The Hero’s Brother Is Bound To Be Depressed

237 – Silent Murder

Thanks to my hard work, I was able to barely catch Kane, who was trying to enter the portal. In order to have a smooth interview with her, I headed to the cafe inside the portal station.

I deliberately found a cafe with few customers and sat at a table in a corner hidden by a partition.

The inside of the store was quiet with soft music playing. The owner of the cafe was a man whose expression never changed, so it seemed like the perfect place to have a serious conversation.

“Do you have anything to say to me?”

I asked bluntly, looking over the menu. Kane had no answer. So she ordered two cups of milk coffee on her own and returned to her seat.

“I thought we were friends.”

The voice might have been a little cold. But compared to the sense of betrayal I felt, this was nothing. I asked, shaking my head in disappointment.

“Is it really just me who thought that?”

Kane smiled bitterly and shook his head slightly.

“I’m glad I became friends with you too.”

With those words, Kane closed his mouth again. There was silence for a moment. He returned to the table carrying a tray containing two cups of the milk coffee he had ordered.

We drank coffee without saying a word to each other. I thought about speaking up first, but decided not to rush him and give him time to organize his thoughts.

Kane finally seemed to have finished thinking and broke the silence.

“… “How did you know?”

“How could you not know? “I’m the manager.”

“I see.”

Seeing Kane smiling bitterly, I leaned back in my chair. Where should I start talking? After thinking for a moment, I opened my mouth.

“When I sent you guys off and returned to the club room, I felt a sense of déjà vu. I remembered the time when I returned from sending you away during summer vacation. “Thanks to you, I was able to feel that something had changed in the club room.”

Kane raised his glass without saying a word. I continued my explanation.

“I realized what had changed as I looked around the club room. “The alchemy table, which was always a mess, was now neatly organized without any traces of use.”

You might think it’s simply a matter of cleaning up a messy table for the winter vacation. However, if it is the behavior that Kane showed during summer vacation, there is a special reason for his behavior of cleaning up the alchemy table.

“You didn’t clean up the alchemy table during summer vacation. Since only you will use it anyway, you probably thought there was no need for it. “He was planning on using it as is when he came back, so he told me there was no need to clean it up.”

Kane was speechless. I glanced at his expression and continued speaking.

“But this time, unlike summer vacation, I cleaned up the alchemy table. why? Because you weren’t planning on coming back to the academy. “Am I wrong?”

I looked straight at Kane. Kane smiled bitterly and nodded her head. Kane’s sickly appearance felt even more pitiful today.

“… That’s right, that’s why I organized it. Because I can’t just leave the cleaning up to you. After all, he is the manager. “You can barely read my thoughts with that.”

Even with Kane’s praise, I didn’t relax my eyes.

“If you thought of us that way, why didn’t you tell us? “Please help me.”

“… “Because I didn’t want to cause you any more trouble.”

Kane smiled as he said that. It was a very tired, gloomy smile. It seemed like Kane had no intention of explaining the reason. After drinking coffee, I looked at the suitcase and asked.

“The root of Calicum. “You have it, right?”

Kane, who noticed that my gaze was focused on the carrier, smiled and said.

“… “How did you know that?”

It was Cane who stole the roots of Calicum. As Navier said, it is impossible to climb the exterior wall and break in through the window. In that case, you should use the hallway of the central staircase on the 5th floor, but the thief who robbed the pension department warehouse did not use the hallway of the stairs. It is literally no different from the work of a ghost.

But I knew how. How to open the warehouse without leaving any trace, without using the 5th floor staircase hallway.

It’s such a simple method that it’s embarrassing to even call it a trick. Just by moving the closet in the club room, you can move to the secret passage on the 5th floor. That way, there is no need to use the central staircase.

There we had our club badges given to us by Principal Nelson. Wearing the badge allows you to enter and exit anywhere in the school. If you had a badge, you could have entered the pension department warehouse alone, which you must enter with the professor in charge.

At first, I was skeptical. He wondered if there was a club member who would use the closet in the club room and use his badge to steal poisonous plants from the warehouse. But he could tell by looking at the organized alchemy table. Kane erased his traces left in the club room. I haven’t checked, but Kane’s room is probably neatly organized as well.

Because Kane had no intention of returning to the Academy. I held back my anger and asked in a low voice.

“The reason I had no intention of returning to the academy was… Because she was thinking about killing herself?”

At my question, Kane lowered his head with sad eyes.

“… “Now I understand why Rakar always says the manager is amazing.”

“Answer me without talking nonsense. “Did you really mean to do that?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

Kane’s voice contained a low laugh. Without realizing it, she clenched her fist and glared at Kane.

“But I didn’t intend to die alone.”

I opened my eyes wide at the subsequent remark.

“I planned to die with everyone in the Youssef family.”

Kane said that with a determined look on his face. I knew that Kane’s family situation, as a b*stard, was complicated. But I don’t know the details.

