Lunaria ☆ | DISCONTINUED

the butterfly; 03

Deadpanning into the wall of my bedroom, posters partly ripped off the wall, and my books all over the place. Amelia had just left my room after complaining about my lack of cleanliness. I roll my eyes at my reckless thoughts before standing up, and walking up to my desk. I pick up a framed photo of the dynamic trio, my fingers tracing over the black frame of the photo.  Amelia reminds me too much of my mother.

My gaze fixates towards the door when I hear knocking at my door. I speak for them to come in before the door slowly creaks open, revealing Sipher.

"Yara, we have guests. Oh, and you got another letter," he tells me, his hand extended with an envelope between his fingers. I walk towards the door, grabbing the enveloped letter in my hands. I look at it intensively, already guessing who the sender was.

I take a look at the front of the envelope. The flap is sealed with wax that had my initials engraved into it. I rip it open, taking out the written letter. Skimming through the meaningless words, it ended with the words; Sincerely, your secret admirer. I knew it. I've been receiving these letters everyday from the same person since a few weeks ago. I never bother to even send back a reply. Each time, it's always a different person giving me letters, but it's been long that I've known that the writer is the same person each time. Their handwriting and the style of their writing gives it away.

A part of me feels bad for the writer. I've been too slumped in my own world that I'm too lazy to write back, possibly even leading them on. But a stronger part of me doesn't care at all. Today, the delivery man was Zaiden. I caught him smiling sheepishly at me multiple times and he was staring at me a bit funny. It made me quite overwhelmed that I almost thought the letter was from him.

I throw the paper into the trash can beside my desk before laying onto my bed. I don't get why this person even bothers writing to me about stuff that they know are meaningless words to me. They don't even know any information about me. I've also noticed that the sender seems to like observing my every move, but never have I ever felt that someone was watching me.

The sun had set not long ago. Sipher and Amelia had practically forced me to eat at the dinner table along with their friends so that I'd appear more respectful. Kian, he's annoying as hell. He's those types of loudmouths at the dinner table that don't know how to stop talking. In addition to that, he either talks about the latest drama happening around school or about Amelia. He never talks about anything else. An irritable liar. I've seen what he does and it's not pretty.

I feel someone pulling out the chair beside me to sit down. "Please, let's enjoy our food in peace, Kian." Zaiden says, giving Kian a look of playful annoyance. If I were him, I'd mean every word he said. Kian rolls his eyes at Zaiden before fixing his composure when Amelia places the plates onto the table. 

When she leaves, Kian follows behind her to help her in the kitchen. They both leave Zaiden and I at the small round dinner table alone. I feel Zaiden's gaze on me so I look up enough to see his face from my peripheral vision. I notice him smiling to himself, the tips of his ears were dusted with a hue of red. I have no idea why I'm nervous. Amelia, Sipher, and Kian could easily see us from the kitchen since it was quite an open space.

Zaiden turns his head to look at me directly and my heart starts to race as if my body is currently running in the annual cross country. Why is he looking at me like that? I'm avoiding eye contact as much as I can but I can't help but feel my stomach swirling with fluster. When I finally bring myself to look up at him, Kian appears behind us, startling the both of us as if my heart wasn't racing beforehand. I turn my back towards him on the chair, looking at Sipher and Amelia who were in the kitchen. Their expressions look disappointed.