A year passed by. My relationship with that new mother was barely courteous and almost nonexistent with that boy. He would stay away from me and I wouldn’t go out of my way to befriend him.

One day, coming back from school I saw the front of the manor heavily decorated and upon asking the servants, I was told that the young master was celebrating his birthday today. Indeed, in one room where giggles and noises came from, upon peeking I saw some children his age laughing, playing and clapping. Paelita saw me and called but I turned around and run to my bedroom, locking myself inside.

I had never celebrated my birthday. Didn’t even know people celebrated that!

The following months, Paelita wanted to celebrate mine. I asked her not to bother, who would be coming anyway. I really didn’t want to suddenly celebrate that but the fact that she yielded in, that too, had been annoying.

At one point, after some years, Vicenzio stopped avoiding me and stopped actively trying to hide every time our eyes met. I didn’t really know when, just that he stopped fearing me, even started wanting to talk to me. It wasn’t easy to ignore him all day long so I responded back and I think for a certain period, we may not have been friends but we weren’t enemies either.

However, that changed abruptly one afternoon and to be honest, it was by pure accident. It was true though that the days before that I had ruined a good report he brought home, I didn’t want him to show it and be praised for a full week once again. So the frictions were already there. It was on his birthday, his twelfth and I really can’t remember very well but by the end of the day, he was clutching a burned piece of paper while crying. That this paper caught fire really wasn’t something I did intentionally.

And seeing him cry, I was tempted to console him at first. But then I saw his mother rushed to us, looked at me like I had done a terribly wrong thing. She may not have talked to me but her eyes had said it all. She hurriedly said nice little words of comfort to her son.

Mother never did that for me. Instead, I would remember being locked in a dark room and crying all by myself. The regret and pity I felt went away at that realization. In its place, I felt a twisted pleasure in knowing I had a hand in his misery.

I think it was after that day that he stopped been nice to me. And it certainly was that day that the conclusion that we’d never be sibling had been ingrained in both our hearts.