Her Lie I Tried To Believe

How It All Started

Chapter 1

It all started in elementary school. Not middle school nor high school, but elementary school... Just to tell how long she's been tormenting me. Yes, a girl. It is always about a girl, isn't it? Couldn't have been a rivalry between boys... No. It needed to be a girl. FUCK. There's no predetermined time to mark when exactly this happened. It just kinda turned out this way I guess. The moment I laid my eyes on her, I knew I would... Hate her. She was tall. Well, not tall tall, but still taller than me back then. You know how it goes... Her hair was not very long, "Boyish" would probably be a good way to define it. But again, this wasn't such a surprise during that time. Her strength must have been similar to mine even. Her feature resembled most of the girls. She wasn't special, that's for sure. She had brown eyes, black hair... A cute little girl and it stopped at that. Just that. Yet there was one thing. Only one simple thing that separated her from the rest of those pure girls. Her eyes. There was something... and I'm not talking about twinkles or anything of the sort. I'm talking about something darker. Something that doesn't belong to a kid. But she hid it. Or at least tried to. And it worked with most people. But not with me. I wonder if she saw the same thing in my eyes. Maybe that's why she answered that contempt with some unknow feelings for her own... I don't know how it happened. Did she provoke me first, or was I the one pushing this "conception" as the sole intent of our relationship? The fact that we were "rivals." I think it started because she was beating me at running. She was beating me at pretty much everything really. But I think running was something more perceivable and that's why I felt it weighing so much more on my mind. "To be beaten by a girl." And it wasn't that she had a talent for running or whatever... it was simply that I was mediocre. And it would've probably been alright with me if it weren't for that smile. That smile... Always teasing me, so brightly so. And it wasn't that compelling either. I mean, more often than not, she would be missing some teeth due to growth so... But again, I don't fully remember why she started doing this, but every time she finished before me in a race during PE, she would always look at me with that smile and say: "Better luck next time, Y/N". For me, it was the greatest insult. For a boy who tries to distinguish himself from the others, in an environment such as elementary school, to be beaten and laughed at by a girl.. .there's no way I wouldn't take it personally. So I made it kinda my "life mission" to beat her at every opportunity I'd get. But sadly for me, I was just an average guy. And while she was too an average girl, she was still slightly better than I was. I think for her, it was simply a game. Something to put a smile on her face, or to feel proud about. Seeing me fail and looking so irritated by that fact.. she might have thought I was also amusing myself somehow. It was only when winter came that she understood the depth of my feelings. We were playing king of the hill on a snow mountain with a couple of kids. I said "we" but we weren't friends or even acquainted with one another. We knew each other's names, and that was that. Maybe it made even more of an impact because of this. Because no one was really playing aggressively... We were just kinda pushing each other out from the top of the mountain to claim it our own. But when I saw her – that girl – climb to the top of the mountain, and try to take this fleeting achievement from me, I just kinda snapped. I remember thinking "this is mine, you won't take it away from me!" And she didn't. She didn't because I grabbed her with all my strength and threw her to the bottom of the mountain, directly on hard ground. It must have hurt. It must have hurt really bad. But my thoughts weren't there. I was completely euphoric with the idea that I "protected" what was mine. That I was finally beating her at something. I guess our strengths were really no match after all. The kids were all regrouping themselves around her for some reason. I finally understood that I had did something I shouldn't have done. Their glares on me told me so. Yet I didn't feel bad. I mean, this girl has been tormenting me way more than this. But they didn't know. How could they know? Finally, the girl – Cassandra – got up painfully from the ground. She didn't cry. She didn't try to stir up compassion from those around her. No. She simply looked at me with those eyes. That's when I knew she finally understood how I feel. That's when I knew she finally started hating me. She became serious. That "rivalry" I thought we had was nothing more than normality for her. So, by seriously trying to beat me at everything, she became one of the best students in our class. I could say some stupid shit like I wanted her to become this way because I knew she was faking to be someone else, but that's clearly not the case. The only reasons I ever had in wanting to crush her were simply juvenile and immature ones at best. I don't think she was "fake" before by any stretch of the imagination... I just think she had that much potential. Sure, I also became better because of that fact, but she always had the last word in the end. And her smile changed too. There was no longer this faint warmth emanating from it. It was cold, like this thing I thought I had once seen in her eyes. She finally looked at me the way I always looked at her. I guess I opened her eyes, and she then saw me for whom I truly was. Also, she stopped saying her usual line when beating me. She continued saying something alright, but it was no longer that line... Instead, she just said something like: " are you even trying!?" And she would say it as often as she could. It was no longer simply when we were running against each other, but also during our academic reports and even during luck-influenced games. My elementary school life ended with an extremely bitter aftertaste. I became the laughingstock of my class, and I somehow helped Cassandra become even better than she already was. A complete defeat indeed. But there would be other chances for me to prove my worth. I knew there would. A chance to crush her, that is.