The sun gleamed and peeked through the curtains; the morning air was clear and filled with birds calling and people driving, trying to get to work. Suddenly, 2 little girls came bursting into the room like kittens playing. "Azrael! Azrael! Wake up! Wake up!" I slowly open my eyes as they both shake me and shout my name. "Viella and Alyssia, stop plz I'll get up..." I say groggily, my shoulder length hair all frizzy, I slowly sit up to rub my eyes and do a stretch. "You're so very lucky I love you two..." I pat them on the head, my voice still groggy, and they both subconsciously lean into it. "Now get out; I need to get changed." They giggle and nod and walk out of my room. Then, my alarm goes off, so I hit the off button and shake my head and speak to myself, "always those two waking me up before my alarm." I chuckled slightly. I quickly get changed and brushed my hair to put it into a ponytail with a front side part. After that I head downstairs, and I see my mum in the kitchen, and she hears me coming down the stairs and looks back. "Good morning, darling, how did you sleep? I hope it was good!" She smiles at me as she cooks pancakes; I take a sniff, and it smells divine, and I fist pump the air. "Is that my fave breakfast!" I speed down the stairs excitedly and hug her. "Thanks, mum, you're the best!" She laughs and hugs me back, leaving the pancakes to cook a bit, but after a minute-long hug, she goes back to cooking. "Go take a seat, silly; breakfast is almost done!" She gestures to the table. I nod and walk to the table and sit down. As I sit down, my sisters come down the stairs as they smell the pancakes. "Mum! Is that pancakes?" They say in unison, very excited, as they both surround her. "Yes, it is pancakes, my dears; now go take a seat next to your brother; it will be done in a min." Mum pats their backs, pushing them slightly to the table as she spoke softly. They both come to the table; Viella sat to the left of me, and Alyssia sat to my right, and they started to chat away, but then they looked at me all serious, then suddenly Viella asked, "Big brother, have you ever had a girlfriend?" Then Alyssia chimed in, "Well, big brother, have you?" I look at both of them a bit surprised, but I say in a calm tone, "Well, I have had a few; why do you ask?" They look at me with a nervous look. They say in unison, "Well, we both like these two boys, and we wanted to know if you could help us ask them out!" I look very surprised; I never thought they would start dating at this age, and I sat there thinking, birds chirping to fill the silence. "Well, a good way to ask someone is to just be direct with them, you know, and if you two are too scared to do that, you could always get one of your friends to do it for you." I look at them, and their eyes gleamed in happiness. "Thank you so much, big brother!" Alyssia said with a huge grin. "Yes, thank you so much!" Viella said, her smile reaching her ears. I just pull them in for a hug, then I remembered that I had school, so I ate my pancakes relatively quickly and left the house.
I walked down the road slowly as I had a fair amount of time before school started, so I looked around at the nature and greenery around, enjoying the sight until a group of people in my school year came walking past, disrupting my peaceful walk to school. I sighed and kept walking; eventually, I made it to the school gate, and people started to gather in groups, and some people were still walking through the gate. I just looked around for my friends until someone grabbed my shoulder. "Yo Azreal," I turned around and I saw my best friend Ryuu, who looked as gloomy as ever, his hair was jet black and has blue eyes. "Ryuu!you alr?" I reply back while patting his back. "Yeah, ofc I'm fine dude I always am." I smile at him, but he still shows no reaction. But me and Ryuu start to talk more and walk through the gate. Then Ryuu asked, "Wanna come to my locker quick? I need to get my books." I look at him. "Yeah sure, that kills some time before class starts."We walk into the school and