This is a story of a person, born at the expense of one's life. I am the light that vanishes, and appears within the confines of the limelight.

I am born differently. I think anonymously.

But I could not replace my newly given reality, and this story… is all about me.

My name is Yozorako and I am not supposed to exist.

You see, there's a line between insanity and what we can call sane- and for two years- I thought I stepped that line many times and let myself adrift.

Supposedly, my mind has been conjuring thoughts of old- older than the body I have right now, and most appropriately, that I knew it is imaginary, borderline bizarre to see the future as far as I'm aware.

I had believed I was Yozora Verona all this time. My mother can attest to that. My sister will agree to it. My father will not undeniably think differently even if life takes him away.

But, as far as my mind concerns; I am more than that.

For a child, I am more adaptable and developed compare to my little sister; minutes older to cease inferiority, of course.

I was born at midnight of August 7th, 11: 52 before my sister was born at the first hour of August 8th, 12: 05.

We grew together, but we vary from our looks and to where our growth overlap and surpass.

I think, it was meant to be. My outlandish propensity to distinguish things I don't even remember seeing in the first place, or the way I am much much more attentive to the things around me even if I am just a month old baby.

I remembered the tang of milk from my mother's breast, the way Yuzu and I would lock up together when no one's around or my father's unquestionably handsome face and mysterious tendency to pry us up so he can be excused on not doing household choirs and angering Mama in the process.

I remembered it, how I grew interested in a beeping calculator and hearing father whisper words and write formula in his paper while I sat on his lap.

In fact, I thought it was all normal, how I am conscious from the very day someone slapped my buttocks and turn me upside down so I could cry in the chilling air.

The confusing itches in my body to move never have been so irritating. So the best course of action is to cry. All the time.

Somehow, I am perfectly acceptable to be horrendously intelligent in my age. Too fast to walk, too smart to talk. It is normal for father, but my sister do not have my traits.

She's still having the 'r's and 'l's converted to 'w's, and her motor skills par with that of an ostrich. She would still slip and sit abruptly on her bum. Or that canine tooth missing its luxurious bite.

She's the day of my night. She's the light to my shadow. We are nothing alike.

And with that difference, did I fell in love.

While I am capable of doing any average babe cannot do, my little sister is all I am meant to save and love without complain. She is my life and sun. I felt happier with her, just to see her close and to cuddle with her in our crib.

But it is not the motive why I am groom to be diverse.

You see, I'm subconsciously aware to the world around me, like it was familiar enough that I could see hundreds of likelihoods hanging in the air.

So it is not surprising when an accident had put me in the 'consciously' active state and elicits lacerating experience that leads me discovering the why's of life.

To clarify the misconception, I was seemingly Roxanne Adele, seventeen years of age. I had family in the Philippines, but I lived in New York, most notably studying in business school to further my corporate profession. I journeyed to Boston. I escaped the clutch of Saudi. I sailed into China. Life is all but challenges, and it is an invigorating experience as woman facing the world with companions at hand.

I was not smart; merely motivated. Cunning but ordinary, I was good at escaping sticky situations. I had acquaintances, had future partners to share fortune and a group of focused minded individuals that will someday change the world and ride the money on their hands.

I was one of them, and fortunately, I share the blame for being selfish to attain goals.

I was a businesswoman at heart, entrepreneur in mind, and a delusional girl in the closet hiding a stash of yuri genre manga I had been hiding to my roommate for so many times.

Yes. You heard it right. Manga. An entertainment for someone with free time in her hands.

How ironical, to see someone practically living in the real world to obscure elated childhood of seeing romance bloom into something more. Reality and Imagination; seems good enough, but it was hideously dangerous, for someone liked me.

Love makes the realm colorful. Money moves the world.

I was scorned by my immaturity, yet Roxanne Adele does not care in the short term vendetta.

It all came to halt when a seemingly innocent publisher unleashed a painful chapter that figuratively gored my heart.

I was good at keeping secrets, and hid the fact that I have a severe heart disease that can turn a moronic dead brain carcass to be left alone.

And it seemed, that I forgotten it too. I read the chapter on my laptop with a panging heart, burning and throbbing while the air in my lungs convulsed.

I recalled not seeing the end of that chapter, as I gasped for air and whine my suffocating chest. I landed quite hard on my back, reaching for the phone to dial my roommate just across the closed door playing her favorite Candy Crush app. I reached weakly, trying to find a good rhythm to tame my tightening heart…. But it's all for naught.

"Roxy? You alright?" I recalled it, how my roommate knocked at my locked door.

