Chapter 62: 49 - Azalea
I merely was born as a doll.
The tool of the Lovecraft family.
Used for their own political authority and prowess to engage with peasants.
My value could hardly be defined by mere achievements or appreciation.
Also, the fact I belonged to them—as part of their possession. Fully.
"Azalea. You really do great when you’re stunning during class and score perfectly in every subject. Keep doing that and you’ll be better than your sister in no time."
"We’ll trust you, and always love you... when you are perfect."
A perfect tool.
That was their intention when they raised me.
These words didn’t exist to encourage me.
Instead, they were a push. And a pull, too.
I had come to realize this long before those words were ever spoken, noticeable from the way they compared me to her—always her—from the very beginning.
In a way, you could make the case that they were the worst parents in the world.The kind who would push you off the edge of a cliff, do nothing to save you, and still insist it was their only choice—so you had no rights to resist.
No rights to cry.No rights to break down.
"Just look at your sister, Helena. If you want to be valued, be like her."
This meaningless doctrine repeated again and again, leaving a mark shaped like tragedy.Suffering became inevitable, foreshadowing the eventual collapse.
Mine.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHH! WAAAAAAAAAAA!"
I was screaming.Losing control of reality,
Breaking every single piece of my own mosaic.
Because—
No. I couldn’t resist it.
No. I didn’t want to.
And no. I would’ve loved to kill myself if the opportunity had ever presented itself.
It just hasn’t. Not yet.
"AZALEA!"
The voice of panicky shouted at me.
No matter how much hatred I felt toward her—toward her carved-in superiority and effortless dignity—Helena, for once, did care.
Or at least... she tried her best to.
"Are you okay? Is there anything—or anyone—that made you like this?"
YOU.
You never realized it, did you?
I was the one who had been suffering all along—for your sake.
Fifteen years had felt like a thousand, stretched painfully by your very existence.
But no, I didn’t want to tell her.
She didn’t need to know.
Just like our parents kept it from her—mocking her foolishness, despite her brilliance.
They whispered when they thought we couldn’t hear them.
The Lovecrafts, in all their prideful decay.
"Helena is brilliant,"
"But too innocent. A fool."
A pawn dressed in silk and sunlight, too naive to notice the knives in her back.
Used. Manipulated. Loved merely as a Lovecraftian symbol.
And I—
I watched from the other side of the wall. Ear pressed against the lacquered wood. Breath shallow. Eyes wide.
Their words stabbed sharper than any blade they had drawn for me.
They were using her, too.
Not just me.
Not just the broken doll.
I should have hated her.
But instead...
That night, when her breath was soft and even, rising and falling under the sheets, I lay beside her. I wrapped my arms around her small frame.
So gently. So reverently.
As if she’d break.
And maybe... in a way, she already had.
I pressed a kiss to her lips.
A soft, trembling thing.
Forbidden.
And I knew it.
However, in that fleeting moment, I wanted her to know someone in this world could hold her without expectation. That someone felt sorry.
Truly sorry.
Not for who she was—but for what they made of her.
It wasn’t romantic.It wasn’t lust.It wasn’t innocence, either.
It was the grief of a broken doll kissing another shattered thing.
A glass.
Why? Because I had never really felt love before.
Not truly a genuine one.
At least, not until I met Kairi.
She looked at me and didn’t see the Lovecraft seal branded into my spine.She didn’t see me as a prodigy, or a puppet, or a shadow of Helena.
She saw me as Azalea and Azalea only.
No matter if it’s merely the mosaic.
Or the jagged shards.
Or even the storm underneath the porcelain skin.
But then... that moment happened.
That awful, piercing stillness.
"What happened, exactly?"
A calm, detached voice sliced through the air like a scalpel.
Sherrie trembled in its wake.
"Well... she fainted due to... something,"
She stammered, as if the truth itself were poison in her throat.
The way she faltered—her elegance crumbling like damp paper before a flame—irritated me.
No.
It infuriated me instead.
"Would you mind explaining?"
The words came out sharper than I intended, but I didn’t care.
"You’re the hall monitor, aren’t you? Shouldn’t you take responsibility?"
Her eyes widened.
"Why are you washing your hands out of this?"
