It has been two weeks since I’ve been so shamelessly eating off my father’s food and money; and sleeping in his—their house.

Truthfully, there hadn’t been a day where I didn’t feel like I was a leech, a stranger living amongst a perfectly happy family and ruining what’s it like to be a great family; members who have bonds amongst one another towards each other that I haven’t ever seen before in my life.

My mother and I lived in an okay-sorta neighborhood; families with barely capable members, with lower than average finance. So it automatically meant there were times they’d fight, noises of screams, shouts and yells reverberating through the entire neighborhood. I was used to living between ruined families; my own family was built from ruins itself, so the only thing I was used to was darkness, shouts, screams, and negligence. Seeing bursting love, joy, and warmth in the eyes of humans was extremely foreign for me, especially when it came out of people whom I was supposed to be family with; Sehun and my father.

I have always been used to the icy coldness, the carelessness, the nonchalance; from my mother’s eyes, the only person in this place that I was closely similar with, a person I looked so much alike. The idea someone - whom I’m blood related with - was willing to offer me everything that I hadn’t been receiving was terrifying in a sense, but I knew it was what I deserved to receive in my entire life; I knew it was the right thing, this light in their eyes. I knew it was what I should have been acquainted with, not what my mom had been offering; which is why I didn’t push it away, even if it scared me, made me uncomfortable, and urged me to force it away.

So to see it slowly break away, it was even scarier. I never wanted to be the cause of someone else’s ruins, despite ruins being the only thing I knew and embraced. God knows how hard it was for me to start embracing it; the ruins I constantly lived in, and I never wanted anyone else to face and embrace the same horrid darkness.

It was then harder to pull away from, as it’d grow to be the only think you recognize.

I stared around me at everyone, in the table where we were supposed to eat; sitting between Suho - Sehun’s older brother, not by blood; but by law, since his mother married my father - and Sehun, whom was awfully silent. The wife, with my younger brother, whom was named Seokjin - he was trying to eat his breakfast cereal without slurping it; his mother constantly chiding him to eat without spilling anything on his clothes - and my father, in spite of his tense shoulders, echoing silence; and permanent frown, was watching him with soft eyes, as if wanting to dismiss the tension in the air every one of us could feel.

Of course no one was addressing it, this tension surrounding us, and I knew that they thought by addressing it, they’d be acknowledging it; something they apparently didn’t want to do. This was something I was used to, actually, with my mother and I. Whenever we had time; whenever she had time, to eat together, this kind of tension swallowed us, and none of us dared to acknowledge it, since acknowledging it meant admitting we were both ed up, she more than I, since I was merely the results of all of things that was hers.

I didn’t know why they weren’t talking. I didn’t know why they were tensed. I didn’t know why they were trying to avoid each other’s eyes, silence deafening, surrounding each and everyone of us. There was something they were hiding from me, and about me too. I mean, I could easily draw a spell and let all of the secrets out, and I could tell without a spell; actually, but for the first time since forever, I didn’t want to know what they were hiding from me. I was willing to stay silent, focusing on their eyes with my own intrusive ones (even if I didn’t want anything to be flashing out for me. I didn’t want to know, period) and pretending not to notice how everyone was ready to jump out of their chairs at any given moment.

I finished my cereal bowl silently and let out a small, unheard sigh; but everyone’s eyes fell to me in spite of what I thought to be an unheard sigh. My father’s eyes were rugged, old, yet sharp, while the other’s eyes were ridden with curiosity, wondering about the reason of my sigh. I didn’t say anything, I never said anything when I’m with them. I don’t interact much with them, opting to spend time in my room (a guest room previously) and practice more magical spells using the books I stole from my mom’s personal library. I always felt like a burden, even though they always tried to tell me otherwise; treat me otherwise. Maybe it was in the quick glances Suho gave me whenever I walked past him to the kitchen to get breakfast, or Sehun’s grim faces he pulled whenever he saw me in the living room, watching TV. Or maybe it was my father’s sad eyes and the side hug he received from his wife whenever those eyes of his fell upon me. Even his wife looked at me differently, despite telling me she’d try to learn treating me as a daughter the same way she was treating Sehun.

I guess two weeks was too little of a time for her to develop the same love she has for Sehun.

