“So what did Noah and that man stealing whore Mia want from you?”

 

“Man stealing whore?” I ask her.

 

But my sister doesn’t answer my question. I had no clue why she was calling Mia a ‘man stealing whore’. As far as I know, she didn’t like Noah and that's the only person Mia could have stolen. Deciding that I should just answer her question.

 

“They were telling me they started to date. And Noah wanted to let me know I shouldn’t talk to Mia anymore” I told her, leaving out the ambush from their friends telling me the same thing.

 

After hearing that, my sister stared at me for a few seconds before asking, “Does that bother you?”

 

“Does what bother me?”

 

“That you can’t talk to Mia anymore”

 

“Why would that bother me?”

 

It’s another pause before my sister spoke again. “How do you feel towards Mia?”

 

“She was my friend” I say, without thinking about it.

 

But my comment changed my sister's expression. She has asked this question to me before, and I’ve always said something along those lines.

 

“What do you mean ‘she was’” she asks me.

 

“I don’t understand your question”

 

“Is she no longer your friend?”

 

“I don’t think so” I say.

 

“And does that make you sad or anything?”

 

“No, not really. Why would I?”

 

“Most people are sad when they lose friends.”

 

“I wasn’t sad when Noah and I stopped being friends”

 

“Most people who know you would say that you and Mia were closer then you and Noah”

 

“I wouldn’t”

 

This again creates a member where my sister thinks before speaking again.

 

“What if you stoped being close with other people? Would you be sad then?” She said, very interested in what I was going to say.

 

“I don’t know what you mean?”

 

“What if we stopped talking” she says, staring intently.

 

But I never gave a response to her question.

 

✾

 

The next thing I remember, I am kneeling on the ground, holding my throat and my sister is holding me. I have no clue what was happening, all I remember is not being able to breathe.

 

I can hear my sister saying something along the lines of not leaving or something like that.

 

As my breathing got better, I was going to tell my sister, but her hug felt really good, more so the usual. She would often hug me, but right now it felt better. Safe. I took my arms that were holding my throat like I was choking and hugged her back.

 

“Aria” I said, sinking deeper into her embrace.

 

We stayed like that for a while. Holding each other.

 

Eventually, Aria speaks up. “Hey Zenith, are you still hungry?”

 

“Not really. I kind of lost my appetite.”

 

“Well then, I think it would be good if you tried to get some sleep. I know it’s not very late, but I think it's a good idea”

 

“Ok” I told her.

 

“I’ll clean up after dinner.  You go clean yourself up.”

 

With that, we let go of each other. Aria starts to clean up the barely eaten dinner and I head to take a shower.

 

But right when I leave the room, my mood drops. I don’t really know why, but being alone again hurts.

 

After a quick shower, I head back into my bedroom. When I get there, I receive a text.

 

Assuming it's probably just Noah texting to be mean to me, like he has for the last 2 years, or its one of his friends doing the same, I pull out my phone.

 

But the text I received was from none of them.

 

It was from, probably my only real friend, Mana.

 

Mana and I go back really far. After I was adopted, I often had to go get check ups at the hunters association. There I met Mana. Like me, she had lost her parents during the first outbreak.

 

We became really good friends, but the family who took her in moved so we can only talk over the phone, and she prefers text. Outside of my brother and sister, Mana is probably the most important person to me.

 

‘Hey, everything good?’ She texted me. I don’t know why, but she usually knows when something is going on in my life.

 

‘Not much’ I responded.

 

‘I think you lying’

 

‘Why would I lie?’

 

‘Because you always do. You never open with the truth’

 

‘But nothing is going on.’

 

‘If I ask Aria, will she agree with that’

 

‘Aria doesn’t like you. She tells me that I should talk to her whenever you text’

 

‘Are you going to’

 

‘She already knows’

 

‘Well, you should tell me whatever is going on’

 

‘I lost another friend I think’

 

‘Do you care?’

 

‘Not really. I barely considered her a friend.’

 

‘Well, it doesn’t matter. You will always have me  ;D’

 

‘Thanks’

 

There is a time gap before the next text.

