Firenze was happy, once.

She lived in a world she built out of dreams and soft illusions—a shimmering world where she held tightly to her father’s little finger and the universe seemed to spin just for her.

Sidewalks glittered like rivers of stars. Invisible bubbles floated through the air like magic spells.

Everything sparkled.

Everything except the silence that wrapped around her when she stood alone.

She had no friends.

Still, Firenze believed that if she just tried a little harder, smiled a little wider, then maybe her story would finally begin.

Like in the movies.

She’d be the main character.

The girl everyone loved.

What she didn’t know was that she was the main character...

Only in a story titled villainess.

It began quietly, innocently.

There was a girl named Daisy—sun-bright, golden, glowing like a god had sketched her with extra care.

Firenze sat beside her one morning, shy and trembling, her heart fluttering like a cornered bird.

Daisy smiled, and suddenly the whole world exploded into color.

They became inseparable.

Whispering during class. Sharing secrets.

Running through the garden hand-in-hand, chasing butterflies as their laughter echoed through the trees like some forgotten fairytale.

In those moments, Firenze wasn’t lonely.

She was seen.

She was alive.

Everyone loved Daisy.

She was the star of the academy—admired, adored, worshipped.

And Firenze?

She admired her too, not out of envy... but something deeper. Something warmer. Something that slowly curled around her ribs like ivy.

But one day, Daisy stopped speaking to her.

She had a new friend now.

Prettier. Louder. More polished.

A girl who already fit in the way Daisy did—effortlessly.

And Daisy gave no explanation.

No reason.

She simply turned away, as if the garden, the butterflies, and the laughter were dreams she’d woken up from.

Firenze asked herself, Why?

Her mind spun in frantic circles, trying to decode it.

But she was only eleven.

And the answer was too heavy for her tiny, breaking heart.

She never understood why.

Maybe, she thought, if she tried harder—if she just begged, just proved her worth—

Daisy would come back.

If only she knew what she did wrong…

She would fix it.

She would change everything.

But no answer came.

There was no answer.

Firenze, with her sensitive mind and paper-fragile heart, cried until her throat ached and her pillow soaked through.

And yet, even as she sobbed in the dark, she made herself a quiet, dangerous promise:

I will win her back.

Because I’m the best for her. Because no one will ever love her like I do.

What she didn’t realize was that her love was no longer pure.

It was twisting into something else.

Obsession.

A fragile madness blooming like a black rose inside her.

A love that would one day pull her apart from the inside.

But that reckoning...

That descent?

Was still far away.

For now, the villainess within Firenze merely slept—

curled up beside a memory of butterflies and a girl who never looked back.

Heartbreak didn’t soften Firenze.

It didn’t make her gentler.

It didn’t carve her into something easy to love.

No—

It carved her sharper.

Her smiles grew fanged, honed like hidden daggers.

And her once-bright hope?

It twisted into something monstrous—

something that could drown a kingdom if it ever broke free.

The garden where she once ran barefoot, chasing butterflies beside Daisy?

It wilted.

The laughter that once rang like music now echoed like a forgotten curse—

a ghost of joy that refused to die cleanly.

And deep within her—

in the broken gears and fractured glass of her aching heart—

something darker began to stir.

It didn’t cry.

It didn’t beg.

It whispered:

"You were never meant to be saved."

To the others, it was nothing more than a childhood friendship.

A sweet, forgettable bond meant to fade like scribbles on a school desk.

But to Firenze?

It was everything.

Love, maybe.

Or hate—born from the silence Daisy left behind.

Or perhaps it was neither.

Perhaps it was the question mark itself—

the jagged, unspeakable ache of why she was abandoned that haunted her more than the abandonment itself.

No explanations. No closure.

Just the brutal echo of footsteps walking away.

Firenze didn’t know what it was, not really.

All she knew was that Daisy was special.

Not in the way stars are special, distant and admired.

But like a secret—

a flame tucked too close to her heart.

And when it went out,

something inside her began to freeze.

Firenze lived in a world wrapped in gauze and glitter, a world where reality blurred and sparkled just enough to keep the darkness from swallowing her whole.

But perhaps that world was a delusion.

Or maybe it was a hallucination, carefully crafted by a mind too soft for the sharp edges of truth.

She remembered the day her father asked with a warm, hopeful smile:

"Do you want a little brother or sister?"

Firenze’s eyes lit up.

"A little sister, Dada! One I can play with!"

She had answered without hesitation, innocence blooming in her voice.

That night, the stars outside the stairwell window seemed to shine brighter than usual.

Maybe because, in her little heart, she believed her wish had come true.

But no one told her that wishes could come wrapped in pain.

---

"Mama, can I hold little sissy?"

She reached out with small arms, heart pulsing with awe and curiosity.

“No!”

The answer came like a whipcrack, not from her mother’s lips, but from the shadowed corner of her chest—rage and rejection born in a single moment.

“You have a fever,” her mother said coldly, hand firm as she pushed Firenze’s shoulder away.

“It’ll affect the baby.”

Shoved aside.

Out of the frame of warmth.

Out of the circle of care.

Firenze blinked, heart stammering.

"Won’t you take care of me too?"

"I have a fever. Doesn’t that matter?"

"Mama...?"

But no reply came.

Only silence.

---

Time passed like water, and slowly, the truth became impossible to ignore.

Her sister—bright, clever, beautiful, thin—was the favored one.

The shining star.

Firenze tried, clumsily, to gather the leftover light.

"Mama, please? That toy is just fifty rupees..."

