>Has it?
>By most peoples standards, no. You come from a good home, with parents and a brother who love you, and you love them deeply. You've never wanted for money or materials or food or shelter, you've never been the target of bullies or peer pressure, and while there have been some that have tried to take advantage of your kind and giving nature over the years, you've been able to spot them for who they really were. You've never suffered from many of the angsts that plague other girls as they grow, such as hangups about boys, other girls, your looks, your weight, or anything of that nature.
>That said, to say that you haven't faced your own trials would be greatly off-base. As much as you love your little brother, his life has had a massive impact upon your own. His life has been complicated, hampered by ill health, since he was born prematurely. He has been in and out of hospitals for the whole of his life. He's never really HAD a life of his own; anything he might ever have wanted to do, or aspired to be, he cannot. Schemers, scammers, slavers and scum are free to lead whatever life they wanted, while he, a kind, intelligent boy sits in his room, or in a hospital bed, and watches the world pass him by. And while you tried not to let the unfairness of this sour your outlook, color your demeanor, the reality of the situation was something that bound you as surely as it bound your brother. Watching his body fail him while people like Konngara got do to whatever they wanted was... Upsetting.
>This, you suspect, was one of the contributing factors to the sense of isolation you had for much of your life. You'd always been a little bit different from the people around you, no matter their age. Kanako called you an old soul. Objectively speaking, this isn't entirely an unfair statement. You've always seen the world through eyes that have seen more than merely eighteen years. You didn't have the same sort of attachment to the physical that so many others did, yet you didn't engage in the same areas of organized faith, either. You were always your own person, separate from the rest of the world. People had a hard time approaching you, and you couldn't really relate to people outside of Myoren your brother.
>This sense of distance, of isolation, of not quite belonging to the same world as all the disingenuine and shallow people around you, persisted until your 15th year, when you met a very unique individual named Marissa Kirisame. Outside of your brother, Marissa was the first person who ever understood you, and accepted you, with all your quirks and philosophy and eccentricities. You had had a number of acquaintances before, but Marissa was your first true friend. Just as you were her first true friend, who accepted and understood her. Once you and she became friends, and helped each other sort out issues neither one of you had even identified, that was when you felt you truly belonged to this world. She provided you with a sense of attachment to the world, and you provided her with a spiritual strength that she had been lacking from her life.
