The Tearsmith

different ways of thinking page 2

-He glanced at me absentmindedly, not paying attention, but after a moment, he noticed me again, as if he had suddenly realized that he had seen me before. I didn't have time to decipher his look of dismay because the teacher took him away... "I think they'll finally expel him," Billie murmured as he disappeared down the hallway. "It's about time," Miki replied. "After what happened with the first years, he deserved to be locked up in a pigsty." The door handle made noise again. Billie and Miki stopped talking when Rigel came out. The veins running through his wrists resembled an ivory labyrinth, and his magnetic presence was enough to silence the room. Everything about his appearance created an undeniable allure. Suddenly, he noticed us. No. Not "us."

"What are you doing here?" I couldn't miss the hint of surprise in his emphasized words. He gave me one of his looks, and I realized I didn't know how to respond. I didn't even know myself what I was doing there, waiting for him as if I were genuinely concerned about him. Rigel had told me to stay away from him, he had muttered it so close to my brain that I could still hear his voice reverberating between one thought and another. "Nica wanted to make sure you were okay," Billie interjected, capturing his attention. She gave a timid smile and raised a hand. "Hello..." He didn't respond, and Billie seemed to be taken aback by his gaze. Her cheeks blushed, instantly turning red with embarrassment in the presence of his visceral charm and his black eyes. And Rigel noticed it. Oh, he definitely noticed. He knew perfectly well. He knew how attractive the mask he wore was, how he put it on, and what it triggered in others. He flaunted it defiantly, with arrogance, as if the mere possession of that sinister charm made him shine with a malevolent, ambiguous light that was exclusively his. He smiled with the corner of his mouth, charming and petty, and it seemed as if Billie was shrinking in size. "You wanted to... 'make sure'," he mocked, scanning me with his gaze. "That I was... 'okay'?" "Nica, don't you introduce us to your brother?" Billie babbled, and I looked away. "We're not family," I blurted out, as if someone else had said it for me. "Rigel and I are going to be adopted." The girls turned and stared at me. I looked at him in the eyes with determination, courageously holding his gaze.

"He's not my brother," I said firmly. I noticed he was looking at me, ominously amused by my efforts, with that sharp smile on his teeth. "Oh, don't say it like that, Nica," he insinuated sarcastically. "It sounds like it brings you relief." "That's right," I conveyed to him with my gaze. And Rigel glanced at me out of the corner of his eye, burning me with his dark irises. Suddenly, a bell rang in the air. Billie took out her phone from her pocket and widened her eyes. "We have to go, my grandmother is waiting outside. She's been trying to call us..." She looked at me, and I nodded. "Well then... see you tomorrow." She gave a smile that I tried to reciprocate, but I still felt Rigel's eyes on me. At that moment, I noticed that Miki couldn't take her eyes off him: she studied him under the shadow of her hood, observing him attentively with furrowed brows. Eventually, she turned around too, and both of them walked away down the hallway. "In one thing, you're right," his voice slid slowly and sharply like nails on silk as soon as we were alone. I lowered my chin and dared to look at him. He had his gaze fixed on the spot where the girls had just disappeared, but he was no longer smiling. Slowly, his irises shifted towards mine, precise as bullets. I could swear that I felt those words forcefully etching themselves into my skin. "I'm not your brother." That day, I decided to erase Rigel from my mind, his words, and his gaze.

To distract myself at night, I would read late into the night. The lamp on the bedside table spread a soft and soothing light throughout the room, dispelling my worries. Anna was very surprised when I asked her if she could lend me that book. It was an illustrated encyclopedia with wonderful drawings, but she found it strange that the subject could interest me. However, I was fascinated by it. As my eyes lingered on the tiny antennas and the wings transparent as glass, I realized how much I enjoyed losing myself in that light and colorful world that I had always approached through countless shades of colors. I knew that it seemed unusual to everyone. I knew I was different. I nurtured my quirks like one cultivates a secret garden of which only I held the key because I knew that many people wouldn't be able to understand me. I traced the curve of a ladybug with my index finger. It brought back memories of all the wishes I had made as a child while watching them fly between the open palms of my hands. I would see them soar through the sky, and from my helplessness, I wished I could do the same, to emerge with a silver flutter and take flight beyond the walls of Grave... A noise caught my attention. I turned towards the door. I thought I had imagined it, but suddenly, after a moment, I heard it again, as if something was scratching against the wood. I closed the encyclopedia carefully and pushed aside the blankets. I approached the door slowly, pulled the handle, and peered out. I saw something moving in the darkness. A shadow slithered along the floor, swift and velvety, and it seemed to pause, waiting for me, scrutinizing me for a second. Finally, it vanished down the stairs, just before my curiosity pushed me to follow it.

