"I can't do this anymore!"
Nillianhie Renie Violet screamed into the cliff's wind, her sobs ragged enough to tear at her throat.
Tears streamed unheeded down her cheeks, mixing with the salt spray that stung her lips—proof that even the ocean refused to let her grieve in silence.
She was the last standing of House Violet now: her brother's suicide had snuffed out the only light left in her hollowed-out world, leaving her adrift in a grief so thick she could barely breathe.
But the tales of House Violet's last survivor would end here.
She'd made her choice: to step off the cliff's edge, to let the churning waves below swallow her grief—and her life—whole.
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..Read that right. She ended her life. Nillianhie Renie Violet, and Nicholas Rien Violet is the 2 main characters in a tragic novel.
Such a novel full of drama.
I don't even know why I picked to read this type of genre.
I, Natalie Campbell, just a peaceful, average young lady in her early 20's.
Hah. Tch.
Who am I kidding?
My life wasn't peaceful at all. It was full and surrounded by shits.
Ehem,
I, Natalie Campbell, trapped in my own pathetic, shitty, pitiful life—
=======================================================
I have an aunt and an uncle, yet I've spent years gnawing at the same unanswerable question:
why can't they spare me a crumb of love?
They adopted me unwillingly after my parents died in a car crash when I was four—too small to grasp the world's cruelty, let alone the cage I'd just stepped into.
From that day on, my so-called guardians tortured and enslaved me;
I learned to adapt, endure, and grow up in the gaps between their blows and demands, a shadow they barely bothered to acknowledge.
Years blurred into a loop of clean, suffer, survive—each day a mirror of the last, the weight of it pressing so hard I sometimes forgot how to breathe.
It was insufferable.
One of those days, I went out to buy some errands.
".. Where's the store again..?"
I mumbled under my breath as I looked around for the new opened store my auntie described.
—Ugh, why can't she just do it herself?
I grumbled internally, already fed up.
Too zoned out to watch my step, I bumped into someone, making me stumble and plop my butt on the ground.
"Agh!"
I groaned and dragged my eyes up to the giant standing over me.
For the first time, I was captivated by their charming look.
I was unexpectedly captivated, like, first time ever—his eyes were melted brown, hair black like
*Hey..? Who's this fancy, hotsy, tall man standing before me? Am I in heaven after one bump...?*
"You okay, miss?"
He smiled and held out a hand to help—no eye-roll, no annoyed huff, just a calm question.
"I-, yes, I'm fine.."
I mumbled the words while yanking his hand to haul myself up fast.
"Thank you. Sorry for bumping into you."
I muttered it, face burning, and immediately started screaming at myself internally—
Gosh!! You clumsy biatch..!
"It's no problem. We both were not looking, no?"
He just chuckled like my clumsy crash hadn't even been an awkward blip, and for the first time all day, I let a tiny bit of tension leak out.
"Is that so.. Alright.."
Whoo.. I'm glad he's a chill guy..
I scratched the back of my neck, and my frayed sleeve hitched up—revealing a cluster of purple bruises on my shoulder, leftover from the beating my aunt had given me that morning.
The guy's gaze hardened for a split second, but he smoothed it over with a smile like he'd never noticed a thing.
"You seem.. to be fine. But is your shoulder good?"
He asked, and I jolted so fast I yanked my arm back to my side, my sleeve snapping down over the bruises.
Oh shoot!- "Yep!- I'm okay. Just bumped my shoulder on a wall while walking earlier..!"
I lied, a nervous chuckle bubbling out before I could stop it.
I felt his gaze boring into me—sharp, like he was testing the lie's edges.
"You seem to have a habit for bumping into things, then."
He blurted out, and I let out a silent sigh of relief, convincing myself he was just being shallow.
Good thing he bought that..
"Yeah.. I'm that clumsy .." I chuckled, my fingers twisting the hem of my shirt to hide how shaky I was..
"Well, then. I got to go. See you later, miss." He smiled, a faint, unreadable curve of his lips before he turned to walk away.
I was kneeling to scoop up my scattered errand items when his "later" hit me—sharp, out of nowhere.
"Sorry, what?"
I looked up fast, but the street was already swallowing his figure.
...
I stared at the empty space where he'd stood, my hands hovering over a crumpled grocery list, confused.
—Maybe it didn't mean anything at all..?
I dragged myself through the last of the grocery run, shoving the aunt's requested groceries into my frayed tote, then trundled home—exhausted to my bones, my clothes sopping through to my cold skin.
A light rain had picked up ten minutes prior, and I didn't have a fricking umbrella;
by the time I reached our rickety slum door, my rubber slippers squelched with every step, and the grocery bag's paper handles had dissolved in my numb fingers.
My aunt and uncle weren't home yet, so I picked at a cold scrap of dried fish and leftover rice before collapsing into my nest of rags.
I curled up, my teeth chattering from the rain chill, and silently wished and dreamed my parents were still here with me—their warm hands tucking me in instead of the drafty crawl space's rusted vent blowing on my neck.
I jolted awake god knows how many hours later, my first thought a foggy confusion:
the crawl space's rusted beams were gone, replaced by a lavish, gilded ceiling carved with swirling lotus flowers I'd only seen in old magazine clippings.
Faint, bright shouts bubbled through the air—nothing like my aunt's slaps or my uncle's beer-fueled rants, but tight with giddy, frantic joy, like people were yelling to announce a miracle they could barely believe.
I blinked hard, my eyes widening to the point they ached, and realized I was curled in a soft, silk-draped bed (not my nest of rags) in a room I'd never set foot in.
Then my breath caught..:
my hands were tiny... my fingers stubby with baby fat, my limbs too short to reach the bed's edge—
like I'd shrunk back into a child's body!!??