 

‘Hey, if I send you a picture, you have to promise not to share it with anyone. All right?’

 

‘Aria looks at my phone so I don’t think I can promise that’

 

‘Aria is fine’

 

And she sent me a picture. Mana is a few years older than me. She is objectively beautiful. She doesn’t tell me but I promise that she is very popular with men.

 

The picture is of her, in only her underwear. Nothing is exposed. But you can clearly see her cleavage. Her lingerie matches her hair, a beautiful pink color. It is 100% the type of picture someone would send to their boyfriend.

 

It also isn’t the first time she sent me a picture like this.

 

✾

 

As Zenith walks back upstairs to take a shower and clean up, I clean up the uneaten dinner.

 

“I really should have waited to talk about that. All of the food he made is going to waste” I say to myself.

 

I love my brother. I have and will always love him. And thinking of wasting all of this food is sad.

 

Zenith took up cooking one of the times our parents went away for work. He said it was unhealthy for us to eat out every meal and he wanted us to be good, us being me and my twin brother. He took up cooking for me.

 

Back when Zenith was younger, we became really close. I loved having a younger brother and would often do things with him. As he grew up, I started to be scared that he would get hurt by someone. I don’t think he remembers when he first met Mia and Noah, but he used to talk about them a lot.

 

I, much like a lot of others, thought that he started to have a crush on her. So I did something to make sure she wasn’t going to hurt him.

 

I installed a mirroring app on his phone to monitor his texts and calls. I never got concrete proof either way of him liking her or not.

 

But it started to come in handy when he started highschool. That is when the bullying fully started. I knew that he was bullied in middle school, but when he started high school, Noah flipped on him. He started sending mean texts to him all the time. Then he shared Zenith's number with his new friends and they did the same. That is when I increased what I was doing. I knew it was wrong but I also started to put cameras in his room. I was scared he was going to start hurting himself.

 

But Mia didn't start to bully him, which is the only reason I didn’t force him to stop going to that school. She was still his friend.

 

But now that's done. Mia is gone.

 

And tonight I got the evidence I was looking for.

 

Thanks to one, admitaly dumb comment from me, I know that he cares about me more than her.

 

I feel bad for causing his panic attack, but if it caused him to reciprocate, even for a little, then I will accept that.

 

When I finish cleaning up from dinner, I walk back to the kitchen and pull out my phone. Then I open up the main app I use, the one that mirrors his. But that is when I see it.

 

I stare at my phone for a while until something pulls me back to the present.

 

“Hey, Aria, what are you doing? It's pretty late” Anthem, my twin brother says. He said he was going out on a date tonight, so I must have been looking at my phone for a long time.

 

“Nothing. Anthem, I need to tell you some stuff.”

 

“Whats up?” he says.

 

“Mia started to date Noah” 

 

“Ha, and we care why? Those two deserve each other.”

 

“Because as much as I don’t think Zenith will tell us. Something is bothering him”

 

Anthem then looks at me kind of annoyed. “Aria, you need to chill with the cameras. He isn’t hurting himself.”

 

“Will you just listen? I asked him something bad. I don’t know what caused this” I tell him, kind of freaking out myself.

 

“What did you ask him?” he asked me, getting more annoyed with me, and I might deserve this.

 

“I wanted to know if the same thing happened with me, if he would be just as nonchalant. And I think the idea of me leaving caused him to have a panic attack” I confess to him.

 

I could see the anger in his face. He was just as overprotective to Zenith as I am. Which also means he wanted to know the same thing I did with the question, so he calmed down quickly.

 

“What is he doing now?”

 

“He probably fell asleep. It’s been a while since the last text”

 

“Don’t tell me”

 

“Yeah, he was texting ‘Mana’”.

 

“Crap”

 

And the two of use stand in our living room, concerned about Zenith.

 

Mana is probably Zeniths best friend. But there is one issue.

 

When I look at the conversation between the two of them, I only see one side of the conversation. Just the texts Zenith sent.

 

That is because Mana is not real.

