I had longed for something to break that silence maybe I longed for it so much that I got listened to. I even got an answer to some of my previous inquiries about my family’s ability to love. At least, father was able to do so just fine.

Short after my mother passed away–six to seven months if memories served me right-, father brought home a new woman and a child in her toe, saying that this was my new mother and ordered me to greet my younger brother.

The woman was called Paelita and the boy, her son, Vicenzio. The child was four years younger than me with curly black hair, and the woman was quite short, with, like her son, long curly black hair and black eyes however as short she may be, she still had a face like those beautiful dolls my classmates would sometimes bring to school.

She had a smile on her face as she greeted me. Her son was holding onto her clothes seemingly afraid of me. Since I was still speechless and motionless, father frowned so I hurriedly greeted them trying my harder to smile but I was too bewildered and seeing their expressions my smile should have been weirder than anything else.

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What had really hurt was that those two, father really treated them differently. Because of them he started working less, smiling more and in the end, I understood that all those times father sighed heavily and muttered under his breath if only I was a boy, he actually was meaning it.

I saw him asked that boy how he spent his days when usually he wouldn’t even notice my presence in the room, I saw him laugh with his new wife, telling her how good a cook she was, and I recalled that he would always frown at mother’s cooking. As I tasted the supposedly good plate my palate couldn’t quite decipher the difference. Maybe the time mother had cooked for us had been so far away that my memories were purposely embellishing it. I didn’t really know, I just knew that the more he would openly compare mother and that woman, the more it would annoy me. So I would usually try to eat the barest as to not be scolded then asked Riel to do something for me other than what I was given. Why that woman would cook in the first place I didn't know, Riel was doing that just fine.

Even the sight of that shy child started annoying me when I would remember how easy it was for him at school and how much father would praise him. The more those two were getting his attention, the farther I felt from my father.

It was like the three of them formed a full, happy family, and I wanted that too, my father’s love, showering me with affection, pampering me too.