Chapter seventeen: my little brother

<< Maybelle de Helvetius' perspective >>

I like my little brother. Little Corentin… or at least I think I did…? But lately, I'm not so sure.

A few days after my Corentin’s aspect ceremony, a strange rumour began to spread in my school, and as a result my friends became a little weird. They began to exclude me from their activities and often start talking behind my back, sometimes they'd do it openly and mock my him to my face. They'd call him a 'failure' and asked me if he really was my younger brother and not just some adopted kid. I tried to deny it at first, I defended him, yet they wouldn't stop and after weeks of that I just kept quiet.

My friends… they no longer wanted to hang out with me. Why? Didn't we have so much fun before? I thought we could be friends for our whole lives, but just because something happened to my brother they don't want to be friends anymore? This isn't fair.

After a few more weeks their harassment had escalated to the point where they hid my things. They wouldn't tell me what classes we had next or let me sit next to them during lunch. Sitting alone in the corner of the room as they constantly talked about what my little brother was as they came up with outlandish theories. Maybe he was adopted, maybe he was some sort of genetic experiment by the government, maybe he was this, or that… I couldn't take it anymore.

The more I defended my little brother the more they treated me poorly. Why? I haven't done anything. If you have a problem with my him then take it up with him!

I don't know when I stopped laughing at school. I don't know when I had to start eating my lunches in a secluded area of the building by myself. Honestly, I wanted all of this to just go away.

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I thought… I thought maybe talking to mama might help, however all she said was that we were family and we should look after each other. So, then what has my brother done for me when I'm going through all of this? ‘It’s important for family to trust family and to support one another,’ she told me. Maybe that was true, even so my suffering didn’t stop because of that.

"Sis?" while I was wandering around my neighbourhood aimlessly, I ran into my younger brother and Sherry who always stuck to him like glue. I felt my face burn up and become twisted, so I tried to hide it. “Are you going home?" he asked, not knowing what I was going through because of him.

"H- huh? Yeah, I'm… going home," I replied to him.

I know it wasn't his fault. He never wanted to be born a failure, and that it was wrong of me to think this way. But… I was hurting. Even I started to doubt at times if he really was related to me. When I think back, he never treated me like an older sister, he would just look down at me as if he was better than me.

Right…

He was always different…

I was never really a sister to him, I was more like an annoyance, wasn't I? If that's the case then wouldn't it be better for the both of us to just stay away from each other? That way… maybe I can get my friends back…

I looked to him. To his face that I could never properly read because he was just so enigmatic. Was he really my brother? How come he never acted like I did? The way he speaks and acts doesn't feel like the way I do things, or even our parents. Maybe… my friends were right? If he is just a stranger, then why do I need to defend someone like him? Right…? He probably doesn't like me anyway, so there's no real harm; if I can just return to my friends everything will go back to the way it was.

"Sis, is something wrong?" he asked. Of course something is wrong! Everything is wrong! He was wrong! It shouldn't have been this way.

Sherry must've sensed something wrong and called out to me, "big sister?" She was always clinging to him like she'd die if he wasn't around. What was wrong with her? Did she not have any other friends, or was she not worried about what would happen to her if she continued hanging around Corentin? Will she feel the same way I did when it's time for them to go to school?

"It's nothing," I told him as I rushed past him and Sherry.

I don't know…

I don't know what to do…