Chapter 5: Letting Go

With the comments constantly popping up, I became more and more clear-headed. I started living and eating regularly, stopped working overtime, and didn’t sweat the small stuff. I even cancelled the supplementary card.

I started getting up early, going for a walk around the colony park, greeting the watchman with a nod, and sometimes joining the uncle gang for slow laps around the colony park, their jokes about BP and joint pain oddly comforting. I even joined the yoga session under the banyan tree, stretching my stiff back as the sun rose. My colleagues noticed I was less snappish. I even made time for my own evening chai at the tapri near the office instead of gulping it at my desk.

As for Ananya, she kept finding reasons to go out and see her so-called male lead, and I just turned a blind eye.

Now that I wasn’t pouring all my energy into these ingrates, I looked much better.

Ananya went from doubting whether I’d really stop caring about her, to gradually testing my limits.

Now she does whatever she wants—eating ice cream at midnight, eating cold stuff during her period, skipping class, not doing homework.

She was supposed to take the board exams, but her grades plummeted from top eleven in her year.

Finally, one day, Ananya’s class teacher called, saying she’d caused a lot of trouble. I told the teacher to call Meera.

Not long after, Meera barged into my office, righteous and indignant:

“The class teacher called for a parent. Why didn’t you go?”

I put down my work and raised an eyebrow.

“She’s your daughter too. Every time there’s a parent-teacher meeting or Ananya gets in trouble, it’s always me at the school. No matter how busy I am, I have to go. You’re home every day—why can’t you go?”

Both Meera and the comments were stunned:

[Has the villain changed? Before, whenever the heroine got in trouble, he’d rush to the school. Why is he pushing it onto the heroine’s mum now?]

[No way! The heroine and her mum are both clueless beauties—how can they handle the wolves and tigers at school? This is when the heroine and male lead get together, making a scene at school—the climax! The two go against everyone for love, but when the villain dad shows up, he breaks them up. No!]

Only then did I realise: I was the villain in the novel who breaks up the male and female lead.

Meera glared at me.

“She’s your child too. If you hadn’t insisted on having a kid, would I have become a mother? Didn’t you always pride yourself on raising her? This is what your parenting produced? I don’t care. I’m not going. Whatever happens at school is none of my business.”

With that, Meera turned and left.

I turned off my phone’s recording and sneered.

Looks like this so-called mother-daughter love is just for show. I’ve known for a long time that Meera is selfish—she only loves herself.

I didn’t want to go either, but the class teacher kept calling. Since I still had some father-daughter ties to Ananya, I had to go.