we start to walk to his locker, then we hear shouting from down the hall and loud footsteps as if someone is running. "RYU, AZREAL WAIT FOR ME!" Then we heard a crash and turned around to see Shoji lying on the floor after running into a wall. "Shoji what the hell are you doing" i facepalm as Ryuu sighed and went to go help him up."Sometimes shoji we don't know what to do with you," ryuu says with a cold stern tone while offering a hand to help him up. Then Shoji says with an enthusiastic tone while caressing ryuu's hand. "Your hands are pretty rough you know!" I smack shoji's hand away "right that's enough you weirdo, we gotta get to class now, thanks to you we gotta double time it" my annoyed tone evident. Shoji as always reply's with enough energy to make the world spin "oh yeah! We got class haha!" And he speeds off. I look at ryuu "what do we even have first?" I sigh. Ryuu pulls out his phone and looks through his photos for a picture of his timetable, eventually after a minute of searching he finds it and looks at the lesson "we have PE and I think we got swimming" I look at his annoyed and a bit defeated "bro I didn't even bring my swimming trunks the school is gonna make me wear the ones they give out for free and there usually so small" Ryuu lets out a slight chuckle. "You forget it either way so I don't know why you complain"I shake my head in defeat. "Let's just go to class." We start to walk to the swimming pool, which is outside on the edge of the school grounds. The building is medium in size and has gray tiles lacing the outside. We walk in as the bell chimes and the swimming teacher looks at us while Shoji frantically waves. "you two are just in time, and azrael it's a bit odd for you to be this late isn't it" I look at the teacher a bit embarrassed that I ruined my streak "sorry sir it won't happen again" I say in a bit of a nervous tone as me and ryuu walk to shoji who is still waving. Shoji whispers really loudly, "finally you guys made it like it took you guys foreverrrr." The teacher looks at Shoji, "Shoji, this is your last warning before you're out; I can hear you!" He salutes while the class gets annoyed at him. "Shoji bro you really gotta take a chill pill you know" I grab his shoulder while holding my face shaking my head. Shoji looks oddly proud of himself "never I will let my energy freeeee!" The teacher sighs really loudly and shouts after having enough of Shoji's energetic outbursts, "Right, Shoji, out right now! Go to the refocus room! "Shoji gladly takes takes the punishment and skips away. The teacher then speaks again. "Everyone just go get changed," he sighed as everyone walked into the changing room. The girls go into the girls' and the boys go into the boys'.As I get the spare swimming trunks that are clearly way too small, Shoji starts to climb through the top window. "Um, Shoji, what are you doing?" I question severely what he is doing.He looks at me and says, "I'm climbing in what else do you think I'm doing!" He squeezes himself through somehow, "and Azrael, you look more toned today." He grabs his chin, rubbing it.Ryuu comes into the storage room and sees Shoji staring at me intently. "Shoji, what the hell are you doing?" Even in this situation, Ryuu is still as calm as ever. "You were supposed to be in refocus. "He looks at Shoji with a somewhat forgiving look. "You know, maybe you can apologize to sir and he'll let you back into the class." Ryuu and shoji walk out of the storage room and out the changing room to talk to the teacher.I think to myself, ,sometimes you really do forget the Ryuu is a kind soul, After I grab a pair of small trunks, I go back to the changing room, and everyone is pretty much already dressed and ready to swim, so I had to hurry.Then Shoji came back into the changing room with Ryuu and Shoji shouts, "I'm back, boys!" I look at him like, how did he get let back in."How the fuck did he let you back in?" I say with a really surprised tone, but Shoji just shrugs and gets changed humming while Ryuu goes to his corner and gets dressed as well.
