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⚠️ Trigger Warning:
This chapter contains themes of emotional neglect, bullying, mental distress, and/or childhood trauma. Reader discretion is advised.
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Everyone blamed her.
They didn't need to say it out loud. Venessa saw it in their eyes, in their footsteps, in the unbearable quiet that followed her wherever she went. At home, her mother's grief became rage. Her father's absence became louder. Her younger brother's sneers cut sharper than any words spoken.
Her sister was dead.
And in the story no one dared to speak aloud—but everyone believed—Venessa was the reason why.
She hadn't told anyone the truth.
No one knew that their mother had exploded that night in a fury of slaps and screams. That Venessa had thrown herself in front of her sister, shielding her small frame as best she could. That in one desperate moment, her sister had stumbled, hit her head on the corner of the table, and collapsed.
No one knew.
Because Venessa had stayed silent.
> "You will say nothing," her mother had said the morning after, voice shaking. "You've already done enough."
So she didn't speak.
When the neighbors asked, she stayed quiet. When the police arrived, she only nodded. She answered questions with flat, broken words, never daring to tell the truth. There were no witnesses. No one could prove anything.
The case was closed.
But her sentence had only just begun.
At school, Venessa became something else.
Not the quiet, top-scoring girl with glasses and a tied-up ponytail.
No. She became that girl.
The one everyone whispered about in corridors. The one people glanced at with pity—or disgust. The one no one sat beside anymore.
Even the teachers, who once praised her, now treated her with thinly veiled discomfort. They spoke carefully around her, didn't push her to participate. It was as if her very presence unsettled them.
She felt it. All of it.
But the worst was Reina.
Reina had tried.
Her only friend had stayed close after everything—walking with her, sitting beside her, slipping encouraging notes into her desk like they were back in normal days. Like nothing had changed.
But everything had changed.
> "Venessa, talk to me," Reina whispered one afternoon. "Please. I know something's wrong."
Venessa turned away.
> "You don't have to carry this alone. Just tell me what happened. I won't tell anyone—"
> "Stop asking," she muttered.
> "I just want to help."
> "Then leave it alone."
Reina stared at her for a long time.
Then, quietly, she stopped asking.
Stopped waiting after school. Stopped writing notes.
Stopped trying.
And one day, she was gone.
Just like that.
> "Her family moved to another city," someone said offhandedly. "Work transfer or something."
No goodbye. No message.
Venessa sat in silence through that day, staring at the empty seat beside her like it belonged to someone who never existed.
After that, she stopped hoping.
No one at home spoke to her unless it was to scold or mock. Her mother wouldn't look her in the eye. Her father came home late and left early. Her brother joked behind her back, murmuring things like "murderer" under his breath when he thought she couldn't hear.
Each night, she lay curled in a blanket on the edge of the shared room that once echoed with her sister's laughter.
Now, only silence remained.
And Venessa, at just twelve years old, began to wonder if maybe that silence would swallow her too.
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End of Chapter 4