Chapter 4

The building I live in has two apartments per floor. Next door at 402 lives a mother and daughter pair, and I've never seen any man in their family.

We occasionally bump into each other in the hallway.

Karen dresses fashionably, with tattooed eyebrows and permed hair. Her daughter Lily, despite being only twenty, dresses like she's in her seventies or eighties.

From the few encounters we've had, it's clear that the mother has a bad temper and often scolds her daughter. Lily, on the other hand, is quite polite and always greets me with a smile when we meet.

The first time I met them was on the day they moved in.

As I came out of the elevator, I saw Karen sitting in her living room, yelling at her daughter.

Just because the moving guy had chatted with Lily for a bit, Karen was calling her daughter a "vixen" and a "slut".

Lily seemed meek, keeping her head down as she moved things into the apartment, not responding to her mother's insults.

Karen noticed me passing by and gave me a look that could cut like a knife.

At that moment, I had a pretty good idea of what kind of person Karen was.

A low-quality, irresponsible, difficult, and aggressively competitive middle-aged woman.

It's a shame that Lily, at such a young age, isn't immediately reporting this incident to the police. Instead, they're trying to cover it up and extort money. It's a disservice to her daughter as well.