I thought I saw a velvety tail, but I wasn't fast enough to catch it. Now I was downstairs, in silence and completely alone, unable to locate it anywhere. I sighed, ready to go back upstairs, but then I noticed that the light in the kitchen was on. Was Anna awake? I approached to make sure, although later I wished I hadn't. When I pushed the door, my eyes met the gaze of someone who was staring at me intently. It was Rigel. He was sitting, with his elbows resting on the table, and on his slightly downcast face, his hair traced clean and defined strokes that shadowed his gaze. He was holding something in his hand, and I soon realized it was ice. Encountering him there, I was paralyzed. I had to get used to it, to the possibility of constantly crossing paths with him. We were no longer in Grave, those weren't the vast spaces of the institution, but those of a small house, and we both lived there. But when it came to him, the idea of getting used to it seemed impossible. "You shouldn't be awake at this hour," his voice, amplified by the silence, sent a shiver down my spine. We were only seventeen years old, yet there was something strange about him, hard to explain. An obsessive beauty and a mind capable of captivating anyone. It was absurd. Everyone let themselves be molded by his ways and fell into error. Rigel seemed to have been born for it, to shape and bend people as if they were metals. He scared me because he wasn't like the other boys our age. For a moment, I tried to imagine him as an adult, and my mind traveled to the

-face of a terrible man, with a corrosive charm and eyes as dark as the night... "Are you planning on just standing there and staring at me?" he asked, sarcastically, while pressing the ice against a bruise on his neck. Now he appeared relaxed, with that arrogant attitude that made me want to run away. Always. However, before I could regain my common sense and flee from there, I parted my lips and spoke. "Why?" Rigel raised an eyebrow. "Why what?" "Why did you let them choose you?" He locked his eyes with mine, as if he was imbued with something that could pass for a conscience. "Do you think I decided that?" he asked, leisurely analyzing me. "Yes," I cautiously replied. "You made it happen... You played the piano." His eyes burned with an almost irritating intensity. "You, who have always been what others wanted, never allowed anyone to take you. Not many families had passed through Grave. They looked at the children, studied them like butterflies in a display case. The little ones were the cutest and most colorful, and they needed attention above all else. But then they saw him, with his clean face and good manners, and they seemed to forget about everyone else. They gazed at the black butterfly and were fascinated by the strange shape of his eyes and his beautiful velvet-like wings, his grace as he moved above the rest. Rigel was the collector's item, the one without equal. He didn't reveal the insignificance of the other orphans, but he dressed himself in it, wearing that grayness as if it were a veil that suited him wonderfully.

However, every time someone expressed a desire to adopt him, he seemed to do everything in his power to ruin things. He would cause disasters, run away, misbehave. And in the end, the interested parties would leave without knowing what his hands were capable of with that white set of keys. But not that day. That day, he played, he made them take notice of him instead of dissuading them. Why? "You should go to sleep, moth," he insinuated with his subtle and mocking voice. That's what he did... he "bit" me with his words. He always did. He would caress me with his provocations and then crush me with a smile, making me doubt to the point where I wasn't sure of anything anymore. I should have despised him. For his character, for his appearance, for how he knew how to ruin things. I should have, and yet... a part of me couldn't. Because Rigel and I had grown up together, we had spent our lives between the bars of the same prison. I had known him since he was a child, and a part of my soul had seen him so many times that I no longer felt the severe detachment that I wished it would produce. I had grown accustomed to him in a strange way, developing that kind of empathy that arises between people who have shared something for a very long time. I had never been good at hating. No matter how many reasons I had. Despite everything, maybe I still held onto the hope that the story would be as I wished it to be... "What happened today with that boy?" I asked. "Why did you come to blows?" Rigel slowly tilted his head, as if wondering how it was possible that I was still there. It seemed like he was evaluating me with a harsh gaze.