Smile Like The Sun

CHAPTER 1🍂

(Third Person's POV)

Time fleets. Memories fade. Hope withers. Gradually but inevitably, with each strike of the second hand, I kept falling deeper and deeper into the bottomless abyss of darkness.

Hideous, Worthless, Pathetic; the words echoing in the void. Life became wearisome without a dream or a desire. Like a journey with the destination unknown. And before I knew it, I started feeling cold towards the world.

Maybe I was really a pathetic creature who had neither the courage to retaliate nor the strength to defend oneself.

I slowly climbed up on the railing of the top floor of my dorm.

The cold night air crept under the thin fabric of my night gown, sending shivers trailing down my skin.

I looked down but nothing except darkness filled my vision. I could feel desperate tears leaking and stinging my swollen cheeks as I closed my eyes.

Did I still have a tiny ounce of hope that I refused to give up? Or was I just a coward who was scared of giving up life?

But I was tired.

I slowly loosened my grip from the pole.

I want to quit. 

Sorin blinked her eyes open at the ringing sound of the alarm on her phone. A familar roof top with stained and partly peeled off paint came to her view. She sighed. Again the same dream. She had been getting it very often lately.

She rubbed her eyes to sober herself up as she sat up, reaching out for her phone from the bedside table which was also her study table.

She switched off the alarm, it was six in the morning. Classes would begin at eight. She made her bed and charged her phone before trudging to the small attached bathroom to get ready for the day.

Sorin was only six when her mother left, for the reasons she never knew. As for her father, she could hardly remember his face.

In the school too, nobody liked to associate themselves with her. She was the isolated kid with whom no one wanted to play. It felt indignant at the begining when she watched them laughing and playing from a distance.

But she gradually learned that it was not so bad to be alone and eventually she started loving the peaceful seclusion. Moreover she had her grandfather with her and it was more than enough.

If not for him her life would had been miserable, devoid of the warmth that a child would crave for. He taught her how to ride a bicycle and how to fly a kite. He would read to her every night before she fall sleep and would safely tuck her in so that the monsters could not get her.

He showed her how beautiful and delicate the world could be. He made her realised how fortunate she was to be born and become his grandaughter.

Those days were the happiest moments in her life, neither a fear nor a worry, like a beautiful dream itself.

Sorin remembered how naive and carefree she used to be, like the tiny dandelion seeds floating in the air, wandering freely to the course of wind. She used to laugh so genuinely during those times.

Having someone to rely upon, someone who love you unconditionally, someone whom you can call a family, it was such a wonderful feeling. She had wanted to stay like that, forever and ever.

But fate conspired to deny her of even the little happiness I had. Why, out of all things, he decided to take away the two things she treasured the most?

The feeling was bitter and painfull as she cried like never before on that rainy night in the melancholy room of the hospital.

It was a few days before her tenth birthday when the accident happened that robbed the smile from her life forever.

From a very delicate age she was exposed to the ugly and bitter side of the world. She realised that the reality was different from fairy tales.

Her grandfather did not survive the crash. Sorin could not accept the fact. She closed her eyes every night, wishing that everything would turn out to be mere nightmare the next morning.

Only to be met with the harsh reality when she opened her eyes.

She eventually became tired of the same monotonous routine repeating itself everyday, forming the never ending ordeal of a tedious life, that she gradually released the tiny hope she clung onto.

Sorin moved in with her uncle since then. He dumped her into a boarding school like a garbage and did not bothered to establish any other futher contact until it was the time for vacation.

And the same routine would continued itself every year. She always knew she was an unwanted child for both her parents, so how could someone else want her?

But she could not deny that she once tried her best to please her uncle, to become the niece that he was proud of, to earn even a gentle pat on her head or a soft smile.

But she could not, and she learned to accept the fact, she was really unwanted. But she was gratefull that at least he provided for her, even though he did not love her, otherwise she did be on the streets.

Maybe because she did not expect anything from anyone, it was not so unbearable when they forsake her.

Or maybe because she forced herself to feel numb towards the world.