I opened my mouth but a strangulated grunt is what it all produced. I heaved and trembled in my stagnant form, fearing for my life and shedding tears to what awaits me if I pulled it off.

Yet, a different part of me rebelled in the current objected fear of death. I cried not for my case, but of the fictional character I admired and saw crumbled in everyone's gaze.

I cried for her. My heart can attest to how much I cared.

I had expected Yuzu Aihara to have a happy ending, to embrace that black haired lover of hers and give a middle finger to the world around them.

But it does not end that way, and I am so disappointed which cause me to be this way.

I had felt my tears fell for the last time, as something just snapped within, forgetting that my friend is yelling in panic at the other side, forgetting that I should breathe.

I do not close my eyes, but the darkness seeps in dauntingly. My life had faded away.

But there's no heaven or hell that awaits me.

There's no abyss that can make time eternity.

I remembered dying in pain….. and waking up choking in a metallic tang while a painful shock coursed through my body.

I 'opened' my eyes and see a blinding light, and a blur of silhouette's murmuring gibberish nonsense I do not comprehend. There's a cry of something, and the freezing air being covered touching my front.

There's agony. Unquestionably pain everywhere. I wanted to wail my gratitude, but a hose is stuck in my throat, extremely penetrating my privacy to chat.

I want to smile and thought I was spared the death of heart attack, but what came…. Truly surprised me.

A girl rushed up in my peripheral vision; a brown haired girl with wide green eyes full of unshed tears. The voices lulled, as I graze the face of the girl tiredly.

She's sobbing, and a rain of tears flows down in her eyes and dropped on my cheeks. I frowned in confusion.

My childish mind says it's impossible to have a child this adorable with those wide eyes.

My more mature thought silently rummages my brain if ever I recall the familiar face.

I was spared the rumore and incredulity to verify the girl, before she wailed and crashed my body with a bubbly embrace.

"Yozowa! Yozowa! Yozowa~!" she cried in my ear, repeating again and again. I cringed as a full wave of groveling hiss escape my mouth, alerting how painful it is to be swept so intimately without knowing. My hand gently rose to grip her pink hoodie. The blurs, as I focused enough, was actually doctor and nurses tittering in nervousness as I hacked air.

Thankfully, a woman strode forward and pulls the child in her arms softly, before staring me with red eyes full of compassion and love.

She hugged the girl trying to reach me, and brush a hesitant hand to my head. I close my eyes in instinct, and there; I feel the love.

The confusion to my reflexive reaction was pulled at the back of my mind for I am dose by medicine. I sleep in fatigue.

The next moment I awoke, it is dimly dark and the spacious room I'm in seems empty except to the machines, a couch at the window and a lone chair in my side.

Said chair has the woman before, and the couch has a girl curled on top of it. They were both sleeping, and from what I could see, the woman's face seems to illuminate the rings in her eyes and the uncomfortable position she had.

I never thought to think if they were that help me be saved by my epiphany, because the air was sucked out into me- since there's literally no way I am dreaming.

There's no way the woman looks absolutely like the female who had cause my attack in the first place. There's no way she's who what I'm thinking she is..

In sheer panic, the machine beeped quickly corresponds to my current heart rate. My eyes survey what it can offer, madly wanting to inject some mild dose of normalcy that I knew.

The rooms too clean. Too perfect. No blemish. Too stark.

I stared at the other occupant in the room, and there, I saw the sign.

"Yozora- chan?" a lovely voice whispered, and I whipped my head in alarm. My heart beats dangerously high, and I weakly grasp it when the woman leans onto me, brushing the bangs hiding my fearful eyes.

Black hair, cut close to chin. Green eyes, narrowed naturally. Too simple, consisting of a blue sweater and a blue pants.

No.

No.

I nervously stared at my hand… and saw a small lithe limb, covered in bandage.

There, the visions pick up. Not of myself in business school. Nor in a room I was violently left to whine.

But of a child. A child name Yozorako Verona, a child baring the face of her father; blonde hair, red eyes and a penchant for business.

A child who is barely three years old; twin sister of someone I knew from before.

And somehow, somewhere; I knew that I should not exist.

Because there's no character named Yozorako Verona in the first place, much less a twin sister of the main character Yuzu Aihara of Saburo Uta's 'Citrus'.

"Yozora- chan!?" the woman- no, my mother called in alarm, touching my face as I shiver at the terrifying conclusion of who I am.

