Summer, 2007
"Siri, meet Ren, he'll be your friend from now, won't you, Warren?"
The Vincent mansion was so unlike the places Sereia was used to visiting, not owing to her social anxiety but her family's status. The Theodores weren't all that of a big-shot as they deemed themselves to be and everyone around them knew it, so, their social circles were limited to close knit family visiting to mooch off and an occasional person from work during Christmas Week.
Mrs. Vincent had hand-picked Mrs. Theodore from her circle of anonymity – allegedly impressed by her unwavering loyalty – and made her, her personal legal representative. Through his wife's connection, the jobless Mr. Theodore, upon a push from Mr. Vincent, began dabbling with politics and soon enough, the families became inseparable. The extent to which their names were intertwined overpowered every media article released; one could just not mention the Theodores without the Vincent's backing and the Vincents rising without the Theodores protecting them.
It was quite a win-win relationship they had crafted.
So, over one summer, when Mrs. Theodore was rushing to a meeting with Mrs. Vincent and Sereia wasn't ready to leave her mother's side, she decided to bring her very bored and very clingy daughter over to the Vincent mansion and handed her over to the eldest Vincent child.
Ren Vincent was seemingly responsible on the surface, owing to his bright face, neatly combed blonde hair and a pleasant smile with which he greeted Mrs. Theodore on a weekly basis. Albeit shorter than Sereia at seven, his entire demeanour was different from her daughter.
Ren was confident, outgoing and expressive; everything Sereia was not, under her chubby skin and shabby dark hair. Sereia was mediocre, at best, in his face and she knew it the moment he held out a hand to greet her.
Sereia stood there, confused and positively charmed, with her arms hanging uselessly by her sides when Ren reached out to gently lead her hand by his fingers. She got the memo, of course, she wasn't all that dense and held out her palm, which he calmly turned and pressed a kiss over the back of.
She flushed, suddenly horribly aware of the state she had forced her mother to drag her in. Her dark hair head was braided only as a pretense for wild locks frazzled out from all possible confines as they could; her maroon tunic was crushed owing to the fact that it was her favourite and she had been wearing it, every day, for the last two months straight. Her socks probably stank so taking off her shoes was out of question in front of the boy who smelled like a fresh packet of frozen lemons.
He looked like a Prince and greeted like a Prince and Sereia had seen enough movies to know she did not look or act like a princess but she wouldn't mind changing for him.
It was love at first sight for her, probably, when he grabbed her hand and kissed the back of it without an inch of repulsion in his pale blue eyes. Her heart hammered within its cage and gusts of cold winds swooned around her in the middle of summer. When he let go of her hand, Sereia felt a part of her leave with him as he stepped back and—did the same to her mother!
Her jaw dropped and betrayal steered her vision to her mother's smiling face. Stealing the attention of the boy her daughter likes? Scandalous!
"Take care of little Siri, will you? I will be with your mother. Have a good day!" Mrs. Theodore said before walking up the grand staircase and disappearing behind the walls.
Giving alone time to her daughter and her crush? What a wonderful mother!
"So," Ren began as he closed the gentlemanly distance between them and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, quite akin to a gangster. With his other hand in his pocket, he led Sereia by her neck like a pet, "You're supposed to be family friend, right? You're cute!" he grinned, bright and toothy, as the hand around her neck grabbed her by the cheek and pinched it.
Sereia was a head taller than him so she had to tilt her upper half in an awkward twenty-degree angle to accommodate Ren' impulses.
"Is your name Ren or Warren?" Sereia asked, a frown laced on her face as she led herself be dragged by the ungentlemanly gentleman.
"Both and well, neither. Everyone calls me Warren or Ren but I prefer the name Sebastian," he took his hand out of his pocket and raised both of them to frame the air in front. "Quite elegant, aye? Matches my style," he grinned.
Sereia nodded, "Sebastian is very princely, like the little mermaid," she reminisced with a snort, "My name is Sereia but I can be your Ariel if you want," she proposed, using all the braincells she possessed.
"Ha! Then I'll have to marry you in the future," he drawled.
"No, silly! Sebastian is Ariel's crab sidekick! Ha-ha!" Sereia laughed out loud with her head thrown back, resting over his arm.
"Very funny, you're so smart," Ren rolled his eyes and led her into the gardens, "You should just call me Ren."
