A Brother's Obsession
Raon finished his strength and agility drills in the indoor training hall and stepped out onto the outdoor grounds.
She's not here.
The sound of a sword cutting the air had been ringing from outside, so he'd assumed Runaan was still training. She was nowhere to be seen. For once, it seemed she'd gone home first.
She's a nuisance when she's around, but it's a little disappointing when she's not.
Runaan always waited until training was over, bowed her head in a quiet greeting, and then left. He'd never thought much of it on ordinary days, but not receiving that greeting left a faint, unexpected hollowness in his chest.
Disappointed over that? Have I been brainwashed or something?
Raon snorted a quiet laugh and walked out of the training ground. Burren and Marta were still inside, so there was no need to wrap things up the way he usually did.
"What a pathetic fool."
What?
"This is hardly the time for thoughts like that."
What are you talking about?
"..."
Wrath said nothing more. He had gone silent, staring westward and nowhere else.
What is it?
Raon turned his head in the direction Wrath was looking. He couldn't sense anything out of the ordinary, but a strange unease prickled at the back of his mind.
Just in case.
The Ring of Fire spun to life. Aura from the Cultivation of Ten Thousand Flames surged upward, and the Sense of Frost Flowers unfurled, spreading his perception in every direction.
There. Not far off, something snagged on his senses — and yet he felt nothing at all.
Which meant only one thing.
Someone put up an aura barrier.
An unknown someone had used aura to cut off sound and presence alike.
I should go.
On any other day he would have left it alone. Wrath's reaction, though, was enough to send him. He killed his presence completely with Shadow Footwork, ready to withdraw the instant he needed to, and ran toward the barrier.
In a dim alley the clan's patrol swordsmen couldn't see, two people were standing.
One of them was Runaan. Across from her stood a tall man.
What's she doing here? And that expression...
Runaan, who he'd thought had gone home, had her hands clenched tight together. Her face was as blank as ever, but the look in her eyes was the look of someone terrified.
He studied the man opposite her.
Silver hair, the same as Runaan's. Purple eyes. A handsome man with a greatsword strapped to his back.
Siria Sullion.
He'd heard that name in his previous life. The genius of House Sullion — one of the twelve monsters expected to become the next Continental Ten Heavens. A man whose name sat among the Continental Twelve Stars.
Then why is she so afraid?
Runaan had seen her own brother, and she neither smiled nor looked glad to see him. She was frightened the way a rabbit is frightened when it meets a predator.
Siria was saying something to her, but the words didn't carry. Then, without warning, he drew a cute little squirrel from his coat and held it out to her.
And the moment Runaan reached for it, he burst the squirrel in his hand.
A scream tore out of her. The barrier swallowed the sound, but Raon could see it — the shape of her mouth, the way her whole body seized.
Siria approached her with an expression so dry it raised the hair on Raon's arms, and began to whisper in her ear.
I have to stop this.
He didn't know what was being said. He only knew, with a certainty that sat like ice in his gut, that those words could not be allowed to continue.
Raon packed the aura of the Cultivation of Ten Thousand Flames into his legs and drove his foot into the earth.
The ground caved. A roar of impact shattered the quiet. Siria was thrown back from Runaan, his face twisting as he caught himself.
"Who the hell are you?"
Raon didn't waste the opening. He stepped in front of Runaan, tipped his head at a mocking angle, and locked eyes with Siria.
"What do you think you're doing, bullying Runaan?"
I have to pretend I don't know who he is.
If he let on that he knew Siria and Runaan were family, he would have no grounds to interfere. Someone else's family. None of his business. But if he played ignorant, there was room to step in.
"If you're going to ask for someone else's name, isn't it proper to give your own first?"
Siria smiled, easy and unhurried.
"That's not something a guy who set up an aura barrier in an alley like this should be saying. Are you a thief?"
"Mm..."
Siria's face tightened at the jab. And yet — something about it was off. It didn't look like genuine anger or genuine surprise. It looked like a man performing anger.
I know what kind of creature this is.
Derus Robert. The man who had killed him in his previous life. The same stench was coming off Siria now.
"Ah, I suppose you could think that. But I'm neither a thief nor a stranger. I'm that child's older brother."
Siria pointed past Raon, at Runaan.
Raon held Siria's gaze and glanced back. Her expression was vacant, but it wasn't her usual vacancy. It was the look of someone who had taken a blow too heavy to process. Her small shoulders were trembling in a way that was painful to watch.
"She looks terrified. Are you really her brother?"
