Paint Me as Villain ✔

Three

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Since the day of that fight, Ady and Mir hadn't talked. At all. Before, Adélard simply did not seek an opportunity to meet Mir, and now they both, as if by agreement, avoided each other as enemies. Enemies who secretly knew--feared?--that their story wasn't over yet.

And still...Ady couldn't stop thinking about what had happened. The memories of their conversation before the fight haunted Ady day and night, taking the roots of doubt into his very heart.

Adélard thought and thought, but he indeed hadn't told anyone else his truth. He scolded and reproached himself over the next few years, but he never told anyone. Of course, he convinced himself that he wasn't following Mir's advice, he was just waiting for the right moment, but...the moment refused to come. At every dinner party, parents continued to make Ady sit next to the fiancée, and no one simply expected to hear Ady's truth. Surely, he couldn't disappoint everyone, including his parents, right?

Adélard had wonderful parents, he believed it with all his heart. He always waited with trepidation for his family to go to the movies, where he and his sister secretly threw popcorn at each other, and their mom snorted with disapprove, but then began playing along and throwing back.

Ady also loved spending time with his dad, making a huge model of some car together, arguing about which car brand is better at first, and then somehow moving on to the discussion about Adélard's future, about what profession he should choose. Dad never made Ady change his mind...well, almost never. Dad always listened to his son's reasons with sincere interest. And yet, in some unknown ways, Adélard every time found himself agreeing that his father's job--his mayor's position--was the best that could be. "An opportunity to help people, to work for the benefit of the city and its inhabitants, isn't it?" Which meant it wouldn't hurt for Ady to follow in her father's footsteps.

Ady's parents always understood him. They didn't beat him, even when he painted the wallpapers all over the house with his watercolors, when he was four--no, his parents just laughed and then suggested repainting all the walls together. They didn't scold him when once he, for the first and only time in his life, came home insanely drunk in the morning. No, his mom just grunted and made him a strong cup of tea.

Adélard felt like he could be the real him with his family, like he could tell his parents everything. Any truth. Even if the parents wouldn't agree, they'd accept, but...wouldn't agree? And what would happen then?

Well-mannered people don't act like that, Ady's mom always reminded him. Yes, you could throw popcorn while at the movies, but when no one saw you in the dark. You could argue with your father, but not in public. Besides, the more Ady argued, the older he got, the more he realized that these arguments were pointless, because Ady was persuaded to rethink—always.

Adélard just couldn't help but give in and say "no" when his mom resentfully pursed her lips, and his dad reproachfully clicked his tongue. Of course we love you no matter what, they repeated, but it sounded humiliating. Like the templates Praejis had talked about. As if his parents, having already decided everything for him, hinted without words: You are letting us down, but we are still on your side. You see? Now you owe us. As if Ady had committed a crime by objecting. As if they still hadn't turned away from him only out of pure love. But would love be enough for the rest of his life?

No, his parents believed in him. He couldn't let them down. He could not, being well-mannered and courteous, behave like an egoist and speak chaos in their noble society. Besides, there was already one truth in Ady's history that he tried to tell his parents, and...it only got worse.

🕷

After their fight, Adélard hadn't talked to Mir not just at school. Praejis's family now also visited Lishan's without their eldest son. Ady didn't want to and couldn't see Mir alone, and even when they found themselves together a couple of times at summer camps, far from their parents, Ady didn't believe he had the right to pry something out of Mir. For once, the right to ask why Mir always swam wearing a t-shirt both in the river at the camp and in the school pool. That's his favorite t-shirt, nope? one of Ady's classmates once told him. Like, a talisman or something.