Misha looked around the living room with a helpless smile, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. He stood at the foot of the stairs for a long time, unable to help but wonder if he was dreaming while awake.
The usually tidy living room had gone through a tremendous change overnight. Colorful decorations hung on the wall here and there, their bright colors contrasting vividly against the gray walls. Balloons floated all over the place; a few also laid on the dark wooden floor, gathered near the L-shaped sofa or the folding table and chairs. Dinosaur-themed tablecloths covered most of the furniture, invaded by unhealthy food, while wrapped gifts piled up in a corner, forming a small mountain.
But the most striking thing was still the big banner in the center of the living room; it wished Misha a happy 10th birthday.
When his eyes landed on it, Misha couldn't help but feel a little ill at ease deep down. Despite his current appearance, he wasn't ten years old but in the middle of his twenties; there was a difference of more than a decade between the two ages! With this in mind, he somewhat felt like a self-conscious woman who refused to accept how old she was, always telling people a number that was obviously not right and insisting on it.
While Misha was busy thinking about how this situation was as bizarre as ridiculous, someone sneaked up on him from behind. A second later, arms wrapped him in a tight hug.
"So? How do you find our work of art? Mom and I worked very hard while you were sleeping to make this. And I don't want to brag, but most of the decorations are handmade, and the result looks quite good. Aren't your sister and mother awesome?" Masha laughed, putting her chin on her brother's head. "I can't believe you're already ten years old. You're a big boy now."
"And you, you're an old girl!" Misha teased back, sticking out his tongue as he tried to escape from her arms. "Hey! I'm not a teddy bear! Let me go! I told you to let me go!!!"
Though his sister's arms appeared slender, her grip was still akin to an iron grip. Misha struggled and struggled, but he was unable to free himself. He had to wait until Masha had enough fun teasing him, and only then did she consent to release him.
Once freed from his sister's clutches, Misha fled to the kitchen as if he had met the devil in the flesh. He quickly ate his breakfast, stuffing his cheeks like a squirrel, before going back to his bedroom and changing his clothes.
When he ran down the stairs and walked to the living room for the second time, he saw his whole family gathered on the sofa, including his father.
It was hard to describe how Misha felt after seeing his father on this particular day. Even before he cut him out of his life, Alexey had long stopped celebrating his birthday with him in their past life. Once, his drunk father had even entered his bedroom to beat him up after midnight. That time, he had repeatedly told him that he should never have been born, that he was a mistake.
Back then, Gabriel slept like the dead in another room, and Masha was out working a night shift, so no one knew what had happened that night and how much it made Misha resent the day he was born. He had never liked celebrating his birthday since then.
At least, the young teenager that he was at the time had been excused from school the following day. He remembered refusing to get out of his bedroom, saying to his sister and Gabriel that he had a stomachache or something along those lines. In a way, it wasn't a complete lie. Dozens of bruises covered half of his stomach, the side that his father kept on kicking. And so, his stomach did indeed hurt like hell, but that wasn't exactly due to eating spoiled food or being constipated.
Misha clenched his fists behind his back, trying to chase away the bad memories. Right now, his father wasn't that man, that violent drunkard; no, he was a loving and doting father. But even though he knew this, he couldn't help but overlap the two persons, always afraid that his father would turn into a monster at the moment he least expected it.
"What are you doing, standing there and doing nothing?" His sister beckoned him to come closer with her finger. "What do you want to do while we wait for your friends? Watch a movie? Play board games?"
"Play board games, of course!" Misha smiled as he trotted to the sofa.
So what if his last birthdays had been hell? Today, he was determined to rewrite the bad memories with happier ones.
.
.
For the next three hours or so, they played games, and Misha made sure to pit his father as much as humanly possible. It was a little childish, but it did make him feel better, especially when he saw Alexey's blank expression, confusion written all over his face.