After school I said goodbye to Ryuu and Shoji and I walked out the gate and started my short but pleasant walk home.As I look around, I see the same things as I did on the way to school: the green tree leaves, the baby blue sky, and the houses that just glimmer in the sun. I enter the house. "Mum! I'm home!" I take off my shoes and put them next to the door. Then suddenly Viella and Alyssia come running round the corner, "Big brother! Big brother, we missed you." Alyssia said, "Yes, we missed you soooo much!" Viella holds me, nuzzling my leg."Hey girls, how was your day?" I ask in a soft voice. "Well! Viella, Mum, and I went to the park and played, but then a weird man approached Mum, and she was acting a bit weird, but he looked very big!" I look at Alyssia curiously, then Viella said, "No! You were told not to tell Azrael!" Alyssia looked embarrassed that she told me even though mum told her to keep it a secret. I was about to say something but then mum walks up to the hallway where the girls and I are."What are you guys talking about?" She looked at us curiously. "Um, girls, me and Mum need to chat, so how about you go to your room, alright?" I rub their heads as they reluctantly agree and run off upstairs. "So mum, who's this man you were with when you were at the park?" Mum looked at me surprised at how I knew. "Well, how do you know that—" I cut her off. "You don't ask the question I need to know who he is because you know dad didn't die that long ago maybe around 2-3 months now!" She looked a bit sad after I brought up Dad's death."Well, I needed to move on, alright, honey, and he's my boyfriend. I wasn't planning on telling you yet because I knew you'd act like this about it." I look at her in disbelief and anger, "what the fuck! You were supposed to be grieving over Dad! Not fiddling with a new man!" i looked visibly upset by this ordeal and stormed off to my room. I just sat on my bed clutching my hair, tears slowly falling from my eyes, dropping to the floor until I hear a soft knock on the door.I wipe my tears off my face and try to sound as caring as I usually do. "Who is it?" "It's Alyssia..." she stands outside the door waiting patiently to let her in. "You can come in." I try to act normal as if I wasn't crying. She slowly creaks open the door and perks her head round, wary. "Big brother, have you been crying?" Alyssia looked sorrowful, like she wanted to apologise for something. "Just tell me what you want sis.." I sit there, head in hands, trying not to ball it out in front of her."W..well I wanted to say sorry for telling you that mum met a man I don't mean to cause an argument" I look at her with pity and hug her, "it's not your fault, it's mum's for not telling me alright, it will never be your fault you hear me." she nods gently "but sis can you just leave me alone for a bit.." She looks at me like I've just hit her, but she slowly nods and exits my room, closing the door behind her. I just sit there, betrayed by my own mum, but who can blame her? She knew I'd act out if she told me, but if she just waited a little while longer, maybe I would have accepted it. I just sat there for a few hours until it got dark, ignoring my mum's calls for dinner. I don't know why I'm acting like this; just the grief from Dad's death is screwing with my brain, making me sensitive, but being mad at her feels so right but so wrong.I feel like I should apologize, but I feel like I also shouldn't and that she should apologize to me. Eventually, I grew tired and fell asleep, falling back onto my bed still clothed in my uniform. The night passed peacefully as I rested with a tear-stained face, owls chirping and the slight sounds of the leaves rustling outside my window. Suddenly I woke up, I feel something strange passing through my body like it knows something is gonna happen, it's unshakable, my mind races, I scrunch my face feeling the dried tears crumble off and I spoke to myself. "What…is this..my mind! It feels off.." I put one hand over my eye as I sit up, trying to make the feeling disappear. I stand up, the feeling getting even worse, "I need…some water.." I pull the covers off my bed as I open the door and walk down the stairs to the kitchen. I stumble into the walls, my vision a bit blurry and my line of sight is wobbling. I stumble into the kitchen almost falling over "water…" i walk into a counter trying to grab a cup. Eventually, I managed to grab a glass mug and wobbled over to the sink to fill it up. The water splashes against the side of the cup as it slowly fills; as it nearly brims the top, I chug it and I repeat that over and over trying to make myself feel better from the overwhelming feeling that encompassed my mind. After a while of being downstairs, I look at the clock for the time and it reads 2:34 am. I looked shocked to see it's that late. I walked to the stairs, my vision still blurred as I venture up, holding onto the railings, trying not to fall back. Each step was weird, my mind started to warp and change reality around it, objects started to swirl and elongate. I slowly but surely reached the top of the stairs, I looked down the hall to see my door. It looked like it was miles away but in reality it was only a few meters, I stumble towards the door. For what seems like minutes I finally open the door and fall onto my bed, I slowly turn to my back looking up to the ceiling. It started to morph and twirl as I closed my eyes, then everything started to go quiet and my thoughts were slowing down. Suddenly I drifted off into a deep sleep only to dream of another world one very much different from mine more colorful more beautiful and interesting.