Over this week of seclusion, my existence was reduced to the bare essentials: eating, bathing, and using the toilet. Nothing more. I was a parasite, resigned and weak, clinging to a bed that felt cold no matter how hard I tried to ignore it.
I remember the words I spoke to my brother when we confessed our pasts: "I'm going to be the brother you deserve. Someone who lives, not one who merely exists."
At that moment, I said it with total conviction. I blindly believed I could fulfill it, but the only thing I've proven is how fragile I really am. Faced with my first real loss, I allowed myself to fall into misery. How can I pretend to save my family if I can't even endure the pain? This week was an unforgivable waste. I could have used it to gather information, to devise a plan... and instead, I chose to sleep.
I was a parasite who stayed in bed while his brother worried, bringing food every now and then. Rudeus, trying to help, picked the lock with magic. In his past life, his parents simply gave up when faced with his problems, but with me, it was different. When he saw me emerge wearing my cloak, he understood everything.
"I'm sorry, Rudy... but I'm better now. I'm ready to go find our mother."
Although he didn't say it out loud, he was just as devastated by Eris's sudden departure, but neither of us wanted to dig any deeper into that. You could say they viewed each other as siblings, partly because they always fought and partly because they had technically spent six years together since we met her at age seven. Losing her was painful for him too.
We had a single mission: "Find our mother."
And although the ache of Eris's departure still lingered, it was now sheltered behind the determination to fulfill our duty as sons. We were no longer the children playing in Buena Village, nor the boys trying to understand the world from the safety of Roa. We were two young men, teenagers who had known absolute defeat and who, despite everything, refused to give up.
And so, we set off toward the northern part of the Central Continent.
...
The constant rattle of three carriages' wheels was the only sound breaking the deathly silence inside the third one.
We were crossing the "Red Wyrm's Whiskers," a dense forest separating the Asura Kingdom from the Northern Lands. The merchant who hired us, a man named Bruno, was nervous about monsters, though my presence somehow made him feel safe. For me, the real tension was right here, in this cramped space shared with a group of B-Rank adventurers called "Counter Arrow" and my brother.
I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye.
To kill time, he had found a new hobby: wood carving. But unlike my brother, who used to sculpt figures, generally questionable ones, I was attempting something different.
"Rudy, look what I made."
I passed him the object.
"Brother, is that..." He took it cautiously, almost fearfully, recognizing the shape instantly. "Did you just make a pistol?"
The others in the wagon watched us with curiosity. Lacking privacy, we couldn't risk speaking in Japanese, so we had to choose our words carefully.
"Basically, it's a Springfield Armory XD." Rudeus handed it back. I caught it in mid-air and spun it on my index finger by the trigger guard. "It doesn't work, obviously, but it looks cool, doesn't it?"
"I-I guess so," he murmured, looking away. "It's just... weird seeing it here. It reminds me of the Blacktail handgun."
It was then that one of the adventurers decided to interrupt, perhaps tired of us talking about things they didn't understand. It was the archer, Sara. She had short blond hair and sharp blue eyes.
"Are you two really brothers?" she blurted out. "I mean, you don't look anything alike."
"We're fraternal twins..." Rudeus replied, visibly nervous about the woman's proximity.
I knew exactly why he got like that. Despite everything, he was still Rudeus.
"Fraternal twins?" Sara, full of doubt, looked back and forth between our hair and eyes. "Impossible..."
"Fraternal twins don't necessarily have to look alike..." I rushed to explain. "I mean, it's a different process than identical twins, resulting from the fertilization of—"
"Yeah, yeah... Blah, blah. You just make up words on the fly to sound interesting, right?"
Rudeus straightened up, snapping out of his lethargy to defend me.
"Actually, he really is smart," my brother said, looking at her. "He just uses different names for things he discovers to help him make associations. If he didn't, he might forget."
"Rudy is right," I added. "By 'fertilization' I'm referring to the biological beginning of life. It's not magic."
"Uh-huh..." She tilted her head.
"You kids have been sighing a lot lately," a female voice noted. "What's the problem?"
The speaker was Suzanne, a warrior with dark skin and braids, the group's sub-leader. Her tone wasn't hostile, just curious.
We forced a smile.
"We're sorry... Was I sighing? Don't worry, Miss. I'm fine," said Rudeus.
"We're just tired, is all..." I replied with the same energy.
We tried to sound cheerful, but the acting was terrible. Our eyes didn't match the energy, creating an unsettling contrast between our smiles and our hollow expressions.
Suzanne, unsatisfied with that fake answer, pressed on.
"Right, tell me then. Why are you heading north? A mage and a swordsman... looking for adventure?"
I sighed, giving up. There was no point in hiding it.
"We're heading north to look for our mother," I answered for both of us, sparing Rudeus the pain of explaining. "She's been missing since the Fittoa Displacement Incident."
I paused briefly.
"And... we just lost someone else along the way."
[It hurts you a lot too, doesn't it? And yet, you keep assuming the role of big brother... Well done, Daiki.]
...I am no longer that child, Ayam. If I allow myself to break again, or appear afflicted, I only demonstrate weakness. And on such an important quest, that isn't an option...
[So you'll stop torturing yourself internally?]
...Exactly.
[Good. I'll hit you if you break your word.]
...You can't.
[No... not for now. But if I ever get out, I promise I will.]
Ayam's comment faded from my mind as the archer's voice brought me back to reality.
"Oh..." Sara murmured, lowering her gaze. "I... I didn't know. I thought you were just arrogant, or maybe nobles too stuck-up to handle a carriage ride with strangers."
"Don't worry about it."
No more words were needed. By the way she leaned back in her seat and fell silent, I knew she understood.