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but it was funny. Ariel's Prince is Eric, actually and he has black hair and blue eyes," she informed as he unhanded her and took a seat on the white swing in the garden.
"Ah, my brother looks exactly like that," Ren chuckled, "But you're no Ariel at all."
"Maybe we should be just Sereia and Warren," the ravenette proposed as she sat beside him.
"So, what do you do for fun, Sea-ri?" Ren asked, enunciated her name as he swung his legs to-and-fro.
"I watch cartoons and read stories," she informed with a shrug of her shoulders, "And you?"
Ren turned to face her with an evil glint in his pale blue eyes, "Do you want to know?" he asked.
"Yes, please…" Sereia replied before she was dragged down the swing and back inside the mansion. They ran up two flights of stairs and entered a room littered with machine parts.
"I opened up my brother's Play Station but I did not find any game characters inside. Mum said they were inside…but I dunno, do you think they're in the T.V.?" he asked, pointing at the innocent television screen propped on the wall in front.
"Hm…maybe? But where is your brother? Won't he be mad when he finds out?" Sereia asked, looking around the otherwise neat room.
"No, he thinks he lives with a monster who messes up things in his room when he's not being a good boy so he asked father to send him to church," Ren turned to grin at Sereia, "I wouldn't experiment on my things, now would I?"
Sereia shook her head with understanding.
"I really want to meet Mario and Princess Peach," he sighed as he took out a screwdriver from his pant pockets, "Help me take it down, will you?"
Sereia did not only help him take the television down but also dismantle it to bits and find nothing of worth inside, not even pink wiring. All the more, they had to jump over the adjacent balcony to hide from Ren's brother as evening approached and laugh out loud in Ren's room.
It was Sereia's first but certainly not last opportunity at dismantling things for a Refrigerator came next – Ren was curious as to why and how the light inside worked – followed by his maid's mobile phone and his sister's racing car. Sereia was a curious and willing accomplice to all of Ren's delinquencies over the summer and she proved her loyalty by not spewing a word against him upon getting caught clogging the bathroom drains to see how much flooding is too much flooding for a mansion.
When school began, it was Ren's turn to repay.
He was two years older and they happened to be two grades apart. Still, he wouldn't shun Sereia away when she would wait outside of his classroom during breaks or after school.
"It's the clingy little girl again, euk."
"Did you see her hair yesterday? So greasy, tsk."
"She's so fat, like a ball. I would roll her around all P.E if I could, hahaha."
Sereia had noticed one too many glares directed at her and heard one too many whispers of her ugliness, clinginess and the overall displeasure she brought to Ren's princely reputation – yet, she did not budge from his side.
How could she when he looked her in the eye and smiled so genuinely?
Her peers did not like her because she was always hanging out with the older kids. Ren's classmates did not like her because she was imposing on them by sticking to his side and making him look bad.
"Choose a place, you ugly pest. You're always in the way."
The words did bother her, during nights, when she would stand in front of a mirror and wonder why she wasn't beautiful or excellent at something? She wondered why Ren was even friends with her? Was he pretending? Hanging out with her because his family imposed her on him? Did he hate her on the inside, as well?
But it did not seem so.
Maybe she was too young and naïve to notice; maybe the crinkle around his almond shaped eyes, the subtle scrunch of his sharp nose and the spread of his lips was a spectacularly crafted façade; but why? She did not have anything which he did not.
Still, during lunch, he would leave her a seat beside him. He would bicker over who has better grades and let her win so that his friends would know about her academic achievements, no matter how small. He would steal her chicken when she wasn't looking and deliberately look away to let her steal his chocolate cookies.
His toothy smiles did not make Sereia feel like she was a burden when he'd ring her doorbell every morning and cycle her to school, planning new ways to get rid of their evil headmaster.
It would have been a redundant gesture to run in between of a football headed straight to her back and twist his arm instead, if he did not consider them friends. Okay, maybe that wasn't all that redundant because he made her slave around for the rest of the month – from asking her to read bedtime stories during sleepovers to making his hair in the morning and spoon feeding him breakfast in front of his entire ogling family.
That was pretty evil.
Though, if he genuinely hated her – he wouldn't keep an extra pair of gloves every day during winter because she hated wearing gloves and kept losing hers, right?
If he truly disliked her physical presence, he wouldn't have beaten up his classmate to the point of getting suspended over, "Woah, the girl who hangs around you is surely growing a rack."