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Chapter 4

Unclear

One month later, the song ‘Still Remember’ was released to the public.

At first, Pailin thought she wouldn’t watch it, but she couldn’t do just that because her beautiful mother dragged her to watch it in front of the computer. In the MV, she only appeared for a few seconds, even after she had spent the whole day under the sun. She turned around to grab a snack, and before she could even find one, the female lead had already grown up when she turned back. She had to rewind and watch it again.

Since it was at the beginning of the song, Pailin had a few scenes that caught some attention. The color grading was done in sepia tone, making the visuals appear old-fashioned. The lighting adjustments concealed Pailin’s eye color, making them look like an ordinary light shade. The following scenes resembled a life insurance commercial, making people cry at the end, making people notice the importance of happy moments. ‘Keeping you in my heart, no matter how long, I can never forget,’ as the lyrics went.

She secretly checked the comments. No one really talked. They only sent crying faces in. The place was filled with those.

She picked up a dried plum from a glass jar to nibble on. Lately, Pailin had been stressed about a certain matter. She wanted to get into a certain school, but the tuition fees were extremely expensive. Fortunately, a smart child like her had already made preparations in advance. The only problem now was…

She had no idea how to tell her mom… Rolling her eyes, she collapsed onto the floor, rolling, burying her face into her favorite stuffed bunny.

Pimploy saw her daughter’s strange demeanors and could only look on in curiosity. Her daughter asked her to let her continue watching YouTube, so she let her sit in front of the computer. Why was she suddenly writhing on the floor?

“What’s wrong, daughter?” Pimploy asked while sitting and calculating her income and expenses.

As Pailin grew older, her behaviors became increasingly peculiar with every passing day.

The little girl stopped flailing before she narrowed her eyes and made a cunning face. The girl came up with something. Pailin got up, tapped a few things on the keyboard, closed the laptop screen, then ran to the bed and flopped down.

“Pailin is sleepy now.”

The mother smiled and shook her head, thinking to herself how lucky she was. Even though she had a daughter when she was not ready, she grew up to be an adorable child with good personalities.  

She continued calculating the upcoming expenses. The young woman was about to graduate. Aside from the relatively high costs of her graduation ceremony, there weren’t any significant expenses left. Everything she had to finish at the university had gone smoothly. As for last year’s internship, Pimploy tried her best. Sometimes, there were difficult problems that arose unexpectedly, but she tried to get through them. She was more like an employee than an intern who only hoped for the word ‘pass.’ The young woman had been transferred to multiple departments, and most of the time, she received praise.

The editor with a peculiar personality, Mr. Inglit Bluke, quite liked her. Although they did not converse often, Pimploy only found out at the end that all the various problems she had encountered were actually created by him to test the interns—because he was afraid she would have too much free time. The writing works she read and sorted were, in the end, reviewed again by the seniors, who were actual employees, to see whether she did a good job or not. Just from this, they could see her dedication. As for the others who had previously been assessed as failing, it was not difficult to guess how they behaved.

In the end, the exhausting internship, both physically and mentally, came to a close. On the last day, the young woman entered the editor's office once more. Mr. Inglit did not say much. He handed her two documents before saying:

"Those who put in effort deserve to receive something in return."

Pimploy thanked him. She did not open the documents in her hands until she had returned to her place. She found that the first document was an evaluation document that needed to be submitted to the university, while the second document was an invitation to join the company. The young woman was overjoyed that she did not have to be unemployed and hunt for a job like others.

During the time before her graduation, Pimploy continued working at the luxury clothing store three days a week as usual. The mother’s modeling gigs were scarce, but the daughter's work schedule was packed. There were clothes related gigs and powdered milk advertisements. At this point, the little one had her own savings account to be used for school expenses.

A couple of days later, mother and daughter had to do the same things. Pimploy woke up early for work, while Pailin, despite being able to speak now, still could not stay alone in the dorm. She had to stay at ‘Imjai Smooth Ironing’ shop—which now should be renamed ‘Imjai Hurry Ironing’ because there were so many customers that they had to hire Burmese workers to help with ironing.

As for herself, Pailin remained the same, except now she no longer needed to be taken care of. She continued to occupy her personal space in the shop. Since she now knew things, she had to show some kindness—sometimes Pailin would walk around tidying up to make the shop become more spacious and pleasant to look at.

"Aunt Im, can Pailin play games for a bit?"

Pailin smiled sweetly. After pretending to do nice little things in the shop, the little kid hurriedly approached to reveal her true intention. After all, Aunt Im spent her days ironing and rarely used her phone. As for an object that was becoming technological waste, Pailin would use it herself.

Day by day, Pailin became increasingly addicted to Facebook. Luckily, in her past life, she had liked many pages, so now she had something to read to pass the time. Upon seeing the page of Meuntip Threads sharing stories about husbands and wives, she felt too lazy to read them and instead switched to browsing nonsense pages.

‘Housewives were shocked when their husbands came home with this.’

‘A tour of a famous fortune-teller's office that celebrities love to visit.’

‘Did you know? The MV ‘Still Remember’ is based on a true story!!’

‘Revealing the cast of the Still Remember MV. I’ll tell you, each one is extraordinary.’

‘Review: Beautiful hair straightening with keratin.’

Hmm, there are threads about a new song. Pailin tapped on the topic "Revealing the cast of the Still Remember MV. I’ll tell you, each one is extraordinary" The screen jumped to a webpage overloaded with advertisements, but she could still see some of the content. The writer had attached an excessive number of pictures, and naturally, everyone in them was famous. Starting with the older version of the male lead, a veteran actor played the role. As for the teenage male and female leads, they were movie actors who had become so famous the year before. Moving on to the child actors, people still remembered that she was the little model who had briefly gone viral on the internet. The other child actor, a boy, was the son of a somewhat well-known celebrity.

For news like this, she knew without having to have someone tell her that the production company had sent it out to be shared. These days, small news could generate buzz and rack up views.

She switched apps to check the view count on YouTube. It turned out that it had already hit ten million in two nights. To her, this song was average. But as for everyone else, she had no idea if it was popular because of the celebrities, the MV, or the song was melodious.

"Gathering stars in the sky, keeping love in my heart, cannot forget..." The sound of someone humming "Still Remember" seemed to come from nearby. Pailin turned to look and saw that it was the Burmese worker singing.

It really must be popular… even the Burmese person at the shop could sing it…

It was already evening, Pimploy put Pailin to bed, while she herself sat doing something a little longer.

With work and savings, things were gradually getting better. As a mother, she had to stay optimistic. Pimploy thought this way, yet she still couldn’t decide which kindergarten she should send her daughter to. Fortunately, things were convenient nowadays. As for the matter of schools, she should try searching about it on the internet.

The young woman walked over to sit in front of her laptop. The orange battery indicator blinked rhythmically, showing that the computer hadn’t been shut down—probably because Pailin didn’t know how to turn it off and had simply closed the screen since yesterday.

The screen was lifted. Within a moment of waiting, it resumed from where it had left off. There was a video clip.

‘Dara Wittayalai School’s scholarship student interview.’ 

Pimploy made a puzzled face. Her daughter watched clips like this too? But judging from the playtime, it seemed that it was a clip that hadn’t been watched yet.

‘Maybe it’s an automatic next-queue play.’

There was no harm in clicking to watch it. Pimploy clicked on the triangle button to view the video. Soon, background music came. It started with a brief introduction to school, describing it as a school that supported activities and social aspects. As for the academic aspect, it was highly reputable. The scene then cut to a young boy with short hair, around five years old. The interviewer was another man, dressed in a dark-blue suit.