Do Not Feed Recklessly - Chapter 0. Prologue

For Jia, Australia was a place filled with a mix of emotions and sorrows. Immigrating at a young age, dragged along by her parents, she was suddenly torn away from her friends and thrust into an unfamiliar world.

The new land felt cold and indifferent to a young Asian girl who couldn’t even speak the language.

But what choice did a child barely eight years old have? Though she spent many nights crying and wishing she could return to Korea, it didn’t take long for the saying humans are creatures of adaptation to prove true.

Slowly but surely, Jia adapted to life in this new place.

A new school, new friends, and a new language. Fortunately, Jia adapted quickly to most of it—except for one thing: the annoying tall kid next door.

“What’s with that tacky dress?”

Jia had been excited all day for a dinner outing with her friends, and she’d just stepped out in her brand-new dress. But as soon as she closed the front door, the voice behind her made her expression crumple.

She glanced to the side, spotting the white house just beyond the slightly-too-short wooden fence. Her eyes scanned the area, searching for the voice’s source. Then she saw him—Ethan—poking his head out of a small window just beneath the roof.

Jia quickly flipped Ethan off, her middle finger shooting up toward him. He grinned mischievously, looking down at her from the window.

“Mind your own business.”

“How can I? I can see your tacky dress from here.”

His words were playful, accompanied by a soft chuckle. Jia clicked her tongue and decided to ignore him.

‘Don’t engage,’ she told herself. She took a deep breath and deliberately focused her attention on her phone. Thankfully, the Uber she called arrived in less than five minutes.

She heard Ethan calling out to her a few more times from behind, but she chose to ignore him. Life in Sydney had become comfortable by now, but Ethan was still the one thing that got under her skin.

That thing was none other than her next-door neighbor, Ethan Taylor.