....
"So this is it..." Rudeus murmured upon seeing the city.
This city, Rosenburg, lies two months and two days' journey north of the Asura border. Sometimes called the "Gateway to the Northern Territories," basically half of its profits come from exporting magical tools to Asura.
"Yes, Rudy, let's go."
We stepped off the carriage and stopped to look around. The streets were bustling with adventurers and merchants, everyone seemingly quite busy. Much of the commotion was due to the two carriages full of goods we had been escorting. Merchandise fetched a high price here.
"Brother..." Rudeus was shivering. "How are you not cold?"
It was true, everyone walking past us wore thick clothes. Understandable, considering winters in this region are heavy with snow.
"Rudy..." I whispered in Japanese. "I literally fell from above the clouds. Believe me, at that altitude, the temperature is much more aggressive. Considering I endured the fall in shorts and a simple vest that was tearing apart... let's just say my body simply raised its tolerance threshold."
"Wouldn't it be easier to simply say you 'adapted'?" he joked.
"It's an acceptable simplification... I'll take it into consid—"
"I don't believe you."
I pulled the pistol from the bag. "You don't, but my pistol does."
"Is that a reference?"
"Is it? —No, enough talk. "
...
We decided to look for an inn first. Night was approaching, and with the merchants already closing up shop, it was clear that once the sun set, a much more intense cold would settle in. One that perhaps even I couldn't endure. I might manage if I kept moving, but if we didn't want to die of hypothermia, we needed to find at least a Rank B inn. According to Suzanne, the cheap inns here didn't have heating.
"Rudy, calm down. It's just an inn."
"It's just that... It's the first one without them."
I didn't say anything, I knew what he meant.
Stepping inside, I found a man in the middle of cleaning. By the way he looked at us, he was clearly the owner. The guy seemed very friendly.
"I'd like a room for a month, please."
"...Sure. I'll need a signature and a fingerprint here. Once you've paid, the last room on the third floor is yours."
Then he glanced at Rudeus.
"Are you together? There's only that one room left, that's why I ask."
"Yes, we're brothers. It doesn't matter if I sleep on the floor."
He didn't hesitate to hand us a key and the registration papers. As the older brother, I let Rudeus fill them out; I knew he liked that sort of thing, and if it kept him distracted, that was all I needed right now. I paid in advance using the money Claire had given me, I had left the rest of my adventurer earnings with my father to fund his search.
"Are those Millis coins?" the manager asked, watching me count the silver.
"Are they no good here? "
"No, no, they're fine. Valuable, too."
We climbed to the third floor, found our room, and stepped inside to take a quick look. A bed, a wardrobe, a table, and a chair. The only things that stood out were the brick walls and the large stove built into one of them.
I arranged the wood and used a flint to light the stove. Dusting off my hands, I stood up and looked at my brother, who was still lost in thought by the window as he hung his robe over the chair.
"Rudy, I'll sleep on the floor. The owner said a room will free up tomorrow because an adventurer is leaving, so I'll have my own then, even if it's on the second floor."
"Yeah, I understand, but why sleep on the floor? I can—"
"I slept on tree branches with a sword as heavy as a sack of potatoes on my chest. This is a resort, Rudy."
Rudeus finally let himself fall onto the bed, realizing that trying to win an argument when I'm determined is impossible.
"Hey, brother... About that Millis money, you said Claire gave it to you, right?"
"Exactly."
"From our grandmother?"
"Yes."
"The same one who made Zenith leave?"
"The very same, Rudy." I settled on the floor with the pillow and blanket they gave me. It was all I needed as I recalled my time in Millishion. "You could say she was very wrong, and I won't justify her actions. But I can say she did love her daughter; that's why she accepted me. However—"
"However?"
"—If she saw you, she might not accept you... But not because it's you, rather because of how you look."
"So, it is because it's me."
"Yes, but it's because you look so much like Paul, and she hates him. She thinks he was the one who made sure she never returned."
Our father had gone to the Latreia Mansion one day, months before he knew I was in Millishion. Since my father didn't frequent the Adventurers' Guild, because they rejected his plan to save the Fittoa victims, he didn't want to deal with them. Besides, the day he went for help, my aunt Therese forced me to stay upstairs. Who knows what would have happened if I had gone down. If I had known back then that my father was there, I would have looked for him much sooner.
"She's not like Hilda, remember? Hilda had lost two sons and saw in us what she lost. She saw me as her second son and you as the first," Rudeus said, staring at the ceiling.
"Yes... She suffered a lot. That's why I tried to make sure she was okay. At least she died in peace..."
In my past life, when adults said my parents had died in peace, I didn't believe them at all. Now that I have a stronger emotional connection, I was able to accept it. I know she appeared in a conflict zone, a horrible place, but at least we could heal her heart so she could die with the certainty that her sons were alive. She is also a major reason why I shouldn't die; if she's watching me from somewhere, I want her to be proud.
[Remember when she used to come to your room? She almost never carried a tray, but for you and Rudy, she would bring desserts every night that she ordered specially from the chef.]
...Yes, I remember. They were delicious, not just because of the chef's skill, but because they were brought with love. Real love. Genuine. I didn't care that we were replacements for her deceased sons... seeing her smile was more than enough.
There was silence. Only the crackling of the wood in the stove could be heard.
"Brother." Rudeus propped himself up on his elbows to look at me. "Remember when we always used to say 'together' and 'always together'?"
"Yes, of course I remember... When I was still learning to live, not just to exist, and when we promised we would always be there for each other."
"Maybe if others saw us, they'd say we were too cheesy, but..." He lay back down. "Together, brother?"
"Always together, Rudy."
And we allowed ourselves to sleep.
...