"M…. M- mama?" I stuttered, brain in shambles. I voiced out the first word I could have uttered. A word where I feel safe. My voice does not have that crescendo or the smooth lull of cheerfulness in it. No, my voice is lace with childishness; those squeaky chime, those whimpers.

I panicked in full realization. I remembered who I am. For a moment, I stopped being Yozora and initiate to take the formation of knowledge from Roxanne Adele.

I cried as I recall it; everything from the kid's body I am in, and hugged Mommy as she lulls my whimpers. Because truthfully?

Reincarnation is not the best way to be the reason behind my insanity.

I was Roxanne Adele. I am Yozorako Verona.

It's hard to swallow the truth were everyone would call you different things.

Some says it surprising, but exhilarating. Some even says it is a miracle of fate.

I say it's a toxic. There's a reason a person could only have one mind, body and soul. Rely a vision of another soul to an underage body would take its toll.

I have seen the signs of being 'broken'. I knew the sign of close to edge.

Imagine my surprise when I figure that out. To be swallowed up by a pathetic chapter and was attack by a malady that kills me with 'heartbreak'? Yeah, go figure how much I enjoyed blaming someone for that.

I have no reason to complain, nor I have a choice for the matter if ever I want to go back to where I came. Unexpected things are made adaptable, and I'm in for a journey for problems in order to stay alive.

However, as much as I like to grouch to the pretense of the preserve memories of Roxanne Adele in my head, I have a single question that irks me to no end. Asylum is not an option. Especially for the inmates of their own imagination.

Why's an OC doing here in Citrus?

I mean, yeah, I barely swallowed the thought I am just another character of a manga and anime I like, but seriously? What am I doing here?

I though OC's are for actions, where they could have change the plot and create happy endings to their hobo and biased world.

Citrus is none of that. It is a romance, where they would start and develop feelings where battles are not of the world war and hearts are more delicate than explosive bombs.

I cannot change a thing, because it would be horrendously freaked up.

This is a world where normal exist, where emotions are the main playing role to indicate. There's not much anime physics except for the atrocious expressions and what not. There's nothing of a defying gravity hair in the first place.

So I am at lost, since I am a complicated woman; emotions are considerably the most difficult I can tracked, where objectives is more valuable than feelings, in my biased opinion.

Why, does an OC lived in the first place?

Since I have no clear answer to my self- impose question, comes the realization of what I could dig up all along.

Or the hypothesis I would like to create on my own.

I vague remembers that Yuzu's father to be mentioned in manga or anime, much less his last name and what is his line of work.

While being here, in this world- which I preferably became bitter-, some left unanswered was most likely been startling. There's so many things unsaid, and I am more interested in finding all of them than actually living a second life in a small body who still crave for confectioneries and consideration.

There's nothing much that I can dig up for myself in my subconscious state for three years I'm half- complete.

What's brow-raising though, is how I awoke in the world with the memories long buried in my mind.

I remembered; how this body was under the bed of my twin sister, hugging her close. There's a lot of screaming. There's a few gritting broken objects too, thrown from the living room downstairs as Ume and our father- Jordan yelled at someone in argument.

I'm sad and there are few angry tears in my eyes also. I'm upset for the small things that happened, and Ume is livid at something the stranger had said.

Pity, it was my birthday too; 7th of August, while I ducked there hushing Yuzu's whimpers and doing nothing to stop the ranting that resonates within our house.

Then there's a huge gunshot.

Silence reign and our heartbeats stopped.

I remembered it, how our usually kind and quiet father marched in the room, dragging me softly away from Yuzu, as we protested and tried to reached each other's hand.

Because there's a looming rift in our instinct. The emotions intertwining twins at each other's soul.

I recall mother nervously rubbing her hands at her pants.

There's a man at the floor. Bleeding. Dead.

I remembered how father consoled my mother. How he gave Yuzu and ushered them out to mother's car.

How the sweat dripped on her face as father dressed me up and slid me at his own vehicle.

How they drove away while Yuzu and I cried to take each other to return by our side.

I remembered heartache.

I remembered father's bloody clothes, smiling at me as he drove quickly.

Then there are black cars appearing from side to side.

Father is wrathful. The revolver on his hand is gallingly lurid.

The rain pours down heavily on the road.

The lightning strikes.

And the car was smashed into a tree.

Bullet holes scattered in my body.

And I was carried from a nearby hospital by some stranger, in which where I 'died'.

I look at myself and pats the bandage covering my body, as I recall the painful pull of life in me. The electric current rids the stagnant muscle pumping blood, and with it, I came back alive.

