24th December, 2014.             12:01am

“It is those who live are the ones destined to. Your name is an inked curve scribbled in his diary, blotted on the bottom is his sign in golden ichor, my friend, he wrote a beautiful death for you.”

*

"You haven't slept days, Ray."

She had a motherly instinct to whenever Ray drifted away. She loathed the feeling of losing her son the way the Ivanovich had, a ghastly disaster which she blatantly stated as parental ignorance and more of an incompetence.

What she did not understand was the fact that she was being a complete hypocrite.

It was back in 2004, Ray was six then and Priya Singh was as beautiful than ever considering she was married to professor Singh in her early twenties. She could have had any man she had wanted, with her chocolate skin and midnight eyes, her jet black hair and the grace with which she walked, any man would've wanted to be with her.

Besides professor Singh.

A man of a very few words and more of actions, he was rather morally obligated with his marriage and for Priya that summer, she had to crash in to the harsh reality of Dr Singh having an affair with his student, Yulia, of whom he talked about during the late night dinner parties with a glass of champagne, a vivid hint she hadn't picked up earlier, and a cigarette languidly hanging from his lip to which Priya listened with a tight smile holding back her tears and an unaware Ray oblivious to the happenings around him, loved his parents to eternity.

Only he didn't know what eternity meant back then. Nothing.

2006, Ray had turned eight in the beginning of the cold February, and the house was as silent as if on someone's mourning. His father didn't show up that night and his mother, wasted on a lot too many French cigarettes, held on to the the knife in her hand but never let it touch the skin of the cake. Ray stared at the distant look his mother wore, something like newfound insanity she had bought at a thrift shop, bringing the knife closer to her veins and digging it into her wrist and when she heard him scream, all she saw were the candles never blown on the frozen, uncut strawberry cake. It wasn't his fault that his mother wasn't the same person he knew or perhaps pretended he knew, being his very first lesson in life ; with no strokes and a blank canvas screaming as if pretending it were drenched in the sweet colours of the summer, the art of pretence. He cried the night, her fake excitement for his birthday lasting longer than her husband's love for her.

"They found the body, the boy's certainly dead, perhaps has been for  a week or two."

The same pool, mother, where we'd meet, his eyes would lock with mine, I'd smile, he'd smile too and we'd be in the cold water for the rest of the afternoon, thought Ray, never looking back at her, staring at his feet.

Although they had barely talked, it seemed like he knew him for a lifetime or at least for the time till which he had existed.

"They said it was a suicide, I don't know why a boy like hi-"

"You didn't know him, so why pretend?" Ray snapped, making an eye contact with his mother which he had refrained himself from doing, if it weren't his anger that had blinded him he would've laughed, a bitter laugh, because that was all she ever did, pretend, right? "Why does it even bother you?"

There was something in Priya's eyes for the first time, a flicker of a certain fear she didn't want her son to notice, and as the mother she was she didn't let him "It doesn't bother me Ray, none of it matters at all, it's all the Ivanovich's headache." Ignorance for her was bliss, the way she had ignored Ray and his godforsaken existence, dwelling on her sorrows a little too much, it was indeed bliss.

Ray felt her words sting, they always did, her bitterness seeping in her veins, blood rotting, lungs shallow, she wasn't the youthful Priya Singh who sang him lullabies, he didn't know who this woman was now, or who she had been since the past twelve years.

In his eighteen years had he only learnt and he well knew the very art of pretence that every one around him had mastered, for instance he knew his father would come home , pretend to be exhausted but never admit his infidelity, fucking his students for all he knew because Dr Samir Singh was a man of actions. Priya Singh would smile besides the bitterness she carried in herself, again the ignorance, smoke another packet of cigarettes maybe after Dr Singh went to bed, criticising her for all the happiness she couldn't give  him, drink more wine than needed, it was a cycle in constant motion, it never stopped even though how much you resisted it.

Ray had grown accustomed to this , resisting every thing that came his way, building walls and hiding behind them hoping for safety and comfort no one could give him, hoping no one could see him through the thick walls that he had built but what he hadn't thought through was Viktor would know the truth, the Viktor he had barely talked to, the now dead Viktor  knew and for all, the walls that Ray had built, he could see clearly because what ray had never realised doing so was that he was building those walls out of shards broken glass.

*

[ A/N ] : im so sorry. Plus i hope you didn't find it boring? ( again, I hope) it is with deep sorrow that I inform you that I have officially lost the gist of the English language. I know, I know.

Also, this was more of an insight chapter into Ray's family past and it kind of is the base for my very story ?

Do let me know what you all think though, it'd help me take this story forward ig :)

xoxo