The New Life of the ⬛️ ⬛️ ⬛️

Chapter Whatever

She - or was it a he? - laid on her bed on her side, slowly scrolling through stories to read. Her eyes - or his eyes - had an almost lifeless aura to them, as if she abandoned all life.

To be fair, she did.

Nothing she did ever amounted to anything. Maybe when she was a child, she was a bit smart, but as she grew up she made friends with the wrong people and she slowly lost her straight-A's. Therefore, she had lost all the compliments and praise that she had gotten which was the water to her life.

Maybe.. she should not have become the top student in school. Maybe, she should have cherished her life, her friends, her parents before everything went to shit.

Here she was, 18 years old, accepted into MIT, one of the colleges she had always wanted to go to, and yet she no longer had motivation. Her parents thought she wanted to be a computer engineer, a programmer for artificial intelligence to be exact.

They were wrong.

She wanted to be a writer.

When she was in middle school, when she didn't know that what her parents were doing to her was verbal abuse and thought that she was just weak, she had read so many wonderful stories that had picked her right up and planted her in that beautiful world. The words had guided her to a land where no one would be angry at her, where she could daydream all she could and no one would admonish her for it.

It had impacted her so much that the girl made so many stories in her own mind to cope, and even now characters swirled in her head, soothing her that yes, I'm here, you're not alone.

Perhaps she was not alone in her mind, but she was alone in reality.

Softly, gently, she closed her eyes, leaving her phone on the table next to her bed. She wished she could redo her life somewhere else, in a different world.

She was successful, but she was not happy.

At long last, with tears littering her pillow, she fell into a restless sleep.

---

"Wake up, ⬛️ ⬛️ ⬛️, you have your first day of school today." Someone softly shook her awake. The girl, at first, was confused. Wasn't there usually an alarm instead?

She shot out of bed to look at the one waking her up, and the other woman was pleasantly surprised. "Oh, were you already awake? That's good, you have your first day of school today!" Her smile held only fondness, not the angry expressions that the girl was used to.

"Mom..?" The voice that was uttered out was high-pitched, like a child's. The girl stared at her hand, and it was small. Too small. Her body was tiny, too.

She was suddenly picked up. "You have school today, remember? Daddy is taking you."

It was sudden. Too sudden.

Had she gone back in time? Right after she thought that she literally did not want to relive this life?

Ok.

Let's take this with a grain of salt.

---

It appeared to the girl that this was her first day in third grade. The only thing that she remembered about third grade was that in that year she had three tests on her birthday. She sighed. Oh well.

She also remembered that she basically had no friends at this time. That did not matter anymore, though. Now, she could simply focus on writing. Friends were for the weak.

Everybody was in the class, and the teacher came in. With a shock, the girl remembered the face. Mrs. Carnevale. That's right, this was the teacher with the fussy attitude.

There were many times when the girl herself had gone and literally embarrassed herself, and now was the time to fix that. Loner girl, activate!

...This was a sign that she had read too many novels.

"⬛️ ⬛️ ⬛️ , would you please introduce yourself to us?" Mrs. Carnevale asked.

With a long look, the girl finally stood up.

"My name is ⬛️ ⬛️ ⬛️, but I'd like to be called Rani in the future."

There were many confused whispers, but she didn't care. Her original name was too.. weird. No, it would be better to have this nickname, and next year, she could change it again.