The wounds miraculously did pass any vital points or bones. It is swelling and sore, but any medication I drown should suffice to lull the ache of my meat pierce by bullets and concussion.

I can't remember how I feel back then. How the accident puts me in danger. I guess my brain deem it not necessary to incline for me to remember the painful experience I had. And in fact, I barely care to the point I never cried when I realized.

No. I was beyond mourning.

I am resigned.

There's the part where I'm lonely too. But that is not the point.

I have lived. Yozora lived to see another day. To be part of Yuzu's life. I survived the mysterious epiphany that consumes the loss of Yuzu's childhood. I have awoken.

I rather die than feel a part of mine being tear apart by Death, embracing it and will not let go until a debt is repaid. I won't imagine how it would be to lose someone close. A part of what makes a person is.

I am thinking of the universe's way of giving me another chance. To take her hand again and be by her side every step of the way.

However, that second chance is not welcome. I could barely comprehend what is right and what is real.

I am seeing her as some fictional character, while my heart says she's been with me from the very day I greet the world.

Rational thoughts vs. Irrational feelings. I feel trapped. I feel confounded. Because whatever I do, my little sister is tainted by the past as the main character of the world. I am a mere character pulled into a situation I could not have anticipated.

And it makes me numb.

Because if ever she's the focus of the universe, then what of me?

What of Yozora?

Why is she here?

What am I doing here?

In time like this is where I hated myself. My conceited personality had put a wall between my logical plans and what has to be done.

Emotions are not my strong suit. It is a weakness I rather buried, but with my current state feelings are the hyper instinct that initiates radar of observation and attention that intertwine parents unto their child via close relationship.

Yet it is hard to pull it off. To feel happy when I do not know the reason to.

Yuzu and Ume came not too long after I was discharged, sticking close to me while I sat on my wheelchair so they could hold a part of me I rather be comfortable giving to them.

Yuzu is smiling brightly to me, her eyes still shone innocence that reflects my own with its ingenuousness. I scantily saw my reflection at the bypassing mirrors. Half- lidded eyes deprived of life, mouth thin and back hunch. I did not smile back, but I tighten my grip on her hand, for words are not enough to describe my incapability to express myself.

I could not be happy, for I have no right to smile when my mother is hurting, still haunted by her husband's death.

I could not be angry, for I have no reason as such. To whom will I blame my horrendous curse? To whom will I attempt an effort to imply my hate?

I could not be sad, for my view to my surroundings had degraded into a fantasy worth forgetting for.

I couldn't feel, so I would be indifferent. I would play nice and polite, just so I could do it.

I'm a difficult person, and it spokes true.

Yuzu is young, too small to remember these moments of defeat. She would not remember what truly happened to the father she gradually visit. She would not recall the reason behind Ume's absence on her life. But maybe… maybe if I 'died', this embodiment.. this twin of hers would be left forgotten. That's how excruciating life can be.

However, I knew I will. And I knew it would hunt me down from the very moment I look behind.

Father's funeral is no brainer. We are illegitimate in Grandmother's eyes. We are not welcome to the said lamentation, but we are not prohibited to visit at any time. I am an exception, the grandmother says more than once, when she visited me when I am alone. I am my father's daughter, and shall I come to them, I would be welcome with open arms.

Yet, I could not respond to the idea. I will not stoop low and run while my twin and mother will suffer more in my nonexistence. If given piece, Yuzu must be part of it. We are a package of sort. No twin will leave her part to be lonely. I will not be apart with Yuzu again.

There's a nagging feeling in my chest that won't abandon her. The flick of light where we are bonded the most.

Speaking of sister, she's coherently babbling nonsense while Ume situated me at the back of her car, Yuzu hugging my side and nuzzling what I can offer, imposing as a statue before the woman who given me birth reminds;

"Yuzu- chan, don't play with Yozora- chan too much, you hear?" she started the car, and drove with a weaken beam on her face. I wonder how painful it is, to lose your husband with children still toddlers and blind.

"Un, Maman!" Yuzu, the ever beating twin of mine replied, happy…. Too joyful within my reach. I avert my eyes to the front, my muscle convulsing in a manner of trauma. Ignoring it, I meet Ume's eyes, asking, wondering- where is the destination in mind.

"…. Just a few towns away, Yozora- chan… P…. Papa says it would be a wonderful place to start." The crack in her voice, the vein on her neck; it spokes difficulty and uncertainty. She glosses the real reason. She knew I will know.

I met her eyes again.

She smiled that god awful smile.

I avert my eyes.

I can't.

I can't look in that fake smile.