 

✾

 

The day that I was called out by Mia and Noah was a Friday, so today is the first day of the weekend. As I got up, I noticed that after I had fallen asleep, Aria had come into my room. Much like the picture Mana sent me, Aria was only wearing her underwear.

 

Like the petting and overly affectionate nature she shows during the day, this is also not uncommon.

Seeing her still asleep and not wanting to get in trouble for getting up without her, I try to wake her up.

 

“Aria, it's time to get up” I say while shaking her. This works to wake her up.

 

“Good morning Zenith, did you sleep alright?” she asked me, while yawning.

 

“I slept fine. You should probably get dressed” I say to her, very embarrassed about the situation.

 

“Oh, look at you. Well, you go down stairs and I’ll change. We’ll talk about your day off during breakfast”

 

“Um, ok.” I said to her.

 

For the most part, my days off are pretty much the same. I wake up and make breakfast for my family. Then I spend my day doing things like studying or getting some exercise, getting ready for when I can become a hunter.

 

Usually on the weekend, Aria usually just hangs around home with me, or helps me get some practice in. But because of her work, she might get called away to help out with the association.

 

When I got down stairs I found that Anthem had come home at some point over the night.

 

“Good morning Anthem” I say to him.

 

“Good morning Zenith. How was your night?” he asked me.

 

“Fine, I think? I didn’t eat that much diner so I am pretty hungary” I tell him. “How was yours?”

 

“Just fine. The girl I had a date with last night was pretty cool” he tells me.

 

“What was it like? Going out like that”

 

This causes Anthem to look at me funny. I don’t think I had ever asked him about dating before.

 

“You know, I don’t want you to be like me, Zenith. You should try to find someone who can make you happy” he says to me, with a solemn face.

 

“Do the people you date not make you happy?”

 

“It’s a little more complicated than that. But hey, this isn’t something we should talk about right now. Are you making breakfast?”

 

“Yeah, but we haven’t been to the store in a while so we don’t have much food to make. I saw that last night”

 

“The three of us could go out to breakfast. It's been a while since we have done that”

 

“That could be fun” I told him.

 

“Then it's agreed. Where is Aria?”

 

“She said she was going to change. She should be down shortly” He probably already knew that she had spent the night in my room because of how common it is.

 

And I was right. Within a few minutes Aria came down stairs wearing one of her casual outfits. Sometimes when we are both free, she drags me to go clothes shopping with her. She likes to get my input on the clothes she buys. I remember when she bought this one.

 

“What's going on guys, breakfast won’t make itself” She says to us.

 

“Well, some of us have been neglecting the groceries so Zenith doesn’t have much to make. So we decided to go out for breakfast” Anthem said.

 

“What are you talking about? Groceries are your job when mom and dad are gone” she said to Anthem.

 

“That's not important right now. Lets go” he said, taking me by the arm to force her to follow.

 

Both Anthem and Aria can drive and our parents didn’t take their car when they left so we all got into the car. We decided on a local breakfast place that we all really enjoy.

 

There we enjoyed a good family breakfast.

 

Until both Anthem and Aria received a call. They were both on it and argued with the person on the other side for little. I knew what this meant.

 

When they hung up the phone, I spoke up. “So you both have to go to work then?”

 

“Yeah, it looks like some newbie party just passed the test and their initial status has some rare skills. One of them is even a healer” Anthem tells me.

 

“A healer. That's pretty rare. The only way to get is either skill orb or intrinsic skill, right?”

 

“Yep, that's why they want to give the party their orientation. We are the closest to age to them, and they want to give them a good impression of Association hunters so they might join.” Aria said, quite annoyed at this outcome.

 

“Well, you two have a good day” I say kind of upset that I can’t go into the dungeons yet.

 

“Hey Zenith, there is something I want to talk to you about later. I was hoping to bring it up during breakfast.” Aria tells me.

 

“What's up?”

 

“Nothing right now, we’ll talk about it later” Anthem said, indicating he knew as well.

 

As they both left, they gave me their card to do stuff today, and so I can get home later.