“Dewey. Didn’t I tell you that you don’t have to face everything by yourself? You can rely on me,” she said, stroking my back. “If you feel like crying, you shouldn’t hold back. It will make you feel a bit better,” she continued, and as if on command, tears started flowing out of my eyes.
I was torn between the embarrassment of being seen crying and the warm comfort of the first gentle hug I could ever remember receiving.
After crying for a while, I did feel a bit better, just as Maria had assured me. The more I calmed down, however, the more the awkwardness set in. In particular, my face was pushing against something very soft, which could only be…
No, don’t think of that. I absolutely cannot think of that.
But the more I tried to ignore that fact, the more I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
“I-I’m fine now. Please let me go,” I insisted, now at my limit, and I was relieved from her breast—I mean embrace.
I could only imagine how red my face was at that moment, but at least my heart felt a little lighter.
“You do seem fine now,” Maria told me with a smile.
“Yes…”
The girl I love comforted me while I was crying… Should I be happy about this? Should I just be embarrassed?
“So, since you are fine now, I have a proposal to make. Would you like to hear it?” She stared at me with her clear blue eyes, making my face feel even hotter.
“O-Of course…”
“Won’t you try to speak with your brother again?”
“What?!” I yelped, completely taken by surprise. I had assumed that Maria, in her kindness, would suggest keeping my distance from someone who clearly wanted nothing to do with me.
“B-But he told me to never come back, because I abandoned my family…”
“That is my point,” she answered, gesturing with her index finger. “You didn’t abandon them. You were sending them money, and today you rushed here as soon as you read that letter.”
“I never came back here before today though…”
“It’s barely been half a year since you left. You’ve just started your new job, so I’m sure you’ve been busy catching up with work even on your days off.”
“That’s true, yes, but…” I knew that, had I really wished to do it, I could have found the time to go back home. I chose not to.
“And most of all, you don’t even know why your brother told you those things.”
“That’s just because I left him and all my other siblings…”
“But you didn’t! You can’t be sure of how he feels, since you’ve never talked about it. You’re just making assumptions. Someone,” she said with a giggle, “once told me this: you can’t tell what people think, even if they’re very close to you. Even if they’re family. So you need to talk to them to be sure.”
I could tell that she was trying to do an impression of Katarina, and I couldn’t help but giggle as well.
However, she was right. Even when we lived together, Ronnie and I were both so busy that we never had much time to talk to each other. He was a grumpy guy, but he always looked out for his siblings—I didn’t know why he’d say something like what he did.
I must not run away, I thought, but I couldn’t work up the courage to step forward either.
“I’ll come with you,” Maria then declared, and I immediately started walking back to the house, with the world’s most wonderful woman by my side.
★★★★★★
“Hmmm… I don’t think I’ve made any wrong turns…”
I’d been following Dewey’s sister’s directions to Ronnie’s workplace, but I didn’t seem to be getting anywhere, and I started feeling anxious. There was a lot of greenery around me, but not a single soul that I could ask for information.
I wasn’t that bad at following directions…but I didn’t have a compass built into my head either. Furthermore, I didn’t really know this town except for the area around Maria’s house. I’d never been near Ronnie’s workplace before, and it honestly surprised me to even find a path in what was basically a forest.
“I thought it’d be close by, since he went there on foot…”
And his legs were injured too… It’s sad to think he had to walk on this bumpy path full of rocks.
I kept stumbling my way along the path until I saw Ronnie’s back in the distance.
So I didn’t get lost!
He was walking relatively slowly, probably because of his hurt leg, so catching up with him wasn’t so hard. “Ronnie!” I called when I was close enough.
“H-Huh? Why are you here?”
“I wanted to talk with you a bit more,” I answered, and he looked at me suspiciously.
“Why should I talk with you? And I don’t have time anyway. I’m going to work.”
“But I heard from your sister that your job involves strenuous manual labor. How are you going to work, hurt like that?”
“Tsk, always running her mouth…” he grumbled, clearly displeased. “I know, but I have to go and see if there’s something I can do. If I don’t make money, all the little ones are going to starve.”
“So you’re not even sure you’ll be working at all? Then it’d be better to rest for the day, or your injuries won’t get any better. If you need to report that you’ll be taking the day off, I can deliver the message for you.”
“Were you even listening to me? I’m paid by the day, and I need to work. I can’t just take a day off like that.”
“But if you go and hurt yourself even more, you won’t be able to work at all. If you need money now, just ask Dewey. He’d be happy to know he can help.”
“Dewey left us. He’s not one of us anymore,” he replied dryly, furrowing his brow.
“He was very worried about all of you while coming here, you know?”
“That guy…” he muttered, and I caught a glimpse of sadness in his eyes.
“You really care a lot about your brother, don’t you?” I asked Ronnie, whose face immediately turned sour.
“Huh?! What are you talking about?! I just said that he isn’t one of us anymore!”
“So you said, but doesn’t that just mean that you don’t want him to worry about the rest of you and enjoy his own life?” I countered, feeling that this was the true meaning behind his harsh words.
“How’d you come up with that idea?!”
