Irium

"Yes, it"s for someone by the name of …"

"I know. Only dad gets mails. It couldn"t be for anyone else. He isn"t at the home right now so …" she deliberately trailed off. Understanding her intention, the mailman nodded and handed her the pen and the paper that she needed to sign, as proof that the mail was delivered.

"Now, what the h.e.l.l is this?" She wondered after closing the door and looked at the mail. "Remedy Corp.?"

She saw the name of the company her adoptive father worked for and immediately decided to bring her mischievous side out. She took it to her room after telling her mom a lie about the person who had knocked on the door being someone asking for address instead of a mailman.

Then, alone in her room when she was and after she had made sure that none of her siblings were hiding anywhere in the room in order to prank her or whatever, the 15-year-old girl decided to take a look inside his mail. She was able to open it fairly easily, which was kinda suspicious but she was interested in finding out what was inside it than worrying about things like that.

A grin was on her face as she opened it. And then,

Knock! Knock!

A knocking sound came from the house door again.

"Tsk!" she clicked her tongue, "Eh, mom, I am a bit busy right now so could you send Jason to get it?" she inquired her mother if Jason, the second oldest of the four siblings could open the door, and her mother only replied with a happy "OOOKKKKKAAAAYYYY!!!"

Hearing that, she peaked out from the bottom-s.p.a.ce between her room"s door and the floor and found Jason going to open the door. With that rea.s.surance, she breathed a sigh of relief and started to read the contents of the letter.

KNOCK! KNOCK!

Whoever was on their door seemed to be impatient and hearing the person knocking on their door again and again made her a bit irritated. But, she distracted herself by the mail.

"Let"s see – what does it say?" and with that, she started reading the letter.

In a matter of mere seconds, the person knocking at their door had started knocking on her door. But, she wasn"t responding. She was too engrossed in the details of what she was reading. And so, that person broke the door by repeatedly kicking it and entered the room. The loud noise caused by that finally grabbed her attention and distracted her from the letter.

Her adoptive father, who had been away on a business trip, had come back home in a hurry and s.n.a.t.c.hed the letter off her hands, all the while breathing like he had run a marathon. However, even Grimma, the rowdiest person in the house, wouldn"t dare to joke after seeing how angry he was.

"DID YOU READ IT!?" He yelled in anger and,

"N-NO!" she reflexively replied with the safer choice, the choice that was a lie. However, her quick reaction made the man think she was telling the truth. And so, that foolish man relaxed.

*****

That was the incident that started it all. That was the one incident that brought my downfall. Foolish as I was, I still should have questioned if Grimma was lying back then. I didn"t. I didn"t because I wanted to believe that my family wouldn"t tell lies to me. And because of all that, I paid the price, a price that couldn"t have afforded to pay, not in a million lifetimes.

If I were to come face-to-face with that man who foolishly believed what Grimma reflexively told her, I would kill him. I would smash his head with a bottle or something. He doesn"t deserve to live. He, the foolish me of the past, doesn"t deserve to live at all. He was a sinner, obviously. But, even more than that, he was a sc.u.m who couldn"t even protect his family, the one thing that really mattered to him.

He put hidden cameras in his house to make sure that everyone was safe. But, when one of those hidden cameras showed his daughter taking a mail from the company he worked for and then going to try to read it, he couldn"t even stop her, neither did he show enough wits to understand that she was lying when she said she hadn"t read it.

That sc.u.m! He deserved to die! But, he didn"t. He was the only one who deserved to die. So why? Why was he the only one who didn"t?

*****

Now a 16-year-old, Grimma had gone back to studying in her room after dinner. She knew it wasn"t a very healthy habit to study at night, especially after dinner, but still, she couldn"t help it. Her mid-year-exams were coming up. She had to be prepared. Or, at least, that"s what the rest of the family thought as they saw her going into her room and locking it up from inside so no one could disturb her.

But, instead of studying,

"Time to practice!" she was dead-set on practicing magic, the thing that she had learned existed from the mail that she had once read mischievously.

As she was in the prime of her adolescence, she couldn"t resist the urge to learn something like magic. Also because of the same reason, her father had removed all the cameras from her room … which she didn"t even knew were once there.

Regardless, there was no one around who could find out that she was trying to learn magic and so, there was no one around to stop her.

And so, she practiced. She practiced the spells and incantations and whatnot that she had gotten a hold of from peeking at her father"s stuff while acting like she was cleaning the house. She truly was a smart girl, smart enough to consider that there could be cameras in the house and act in a way so as to not let the cameras know that she was peeking at things. Unfortunately, this wasn"t the best use of her intellectual abilities.

Knock! Knock!

She heard someone knocking on her house door again. Obviously, as she was supposed to be engrossed in her "studies", so she had no reason to be the one to open it. Plus, her dad was at home so he"ll obviously open it. But,

"What!?" her dad"s surprised voice rang out, easily reaching her room which wasn"t too far away from the house door. She decided to take a look at what was going on and as she did,

"As we said, mister, we are police!"

Said the two men at their house door.

*****