Paint Me as Villain ✔

One

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Then

Mir Praejis was a villain to the bone--Adélard was sure of it.

Ady was sure of it just as well as of the fact that Ady and Mir had known each other from childhood, their fathers had worked together sometimes and their families gathered together for occasional holiday dinners, yet in his whole eighteen years, Adélard had never seen Mir smile--with a real smile. With that kind of smile that made your eyes shine, that brightened up your gaze from within, that lit your face with zeal and happiness and sincere curiosity to the world around you.

No, Mir's smile always touched only his lips. Like a mask, polite but indifferent, sharpened and polished, woven like a stage costume, it never reached the eyes.

And no matter how many times Ady tried, he could never find anything behind that mask. No gratitude when someone praised Mir for his hard work at school. No gloating when Ady's father and mother, listening to those praises, clicked their tongues and advised their son to look up to his friend. There wasn't even a hint of any lenient, tired contempt with which everyone sooner or later tries to balance the resentment that comes along with the disappointments that life brings them.

But... there was no emptiness in Mir's eyes either--which, to be honest, scared Ady even more when he thought of it. Praejis had eyes neither glassy with ignorance like a fish's nor foolishly naive and fogged with cluelessness. Worse, those were icy, like a shadow of the underworld eyes, a gaze that pierces you to the very core and counts, scratching, your bones there so if you don't look away in time, it could make your stomach churn. A gaze macabre and silent like a touch of death.

Some might reasonably note, of course, that Adélard made things up--he tried to reassure himself if it quite often--but not just Ady noticed that something about Mir was off.

Everyone saw it.

Everyone saw and at some point, people at their school even started to gossip about Mir being tied with notorious dark magic. Their St. Daktalion city was one of those old cities full of urban legends, where people always loved spooky stories. Loved talking about some abandoned house that once belonged to merchants who were forgotten in history and lost in time.

They weren't lost--they were sacrificed to the devil by the four Vedmaks who founded our city.

No, they are the Vedmaks, and they still live in that house. It's just we, the ordinary mortals, can't see them, because their witchcraft has drained them and turned them into ghosts.

They're no ghosts--they're restless spirits of the people who killed themselves there in the basement of that house as they went nuts when an ugly, old witch cursed them. If you go into their house at midnight during the full moon, they'll catch you and eat your heart alive, and make you one of them!..

And just like that, after a hundred fake smiles and gossip, Mir became another legend. Everyone had their suspicions, yet explain him--nobody could.

Ady, himself, had never seen Mir's mother, his father never talked about her. Therefore, of all the fables spread, Adélard--despite his skepticism about magic--found one story as the most convincing: the story that said that Mir's mother, too, was an ancient witch who seduced Mir's father, and then gave birth to her son in the realm of the dead and sent him to the realm of the living, and Mir's soul turned into a stone while passing through the veil separating the realms, only a shadow of him, capable of no feelings, was left.

Yes, there was something off about Mir. Everyone saw it, but only Ady, it seemed, found it disturbing. The others, like in a distorting mirror, were just the opposite--they were in love with this mystery called Praejis. In love like with a dessert of a secret recipe, breathtakingly delicious in its uniqueness, melting into sweet, tender velvet on your tongue.

Still, if Mir Praejis could be a dessert, he was one steeped in poison. And this poison lulled everyone but Ady. Why? Why Adélard was the only one who saw that Mir, who was made of mysteries and contradictions, harbored evil?

The first evil contradiction that Ady discovered as he had been recalling the past and trying to figure out the truth stated that, till the age of thirteen, Mir was a reticent but obedient, quiet child who rarely played with other kids. He only loved exploring slopes and bushes at his family's country house and usually returned to the kindergarten after the weekends--and then to the school--bruised, and silently looked at everyone from afar, as if looking for but not daring to choose his victim, and then...then Mir ran away from home.

Why?

Mir's father was kind and caring and, as a hardworking lawyer with his own law firm who hadn't lost a single case during his career, he was almost a celebrity in the city--rich, able to buy his son any dream. What kind of person with a soul and healthy feelings would run from a parent, especially a loving one? And where to run? For whom? To see his mother in the realm of the dead, to learn a couple of spells, people would soon begin to gossip in their school corridors, recalling that incident with thrill.

Ady wasn't thrilled by the thought of the dead. Death didn't entice him. He had plans for his life and friends and family, who he didn't want to give up to the Grim Reaper in the near future.

Another contradiction that promised no good that Ady saw was this: Mir wasn't exactly popular in childhood when he sat in quiet corners, sulking, yet after that runaway incident, Mir seemed to become another person--exemplary, the standard of all the rules and the embodiment of everyone's dreams. Not at once, of course, gradually, for even a shadow with a stone for a soul had to pretend to fit it so as not to make the ruse obvious.

Gradually. At first, Mir began to dress like his father, to wear ironed suits and polished, shiny shoes. Began to comb his previously rumpled, wild golden locks like his father. Began to pleasingly smile--with that very, fake smile seemingly like his father. But his father's smile reached the eyes, Ady saw it. the father wasn't fake, yet the son, this soulless copy who found a believable yet someone else's role, was still loved by everyone, more and more with every day! A future lawyer, the grown-ups said. A worthy successor to his father.

A devil that arrived to steal our souls, began to seriously think Adélard. And the mane itself...Mir? Didn't it mean 'peace'? He should've been called Villain instead.

And the more people praised Mir Praejis, the more Adélard wished to squeeze the life out of his Villain with his bare hands because anger built inside him like a wall as everyone kept telling Ady to look up to this blasphemous, empty facade of a man over and over. You're doing great, Ady, but Mir did better on the last history test at school...Your toast at your aunt's birthday was good, but Mir would have used different words...We're proud of you no matter what, Adélard, but if you, like Mir, also hadn't argued with your father...

Ady slowly began to wholeheartedly hate Mir, the situation was getting out of control. He's fake! Ady wanted to shout. Wicked and fake to the bone! How could you not see it? How could you love this polished fraud? How could you not sense danger?!

But Ady couldn't shout. Even though he could argue and had, unlike Praejis, his own, not stolen from the others opinion, even though he was raised to be honest, Ady also was taught to be tactful and courteous. Courteous people don't say things that could offend others, don't devalue other people's opinions and don't cause inconvenience to the public by neglecting manners and shouting about deception in response.

Meanwhile, Mir seemed not to notice the flattery earned and the heights already conquered and, like a soldier who found it never enough, marched on and on. Like a devil, Mir adapted among people responsive to feelings, always remaining the purest logic himself. He made more and more friends, finding a common language with everyone, miraculously saying what people wanted to hear from him, and helping anyone who asked for help, but he himself never asked for anything. Everyone needed him--he needed no one.

Mir Praejis was terrible.

Mir Praejis was perfect.

Mir Praejis was a mystery that drove people crazy, and Adélard Lishan knew that this poison had finally affected him, when he suddenly and horribly realized that he could no longer think about anyone else.

That, just like everyone, he was in love.