I Am the Hero's Immature Younger Brother

“Your Majesty.”

A voice tight with tension called to Ragniel.

The eyes that had been sunk in a daze slowly regained focus and moved in search of the one who had called him. Those sluggishly moving eyes only lost their strength after they found the attendant. After staring at him for a long while, Ragniel gestured with his hand, and the attendant carefully approached him.

“Your Majesty, you must eat. You’ve already skipped two meals......”

Ragniel waved his hand, cutting off the attendant’s words.

He had no thought of food at all.

He needed something that could settle the throbbing headache. What could calm him, even for a moment?

To keep his pain from showing, Ragniel smiled palely. Hiding the faint trembling of his fingertips, he moved his lips.

“Did he like the gift?”

“Pardon?”

The attendant showed his confusion at the question that came without any context. He quickly gathered up his blank expression and clasped his hands respectfully.

“My apologies, Your Majesty. I am slow-witted and failed to understand Your Majesty’s question. If you would ask me again......”

“I told you there was no need for formalities when it was just the two of us.”

Ragniel’s gaze passed over the face of the attendant who had apologized and looked into the mirror across the room. It was plainly new. The full-length mirror, untouched by even a single handprint, looked especially foreign in this room. Perhaps it kept catching his eye because it was not something he had chosen.

“Giselle must have told you not to do that, didn’t he?”

After a short pause, the attendant answered with a helpless expression. Reading the apology contained in that low voice as it said, “Yes, Your Majesty,” Ragniel shook his head. Giselle must have done it for his sake. Because he did not want Ragniel to lose the dignity of a king.

Thinking of him made his head ache even worse.

After the decision to march out had been made at the meeting, Giselle had requested a private audience with him. For Giselle, who was always at his side, to speak of a “private audience” and formally request to see him was something rarely seen without a special reason.

After all the ministers had left the conference room, Giselle knelt before him not as the king’s strategist, but as the king’s knight. He said he, too, would go to war, and asked for permission.

Ragniel could not answer with any words at all. All he could do was look down at the crown of Giselle’s head as he knelt and bowed low at his feet.

“Ugh.”

“Your Majesty! What is wrong? Are you unwell? I’ll call the royal physician......”

“......”

“Your Majesty......!”

Only after the headache that felt as if his eyes would be torn out passed through his skull like a hammer pounding it did Ragniel finally steady his breathing. At Ragniel’s peaceful face, as if he had never groaned or grimaced at all, the attendant wondered whether he had just imagined what he had seen.

“The gift. You went to my room and Ren’s earlier, didn’t you?”

“Ah! You mean the music box Your Majesty gave him?”

“Yes.”

“Of course he must have been delighted with all his heart, since it was a gift from Your Majesty.”

Would he have?

The attendant said it as though it were obvious, but Ragniel thought that would not be the case.

Because Ren had looked at him less like the solemn king of a kingdom and more like, yes, a villain who had stolen his brother away.

“Haha.”

Laughter suddenly came out. His dry throat stung as if it were being scratched, but his mood felt considerably better.

Yes, perhaps it was good to receive a gaze like that. At least he looked at him as another person.

Ragniel finally felt as though the fog that had filled his head was clearing. 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

“He may have thrown it away.”

“How could he! He could never do something so insolent.”

Seeing the attendant’s face go red as if he had been insulted himself, Ragniel burst into louder laughter than before. Perhaps, if it was an insult given by that child, he might be able to accept it gladly. What was so special about a boy he had only just met that made him like this toward the king of an entire nation?

Ragniel asked himself.

But perhaps the answer lay somewhere deep inside, because it did not come to him. He merely recalled Ren’s voice as he chattered away while holding on to that man called Veron. That voice like the small chirping of insects ringing through the grass on a summer night.

***

“Why did he give me something like this?”

Ren frowned.

He had tucked himself into the rocking chair the old man had given him and was glaring holes into the object on the table.

“Who knows. Maybe he gave it to you because our Ren is cute?”

“Ah! Old man!! Seriously, I’m being serious right now.”

Ren snapped, then lowered his voice.

“This old man will get rid of it for you.”

