Mom's Possessed - Chapter 63

“What?! Birthday?!”

Catherine jumped up when she heard from Luke about Bonita’s birthday.

“Why are you only telling me about something so important now!”

“You didn’t know either, Mother.”

“No, but you should have known!”

She beat her chest with both hands. Luke’s eyes narrowed.

“Mother, do you know my birthday?”

“Isn’t that obvious?”

“When is it?”

“November 17th.”

Luke looked a bit surprised.

“You know it unexpectedly well.”

“Hey! What kind of parent doesn’t know their child’s birthday? I almost died giving birth to you because your head was so big!”

“…”

Luke closed his mouth at the heavy truth. He realized that continuing this argument would only lead to defeat.

And in fact, even he thought… it must have been very difficult for Catherine.

Even though Bonita was born very small, Elodie’s body was damaged beyond repair.

Considering Elodie’s congenital frailty, giving birth itself was already a life-risking endeavor.

Feeling awkward, he fiddled with the back of his ear and grumbled.

“I was preoccupied. And anyway, wouldn’t it have been fine if I remembered even a week before?”

“Did Miss Hilton tell you?”

“That…!”

How on earth did she know?

Catherine, noticing Luke’s confusion, snorted.

“As you get older, you naturally see right through your child’s thoughts, son.”

“Really?”

He asked with suspicious eyes.

“I’m always anxious because I never know what Bonita is thinking.”

Hearing this, Catherine let out a groan.

“Bonita is… a bit unusual. She’s not like a typical child.”

“More than me?”

“You were like a child when you were young.”

Catherine retorted cynically.

“Do you know how many curtains in the house you tore up and ate? The servants came running to my room crying every day because you kept tearing down the framed pictures on the wall to use as sleds on the stairs. I wonder if you even remember.”

“There’s no need to go into such detail…”

Luke cleared his throat at the stark recollection of facts. The tips of both his ears were red.

“Anyway, that’s how it turned out.”

“What exactly?”

Catherine raised an eyebrow with an incredulous tone.

“You’ve never prepared a birthday party before, have you?”

“Elodie’s birthday party…”

“Elodie is an adult over twenty, and Bonita is a seven-year-old child! It’s completely different!”

That was true.

“What’s the difference? We’ll decorate the entire mansion lavishly either way, won’t we?”

“Tsk tsk, you heartless fellow who doesn’t understand children’s hearts at all.”

“I should be closer to a child than you, Mother.”

Catherine neatly ignored Luke’s complaint.

“First, fill the mansion with helium balloons. The more shapes and colors, the better.”

“Oh.”

It was quite a good idea.

Luke tried to recall memories of birthday parties from his childhood.

‘There were definitely balloons… weren’t there?’

After turning twelve, he started to prefer a more refined atmosphere, but when he was younger, it seemed like there were balloons.

Seeing Luke’s expression, Catherine gained confidence and started listing her opinions one after another.

“Next, a large chocolate fountain that children would like, fireworks to set off in the evening, huge gift boxes, and fill the birthday table with all kinds of desserts. And also macarons that Bonita likes…”

Luke’s hand moved busily.

Unlike him, Catherine was an experienced person who had personally prepared birthday parties when they were young.

Moreover, surprisingly, every single opinion was useful.

Luke, who had written down everything Catherine said, asked.

“Is this enough? For gifts, I guess we can just throw in all the good ones, right?”

Catherine shook her head and clicked her tongue.

“Tsk tsk, how pathetic, even if you are my son.”

“What now?”

Luke’s eyes narrowed.

Chocolate fountain, fireworks, gift boxes, various foods and delicacies that Bonita would like, and even desserts.

No matter how he thought about it, nothing was missing.

Even when he tried to recall his childhood memories, it was pretty much the same. It seemed like this was about right.

“Oh my.”

Catherine shook her head, seeing her son who couldn’t grasp it at all. Finally, she spoke first.

“You need to invite friends!”

“Pardon?”

Luke blinked.

“What friends?”

“Are you going to have a birthday party without inviting guests?”

“Isn’t this kind of thing usually done quietly with family—”

“That’s what old adults like, children like playing with their peers the most.”

“Old…”

The expression of the thirty-year-old Luke, who suddenly became an old adult, crumbled for a moment.

‘It’s not wrong…’

The age difference between Bonita and him was twenty-three years.

Children of that age group usually called anyone over twenty ‘mister’ rather than ‘brother’, so to Bonita’s friends, Luke was undoubtedly a mister.

