MISHA
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"Just because someone caught hold of my heart, didn't mean I would perceive them back then. I wanted to graduate first. And though he believes he loves someone now and it's with her, I know it won't last forever. I can wait."
What...? What the fuck?
What kind of mindset is that?
"Are you sure your beloved is even into girls?" I scoffed.
Finally, her light green eyes came back to me, even if it was for glaring.
"Will I have to draw that the one I love is not Leonid or Luigi?" She growled more than offended. "I've said before when they came out for you all," she turned her eyes away from mine, annoyed, making me annoyed too, "that I do not love Leo or Luigi like that. At all," then she made a gagging disgusted sound, "ew. With all due respect, but, ew. Ew-ew-ew."
Leo and Luigi burst out laughing at her disgust, "Now, that clears it up."
She rolled her eyes at my brother, "Leo is not my type. His personality is not really appealing to me romantically, and though he's is owner of undeniable beauty like all of Zio Ricco and Zia Sasha's kids, I don't find him attractive."
My brother pressed his chest, dramatically pretending to be offended, "No need to beat me up like that, Mia."
So, she's not in the same situation as me?
But I swore it was gonna be Leo.
"Wait, you really are in love with someone who doesn't love you back?" Her oldest brother, Pieter, gasped in shock. "Why? If he doesn't see you, then he doesn't deserve you, Mia. Why are you losing your time? Move on."
"I am, yes," she said matter-of-factly, and I felt something in my stomach roll nauseatingly. "I mean, it's not that he doesn't love me back, he doesn't like me at all." She stared down at her food, clenching her jaw. "Since we met, he avoided me like a plague, as if I had a contagious parasite."
"He glared at me as if I had come from another planet and he was far from satisfied with it. His aversion for me was so strong that it pretty much screamed out of all the pores of his body, but I didn't blame him. After all, if my siblings didn't like me and my personality, how could I expect him to, right?"
"Where did you get that from? We loved you!" Julia gasped.
But Zoe Maud scoffed bitterly and turned her eyes to her sister who was sitting at my left, thus turning her eyes to our direction, and I found myself holding my breath for no reason.
"You can love someone and not like them, Julia. And though you made it quite hard for me to even see if you loved me back then, I was certain you didn't like me. We all know that, there's no need to lie, and that's okay. I heard the times you all went running to mama and papa to tell them to tell me to stop playing with you, to stay away, because I was an arrogant condescending kid who stole all the spotlight for myself."
"It's not like that, Mia," Pieter gasped, embarrassed. "We were kids."
"And so was I," she countered, but there was no bitterness in her voice. "Younger than you all. But I hope you understand I didn't do it on purpose, I may have been clever, but I was still young, innocent, and with not much sense of what I was doing. I saw you giving your all on the games and on school, and I wanted to do the same. I didn't knew doing that would have been so bad for you."
"So, when I heard you asking mama and papa to make me stop, even though I had no freaking idea what was it that I was doing that made you all despise me like that, that made me so weird and inconvenient in your eyes, I tried to listen to you. I stopped talking with you because you said I was talked like a smartass and that was the only I knew how to talk. I stopped playing, going out with you, spending time with you, because you seemed happier when it was just the 13 of you."
Again, there was no bitterness in her voice, and it made me angry. Angry with myself. Angry because I did exactly the same as her siblings and mine.
Angry because I'm part of what hurt her. Angry because for almost my entire life, I thought the worse of her. Thanks to our behavior, she shut down, and she's still far away from our reach, even if we are in the same table.
"You never laughed freely when I was around, you were always tense. All of you. The 13 of you, even Leo back then. When the others came around to play, you were even more joyful, laughing, screaming with happiness. I was never there, but as I realized I was not missed at all, I knew I had made the right choice. It was alright, more time to study, to read, to do productive things."
"Sure, it kind of sting," she chuckled anxiously. "Stung a long, to be honest. Until it didn't, when I left to the US. I was away from you, and the heavy weight of forcing myself to stay away of you sight so you could stay joyful and happy, was finally lifted from my back. And again, I had papa. In the end of the day, he understood me because he saw himself in me, way more than just physically."
She pointed at her face and hair and skin.
"Eye color aside," she side-winked at zia Anna. "Being a kid was a luxury I couldn't have if I wanted to make sure everything went according to plan. Papa helped me out in more ways than another. From the time I turned 10 to 15, he would give me real work tasks, as by then I had already mastered coding, in secret, and he would pay me for it."