I had a conversation with Kane at Bold Snow Mountain. She didn’t think Kane wanted to talk about her family, so she didn’t ask, but now she had no choice but to ask.

“It was like that last time. I must go back to my family in the winter… “Have you been planning it since then?”

Kane smiled and shook his head.

“maybe… “It will happen.”

I frowned at the ambiguous answer.

“Speak clearly.”

“I thought about it for a long time until today. Because I really enjoyed being with you guys. So, like always, I was about to give up on my plan… But now the situation has become unavoidable.”

I have no idea what kind of situation Kane is facing. Maybe I wasn’t interested in Kane at all. Because she didn’t know that Kane was falling apart even though she was next to him. I’m so angry at my indifference.

Was the goal of protecting precious people just words? The facade of being a precious friend ultimately failed to help Kane.

I wiped my face with one hand and asked, trying to control my emotions by emptying the coffee in my cup.

“Can I ask why you thought that?”

Kane smiled slightly at my cautious question.

“If you promise not to stop me from leaving after the explanation is over… “I will tell you about my past that I have never told anyone.”

I had the feeling that if I refused the offer here, I would never be able to hear the truth from Kane’s mouth. She forcibly removed her carrier, and even if she locked her in her club room, Kane would silence her forever.

I thought for a moment and said.

“I promise.”

In response to my answer, Kane looked at the ceiling of the cafe for a moment. After silence, a long sigh flowed from his mouth.

“Do you remember that I am the youngest and b*stard of the Youssef family?”

Kane’s gaze came down from the ceiling to me. Of course I remember. She had heard from Kane that his name was Kane van Youssef, that he was the youngest and eldest of her seven siblings, and that she was the only one in her family who practiced alchemy.

When I nodded, Kane rubbed his eyebrows and said.

“Being a b*stard is evidence of adultery that comes to life before your eyes. He is someone who is not loved by anyone in his family. Even to my father, I am a shameful being who wants to be hidden. “I have been a negative being since I was born.”

I felt a strange sense of kinship with Kane’s words. It was proof that both were born from lies.

Kane continued speaking with a bitter smile.

“But there was a mother who was the only one who cared for me and loved me. “Ever since I was young, I lived with her mother in the family’s small outbuilding.”

Kane, who was smiling softly as if recalling the past, suddenly asked a question without context.

“Ross, do you know what happens when you become nothing to anyone?”

I didn’t understand the meaning of the question. When she gently shook her head, Kane patted her thigh and spoke in a calm voice.

“You will die while still alive.”

“… .”

“The first moment I remember was a family gathering. It was my first time seeing such a huge cake and a mountain of delicious food. It was bound to remain vivid in my child’s memory. When I was happy sitting next to my mother eating cake, I felt strange. No one is looking at me or her mother. “It’s like I’m an invisible person.”

Kane was seen biting his lip. Without saying anything, I waited for Kane to continue speaking.

“I realized it after I grew up a bit. The people in the family completely treat my mother and son as if we don’t exist. Even though we are having a good conversation, when my mother starts talking, everyone stops talking and pretends not to hear anything. They’re intentionally making me feel embarrassed by being silent. And then they talk among themselves again. Thoroughly, as if I hadn’t heard anything.

No matter what their mother said, it was a voice they couldn’t hear. My mother tried her best to join in on the conversation, to the extent that even in my young eyes, I felt sorry for her. I was very ashamed of my mother like that. Why is she so desperate even though she is being ignored like that? “She didn’t understand.”

Kane’s lips trembled. Kane, who had been stroking his lips for a moment with his eyes red and bloodshot, was looking at me, but his gaze was not directed at me.

“When I got a certain age, we had to move out. Even though he was a b*stard, he had to receive basic education. We were forced to eat together every day where our families gathered. My mother, who became invisible, slowly withered and died amid people’s indifference.

I couldn’t talk to anyone except myself, and I spent most of my time locked in my room, lying helplessly in bed. No one came to visit us. Didn’t even talk to me. Because we were living corpses. A corpse that cannot communicate with anyone. Even the servants treated us as invisible people.

Through the book, I learned why we are treated like that. Because it was the result of a woman who had an affair with the head of the family. It was taken for granted. To them, it would have been something we wanted to deny. Without contempt or even contempt… “That kind of being.”

Kane wiped away the tears that fell. Kane burst into laughter, tightly grasping his tear-stained hand.

“Over the years, my mother’s emotions gradually dried up. Her voice, which used to tell me she loved me every day, eventually lost its vitality, and her body collapsed to the point where she could no longer walk. Her mental illness eventually ate away at her mother’s body. “I watched it all from a young age.”

Kane raised the corner of his mouth. The act was clearly called a smile, but to me it felt like a silent scream.

“I couldn’t even ask someone to help me, so I just watched my mother die quietly.”

Kane, who said that, smiled faintly while holding back tears.