Chapter 44: Friendly Greetings from My Dear Younger Brother
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 44: Friendly Greetings from My Dear Younger Brother
Just as I was pondering how to respond to their "greetings," my phone suddenly rang.
A call was coming in. Was it a coincidence, or had they been trying to reach me this whole time?
I exited the messaging app and saw a double-digit string of missed calls. It all made sense now; my phone’s battery drained rapidly, and not a single one of their calls had come through while the device actually had power.
The caller this time was my younger brother, Yang Yunhan. He was essentially the "alt account" my parents started raising after my "main account" was written off as a failure. In truth, there wasn't much of an age gap between us.
Just as I was about to swipe to answer, I suddenly realized that I wasn't the same person I used to be. My voice had naturally changed quite a bit—at least enough that someone familiar with me should be able to tell the difference.
If I picked up now, who was I supposed to be?
My own girlfriend?
They knew I had a girlfriend, but that excuse didn't seem like it would fly.
I watched the screen, knowing the call would soon time out. Since the phone was on, the person on the other end likely realized I’d finally powered it up after trying for so long. If it were still off, the call wouldn't even go through.
So, I answered.
"Hello? Where the fuck did you go? Why haven't you been picking up my calls?"
The moment the call connected, I was taken aback by my brother’s explosive temper. He went straight to an interrogation.
He sounded so agitated; I wondered if our "dear" parents had been taking their frustrations out on him.
"Why aren't you saying anything? Are you deaf? Get your ass back here right now!"
He continued his emotional outburst, barking away without giving me a single chance to interject.
Listening to his tone, I couldn't quite figure out what he was trying to achieve. Since birth, I had been the "mental patient" who lived outside the family's control. Yang Yunhan’s current attitude was atrocious, and his commanding tone was the one thing I tolerated least.
Did he want me to come back, or didn't he?
"Say something! Did you run off with that bitch next door? Do you have any idea that you're missing? Mom and Dad are going crazy looking for you! Well?!"
The moment I heard how he referred to Sister Bai, my calm expression shattered. Profanities surged to the tip of my tongue.
But just as I was about to lash out, I choked the words back.
I forced myself to calm down.
Firstly, my vocabulary of insults wasn't particularly extensive; it would be difficult to out-curse him to the point of silence. Secondly, getting into a shouting match felt beneath me. Aside from venting frustration, it served no purpose.
I hadn't picked up this call to argue or vent. I wanted to see what kind of drama they were staging for me.
Mainly, I wanted to witness the "biological diversity" of this world's inhabitants.
"I didn't know," I said, instinctively lowering my voice.
The timbre was still significantly different from before, though I wasn't intentionally trying to disguise it. Talking to them simply didn't inspire any enthusiasm, so my tone naturally became low and flat.
"You! Hmph..."
He seemed to choke on his own words, as if my response had robbed him of his momentum.
"I'm doing very well, thank you," I added.
I was actually a bit curious—had he really not noticed the change in my voice, or was the microphone on this old phone so bad that it distorted me beyond recognition?
"You're doing well? You're doing well?! All you care about is yourself! Do you have any idea what we have been going through these past two days? Dad stopped going to work just to look for you! He's been to the Shi'an Bureau I don't know how many times! And you have the nerve to tell me you're doing well?" Yang Yunhan seemed provoked by my words; his voice grew heavier, bordering on incoherent.
As he screamed at me, I actually had a momentary lapse where I wondered if I had gone too far. But I quickly extinguished that ridiculous thought.
Something was wrong with his emotional state. He was too frantic. He was the golden child, the precious younger son my parents doted on. Why would they put so much pressure on him that he’d come to me to vent?
It couldn't be that they’d suddenly grown a conscience and started worrying about their "mentally ill" eldest son, could it?
Or had they done something and desperately needed me back to take the fall?
Surely not...
"Why are you in such a hurry to find me? Shouldn't the house be a much happier place without me?" I asked unhurriedly, while simultaneously trying to recall exactly what had happened the day I left.
The fuse that led to my final departure was... them trying to send me to the Lesser Demon Academy?
The Lesser Demon Academy was a garbage school. They were only offering fifty thousand credits; that shouldn't have been enough to make my parents this desperate.
After all, fifty thousand would only buy them a brief period of comfort.
Oh, right. It would also allow them to permanently rid themselves of their "crazy" son.
As for why the Lesser Demon Academy paid people to enroll, it was because no sane person would ever go there willingly.
If the Witch Academy merely had a "bad reputation," the Lesser Demon Academy was straight-up evil. In my previous life, it would be the equivalent of a "pheasant university"—a diploma mill that didn't even grant a real degree—sitting at the absolute bottom of the Transcendent academy hierarchy.
The discipline inside was rumored to be like those "Internet Addiction Treatment" boot camps; they didn't treat people like human beings. You could tell just by the fact that they paid for recruits. They even accepted students who hadn't awakened Spirit Vision.
In this world, students without Spirit Vision have no business touching the Transcendent realm. The fact that they recruited them anyway spoke volumes about their sinister intentions.
Once an ordinary student enters a Transcendent academy, they are basically severed from the outside world. This was different from my previous life; Transcendent power had drawn a hard line through society. The Academy factions maintained a tight grip on this boundary: ordinary people stabilized society, while Transcendents focused on ascension.
It sounds simple, but it's incredibly difficult to execute. Even after years of social struggle, keeping information about the Transcendent world hidden from the masses remains the most efficient method of control.
Because of this, places like the Lesser Demon Academy were born. Society naturally assumed the worst about such institutions. Unfortunately, I had ended up at the Witch Academy, so I didn't know what the Lesser Demon Academy was actually like.
Maybe it was just misunderstood?
Even if that possibility was miniscule, I wasn't about to jump into a fire pit just to gamble on whether the flames would actually burn.
"I'm telling you, get home right now! The recruiters from the Lesser Demon Academy have already come to our house. If you don't come back, I can't guarantee your 'transition' to the academy will be a pleasant one!"
Finally, Yang Yunhan spat out the crucial information. So... someone had actually come to the house. It really was about the Lesser Demon Academy?
My guess was spot on.
But I hadn't even applied to the Lesser Demon Academy. Had they contacted my parents privately?
Did my parents assume that since it was the final day and I hadn't applied anywhere, I was planning to just find a job and run away?
They must have decided to contact the academy directly. After all, as long as an academy is willing, they can take anyone; the online application is mostly for registration convenience.
And without a doubt, the Lesser Demon Academy was exactly the kind of place that would pull a stunt like that just to fill their quotas.