Chapter 4: A Night at the Hostel
The next forty-eight hours were an exercise in glorious, uninterrupted peace for me, and absolute, chaotic misery for them.
In Tokyo, I immersed myself in a culture of respect, order, and breathtaking beauty. I walked through the tranquil bamboo forests of Arashiyama, ate street food in bustling markets, and spent an entire afternoon soaking in a private, cedar-lined hot spring (onsen) with a flawless view of Mount Fuji in the distance. I felt a profound sense of spiritual decompression. The heavy, suffocating weight of my family’s expectations had vanished.
Back in Europe, however, the illusion of luxury had shattered into a million jagged pieces.
Without my black American Express card to pave their way, Paris was not a welcoming city. They quickly discovered that booking last-minute, affordable accommodations in the center of the French capital was impossible.
I knew exactly how miserable they were, not because they told me, but because the silence on social media was deafening.
I checked Talia’s Instagram page on the second day. Usually, Talia documented every second of her life. She was obsessed with curating an aesthetic of unearned wealth. I had fully expected her to post pictures of herself eating macarons in front of a sparkling Eiffel Tower, captioning it with some trite quote about “living her best life.”
But her feed was a ghost town. She posted nothing. No stories, no photos, no updates.
The truth, however, always finds a way out.
On the evening of my third day in Japan, I received a long text message from my cousin, Elena, who lived back in the States and was notoriously prone to gossip.
Elena: “Omg Nina, what the hell did you do?! Aunt Irina just called my mom sobbing hysterically, begging to borrow two thousand dollars. She said her credit cards are maxed out.”
I sat up in my plush hotel bed, wrapping my silk robe tighter around myself.
Nina: “I didn’t do anything. I just stopped paying for them. Where are they staying?”
Elena: “Aunt Irina said they had to take a train an hour and a half outside the city center to a suburb because they couldn’t afford a hotel. They are sleeping in a sketchy budget hostel. She said the room smells like mold, there’s no air conditioning, and they have to share a bathroom down the hall with backpackers! And apparently, Talia has been throwing absolute temper tantrums. She screamed at your dad all night because the hostel doesn’t have free Wi-Fi and she can’t post on TikTok. Aunt Irina said they are all fighting non-stop.”
I threw my head back and laughed. It was a deep, rich, unrestrained laugh that echoed off the walls of my Tokyo suite.
Talia needed rest, didn’t she? I thought to myself, feeling a dark, potent wave of schadenfreude wash over me.
