A dream come true

the battle

"and then i got the red one because it's my favourite color so thought it'll look cute, how is it? Do you like it?" I, recently turned 14 years old, asked my older cousin who I shared this roof over my head with, he's the closest thing I have to an older brother, all my cousins are very close to me like siblings because we've lived together at one point when we were young,

My cousin didn't even turn around to look at the new red dress I was wearing, which I haven't shut up talking about since I came back from market, showing all the other stuff my parents got me,

"Yeah, it's nice." He kept walking ahead as I kept following him around like a little duckling as I spoke non stop like always,

"You're not even looking at it."

"It's nice." He turned around for a brief moment before walking away,

"We got a t shirt for you too" I said happily, after spending a whole day out with my parents after a long time, we had gotten many gifts for everyone as my parents never left anyone behind, "don't you wanna look at it?" I asked,

"Later."

"Look at it now no? I wanna see your reaction." I smiled,

"I said 'later', I'm bussy." He told me while holding back saying, 'why don't you bother someone else.' as he knew about my sensetive behaviour and how I'd cry easily and he didn't want me to annoy him even further with my cry,

"Okay...later I guess."

He sat on his bed to use his phone followed by me sitting besides him,

"What else are you doing?"

He let out a tired sign before looking at me, "why don't you talk to someone else?"

"Who else do I have?"

"Why don't you make friends?"

"I tried but they don't let me in their group, everyone already know eachother from middle school and I'm new, guess they don't want a newbie."

"Maybe they don't want someone annoying them all the time." He said in a bitter tone,

"...I'm annoying?"

"Yes, you are." He said before reverting his attention back to his phone,

I just sat there in silence trying to process his words, I've always heard siblings are sometimes bitter to each other for fun but deep down they love each other so I didn't think much of it,

"You don't mean that." I laughed slightly, thinking about the good time we spent over past years, he was always caring until aunt moved out with him to get away from his abusive father, I empathised with him more because while my parents loved me unconditionally they didn't love each other enough resulting in some fights here and there and I felt like no one else understood that except him, but he turned more distant as he grew older, the boy who was so caring he would give away all his toys to me and took me with his neighbour friends to play with whenever I visited his house was feeling ashamed to even walk out of the house with me because he didn't want to be seen with me or aunt or even grandma infront of his new friends for some reason, maybe adulting was tiring, he was turning 18 soon maybe he was just going through some hard times,

"I do...you know you were born C- section?"

"Huh? What about it?"

"It means you are being a bad omen to your family ever since you were born, now you're annoying us too, just go find something else to do and don't bother me." He went back to use his phone turning away from me, I sat there in shock, is that how he felt about me? I didn't have anything to reply to that either as I decided to just get up and leave his room, not before placing the packet that had his new t shirt besides him,