Warning: Death related to socioeconomic status.
Aras Dominykas Prapuolenis (23 December 1994—30 April 2021, aged 26) was the cousin of Vi’s husband and eldest Praupolenis sibling being the late older brother of Inesa. In addition, Vi’s husband is also the older brother of Noa’s love interest. Aras knew Noa and his younger cousin were in love with each other and tried to lightly tell his cousin that making a move on her would be worth it. While his family had a tough upbringing in poverty since their emigration from Lithuania, his cousins’ family had an easier time. His family was from rags to riches and had an inspiring way of how they started from nothing and built beautiful lives for themselves. It also helped that Noa’s love interest was able to find their identity and live their dream self. Aras couldn’t be mad, these were something he found highly respectable, but he felt some envy and wasn’t super confident. He lived his life in a tiny apartment building and hardly ever made needless purchases because he knew he’d regret it if he did. Despite his tough times, he had a sense of wit that he never let go of.
While Aras never had any children, he wanted children but couldn’t bring them into a world where he couldn’t afford to raise them, he did have a known nickname as the Baby Predictor. Since he was a child, he’s always liked predicting if unborn babies were male or female. What was interesting was his accuracy and he managed to almost always be correct. When he was 17, he correctly predicted that Inesa was female. People thought he just had lucky guesses but when he correctly predicted an intersex baby, they felt Aras was practically a magician. Aras always said, “Na, the real magicians are anyone who has a baby that isn’t what I predicted.” People who wanted to not know the gender until birth would intentionally not ask Aras to predict in fears he’d “spoil the surprise” even though he doesn’t have any other way of knowing besides predictions. At 3 AM, Aras was called by an old high school buddy he hasn’t talked to in a while and her exact words were, “I just found out I was pregnant! What gender is it?” Aras said it was male even though he was half-asleep when he said that — and still ended up being right. He is mostly correct although he’s been wrong a few times: he has been wrong about three pregnancies of strangers who already knew the gender, he’s been wrong about his friend who’s had three children and somehow he didn’t get any of them right, and he’s been wrong about Noa’s older sister’s pregnancy she had at age 20 to a baby boy that he said was a girl.
The hardest struggle in his life was being able to live with what little payment he got. He had a boss who wasn’t very sensitive of his employee’s needs and made Aras do more tasks without upping his salary after another employee left “to make up for the lost work”. Deep down, the other employee quit because of the harsh environment. When Aras’s sister went to jail, he didn’t say anything bad about her because he knew she had suffered from the madness of a job that didn’t pay her well either. He became friends with Vi’s family through his cousin and after they first married, Vi thought she was pregnant and told Aras and he said, “It’s a boy”. But apparently it wasn’t actually a pregnancy and Aras felt really awkward predicting something that didn’t exist. Aras admitted he envied his older cousin for having such a great career and a wonderful wife, and his younger cousin for being successful in school with a scholarship and being mutually liked by Noa, but didn’t say anything as his envy wouldn’t solve anything. Unfortunately he never had the time and money due to his job and kept pushing himself just to pay rent for the month. Aras suffered from intense headaches but wouldn’t go to the doctor because he greatly feared he would suffer even more economically since medical bills were high and he didn’t want to risk it on something supposedly minor. He broke a bone in his right hand a month earlier and even after he knew it was broken, he wouldn’t seek medical attention since he knew it would cost him a bundle and forced himself to just let it heal on its own. Aras asked his boss what he should do about his headaches but his boss told him to just get back to work and stop letting it distract him. He did but right when he was leaving his shift, Aras had died. Just after clocking out, he collapsed from a fatal brain bleed caused by severe stress. An employee working on her first day caught Aras before he hit the ground, but he didn’t survive, essentially dying in her arms. She was so traumatised that she quit after her first day. Aras’s family sued his boss for wrongful death after he died but they lost the lawsuit as his boss got away with the technicality that Aras had existing health problems such as iron deficiency and low blood sugar due to his status and that his boss “isn’t responsible“ for other people‘s health. Aras’ and Inesa’s sister missed his funeral due to being in jail and said she always deeply regretted it.
Some people look at the three Prapuolenis siblings like they were creepy and melancholic due to the first being dead, second being a former convict, and third being just an innocent 10-year-old caught up in the calamity. However their more successful cousins still perceive them as good people who made others happy and hate when people act like they’re the “good” part of the family and the three are the “bad” side. People don’t always get to choose how they live (or die) and they know they had more fiscally privileged lives but don’t want people feeling disgusted or even miserable when thinking about their cousins. Despite Aras’s death, his score as the Baby Predictor has improved. While he technically didn’t predict a real pregnancy for Vi and her husband, he did say it would be a boy — which they’re having now in a real pregnancy. They appreciate Aras and feel he deserves the point for that one anyway. It’s not the only posthumous point he’s earned, Noa’s sister has said that her son has realised he was meant to be a girl and is now dressing feminine and using female pronouns. Since Aras said this child would be a girl and she’s now a girl, that’s another point for him, giving the Baby Predictor 53 out of 59 correct guesses, or nearly 90% accuracy.
Inesa was created by me.