"Ah, I was only teasing her a little. It's been so long since I last saw her."
"Squeezing a squirrel in your hand until it bursts is a joke?"
"Oh, that wasn't real. It was only a toy."
Siria flicked his wrist. The blood on his hands and the blood pooled on the ground crumbled into ash and drifted away. He had melted every drop of it, every scrap of flesh, with aura.
"Would I actually kill a squirrel?"
A chilling presence uncoiled from his entire body. The stench of death. It was the same scent Raon had breathed in the moment before Derus killed him.
"How insolent. A mere human dares threaten This King's vessel?"
Raon didn't answer. He simply drew his own presence up to meet it. Wrath was right — this was a threat. I can kill you the same way. Back off.
But he hadn't come here empty-handed.
"Raon! You bastard, did you smash clan property?!"
Burren burst out of the training ground, and the patrol swordsmen came running toward the alley. From farther off, Marta's cursing carried on the air — something about interrupting her practice.
"Raon. Raon Zieghart, was it. I thought as much."
Siria's eyes went dark as orbs painted over with ink. It was the gaze of a man whose emotions had been worn down to nothing, and it made the hair on Raon's arms stand on end.
"But this really is a misunderstanding. I received a long-term mission the moment I returned, so I only came to give my little sister a snack."
He drew a rectangular box from his coat and set it on the ground. The shape and the pattern were a little different, but it was a box of bead ice cream.
"Runaan."
Siria's eyes changed again. This time they were the eyes of an older brother looking at a beloved younger sister.
"You've made a very good friend. Stay close to him from now on."
"Mm."
"I'm sorry your brother's teasing went too far. Stay healthy. I'll see you next time."
He waved, and then he was gone — as if he had simply turned into wind.
"Don't tell me that man was Siria Sullion of the Continental Twelve Stars?"
Burren stared at the empty air where Siria had been and sucked in a breath.
"The atmosphere around him is different. No wonder he's one of the Twelve Stars."
"Yeah. Different, all right."
Raon nodded. A genius. A man they called a hero. He had never imagined that man would be that kind of lunatic.
"Runaan."
He turned. Her face was the same as always, but her eyes were still shaking. The fear hadn't left her.
"Let's go. I'll walk you back."
Siria had said he'd been given a mission. He wouldn't be at the house.
"...Okay."
Runaan nodded slowly and got to her feet.
"Did something happen?"
Burren came over carrying the box of bead ice cream.
"It was nothing."
Raon took the box from him and shook his head.
"I see."
Burren didn't press.
"If you need help, say so. I'll do whatever I can as a fellow trainee."
With that, he left the alley first.
He's really grown.
Burren had changed enough to make anyone watching feel proud.
"This King still doesn't care for that boy's eyes, though..."
Thank you.
"What?"
I was able to help Runaan because of you. Whether I actually saved her, I don't know.
"Ahem! That child is This King's Ice Cream Girl, is she not? I only spoke up because if something happened to her, there would be no more ice cream."
That's what I'm thanking you for.
"Then if This King were to ask for a little of that ice cream..."
I almost would have looked at you differently if you hadn't said that.
Raon smacked Wrath away with his palm. A monarch who truly could not read a room.
"Let's go."
"Okay."
He walked her to where the people of House Sullion were waiting.
Raon said nothing as he walked beside her. She was someone else's family, and he didn't even know the full shape of what had happened. He knew well enough that clumsy comfort offered in ignorance did more harm than good.
When her steps slowed, he slowed. When she stopped, he stopped. He simply matched her pace, quietly, and walked at her side.
Before long the Sullion family's carriage came into view, along with her maids. Raon waited until Runaan had climbed in, then held out the ice cream box.
"Thank you."
She said the same word she used to say in a bright, excited voice. This time it came out sunken and dull. Then she was gone.
When Runaan arrived at the family estate, Lokan Sullion came out to meet her.
"Runaan! Good work training."
"Mm."
She nodded and stepped down from the carriage.
"Did you see your brother? He said he'd give you a present in person."
"...Mm."
Runaan drew a slow breath and held up the ice cream box in her hands. Her eyes looked vacant, the way they always did.
"It's your favorite ice cream. Even with all his missions and training, that boy always thinks of you."
Lokan muttered that there was no present for him, then laughed, loud and easy.
Runaan clenched her teeth. The thought of telling him everything rose and broke against the same old wall. If she did, everything she had protected until now would come apart.
"...I'm going to rest."
She swallowed the words in her throat and climbed the mansion steps, slowly.