He felt a bit dizzy and looked in the mirror. Fortunately, the man in the mirror, although having a fierce impression, didn’t look like he was in his thirties.

“Honestly, my face value is about twenty-five. I’m different from you, Mother.”

“Tsk, that won’t last long. As you get older, the weight of time catches up. When I was your age, I also looked like I was in my early to mid-twenties.”

“…”

Luke closed his ears completely.

Anyway, that was a very distant future.

…It had to be.

“That’s a great idea!”

Aria brightened up after hearing the story from Luke.

“Bonita will like it too. Oh, but should we let her know in advance? About the birthday party?”

“I suppose we should.”

They were planning to decorate the entire mansion for the birthday party.

Unless they kept Bonita in her room and didn’t let her out, there was no way to hide it in the first place.

The two headed to the playroom where Bonita was.

Bonita was sitting comfortably on the sofa, leaning to one side, flipping through a picture book. She was occasionally looking for a few letters she had learned in the last lesson.

“Bonita.”

“Um… Aria!”

Bonita, who was about to say ‘Mom’, quickly corrected her address when she saw Luke beside her.

However, Luke wasn’t a fool. He had noticed how Bonita was calling her.

He just pretended not to know.

While he couldn’t hear the word ‘dad’ himself, he was quite displeased that this woman was being called ‘mom’, but he didn’t want to say anything to Bonita.

Bonita, standing in front of Aria, looked up at her and Luke alternately with expectant eyes.

“Did you both come to play with me?”

“Do you want to play together?”

“Mmhmm.”

At Aria’s voice tinged with laughter, Bonita twisted her body shyly.

“It’s nice to be alone too, but it gets boring if it’s always like that.”

“Then let’s sit on the sofa together and have a little chat.”

Aria lifted Bonita up and sat her on her lap. Bonita laughed as if she was about to lose her breath when her side was tickled in the process.

“Wa, wait, it tickles! Ahaha!”

“Eek.”

Aria, feeling playful, deliberately wiggled her fingers, and Bonita ran away to the side with a small scream.

Innocent laughter rang out. Seeing this scene, Luke felt a tightness in his chest and sat down on the opposite sofa.

“Whew.”

Bonita, who had rolled around on the sofa excitedly for a moment, exhaled. Aria stroked the child’s head.

“So what are we going to talk about?”

“Ah, right. Yes.”

Aria, who had been distracted by rolling around with Bonita, made an ‘oh’ expression. Feeling Luke’s gaze, she hurriedly brought up the main point.

“Bonita, you know your birthday is coming up soon, right?”

“Birth…day?”

But Bonita’s reaction was strange.

“My birthday is coming soon?”

Bonita made a puzzled expression as if it was completely news to her.

Luke and Aria felt a sense of discomfort in that face.

Usually, children look forward to their birthday, the only day of the year. While busy adults might forget, for a young child, there’s hardly a more joyous occasion than their birthday.

As such, it’s a day that absolutely cannot and should not be forgotten.

But Bonita was acting as if she didn’t even know she had a birthday.

Aria opened her mouth, thinking maybe.

“Bonita.”

Her voice trembled.

“Do you know when your birthday is?”

When Bonita shook her head, the two’s expressions hardened.

Seeing this change in expression, Bonita’s eyes wavered with anxiety.

“Um… Did I do something wrong?”

“That’s impossible.”

Luke, who had been watching from behind, stood up. Aria reflexively stepped back half a step.

It was to distance herself from Luke.

“You haven’t done anything wrong. The one who did wrong is someone else.”

The red eyes briefly turned towards Aria. Unlike just before when it was mostly annoyance, now it was infinitely cold.

Only then did Aria realize how the situation just now must have appeared to Luke.

Before coming to the mansion, there were clear signs of abuse on her body, and her nutritional state was poor.

In that situation, the reason Luke tolerated Aria’s presence was solely because Bonita loved her.

But there’s a limit to that too.

‘Aria certainly knows Bonita’s birthday.’

She can’t not know.

It was Aria who watched and assisted Elodie’s childbirth right beside her.

Luke knows this fact well too.

That’s why Aria could casually mention Bonita’s birthday in front of Luke without any problem.

But she had never thought that Bonita herself wouldn’t know her own birthday.

‘The fact that Bonita doesn’t know her birthday means…’

The one who raised Bonita was Aria.

Not her, but the real Aria.

So the real Aria, while raising Bonita for 7 years, never once told her about her birthday.

She bit the inside of her mouth.