Ladybug

-2-

It is today, the birthday of little Bernadette. However, it is only now when Valentine's present for her is finally ready to be gifted.

Although the boy had started in advance, it eventually took a whole lot of time to make. Doing something yourself is painstaking, especially if you try to make it as neat and perfect as you can. And, first of all, if you want it to work properly.

The latter point was the most challenging for the young master, for it seemed to show no desire to be fulfilled. It was not important for Valentine that it was the very first time he made something himself. Yes, before that he only used to repair watches, not create ones, but it did not put a label saying "cancelled" on his wish to make it as required.

"It must work. I said so!"

Everyone was already in the heat of celebration. Valentine could easily hear from his room how his parents told birthday wishes to his sister somewhere in the opposite corner of the mansion. He heard cheerful cries of the guests and, of course, Bernadette's laughter. She had been looking forward to her birthday for a long and wished to receive a huge pile of presents.

They all might silently hate him now, no doubt. He was a sore thumb in his family even without it. Why should he inherit his parents' boring business in the future merely because he was the eldest child and, to crown it all, a boy? Those prospects never brought Valentine any happiness. All he wanted was having a job he could do and enjoyed doing, and he enjoyed nothing but dealing with lots of tiny cogwheels and screws. The only other thing he liked was playing jokes on his cousin Aphanacy when possible.

But as for now, he simply did not come to his sister's birthday party...

"Hey you, pillock! Still digging in your rubbish?" Talk of Aphanacy and he is sure to appear. He turned up in the room with no knocking or any kind of "hello", as usual.

"You'd better go. I haven't called you." Valentine did not even look at him.

"Oh yeah, really, you haven't called noone." It was vague if Aphanacy was trying to joke on him or to insult him. "You could kill everyone and live alone in your messy kennel if you wanted to."

"I wouldn't actually kill everyone," Valentine turned to his enemy at last. "But it'll be pleasure for me to kill you."

"Oh mother dear, I'm so-so-so afraid!" Aphanacy laughed and ran away to the parlour which was roaring with celebration.

"Pffff."

It did not bother Valentine what those blunt aristocrats like Aphanacy thought of him. He finished making the present for his sister, this was everything that mattered.

The twelfth strike of the clock was not soon to happen, so he had plenty of time left.

Still, he did not feel like giving that present to his sister in presence of all the guests and, in particular, their parents. They would execute him on the spot.

Valentine left his room to look for Bernadette and to call her by stealth. However, he did not have gone a long way, for Bern was up there, running along the corridor, supposedly from her room back to the table.

"Bern!"

She looked beautiful. A new dress sparkling with dark blue tones was a perfect match for the colour of her eyes; ringlets of her hair were styled into two pigtails.

"You haven't given me anything today, booo!" the girl stopped to show Valentine her tongue. She felt uneasy for her brother had not turned up in the room; there were everyone including parents, relatives and many various unknown strangers whom Bernadette saw for the first time in her life. How could he forget about her birthday?