The Rare Ones

*36*

Anyeong, my loves and happy first chapter of 2024❤.

As Taylor Swift once said, "It's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me."

On a more serious note, I want to use this opportunity to apologize for my inconsistency this past year.

Honestly, I've been swamped.

Exams, graduation and Uni resumption, not to mention a bunch of unforseen personal situations I don't wanna get into right now.

But still, the fact that I didn't up to 10 chapters in the whole of 2023 and dropped nothing since 2024 is very disappointing to me, and unfair to you guys.

For this I say, I'm sorry.

In the same vein, I want to thank you all for sticking it out with me this long.

I'm so so grateful, guys, honestly.

I know I must've said this before, but I promise to do better from now on.

Am I forgiven?😭

Whether yes or no, please enjoy this chapter❤.

~~~~~~~
"Never knew a thing about me;
Screw you,"
~~~~~~~
- SZA
(Never Knew)

NOELLE

I stared in confusion at the email opened on my laptop.

It was a list of Social Prefect duties that were now left to me as the Assistant Social Prefect, seeing as Beryl was constantly MIA.

I barely see her in school these days, and when I do, she's usually updating notes or talking to her friends.

She never attends Prefect meetings anymore, and Fortune has turned to me to handle everything.

Sighing, I closed my laptop and pushed it away, my head muddled.

Just before I started this, I was on the phone with my parents.

By special arrangement, they're allowed to make calls to people outside jail every two weeks.

That's how it's been for the past decade.

Yeah, that's right; I haven't seen either my mum or my dad since I was seven years old.

All I have to remember them by are a couple of family pictures here in my aunt's house and these phone calls.

Although now, they've become more out of habit than necessity, and the conversations are short and sometimes uncomfortably formal.

I mean, I barely know them, and vice versa.

But still, it's good to hear their voices a couple times every month.

After their arrest, none of my extended family members were willing to help me, so I moved in with Phineas' family for a few months before my aunt Claudia came and picked me up.

Since then, I've been in her house.

Aunt Claudia is my mum's older sister. She used to be based in Greece with her husband, but she moved back to Nigeria to raise her three kids, my cousins; Atlas, Thea, and Athena.