A scoff.

"Can’t you see I’m taking care of your sister?"

"Why are you being so childish?"

The words struck.

But the real blow came moments later—when her mother, in a flash of exhaustion and rage, struck her back with a kitchen ladle.

Firenze folded into herself, into swollen skin and breathless sobs, curled in the corner like something discarded.

And still—

she wondered, “Why? How? What did I do wrong?”

---

By the next day, everything had returned to normal.

No apologies.

No scars visible to the naked eye.

But inside Firenze?

A rot had begun.

The favoritism grew clearer with each passing year.

Her sister was perfect. Praised. Gifted.

Firenze watched her get everything she asked for.

While she herself was handed only silence.

Maybe—just maybe—if even ten percent of that affection had belonged to her, she wouldn’t have learned to hate herself so deeply

.---

Note from the page no one reads:

Even after all this as time went by

Firenze never hated her mother.

She loved her—deeply, endlessly.

But sometimes, parents don’t realize the way their actions echo.

They don’t see the cracks their trauma leaves in little minds.

They don’t see how they teach their children to bleed quietly,

and call it growing up.

Silence.

It had become Firenze’s oldest companion—soft, suffocating, and always faithful.

It filled the empty spaces in her mind, curled beside her on school benches, and tucked itself under her ribs where laughter used to live.

She sat at her desk, pretending to write something—anything—just to pass the time before class.

Her pen scratched nonsense onto the paper, a secret code between her and the quiet.

Five minutes before the bell, the teacher walked in with a smile that tried too hard.

"Firenze?" she asked gently.

"Why are you sitting alone? Why not join your classmates?"

Firenze blinked, startled, and gave the only answer she could summon:

"I'm fine, teacher."

But the teacher wasn’t convinced. She turned to the group of girls by the door—bright, polished, popular.

"Girls," she called, "she's new here. Shouldn’t you welcome her?"

The girls exchanged glances, all sweet smiles and empty hearts.

"We thought she liked being alone," one shrugged.

"She’s always like that. Quiet. It’s not our fault."

And maybe it wasn’t.

But it also wasn’t the whole truth.

Ever since Firenze had entered that classroom, those same girls had laughed behind cupped hands.

"Why is your nose shaped like that?"

"Do you eat a lot of junk food?"

She didn’t understand the cruelty, so she just replied softly, "No… I don’t. Why?"

"Well, because you’re fat."

The silence after that hit harder than the insult itself.

Words clotted in her throat. Her mind, blank. Her soul, smaller.

So yes, maybe Firenze did prefer being alone.

Because loneliness didn’t mock her.

Didn’t giggle after every word she spoke.

Didn’t measure her worth by the angle of her nose or the width of her waist.

---

There were moments, rare and precious, when the world didn't feel so heavy.

On days when Daisy’s new friend was absent, the golden girl would return to her side.

Firenze would follow her like a shadow, and for those brief hours, they were a pair again—watching birds flit through trees and rabbits dart through the academy garden.

And Firenze, fragile thing that she was, clung to those memories like lifelines.

Because at night, the tears would come again.

Whispers in the dark. Questions she couldn't answer.

What’s wrong with me?

Why am I always the outcast?

Is it because I’m boring?

Not funny enough? Not pretty enough?

Is it because I’m just...  A nerd?

Or maybe I wasn’t born an introvert—maybe they made me one.

Years passed.

Nothing changed.

But she never hated Daisy.

Even when she should have.

Even when it would have been easier to carry hate than the ache of being forgotten.

Firenze only blamed herself.

Because obsession doesn’t need logic. It only needs a heartbeat and someone to anchor it to.

But on the last day—when the walls felt less like prison and more like memory—she stood a little taller.

She turned to Daisy with a bittersweet smile, tears tucked behind her eyes like unsent letters.

"Let’s turn over a new leaf," she whispered.

And hugged Daisy, one last time.

Not for forgiveness.

Not for closure.

But for herself.

The letter firenze never sent

Before she walked away from the chapter that never truly belonged to her,

Firenze wrote a letter.

Not to the Daisy everyone admired.

But to the Daisy who once sat beside her in the garden, catching butterflies with ink-stained fingers.

> I don’t want to wait for you\,

Not if I’m the only one waiting.

When this winter melts into summer,

I hope you become nothing but a fading echo in my heart.

She didn’t want to hold onto the illusion anymore—

The one where Daisy would return,

Laugh the way she used to,

Look at Firenze like she was enough.

> I don’t want to keep standing in the past\,

Lonely, hoping you’ll turn around.

I don’t want to be ignored anymore.

If forgetting you means peace,

Then I’ll let the seasons wash you from my skin—

Even if it hurts.

The years had changed them.

Both of them.

And while everyone else seemed to move forward with new versions of themselves,

Firenze only wished one thing remained unchanged:

> I just wanted you to be the same Daisy you were in our childhood—

Before the world crowned you its sun.

Before I became the shadow trying to keep up with your light.

She could have blamed Daisy.

For forgetting. For replacing. For breaking promises made beneath the innocence of youth.

But she didn’t.

> You were just a child\,

Still trying to find your place in a world that already adored you.

And me? I was the broken one—too quiet, too much, too little.

I can’t blame you.

My love for you won’t let me.

And in her final breath of ink and aching honesty, she wrote:

> If childhood could bloom again—

If the springtime of us could return—

I’d still choose you.

Even knowing you wouldn’t choose me back.

Even for just one more day beside you.

> May your smile always burn with love and passion—

Even if I’m not there to witness it.