𝖗𝖊𝖒𝖊𝖒𝖇𝖊𝖗 | 𝖇𝖚𝖈𝖐𝖞 𝖇𝖆𝖗𝖓𝖊𝖘 𝖝 𝖗𝖊𝖆𝖉𝖊𝖗

𝐼

Y/N remembered nothing from before the age of thirteen. She was told her name - Y/N Foster, and she was told that she lived her childhood years in an orphanage - or foster home, or something. The couple that adopted her was never too specific - they just kept reminding her that this, this was her home now. They never told her anything about her past, even the country she was born in, her parents' names.

The first thing she remembered was the woman's blindingly white smile as she turned to her husband.

"You know, maybe it was a good idea to get a teenager. She seems sweet enough." The woman then turned to her, "Y/N? That's your name, Y/N Foster. We're a family now."

Nothing her adoptive parents did was ever filled with love - purely going through the motions of being a family. Y/N didn't know this, of course, she didn't really know what love was, couldn't remember the sensation - but she knew that something was wrong, deeply wrong. She wasn't exactly surprised when she was told that she had two options: going to college at 18, or being, politely, kicked out at 18. Of course, it wasn't phrased as being "kicked out", as such, instead, her adoptive parents were gracing her with the opportunity of "being independent".

Now, she was a graduate of NYU, the proud owner of a literature degree, and working at a book publishing firm. It wasn't like her life was getting tedious - it had always been tedious. She slogged through her teenage years, staying just vaguely near the top of her class enough to get into a good college. Once she graduated from said good college, she looked for a job that would start her off through the ranks. She had gathered a reading hobby, quite small but honestly the biggest hobby that she had acquired over the years of her adoptive mother enrolling her into what seemed like thousands of clubs in school. Now, she was stuck in that starter job years later, but she didn't exactly want to leave. A voice nagged at her to throw all intelligence out the window and quit, but her common sense ignored it. However, this voice wasn't exactly active during the thousands of calls to her best friend about how much she hated her life right now.

"Ugh, Vee, you don't get it! I mean, I can't remember any single time in my life when I wasn't so bored. Everything about my entire existence has been so pedestrian so far." She sighed into her phone, lying on her back on her bed in dismay.

"Whatever Y/N. That's life. Go touch grass." Her friend replied - and Y/N could swear she heard a computer typing in the background. She wondered if her friend was even listening to their conversation.

"Whatever Vee, I'm going out. Getting some excitement, touching grass." Y/N copied her friend's strong, and admittedly annoying, valley girl accent. This seemed to get Vee's interest back.

"Where are you going? Are we going out clubbing?" Y/N hated squashing Vee's hopes and dreams like this, but Vee should have known that she wasn't the sort to waste her time partying or getting drunk, which seemed to be her friend's favourite past time.

"No. Library." She answered, apprehensibly. She heard a loud sigh from Vee before her phone screen went back to the home screen. Y/N rolled her eyes, trying to remember why she was even friends with Vee in the first place. Oh yeah, it was because she had no other friends.

Y/N made the least effort she could to get dressed - pulling on the closest pair of slouchy, loose button-up black trousers in her wardrobe, along with a soft, white, jewel-necklined t-shirt and the baggy black blazer that was handing up on the back of her apartment door. She stared at herself in her murky bathroom mirror whilst slathering on some chapstick and pulling her H/C hair into a messy ponytail with a nearby blue scrunchie which she found on her desk. After finding a random tote bag collapsed at the bottom of her wardrobe, she stuffed the essentials and books she needed to return into it and slipped on her Doc Martens. She unlocked her apartment door and made her way down the thirteen flights of stairs to the street outside.