This story was developed from my imagination. I ask you to respect my work and not plagiarize nor distribute it in any shape or form. If you do hate this story, you have the choice to stop reading.

Thank you for your consideration and without further ado...

His parents and mine were long-term best friends. All four of them attended the same military academy and remained friends from then, all the way to now. Because of their friendship, Alexander, or Red as I would call him due to the fact it was his most despised color, and I grew up together. When my parents weren't home for weeks at a time, I would go stay with his family and they would take care of me. If his parents weren't home, he would stay with us. This was why I basically had my own room in their family home and he had one in mine.

I didn't always despise him, in fact, he and I used to be the closest of friends. He was the one I trusted the most. However, when we both decided to follow in our parents' footsteps and attend a military academy for high school, he began to ignore me as if we didn't even know each other. At first, I brushed it aside and thought nothing of it and still tried to talk to him anyways. But as time passed, the distance between us grew larger and I began to despise him for the fact that our 14 years of close friendship meant nothing to him and he was easily able to forget me. When I realized what we had would never return, I too, gave up on him. My competitive spirit created some kind of rivalry between us two since no matter what, I wanted to win against him.

Whether it was studies, combat, or other stupid little things, I never wanted to lose to him. Our little competitions became so well known in our school that sometimes, they began to pick sides, betting on who would win and who would ultimately lose. My friends always sided with me and his friends always stuck with him. For studies, I worked hard into the night so I beat him most times with hard work but combat wise, he would usually win. I would like to think I wasn't necessarily bad but he was 5 ft 11, still growing with broad shoulders and weight mostly from muscle while I was just around 5 ft 6, average height and weight.

End of high school, we both ended up at the same university but since we were studying different subjects, it was a small probability that we would cross paths with each other. However, apparently our parents pulled some strings so that his dorm room was right across the hall from mine. Their reason was that they were worried for our safety. While I appreciated their concerns, it aggravated me to no end that when I thought that I may not see him again, he was right there in front of me.

After graduating and getting my diploma, I decided to study my masters elsewhere and I never saw Alexander since.

With the completion my masters, I decided to continue down in my parents' footsteps and enlisted for the military and was soon deployed overseas. I knew of the dangers and that I might not make it back alive but I felt that it was something I had to do.

The heavy emotional stress started to break me down bit by bit and when a mission went disastrously wrong near the end of my 15-month tour, I came back home and decided to take a break from everything, from reality. Unfortunately, home was not as safe as I thought it was.

This takes us to the present day.