He looked up at the stars, tears brimming his eyes threatening to fall any second now. A smile fell on his face shortly,
finally...she became one of the stars.
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"You are a hero." She said with a shaky breath, "It matters not which side you...
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꧁seventy-four꧂ Is Life Really Printed On A Piece of Paper?
Xhoia was only 18 that time, and Ataeru was 27.
It was a few days before Christmas, when Xhoia and Ataru were finishing their very first support item—a fully automated skin-tight suit equipped with technology supported features such as GPS tracking, levitation, sound absorbent shoes, etc.
Ataeru knew the product was not yet completed, and Xhoia wanted to try it.
"It's not working yet! We have to ensure atleast 99% safety standards before we put it on someone's body!"
"Then how are we gonna know?" Xhoia smiled, "come on, Ataeru. Trial and error, remember?"
And that was Xhoia's first and last trial and error.
With the suit on her, it worked perfectly for a couple of minutes, then it sparked. The suit malfunctioned fast, as the fire slowly burned her body. A fire extinguisher only made the fire burn larger so Ataeru stopped using it.
Desperate for help, he ran inside the house—only to be met with two of his siblings watch Xhoia suffer through the window.
They watched Xhoia burn in flames, not a single remorse or empathy on their skin.
Ataeru has three siblings—him the second youngest. Xhoia, the youngest,—then the step-siblings; Aman, the third and Xanaia the oldest.
Ataeru's father re-married Xanaia and Aman's mother 5 years prior to Xhoia's accident. The siblings were never close, giving the big reason why they never cared for Xhoia's death that time.
Ataeru was blamed for Xhoia's death, and as so much as he tried to explain, no one took his side. His father blindlessly took his step-sibling's side and blamed him for everything that happened.
He was imprisoned for 3 years, until it was proven that Xhoia willingly took the suit on and that it indeed was an "accident", but it did not come out easy for Ataeru.
After prison, he was banned from visiting Xhoia's niche. He asked, why she wasn't placed on a columbarium instead, but his siblings heartlessly laughed at his question, "we had a bit of money to spare from insurance..so we set up a niche instead. Cool right?"
"And what do we put on the urn? Grass?"
That made his blood boil, causing him to assault Aman—adding a few more years to his ban of visiting anything of Xhoia.