"Of course. You must be tired. Get some sleep."
"Mm."
Lokan waved her inside. Runaan nodded and went up to the second floor.
"Haa."
She shut the door, let out a long breath, and sank to the floor. She bit down on her lip and opened the lid of the ice cream box.
It was her favorite. Her hands wouldn't move toward it. All she could see was her brother's face.
He came again. He's the same.
Siria Sullion hadn't always been like that.
After he came back alive from his second mission — the only one who came back — it was as if a different person had taken his place. And only toward her.
To everyone else he was still the polite, kind genius swordsman. To her, he had become a monster of obsession, and she had never been able to tell where that obsession had come from.
Ruby...
The Ruby he had spoken of was a red-eyed squirrel that had lived in a tree nearby when they were little. They had become friends. She had given it the name Ruby, and they had played together every day. Then one afternoon Ruby scratched the back of her hand.
The squirrel had been pregnant, stressed, and the wound was tiny — nothing, really. Siria saw it anyway. He caught Ruby. He caught every squirrel in the area. And he burst them all in front of her eyes.
And then he had said:
You're mine.
You can't get hurt.
Just breathe, and live.
If you tell Father or Mother, I will tear this house apart. I will spare only you, and I will burn everything else until nothing is left.
From that day on, Runaan closed her mouth.
Someone else might get hurt. So she kept her distance from people and from animals alike, and she cut her words down to almost nothing.
She had lived like that, alone, until she met another loner. No — a boy who seemed even lonelier, and in even more pain, than she was.
Raon.
At first she had only been curious. How he grew so fast. How he endured with a constitution and stamina that should have held him back. Simple curiosity. She had approached him because his growth interested her, nothing more.
And then she had learned.
What kind of person Raon was. How hard he worked. How much he had endured.
Watching him change even the way other people looked at him through nothing but effort, she had thought that she might be able to change too. And she had begun to.
Thanks to Raon, and thanks to the trainees of the 5th Training Ground, the fear of Siria had been fading. Today, that fear had come back to life.
Runaan sat there and watched every last bead of ice cream in the box melt to nothing.
"Just me."
She dropped her head between her knees. Her voice was wet.
"If I just endure it, it's fine. It's okay."
She didn't think she would ever be able to eat ice cream again.
Raon was on his way back to the dormitory after seeing Runaan off when Wrath suddenly popped out of the bracelet.
"Was that thing even human?"
What?
"The one who called himself the Ice Cream Girl's older brother."
Ah. He was a strange one, I'll give you that.
Raon nodded. Siria had the air of a warm, approachable man — and at the same time, a bone-deep wrongness, as if you had looked straight into the dark. The eyes he'd worn while making that threat had been as lifeless as dried grass. Just looking at them had sent a chill down Raon's spine.
The acting, though, had been excellent. If Raon hadn't seen him burst the squirrel and threaten Runaan with his own eyes, even he would have been taken in.
A lunatic, same as Derus.
Siria didn't seem capable of feeling human emotion. Not because he'd been trained out of it, the way Raon had been. He seemed broken somewhere deeper than that.
He said it was a long-term mission, so he shouldn't be back for a while.
"As long as that creature is the Ice Cream Girl's brother, the problem will keep coming back."
That's true.
Even if Siria didn't return to the house for years, he and Runaan were family. They would keep meeting. No — he might already be watching her, even now. What had sat in those dry eyes was obsession, without any question.
"Hand over your body. I'll kill that bastard and give it back."
What?
"This King repays kindness twofold and grudges tenfold. That child showed This King the new world called bead ice cream. This much, at least, can be done."
Don't make me laugh.
Raon snorted and waved him off.
"This King is serious!"
Even if you are, that's not happening.
"Why not?"
He put a trauma in her. Killing him won't lift it. It might even tighten its grip. In a case like this, she has to stand up on her own. And besides...
Raon tapped the floor with one finger.
I can kill him myself.
Across his previous life and this one, Runaan was the first person who had ever shown him genuine consideration. She had helped him more than she knew. Killing Siria for her was the least he could do.
"You've gone completely mad. Even a hundred of you couldn't beat that man. He's already ascended to a higher realm."
Wrath's face twisted, as if Raon had said something unforgivably stupid.
He's strong, I'll grant you that.
"You know that, and you're still talking nonsense?"
Being strong doesn't mean a blade can't go into his throat.
Raon tapped the scabbard at his hip. A cold, quiet killing intent unfurled from him like frost.