PROLOGUE

Hi,

This one is to whomever it might occur to them that I've been missing at the dinner table for several days now maybe even years or you didn't find my typically plain existence stranded in one of your many past pitifully empty family gatherings that The Bennoes' host each week and force me to participate in them so as to keep up with the charade of it being such a perfect family. 

Hey, do I know you?

Are we related somehow? Oh, we are? Then, how are you?

Have you eaten?

How was your day, love? Made any new friends aside from the "best" ones you were assigned?

Geez, look at me being all vocal on a white sheet of paper. Not my style, is it? Or perhaps you don't even remember me that much to think of what my style was like. I can't blame you. I've worn that mask for so long that it felt like the extension of my face so I know how it feels to live someone else's emotions and reactions. 

Thank you for taking it upon yourself and even went beyond my bedroom door to search for me. The invisible. Only to find this letter instead, hidden far away beneath my sacred bed after all the searching and cursing from your side. It's kind of funny now that I'm visualizing it.

On a serious note though, whoever this might be, thank you for noticing and the effort you took to come and search for me in my room but, I'm sorry to disappoint you with the revelation that I've left for good. 

It's hard enough to live my truth, I can't go on living somebody else's joys and tears.

This is not a drill nor a joke on my side.

Yes, over the past few years I admit that I did a number of unimaginable things just for an ounce of attention from you guys but not anymore.

I've found my calling, finally. With my very own person on my side. For the first time in my life, I'm happy.

I wish you are too because, you deserve it.

Yours in acting,

Cherry La white.

NB: Oops! That's my name nowadays.

He couldn't help but smile at that piece of paper in his hand for the umpteenth time. He didn't know why but, he couldn't just let go of that letter in his possession since he found it a year before.

  It wasn't anything useful on his part and the fact that it was written five decades before made his family all the more pathetic. They behaved the same way!. He didn't know the writer nor their gender but, he knew that he was reliving their life. And he wanted to leave too.

He couldn't find it in him to blame anyone for their current predicament because living as the member of that family was suffocating to the point of killing every living brain cells or dreams one might have. He was just glad to have found a review of a new feeling in him. Curiosity of the world beyond their walls.

He didn't want to think about the writer of the letter and how sad it was that the letter was found by someone who was more of a far-fetched relative with a generational gap between them. Did they ever miss the writer after she left?

Will his family notice and try to remember him when he does work on his plans? Pathetic really.

The bell for bed time rang and his nerves started to act up on him once more. The D-day was just hours away from that moment. Who would be chosen as the gift for the new general and King of the kingdom?

It didn't help the fact that the said man tends to get off from people's humiliation and agony. It was a fate that he didn't even wish upon his first brother who foolishly asked for the war in the first place.