Chapter 2

Victoria's POV:

Entering the living room with a smile on my face, I saw my dad sitting on the couch reading a newspaper. It was surprising to see him at home.

My father, Mr. Elvis Terry, is an accountant at Crestfield Bank, works on weekdays from 8:00am to 6:00pm. So it is very unusual for him to be at home at 4:00pm.

"Good evening dad," I greeted him with a smile on my face.

"Good evening sweetie," my father replied with a smile that barely reached his eyes.

I thought I saw a glint of unease flash in his eyes, but I ignored it and thought of it as a result of him being tired from work. After all, it was the middle of the year when the banking system had been updated not long ago, so he sometimes had to stay overtime alongside some colleagues in order to familiarise himself better with the new system. Perhaps today had simply been one of those draining days that followed a person home on their face whether they liked it or not.

Entering through the open door on my right, I could hear my mother in the kitchen, the soft clatter of pots and the low hum of something that might have been a song or might have been her just thinking out loud. The smell that reached me confirmed dinner was already underway — something warm and familiar that immediately made my stomach remind me, for the third time that afternoon, that I had eaten almost nothing all day.

My mother, Veronica Terry, owns her own coffee shop on Elmridge Street — a small, warm place called The Daily Grind that she had built from a single rented unit three years ago into something locals had genuinely made a habit of. She was the kind of woman who channelled everything into whatever she was doing, which meant the coffee shop got most of her mornings and her energy, and the evenings she saved for us.

Dinner that night was quieter than usual. The three of us sat around the dining table — my father, my mother, and me — with the television off, which was already unusual enough to notice. My brother Daniel, who was two years older than me and currently halfway through his first year at Crestfield University, was not home. He had his own flat near campus now, which he treated as a point of personal pride and which my mother treated as a reason to send him food twice a week.

It was my father who brought it up, in the careful, measured way he approached most things he had clearly been rehearsing in his head. He set down his fork, glanced briefly at my mother, and then looked at me.

He told me that he and my mother had decided, after a great deal of thought and a great deal of honest conversation between themselves, that they were going to separate. Not with anger, he said, and not because of anything sudden.

They had grown in different directions over the years in the quiet way that sometimes happened between two people who had started out wanting the same things. They had talked it through properly, like adults, and they had agreed that this was the right decision for both of them. The important thing, he said, was that nothing about this changed anything between them as parents, or between either of them and Daniel and me.

My mother nodded gently throughout, adding the parts my father left out — that they had reached this decision three years ago and had waited until Daniel and I were older, until the timing felt less like damage and more like information. That they still respected each other. That the house arrangements and everything practical had already been quietly worked out.

I sat and listened. I pushed a piece of carrot around my plate. I said very little. There was not much to say to something that had clearly already been decided and delivered with such careful kindness that falling apart in response to it felt almost rude.

After dinner I helped clear the table, said goodnight to both of them, it was about 4:40pm. I climbed the stairs to my room.

Walking into my room, I sat down in my study chair and just looked out through the window in thought. The rain from earlier had stopped, leaving the street outside glistening faintly under the lamppost at the corner. I reached up and took off my glasses, setting them on the desk beside me, and pressed my fingers briefly against my eyes.

"Ding — system binding."

"Ehh, what's that sound?" I asked, looking around for where it had come from.

"System binding complete" the voice came back again.

"System?" I asked with eyes wide open.

Suddenly a purple game-like interface appeared in front of me "Like the ones in novels?" asked again in confirmation.

"Host you could say that" the system replied.

"What type of system exactly are you?" I asked the system.

"Host I'm the beautiful and Famous system, my sole purpose is to make you a beautiful and well-known woman in the entire world" the system replied.

"....System, are you serious?" I asked the system glancing at it suspiciously. "What's the use of being beautiful and famous?" I asked again?

System"......."

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