Chapter 25.5 (2/2)

“I, um, did you come out of sleep?”

Erich looked at her face and her eyes, and the watery eyes she couldn’t hide.

“Why did you get out of the room at this time?”

Hari asked him in a very natural voice.

In Erich’s head, the puzzle was slowly setting, but like her, he hid the nursery rhymes and spoke in a grave voice.

“I can’t sleep either.”

“Yeah. Would you like me to warm up the milk?”

Usually, he would say,

‘Am I a child? I deserved to have to say’

‘Just eat it because I don’t need it.’

But Erich just stared at her face without saying anything to her.

“I’m going to bed.”

He managed to say so and turned around.

“Good night, Erich.”

It wasn’t unfamiliar to hear her voice ringing from behind his back.

And when he returned to the room, Erich sat down leaning against the door. Penny came up to him and licked her hand around his knees.

He couldn’t figure out why his heart was about to shake. Even if he couldn’t figure out the door, he tried not to come out with tears in my eyes.

He feel terribly miserable and humiliating, but he doesn’t really understand the conflict of relief that comes with him.

Is it a relief that he doesn’t have to be scared by himself anymore?

The fact that he wasn’t alone during the time he was most afraid of.

Even though he was relieved, he felt indescribable shame in the fact that the person who had seen his most unwillingness to do is her.

Eventually, Erich couldn’t win his complicated mind and cried a little that night.

And after that he fell asleep as he was exhausted. He couldn’t understand himself, but strangely it wasn’t scary to fall asleep after that day.

******

“Really, I don’t know who Eugene resembles because he is too stubborn. He just have to do what the adults tell him to do, but his front and back are so tight that he resemble my brother.”

As usual, Mrs. Lenoard put Erich on her side and gossiped.

“Erich, you’re a good boy, so don’t be like your brother. Eugene, Cabel, and you have nothing to learn and see from them. You just need to do what your aunt says. Okay?”

Erich does not listen to her.

He was stroking Penny with an unfamiliar expressionless face. Probably, he made no response, no matter what Mrs. Lennon said.

‘”Aunt.”

But that day was different. Erich stared at Mrs. Lenoard eyes, as she looking at the sky.

“Stop offending my family to me.”

She seemed surprised that Erich, who seemed like a mess, first opened his mouth.

And soon she awkwardly laughed and said to the voice that flowed out from his mouth.

“Oh, Erich. What are you talking about? When did I swear to you about your family…”

“Aunt Aunt, I’m not dumb or half deaf.”

That was a few days ago, before Mrs. Lenoard left Ernst and spoke out in front of Hari and him. She had her eyes wide open when Erich say that.

No matter what she says, he was consistent only with no response, so he was not surprised at her unexpected guess that he have autism symptoms.

Erich was still staring at his aunt with an expressionless face.

“You think I’ve become a fool since I’m just listening. If my aunt curses like that, you think I’ll be brainwashed and think the same as my aunt?”

“E-Erich.”

“Or else, do you think I really don’t know why you want to be an aunt and stick to me like this?”

His quiet voice is consistently cold.

“Don’t be mistaken. No matter what my aunt does, I’m never going to like you more than my brothers.”

Mrs. Lenoard was just staring as if she had lost words to say to such Erich.

“Stop saying that to Hari, too.”

Erich stand up silently after one last comment.

“My aunt seems no more decent than her.”

***

“She cried.”

On the day Hari grabbed Cabel’s arm and tried to ask them to eat at the dining hall, Erich went to Eugene in his office and said.

Eugene seemed to have noticed who Erich had just said. With a firm face, he asked again to his younger brother.

“Cry?”

“She doesn’t want to eat alone.”

Of course, she’s not really crying for that reason.

And, in fact, even though she was crying, that was not the case. Since there wasn’t a drop of tears falling from Hari’s eyes.

But it must have been tears that hung on those purple eyes when she turned around after saying “I hate you.”

After that, neither Erich nor Cabel were not surprised and they could not move for a while.

Cabel was embarrassed and went to the right and left his room and went to Hari’s room and stood in front of it like a lost-dog.

Probably still do not know what to do, Cabel was wearing his head down in front of her door.

“I think my aunt said something.”

Erich saw the strong force of Eugene’s hands on his desk, as if pressing emotions.

“Brother, are you trying to do something?”

Erich was quick enough to think that even himself was a little evil. So he able dimly guessing that something was being prepared by Eugene.

“Sorry.”

His older brother had an apology that would not have to be with a hardened face.

“It wasn’t my intention to make you guys trying to endure something like this.”

Eugene seemed to feel a little bit of remorse for what they came up to now. Even though it was neither his fault nor his responsibility.

If he think about it later, Eugene at that time was very young.

The age of pretending to be an adult at least once, revealing a childlike stroke in front of others with a less mature body.

However, Eugene was a man who felt so infinitely large that Erich could not catch up to him.

As he got older, the feeling grew more and more rather than disappearing.

The person Erich respects and loves more than anyone else. And because of that brother….

“I can’t win…”

Erich lay on the bed and covers his face.

Penny who followed him barked under his feet, but as of now, he couldn’t care about anything else.

The girl he liked was holding his clothes in his brother’s room, with a strangely mature look.

When did it start?

But, in fact, that question had no meaning, the exact starting point of this emotion was unknown, as he was the same.

There was an unknown prey in his stinging heart. Didn’t he just act in front of Hari and Cabel?

A strange feeling.

Occasionally, it was because of the angular nature, and sometimes the words that were more than he thought popped out of his mouth and he was startled by himself.

‘I told you not to look so ugly.’

Whenever he did said that, Hari shook her tongue at him.

‘So I regret it every time.’

He was reminded of the fact that he was ashamed at the dining hall because she was asking if he hated her.

“Dummy.”

He can’t hate her. Rather, it’s the opposite, so now he think he will die.

“.. I like you.”

Erich vomited a sound he had never spit out of his mouth with his face still covered.

“I like you.”

Probably there is nothing to say aloud in front of her in the future.

He said that he would not support her because of this feeling…

Still, he was hoping for her happiness. And his happiness too.

“Come, Penny.”

“Woof!”

When he reached under the bed, the puppy still hovering around him climbed up, reaching out as if she had been waiting.

Erich hugged Penny and lowered his eyelids.

It seemed to him that Penny’s warm body temperature, which lifted in his arms, comforted him.

He wasn’t a full grown-up yet, so it would take a little longer time for him to be okay.

Erich thought that the day would be over in a hurry with his eyes closed.