She stammered something. I didn’t listen.
The moment she said "Kairi shouldn’t have gone there"—
Something inside me snapped.
Gone? To where?
You speak in riddles, Sherrie. But no, I already knew.
Somewhere dangerous.
Somewhere you should have stopped her from entering.
And it was your fault to begin with.
I stepped forward, took her by the collar, slow and deliberate.
"If you harmed Kairi..."
My voice dropped.
"If you endangered her, you know the consequences."
The air went still.
Even the light seemed to dim.
Sherrie nodded, her lips trembling, her pride dissolving in silence.
"Good."
Only then did I notice you.
Watching.
Somewhat shaken.
My eyes were wide,
My soul was trembling.
And I turned to you.
I wish I could’ve smiled.
But that wasn’t the face I wore anymore.
Because something had begun to awaken inside me.
Something that had no name yet.
Something cold.
And it was alive.
And terrifyingly possessive.
Kairi...
I won’t let them break you.
No one touches what I’ve finally come to understand.
No one.
I knelt beside her, arms reaching out—not with gentleness, but with something deeper.
Something desperate.
I pulled her close.
She flinched.
Of course she did.
She had every reason to.
Her body tensed under my embrace, her breath shallow, caught between panic and confusion.
She didn’t trust me.
Not yet.
Maybe she never would.
But that didn’t stop me.
Because I had to feel it—this warmth, fleeting as it might be.
I held her tighter, as if by doing so, I could chain time.
Keep it from leaving us.
Keep her from leaving me.
Kairi...
Even though the time we’ve shared could fit in the palm of a broken clock...
I remember everything.
The way you squinted at the overcomplicated formulas in Alchemical Methodology, then smirked as if mocking the textbook.
The times you muttered sarcasm under your breath in class, only loud enough for me to hear.
You thought I wasn’t listening.
But I was.
I always was.
And that one afternoon... when the world blurred out and there was only you and me...
You were sketching nonsense with your wand in midair, and I was smiling.
Actually smiling.
I should’ve been focused on Dellaetrix’s lecture, but instead, I was reading her.
Not the words.
Her.
The faint lift of her brow when she was thinking.
The way her lips parted ever so slightly in concentration.
That unbothered, mildly annoyed expression she always wore, as if the world was never quite interesting enough unless she could reshape it herself.
She tilted her head, waiting for a response.
Then—
"Why are you so quiet?"
Her voice, again.
Direct.
Unfiltered.
Calling me out.
Me.
Just me.
I panicked—shaking my head, waving my hands, as if I could erase what had just happened with enough movement.
But the moment shattered—
CRACK!
A sudden pain bloomed on my scalp.
I winced, grabbing my head.
Kairi, beside me, looked just as shocked—rubbing the same spot on her head.
Professor Dellaetrix stood over us, baton in hand, face unamused.
"Miss Lovecraft. Miss Veylith."
Professor Dellaetrix’s voice crashed into us like cold water.
"You two... always in your own world! Do you not see that the lesson has already started?! What could possibly be more interesting than my teaching?!"
His voice was shrill and piercing, worse than the hit.
"Kairi, you too. You just recovered, yet you’re busy floating letters in the air?! Did you think I wouldn’t notice?!"
Azalea, ever seemed so composed, held up the blank papyrus, to which the professor nodded in understanding.
"Alright, I’ll let it slide this time. Don’t do it next time, alright ladies?"
Both of us nodded in unison, not wanting to disobey.
I remember how you stiffened, turning beet red, while I couldn’t help but laugh.
A real one.
Not the fake, manicured kind I gave my parents.
Not the polite one I offered teachers.
But something real.
A shared shame.
A shared world.
Our world.
Even if it only lasted ten minutes.
Even if it only lived in the crack between two breaths.
It was real.
It was.
And now...
Now that I’ve seen it—felt it—I can never go back.
Kairi...
You’re trembling.
Afraid of me.
I can feel your heartbeat against mine like a frightened animal, caged and cornered.
But I’m not here to hurt you.
I’m not them.
Not like them.
Please believe me, just this once.
Let me have this.
Let me remember this moment without blood on the edges.
Let me stay here.
Even if only in the memory of you.
Even if only as your shadow.
