I spent the next three days at Danbi's house mostly just holed up in her room. I waited for Hana's call but all I received was a series of text messages telling me to stay put, and that when the time was right she would come to pick me up.
Danbi meanwhile proved herself to be a truly good friend. Caring, kind, attentive, and most importantly, trustworthy. Although she said she was excited to have a friend over, she wasn't obsessed with the idea that we had to be doing something together. We just hung out, sometimes each of us just reading something from our phone without talking to each other, watched some TV shows together and I tried to keep up with the school work with the printouts Danbi brought home.
I think I might have been a little flustered throughout this period if I wasn't Jenn and if Danbi wasn't so casual about the whole thing. After all, I was a boy who was suddenly living together with a girl of my age, but thankfully, with Danbi being so aloof it felt more like just living with a sister or something.
On the third day, I finally got a call from Hana saying that she would come to pick me up. It was during the day so Danbi was still at school. I kinda wanted to see her again before leaving to thank and say bye to her properly but after three days of being in the dark about what was going on, I knew it was probably best for me to go home as soon as possible and find out what happened. I just left a little note on her desk saying thank you but made a mental note that I should probably get her a nice present or something at some point.
When Hana came ringing the bell of Danbi's door, the first thing I noticed when I saw her was that she was wearing a cast on her left arm.
"Wow, Hana, are you okay?", was the first thing I said.
"Nothing serious to worry about, Miss. I'm sorry we've kept you waiting for so long, but now is the time to go home"
"What happened?"
"I'm not in a position to answer such a question. You may ask your father to see if he will answer"
"Ok"
I didn't ask anything after that and went downstairs together with Hana to the parking lot in the apartment complex Danbi lived in. We walked toward a black sedan parked with its engines on, but I noticed this didn't look like our car.
"Hana, is this our car?"
"Yes, we got a new car"
"Huh…?"
"We had a bit of an accident with the old one"
"Ok…"
I knew this family was pretty damn rich but I didn't expect that we'd be changing cars just like that.
Once I got into the car Uncle Tan greeted me cheerfully.
"Hello, Miss. Have you been well?"
Again, something was off because he had bandages around his head.
"Hi, Uncle Tan. Are you alright? What happened to your head?"
"Just bumped my head here and there a little"
"Did you get into a fight with Hana or something?"
"Haha, fortunately not"
Our conversation stopped there and we remained silent until we reached my home.
"Oh, sweetie, are you alright? Have you been eating well?"
As soon as I walked through the door Mom came rushing to greet me and gave me a hug.
"Thanks, Mom. I'm alright. My friend took very good care of me"
"That's great. We'll have to thank her properly sometime"
"Yeah, we should"
"Let's go to the living room, your Dad is waiting there"
I half expected that Dad would be injured in one way or another, although I did not understand why he would be. It was just the feeling I had considering the shape Hana and Uncle Tan were in. When I actually saw him sitting on the big armchair in the living room though, I saw that he looked fine and didn't seem to be hurt anywhere.
"Hi, Dad. Are you alright?"
"Welcome back home, Jenn"
"Thanks for letting me come back, I guess"
"It's your home, of course!"
"Yeah, a home that I was suddenly told not to return to"
"It was just a precaution. I hope you can just let that pass"
"Dad, I know you said I shouldn't ask 'such things', but can you at least tell me what's going on here?"
"Have a seat", then he gestured for me to sit on the couch opposite his chair, so I did as was told.
"Now what?"
"Jenn, we don't tell you the details because it is unnecessary for you to know, and knowing them won't do you any good. Especially after your memory loss, we thought it was a great opportunity to, well, start over with a clean slate so to say"
"Uh-huh"
"But I think I do owe you some sort of an explanation. This could happen again in the future and we can't just keep you in the dark every time"
"Right"
"So, let's put it this way"
I waited in anticipation.
"I work for a charity, well, I actually run the organization as the head"
"Oooo-kay"
"There are bad people in this world, who try to disrupt our charitable operations"
I just knew this is going to get even weirder from here, but I might as well ask and see where it goes.
"What kind of a charity is this?"
"We provide service and goods to poor people who need them but can't get them easily, and we also relieve people of some burdens that they cannot bear themselves"
"This charity is making so much money that we can live like this?"
"We receive a lot of donations as a token of appreciation, from our clients and sponsors"
"Just why the hell is this charity work so dangerous that you guys get hurt? And I have to run away and hide?"
"As I said, there are bad people who are against our charitable causes and they try to disrupt our operation. Sometimes conflicts do happen and in the worst case scenarios they resort to rather aggressive actions, targeting me and my family"
"Gees, I've never heard of charities like this. It's almost as if it was a -"
"Charity, Jenn. It's a charity"
"Oh…"
"Yes, remember, it's a charity. We are running a nice charity organization"
"Your Dad is a very kind man, isn't he?", Mom added with a kind smile of her own.
Just what in the hell did I get myself into…