I stood from the table, carrying my bowl with me under the watching eyes of them all; walking towards the kitchen and quickly washing the bowl so that I can put it away to dry. I felt my magic drizzle and explode inside of me all of a sudden, and I knew quickly that someone else was inside the kitchen with me.

Suho.

I turned around to give him a look, wondering what he wanted. But he merely raised his eyebrows, leaning against the countertop with a small smile on his face, like he was slightly unsure of what he should do or say, but said it nonetheless.

“Father wants you to know that you’ll start school a few days from now,” he said smoothly, voice light and sunny, resembling the same impression I have had of him the first time I saw him and heard him speak. My eyebrows flew up and hid behind my bangs. What?

“If you want to yell at someone,” He completed, “Please do it outside the house. I’m done with Sehun’s yells. Can’t bear his twin sister’s yells as well.”

“Aren’t you charming.” I muttered, sarcastically of course, and walked past him, out of the kitchen and towards where the tingles that I have in my body were directing me. They, the perfect family; weren’t in the dining room anymore, and I wondered mentally when did they get fast enough to travel between rooms while I just went to clean a bowl of empty cereals.

I could feel Suho’s footsteps walking behind me, his presence got so familiar to me that my magic grew accustomed to him, and started reacting to him whenever he was close, far away, in danger, or in sickness. It was annoying how my magic suddenly decides this person is going to be in its radar just because I spend a lot of time with, two weeks apparently. Everyone of this perfect family members had appeared in my radar, Sehun and my father having already been in my radar ever since I met them because of the blood relation.

It was highly annoying.

I found them in the living room, crowding over the couches. Sehun was still holding his cereal bowl, but he didn’t seem like he was eating. His eyes were looking at me, peering, and calculating. He looked like he wanted to say something, something he should have told me of in the first day I stepped inside his life. But he closed his mouth and looked away, not saying it yet again.

I sighed, sitting on a single couch and eyeing my father, who was petting his son, Seokjin, and looking down at him; as if totally unaware of my presence. However, he and I both knew he was perfectly aware of me sitting across him, giving him a flaming look.

“I don’t want to go to school,” I told him passionately, gripping my hands together tightly and producing sweat with how tight I was holding them. “I don’t want to go to school with your money.”

He looked up at me, frowning, and I noticed that everyone was looking at me as well.

“You’re my daughter, Hana, what are you saying? The money is ours now, not mine.”

“I don’t care,” I mumbled softly, lowering my eyes to my interlocked fingers and swallowing my saliva away. “I’m never going to be a part of this family. Sure, you’re my father; but you’re not my dad.”

He looked awfully hurt with what I said, Sehun looked hurt with what I said. Actually, all of them were, which came as a surprise since I never thought Suho or his mom would care about me this much. Or maybe they truly weren’t, maybe they were just hurt because my father was hurt. But what did they want me to do? He is my father, that much I can’t deny, but is he my dad? Did I feel like he was? No, I didn’t. I always, and will always remain feeling like I’m a stranger amongst him, and Sehun, and them.

I was just brave enough to swallow it down. That I could never, even if I endlessly wished to be, feel like I belonged with them. Like I was truly his daughter, like he was truly my dad, like Sehun was truly my brother. There’d always be a wall separating me from what I truly wanted, and it was no one’s fault. Really, things were just bond to go in halves, our family was bound to be broken into shards, only to be recollected with new pieces I’m not fit to touch.

That was just the truth. And they needed to accept it.

“But I am your dad,” Father said with the same passion I had used in declaring he was not. “I can be your dad. Why won’t you let me?”

“I.. I can’t let you,” I tried to explain my views, looking up from my fiddling hands to his wide and panicking eyes. I have never seen such vulnerability in a father’s eyes before, and I felt ashamed I was the cause of that now. “It’s just.. I can never feel close to you like how a daughter should feel close to her father. I’ve never felt close to my own mother, like she was truly my mother; even when she raised me to be the person I am today. You can try and be my father or dad or whatever the name is, but it’d never feel like it, not.. not with this wall between us.”

“Tell me honestly,” Sehun, imagine, was the one who actually talked before father could, and I dared to push my pleading eyes (pleading for understanding) to him, my brown eyes and his looking oddly similar to one another for a small second; the first ever similarit