Sometimes, his father couldn't even figure out how exactly he had lost, making Misha feel quite proud of himself. Because Dereck was a board game lover, he often played with his friend over the years and developed a few skills accordingly. And now, Alexey, who had no interest in board games, had to face Misha's kamikaze tactics head-on.
Needless to say, it didn't end very well for him.
When they went camping at Oka National Park, Misha concentrated all of his energy on dealing with Gabriel whenever they played board games, so he had more or less let his father off the hook back then. But today, Alexey was his main target, and it made him realize just how terrific his son could be when he wanted you to die in a game.
In this way, the hours went by quickly, and they had a good laugh; overall, an enjoyable time. Still, Misha felt like something was missing, although he couldn't pinpoint what exactly.
And when Gabriel's helpless smile flashed across his mind, Misha froze for a second before immediately dismissing it. No, he wasn't missing the teenager. Well, maybe a little, but not that much. After all, how could he ever miss his sister's boyfriend? It was just fun to annihilate him in a board game, as the helpless expression he wore each time was priceless. It wasn't something he saw every day, after all.
Misha pursed his lips. He didn't like where his thoughts were heading; it felt as though he was trying to make excuses.
Just as he was starting to wonder if he should go bother his sister to distract himself, the doorbell rang, putting him out of his misery. He swiftly leaped to his feet and ran toward the door, emptying his mind while he was at it. He carelessly swung the door open and took a step forward.
However, he stopped dead in his tracks, and his brain seemed to turn off.
Instead of Vanessa or Dereck, whom he was expecting, three uninvited persons stood on the doorstep of his house. However, Misha only had eyes for the teenage boy standing in the middle of the group, blatantly ignoring the two other persons.
Once he recovered from the shock, Misha directly pounced on the teenager like a torpedo. Gabriel took a step back as he cushioned the boy, who wrapped his thin arms around his waist and hit his stomach with his forehead. The child slowly lifted his crystal clear blue eyes, staring at him like a predator would at its prey.
"You're not a ghost, right?" Misha asked with a touch of hesitation in his voice.
"Don't I feel tangible to the touch?" Gabriel chuckled, ruffling the boy's soft hair.
"You're not an illusion either?"
"If I'm tangible, how can I be an illusion? If I were, you would have hit nothing but air and fallen down the stairs after pouncing on me."
With a contemplative look on his face, Misha seemed to ponder over his words for a short second. Eventually, he concluded that his reasoning made sense and nodded.
"Then, am I dreaming?"
As an answer, Gabriel mercilessly pinched the boy's tender cheeks until they turned bright red. "Are you imagining the pain in your cheeks too?"
"Ouch! Ok, I get it, I get it! You're real! Let go, you sadist!" the child cried out before adding with a snort, "But it's not my fault if you disappeared from the surface of the earth. How can I not be surprised when you suddenly appear out of thin air after so long?!"
Feeling somewhat aggrieved, Misha released Gabriel to rub his painful cheeks, a look of resentment plastered on his doll-like face. Meanwhile, he glanced askance at the well-dressed woman standing beside the teenager, and his facial expression changed drastically, becoming icier and gloomier.
It was that viper's fault that he hadn't been able to see the teenager until now! Although he still hadn't sorted out his feelings about that liar, Misha had come to understand that Gabriel wasn't as bad as he had previously thought; he did save him when he fell down the slope, not hesitating a second before jumping to catch him despite the possibility of losing his own life. He broke many fingers in the fall but never let go of his head, which spoke volumes.
Over the past few months, his animosity had gone down by a lot. Now, Misha wanted to learn more about the teenager, to fill in some of the blanks littering their past life. Yet, that woman had made it impossible for him to meet with Gabriel, using dirty tricks to keep him away from his girlfriend and her family.
When Misha thought of such things, his fists felt itchy. He very much wanted to beat Gabriel's stepmother half-dead and toss her body into the trash bin—trash should stay with trash.
__________________________
Chapter revised on 2022-05-20
Edited by Clozed! ♥
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