Good heavens, getting rid of a gift!

Ren looked at the old apothecary as if he were looking at a lawless brute.

Ren sprang to his feet and hugged the gift he had been glaring at like an enemy just a moment ago.

Get rid of a gift!

To Ren, a “gift” was something with great meaning. He probably would not throw one away even if an enemy gave it to him.

Ah, was that roughly right? Ragniel, who had taken his brother away again and again by royal command, was, in a way, no different from Ren’s enemy.

Tch. Why give me something like this? Making me care for no reason.

Ren grumbled as he peeled off the wrapping. His hands were not as careful as they had been when he removed the wrapping from the rocking chair the old man had given him, but they were still careful enough in their own way.

As he unwrapped it, he realized the thing inside was hard.

What is it? Some kind of sculpture?

When Ren blinked and completely stripped away the wrapping around the object, the gift’s identity was finally revealed.

“......? What is this?”

Ren held it in his hands and shook it this way and that. The glitter lying along the bottom like grains of sand floated up and reflected the light. Inside the rectangular box with a ring attached, a tall young man and a short boy stood side by side, shoulders touching, looking up at the sky. Behind them was a house painted with a red roof. Beside the fenced house, a tree with golden leaves and bright yellow flowers swayed as if singing.

Some nostalgic, beautiful scene flashed through his mind. It was a sculpture that seemed to have drawn out and given shape to a scene already inside him, one he felt he had seen someday. The glitter like grains of sand that he had shaken earlier swirled and settled over the little figures. Now that he looked, they did not seem to be grains of sand......

They seemed to be snow.

When the light touched the figures, the snow crystals hidden inside revealed their shapes and then vanished as though melting.

For the first time, Ren thought that perhaps snow might be beautiful.

***

Knock, knock. Knockknockknock.

The steady knocking sound faintly woke him.

“Mmm.”

“Ren.”

Knockknockknock.

“Ren, are you awake? Are you still sleeping?”

Because he had fallen asleep after playing with the music box all night, his drowsiness would not clear, but a familiar voice dragged Ren’s consciousness upward.

Knock, knock. Knockknockknock.

“Ren. Ren, are you asleep?”

Ren let out a pained sound and tossed over. He tried moving this way and that across the wide bed to wake himself up, but the blanket only wrapped around his body.

Judging by how persistently they were knocking, it had to be something fairly important.

Get up. Get up......?

“Aaagh!”

Thud!

“Ren—! What happened....... Haah, Ren.”

Ren had been rolling around wrapped tight in the blanket until he finally plunged off the bed. The blanket was thick and the carpet was also of excellent quality, so he was not hurt, but because the bed was high and he had fallen while half asleep, he froze in shock.

Luman, who had burst in as if he were about to break down the door, sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. Then he lifted Ren up, blanket and all, and carefully set him back on the bed.

“Were your sleeping habits always this terrible?”

Luman asked as he bent one knee in front of the bed. Ren, blinking with a dazed face, stuck out his lips.

“That’s what happens when you wake up someone who’s sleeping.”

Ren said it sullenly. He was not snapping, nor had he raised his voice, but he looked displeased.

“Why are you sulking? Is it because I woke you up?”

Luman smiled and tilted his head. Staring at the eyes looking down at him as if he were absurd, he opened his mouth again.

“Ah, it must be because I haven’t been bringing you snacks lately!”

As if he had figured it out, Luman let out an affected exclamation and began explaining with a flourish of his hands.

“Ren. The truth is, I was a troublemaker, so I had a great many apology reports to write. I spent all day writing them, and that’s why I couldn’t find the time to bring you snacks.”

As if to say, Look at this, Luman showed him the blister that had formed on his middle finger. Ren stared at him without blinking once.

Feeling guilty before he was even accused, Luman eventually dropped his smile and opened his mouth.

“I’m sorry.”

“Why are you apologizing? Did I say I was actually mad because I didn’t get snacks?”

Ren grumbled at the apology that rang with a heavy weight.

Though neither of them said it aloud, both felt the uncomfortable current between them slowly begin to ease.

Ren felt as though he knew what Luman was apologizing so seriously for.