artemis kwon + capitol/18

"Goddamnit Artemis, wipe your eyes and stop crying for once in your life."

My mother's always talking like that, ever since I remember. My parents were never meant to have a kid but they insist that I'm their joy anyway. They started treating me like an adult when I was four and left me to take care of myself since. I have. I enrolled myself in school when I was five and went to pick up my uniform on my own, I put myself to bed at night and was very strict with myself when it came to doing homework.

No one else was going to take care of me.

Least of all them.

I didn't really mind, my mother had a harsh mouth and I'm pretty sure that my father still isn't entirely certain about what I look like.The more I stayed out of their way, the less attention they would pay to me. Sometimes I think that they forgot I existed. This worked well for everyone.

I remember being in grade one and standing up in front of the class to tell everyone what my parents did for a living. "They do large heists and train Avox for the fight ring," I told an entire class of six-year-olds uncertainly.

I was pulled out of that school and placed in a different one after that. My parents had to pay off the entire class's parents not to 'squeal'. My mother hit me for my stupidity.

I got shyer after that, more afraid to talk, confused about what an acceptable topic was when I listened to my parents run off plans and numbers every day at home and spent a lot of evenings at the fight ring, watching Avox beat each other bloody. It always scared me, made me cry. My parents wouldn't let me look away, they'd wanted it to toughen me up somehow. If I hid my face, my mother would pry my fingers back and hold my head steady. When their wallets grew fat with the money gained on betting on the Avox they had trained, my parents bought us a large house to live in. I was moved to another school, an upper class one. That was ok, I hadn't had the chance to make any friends yet anyway.

I lived alone like that until I was ten, when something changed for me.

I made a friend at school, his name was Achilles. He was strange and bouncy, an endless stream of helium. He was different in a lot of ways, more similar to me than I ever thought anyone would be. He liked the books I read too and we started playing together at lunch every day. Sometimes we'd skip classes even to go and play in the woods behind the school. Our games always had something special in them, like made up creatures or invisible worlds. I found it easy to smile around Achilles and when other kids were mean to me, he used to hold my hand and tell them to go away.

I think he was my best friend. I hope he was. I haven't had another friend since.

Our parents didn't like each other. His father forbade him to speak to me, something that happened a lot to the kids I went to school with, I'd gotten used to it very fast. I'd stopped trying to keep or even make friends long before Achilles. He'd insisted, perhaps he had pitied me. My parents were known to be dirty money, criminals. No one wanted to be seen with a Kwon, least of all they didn't want their children playing with one. So I kept to myself, head down and always in a hurry.

After that, I was alone a lot. I threw myself into schoolwork and spent lunchtimes alone in the farthest corner of the school's lot that I could find. I'd still see Achilles at school but we'd ignore each other like neither existed. I'm pretty sure he did, teachers called on him a lot. I'm not so sure about me.

If I exist, if I did at all.

I moved to another school soon after, entering as a freshman. I faked my parent's signature on the transfer, knowing that they wouldn't care but not being able to take the careful ignorance anymore.

My new school offered more subjects but had fewer students. The uniforms, the books, everything was more expensive. My parents refused to pay for it; they told me that if I wanted these things then I would have to make the money myself. I think they wanted me to turn to the fight ring, to bet on the Avox there. I got a job at the library in my neighborhood and spent long, quiet hours reshelving books and helping children find suitable stories to read. ("Not too scary and not too boring, no romance, please.")

Teachers tended to leave me alone once they learned my last name. I only ever did average in school, I was nothing special. It wasn't because I preferred to stay under the radar, I tried very hard. I was always just stupid. I was good at fading into the background, nothing exceptional when it came to looks. Light brown hair and dark eyes with pasty pale skin and no growth. I stopped growing taller after grade ten and only ever reached 167 centimeters in height. I stood shorter than most of the other boys in my year. I was easy to push around and often found myself at the end of someone's fist. I was meek, apologetic. I never told. I didn't want to have to move schools again.

There were more options available at this school and so I tried to apply for librarian studies but by my own mix up, I ended up in an art course. At first I was worried, I'd never been exceptionally good at anything at all in my life. I kept at it with the urging of a senior and began to get into a calming rhythm. Art became my sanctuary from my parents and their insanity. The older I grew, the less they made me go to the ring with them until they stopped forcing me altogether. I stayed quiet, out of trouble. They forgot about me once again.

I moved out when I was eighteen, away from my parent's dirty dealings. We both wanted me out of the way. They bought me an apartment far away from their house, across the city. It has a view of a park and there's only quiet streets near it. I started studying art in earnest, unable to drop it after highschool. I paint now, all the time when I'm not sleeping. It keeps me distracted.