“By looking at you back there and here now. It’s obvious that he’s important to you,” I declared, confidently staring at him.
Ronnie started awkwardly scratching his head. “Did Dewey say that?”
“Nope. It’s just what I think. Dewey thought that you hated him, and he was quite shocked because of that,” I replied, and Ronnie gave me a look that was half relief and half sorrow.
“Let him think that then. Don’t tell him about what you just told me.”
“But why? He was really hurt when he heard those words coming from one of his beloved siblings. You should stop being so embarrassed about it and just tell him the truth.”
“I’m not embarrassed about anything!”
“You aren’t?”
Huh, I thought that was the issue. Ronnie does look like the type who has trouble admitting his own feelings.
“Of course not! I just don’t wanna weigh him down…”
“How so…?”
“You saw that scum we call ‘father.’ While we’re working our butts off, he steals all the money he can from us, gets drunk, and beats us. And our mother isn’t much better either. That’s why we have to live in that tiny shack that’s gonna fall apart any day now. I’ve never been to school, so I can’t hope to get any decent job, since I can’t read. And all the others who left before Dewey were the same. He was the only one who made it. He got into the Ministry… Having to care for a family like this is only gonna be a hassle for him.”
“That’s not…”
Before I could say true, Ronnie added one more thing.
“He’s our pride,” he said, looking calm and satisfied as he did so. “He’s always been smart, you know. He even learned how to read all on his own. When he told me he wanted to go to school, I knew that was the right thing for him. He’d go to school and then come back home to work. I know how hard he was working, trust me. And then, what do you know, he was even smarter than all the other kids there, and he got to skip grades. Oh, I was so happy when I heard of that. Then he got recommended by the school to take the Ministry’s exam, and he managed to pass it without a problem. I’m so proud… No, we’re all so proud of having him as our brother.”
Ronnie’s recounting of his brother’s achievements was a happy and loving one. He clearly wasn’t lying about being proud of Dewey.
“That’s why I don’t wanna weigh him down. I want him to forget about scum like us and live his best life.” He smiled sadly.
“Ronnie… Neither you nor your siblings are scum.”
“I can’t read and I can’t do calculations with numbers. I’m a piece of useless scum, just like my father.”
“Your father may be scum, but that doesn’t apply to you. Of course, being literate and numerate is very useful, I will give you that, but those skills don’t make you any worse or better of a person. If anything, I think very highly of you for the way you take care of your younger siblings.”
Despite the beating he had received, he was still determined to go to work to feed his family. Despite how this could make Dewey hate him, he wanted his little brother to be happy and free. That was the opposite of scum.
Ronnie was staring at me, surprised. Perhaps, just like Raphael had theorized, both Dewey and Ronnie had been put down by someone for all their lives—their father, obviously—and ended up losing all of their self-confidence.
“I-I…” Ronnie finally started talking, but someone’s jarringly brisk voice interrupted him.
“There she is!” the voice cried. I turned around and saw a cloaked woman running out of the woods toward us with a grin on her face. She was the very woman Liam and I had met near the orphanage. Larna had told me her name…
“Sarah?” I wondered, and she seemed surprised.
“How do you know that name?” she asked me.
“Someone told me, obviously. More importantly, what do you want?” I fired back, wary of her, and she started laughing.
“I’ve come to bully you a little bit.”
“Huh?!” I uttered, confused by that nonsensical answer. “Why in the world would you do that? We barely even know each other, and this is the longest we’ve ever talked!”
“Yes,” she agreed after thinking about it for a while, “that’s true. But, you see, I’ve been feeling all weird up here because of you recently,” she continued, placing a hand on her chest.
For the first time, her expression didn’t look fake. Her face right now reminded me of a child who could start crying any moment now. I felt kind of sorry for her, and I reached out my hand to her.
“And so, I’ll bully you a bit to make up for it,” she concluded, going back to her fake-looking grin as she raised and then quickly lowered her arms. When she did this, a huge black snake appeared out of nowhere.
Wow! That looks even more realistic than the snakes I make! I thought, failing to understand the gravity of the situation.
“Watch out!” Ronnie shouted, jumping in front of me to shield me from the snake, which hit him straight in the arm.
“Hng!” he cried out in pain.
“Are you okay?!” I asked, trying to determine if he had been hurt.
“It’s nothing. But don’t just stand there like an idiot! And what’s that girl’s deal?!” he shouted, but, from the way he was holding his arm and the pained expression on his face, I could tell that it had definitely not been nothing.
He jumped to protect me even though he barely knows me… He really is a good guy!
“I’m sorry. She’s…an acquaintance…of sorts, but I guess she hates me for some reason. Anyway, show me your arm.”
The spot where the snake had hit him had turned into a large black bruise.
“What’s this now?!” he yelled, scared by the unnatural blotch on his skin.
This isn’t a normal bruise. It was Dark Magic, just as I suspected… That girl really knows her way around nasty spells, that’s for sure. It’s just like that time when she sealed us into that pitch black space… I thought, the main difference being that, unlike the previous time, I had absolutely no idea what to do.
“Awww, I missed,” Sarah muttered with a clearly fake frown. I feared that she was not going to leave it at that, however.