Because I Love You ~

Chapter 4: Olive - The Opulent Pauper

I promise you—I really didn't know. I'm sorry. But that doesn't change anything. I'm so so sorry. Please believe me. -Senkath

Everything around me twirls familiarly, swabs of russet and mahogany and sage enveloping my vision; for a second I imagine myself awaking in the stuffy office to the eccentric doctor's awkward conversation and I avail, seeking the divine cessation of my spinning mind.

It settles and I shield my eyes from the blaring sun, feeling its warmth scatter across my face as I sit in a broad field full of poppies. The discomfited office I had expected was nowhere to be found; a slight invidious tang pierces through me as I imagine the tranquil (albeit strange) occurrences in Akrasia. I am sprawled across the grassy field on my back, humming softly and twirling a flutter of red petals between my fingers. The scene is all too familiar—the spring brush of petals, the slight hint of hydrangeas, the persistent rustling of leaves. In a flash, the jutting rock looming stoically beside me startles my memory. On the slightly weathered rock, I see a child's broad handwriting in proud marker—Colette Kodimala. I clench my first, silently, bracing for impact. The stones hover in my field of vision, quickly picking up speed, becoming larger and larger in my sight.

The nostalgia hits me as soon as the rock does, pelting my face and leaving a thick gauze of scarlet to drip down my forehead. It is a glittering, familiar, stinging pain, the type that embitters the soul more than the body, the paralyzing debilitation of a young mind morphed by revenge and hatred. My fist clenches, tight enough to feel blood droplets on my fingertips, and my eyes widen as the taste of warm iron drips into my mouth. I do not say a single word, no matter how much I wish to scream. I am an apparition here, a boundless observer forced to bear these sights once again.

That's right, I think. The doctor spoke of muscle relaxant altering the brain, releasing pent-up memories, but why here? My surroundings are familiar enough to distinguish chronologically, but the meaning of this memory eludes me.

I was five turning six, hailed as the 'muted genius', for I never spoke yet consistently ranked at the top of my classes. It had been two years since my mother had passed from an unfortunate incident; my father, whom I had never met, was described often as an intellectual savant researching abroad, but even when he heard of my abandonment, not even a consoling letter graced his busy fingertips. I vowed to never look so far into the future so as to neglect the present. That night, as I planted poppy seeds above the ground where she lay, my words rolled away along with my tears; I became an empty shell, disconsolate, alienated at school, ennui and apathy constricting me.

I treated those around me with passive indifference, if not disdain. Perhaps the ubiquitous discontentment I exuded served to brood restlessly with the others; incompetence became threatened at my callous victories. Spite and jealousy quickly turned to action. When they realized that my silence became a haven for their untraceable abuse, targeting became common: missing notebooks that turned up destroyed in the fountain, a burst of resounding, jarring laughter as they tripped me and pushed their grimy shoes into my skull, rocks pelted at me for their lowly utter amusement. I admired their futile attempts at mockery, wiping away the trails of blood silently. But it pained me more to be alone, for the thoughts of my mother sprawled across the road continued to haunt me, and so I accepted their cruel torture tacitly, falsely sanguine to the point of delusion. Some would approach me, wishing to commiserate, but the complete alienation at my mute behavior combined with the risk of becoming a target drove even the most morally intrepid people away. The bitterness sank within me and I gladly accepted my fate—the unyielding enemy that towers over hardworking peons, the naturally gifted antagonist that must exist, the evil that lurks so good may conquer.

Today, they had gone too far. Rock throwing had been a favored pastime of theirs for a while, but they had followed you silently as you lay near your mother's grave, basking in the field in the forlorn attempt to grasp her warmth. You hear the jarring sneers:

"Hey, you! Say something, you freak! You killed your mom, didn't you? If my kid wouldn't say anything, I bet I'd jump in front of a car too. And your dad isn't even coming home, isn't that right?" Smack. Red clouds your vision as the stones make contact. "No one even likes you. Why don't you kill yourself, huh? Don't you want to see your mom again? Smack. Smack. Smack. "What type of sicko doesn't even fight back? You can hear me, can't you? Go back to the shithole country you came from, you dark-skinned monster!" Smack. You think you're better than us, just because you score higher on tests? Is that right? Do you think you're so much better now? Do you even know what-"

The silence is like the sweet calm after a roaring thunderstorm. For a moment, the thought that I'd passed out gleans my mind, but the warm sunlight caressing my skin tells me otherwise. I wipe the drying crimson away from my forehead and brush open my eyes. My hands and face are as red as the poppies around me, a deep lascivious beetroot; my perpetrators lie on the floor a few paces away from me, mangled and sobbing onto the floor. Perched on top of them, sitting on a throne of their bodies, a boy smiled in my direction, his avocado-olive green eyes flashing proudly, kindly, vaingloriously. He steps over and the throng of bullies, whose names I hadn't bothered to learn and faces I hadn't bothered to recognize, rush off muttering curses and spitting imprecations of revenge. He plops down beside me and we sit there in silence, watching strands of cloud drift across an azure sky as the sun's reach slowly turns oblique.

"Thank you."

The words shock him almost as much as they shock me, and friendly laughter emerges from him like the crackling of a hearth, so foreign from the derisive cackles I had become accustomed to. I am surprised at how natural my voice is, having been put out of use for so long, but the feeling of another body so close to mine tilts the sides of my mouth uncomfortably upwards.

"My parents are gone too." I glance at him, at the solemn, melancholy dash across his pale skin. "It hurts, being alone, doesn't it?"

The pain that has been gnawing at me finally unleashes in the form of a sharp inhale. I feel the air slowly flow outwards. "I only wish I could say goodbye."

He flashes a brilliant smile in my direction. "What's stopping you?" I stare at him, at the fierce determination strung taut under a lithe build. I smile back, feeling the sun's warmth though it had set long ago.

That was the day my lonely childhood vanished. That was the day my fatal villainistic thoughts ceased. That was the day I spoke again. That was the day I met Olive.