at, she was usually met with hatred directed towards her for some unknown reason, not that she cared much as any friends she did manage to make usually betrayed her by selling out her dignity to one of her step-sisters’ schemes. Regardless, Annie didn’t really give a shit anymore, and proceeded to ignore the cold glares of her coworkers. After clocking in, Annie then started to do the things that she would usually do at work, keeping in mind the time and how long she had left until her shift finished. Today, her shift happened to run until late in the night, and so she had prepared earlier for Star to be picked up and looked after by her grandmother, Teresa, who was for some reason the only person to treat Annie and her son with basic human decency. Annie never could understand why everyone around herself hated her being, it was entirely unreasonable to do so, she had figured a while ago that the author of this story must’ve just wanted Annie to suffer miserably for some strange and unknown reason. Was it perhaps a self insert from the authors own sad and miserable life? Or perhaps a self-reflection of a strange and somewhat masochistic hidden desire? Either way, in Annie’s opinion, it was kinda cringe.

As Annie began to think about ways to further break the fourth-wall, time started quickly flying by and soon enough, it would be the end of her shift at the restaurant. After the manager left, calling her slurs like ‘whore’ and ‘bitch’ for some reason, Annie would soon be free to close up the restaurant and head back home to her son, or so she thought. As the manager served their regular exaggerated and unnecessary insults to Annie, another customer came in, a tall man with white hair and blue eyes that looked annoyingly familiar to the waitress. Annie had to, unfortunately, resist the urge to kick him in a place that would disable him from having any more children due to the manager still dishing out an array of colourful insults, this time going so far as to insult Annie’s mother, not that Annie really minded as her mother was indeed a bitch. Just as Annie’s manager was about to unnecessarily slap her in the face, it was always the face for some reason, the mysterious customer seized the wrist of her boss, making them turn around in shock. “M-Mister Xian!” The manager exclaimed, “Wh-what are you doing herE?!?!?1?”

Annie rolled her eyes, the manager acting as if the restaurant was already closed and customers couldn’t just enter and leave as they pleased. In fact, there were still a few customers in the restaurant finishing up their meals, why did no one step in to help Annie? Even though they were just background characters, they should surely still notice that Annie’s manager was literally just about to slap her?? “You shouldn’t damage things that belong to other people,” Mr Xian replied, looking at Annie dead in the eyes with the straightest expression possible. Annie nearly choked.

“Please let me hit this guy, manager,” Annie pleaded, “I swear I’ll make sure he isn’t able to remember any of this in hospital, please.” The young man in front of Annie scoffed and grabbed her chin with his left hand, his frosty touch forcing her warm brown eyes to look up into his icy blue ones. Annie was this close to punching him in the face. This. Fucking. Close.

“As if you would dare to lay a finger on me,” Mr Xian mocked, playfully tracing his cold thumb over her lower lip, “After all, I am the father of our child.”

Our child.

Our child.

Since. Fucking. When. This fucker didn’t even pay for child support, he just up and dipped as soon as he named the poor kid a stupid name that would definitely get him bullied later on in life. Annie immediately hooked her right leg around his, making it buckle from underneath him, before grabbing his left arm swiftly and flinging him to the side into her bitchass manager. Annie didn’t really understand why every handsome male she met was noticeably taller than her, it’s not that she was short or anything either, every guy she met was just extraordinarily large. However, knowing this also gave Annie a chance to prepare for any future encounters with any problematic men, and so she had studied in advance a tactical way to avoid her towering opponents, secretly waiting for a day to come when she could beat the shit out of Harrison Xian. Today was that day. “Look, Xian,” Annie sighed, looking pitifully into his wide eyes filled with pure shock at her ruthless movements. Annie couldn’t really blame him, after all, the last time they had met was when Annie was heavily in love with the cold-blooded bastard. The current Annie was different though, and would definitely slap past Annie if she could.

“You ditched me with a child for five years, not even paying fucking child support or anything, and now you seriously come back to me out of nowhere barging back into my life acting all lovey-dovey hero-like for whatever fucking reason-” Annie pondered to herself for a moment, wondering how he managed to walk in at the exact same time as she was about to receive her daily harassment from her manager, let alone how he found her in the first place. “Wait a minute, how did you manage to find me?”

Annie had moved after Harrison Xian had ditched her, how the **** did he know which city she lived in, let alone where she worked? “Have you been stalking me or something?”

At this, Harrison’s pearly white cheeks slowly transformed into a deep crimson hue as he quickly looked away from Annie’s disgusted gaze. Annie would have had a stronger reaction if this was the first time she had been stalked, however, much to her own dismay, this was not the first time such an event had taken place. Annie wasn’t really sure why, but she had been stalked quite a few times by men, despite being a single mother minding her own goddamn business. Who knew, perhaps stalking young and overworked single mothers with a crippling caffeine addiction was a problem in this neighbourhood. However, some randos were one thing, but this bastard was an entirely different story. Just as the store closed and all the customers left, Annie managed to get a few good punches into the sorry lad before her manager was able to pry the angry lioness away from her somehow conscious prey.

(DISCLSIMER: this is a work of fiction, it’s also a parody romance novel and is meant to be taken comically. All the characters etc are fictional and are not related to real people or places in any way, shape or form)

***Download NovelToon to enjoy a better reading experience!***