A Rose Painted Black || The Distortionist x Reader

⊱ ──.⋅Chapter 1⋅.── ⊰

"We kill the lights and put on a show
It's all a lie but you'd never know
Your star will shine and then it will fall
And you will forget it all"

»»-------TBM-Kill The Lights-------««

France, 1910
25 June

Yes, the summer estate was beautiful, but a beautiful scenery deserved a beautiful situation and I was ruining it.

A soft breeze made the heat bearable, and it was soothing to hear the bubbling of the fountain at the center of the garden. The white bistro table and tea sets were magical like they would be on a sunny day in a story.

The estate itself made my imagination soar to the wildest of places. It wasn't as Victorian as my actual home, which told stories of gothic novels come to life, but this one told stories of forsaken fairytales. This home was the kind of home that astray children would stumble upon and in the circumstance of malnutrition and weariness decide to seek haven in the home without really considering who'll they encounter inside, risking their fates.

This was simply due to the fact that the estate was a tad isolated from the town, nearly encased by the stretch of trees that provided for a scene of the ones I make up inside my mind.

"See, you still have tiny legs and can't catch me!" My younger sister, (S/n) ran past me so fast, I only saw colors, with (B/n)--the youngest in the family--failing to catch up behind her.

I sighed. Even if my governess wasn't here, her words still repeated in my mind, I will find no one who will love me if I continue to be childish.

"Father?" Across the table, he raises his eyes from a letter. "When did you meet mother?"

"She was sixteen, I believe."

And I was only getting closer to that age.

"Oh, there. I have found my parasol." Mother comes, adjusting her hat, and wiping away some loose hairs.

"Actually, change of plans, dear." Father plops down the letter for mama to see. "It seems the Bradshaws have canceled on us."

"Oh, heavens! Now I feel as if I've gotten ready for nothing." Mama sighed and slumped up a bit. "I even wore the dress that your mother suggested."

"And it looks beautiful on you, but you'll have to save it for another time, my dear."

Mother. How did mother both meet and later marry father around my age? It was the better option in her case, I suppose. She had been in a lower-middle-class family of shopkeepers, and she couldn't miss the opportunity of an upper-class man wanting to marry her. And at that moment, she said, she didn't even care if she loved him, but she went through it instead because she thought about the future of her children.

"We can't let this go to waste, then." Mama straightened herself and held up her head. "We should find something else to do. We didn't get ready just so that the Bradshaws would cancel, now, did we?"

"I suppose not," Father says.

"How about you, (Y/n), do you have a suggestion?"

"The carnival, mama!" (S/n) broke in out of nowhere, frantically waving a flier in the air.

I nearly choked on my tea. It was the same flier I'd received some nights ago.

"I wanna see! I wanna see!" (B/n) jumped up and down, making an attempt to reach for it with his short arms.