She didn't talk about them often.Not because she didn't remember~but because she remembered too well.
There are things a heart never forgets.
Not because it refuses to let go~but because some words root themselves so deep, they grow branches in the soul.
Snow whispered against the window, soft as a forgotten lullaby. Elirys sat curled in her usual corner, a worn book resting untouched on her knees, steam long vanished from the tea in her hands. The world outside her little apartment was still and pale, like the memory that had just returned without knocking.
She wasn't really in the room.
She was somewhere else - years away - standing in a quiet hallway, behind a door she had once been afraid to open.
She heard their voices before she stepped in. Not loud. Not cruel. Just tired.
Her mother's voice had sounded like surrender.
"She shouldn't have been born. It's our fault. We were selfish to bring her into this world."
And her father - silent, as always had simply looked down.
They didn't say it in anger.They said it in resignation.As if her very existence was a mistake written in soft, inevitable ink.
Elirys didn't cry that night. She hadn't cried then. But something inside her had folded in on itself, small and careful. As if trying to disappear.
She was fifteen.
And still, she loved them.
She always had.
Even now, after everything, she could still see her mother gently placing her hair behind her ear when she had a fever. Her father pulling the blanket over her shoulders when he thought she was asleep. They loved her. She never doubted that.
It was strange, wasn't it?They loved her. They really did.
But somewhere between the meals and the medicine, they had stopped seeing her, they never understood her.
They believed her silence was defiance. Her quiet was rebellion. Her dreams were distractions. Her sensitivity was selfishness. They gave her everything - warm food, a safe home, all the things they thought she could ever want. And they believed it should've been enough.
But love isn't measured in comfort alone.
She tried. God knows, how she tried - to be the child they could be proud of. She studied hard, smiled when it hurt, said thank you even when her heart was breaking. She wanted to give them the world. Everything they deserved. Because she knew they had cared for her, protected her, sacrificed things she might never fully understand.
And yet, somewhere between the giving and the growing, they had decided she didn't love them.
That she hated them.
That her spirit was rebellion, not yearning.
But all she ever wanted was to be their joy. Their peace.She had wanted to take care of them when she grew older, to show them that their kindness hadn't been wasted.To be good enough to deserve their love without conditions.
But how could she explain that she disobeyed not to rebel, but to breathe?
How could she say that every time she said no, it was only because she was trying to find the yes that belonged to her?
They didn't see that.
They saw her difference and mistook it for distance.They saw her gentleness and mistook it for defiance.
And somewhere along the way, the silence between them became a wall none of them could climb.
She laid her head against the cold windowpane. Snowflakes tapped against the glass like tiny, delicate echoes.
"I didn't hate you," she whispered into the silence. "I just wanted you to see me."
Her voice cracked. The kind of crack that came from years of being misunderstood while holding on to love so tightly it nearly turned to glass in her hands.
She didn't know if they thought of her now.If they remembered the girl who brought them tea when they were tired, who sat quietly in corners just to be near them, who loved them even when it hurt.
Or had they replaced her image in their minds with a stranger-difficult, distant, undeserving?
Maybe they never would.Maybe love sometimes wasn't enough when it didn't come with understanding.
But still, she loved them.
In the way you love a house that never truly kept you warm, but was still the only one you ever knew. Even if she was the only one who remembered the warmth beneath the words that had once broken her.