I Am the Hero's Immature Younger Brother

Verdi stared into the boy’s eyes.

“.......”

He parted his lips as though to say something, but no words came out, and he had no choice but to close them again.

Without realizing it, Verdi tugged down the sleeve over his left arm. It was the sleeve stained with dark reddish-brown marks.

“Your memories—”

The rest of the sentence—Are returning?—was swallowed back down his throat.

Because there was no way the ritual could have failed.

Those who underwent the special rite and then remained within the Forest of Aked for over a month without taking a single life were granted the right to be “forgotten” by the world.

It was magic spread across the entire kingdom, and at the same time, an enormous ritual.

The moment the rite was completed, it became something humanity could never overturn. A colossal ceremony that had continued for hundreds of years and would continue for hundreds more.

And yet, some memories remained in the body.

The instant he saw the sharply gleaming blade, the boy understood instinctively.

There had once been a moment when the tip of that sword had been aimed at his throat.

Looking at Verdi’s utterly unmoving expression, the boy realized it.

Verdi, who had been silently staring at him, let out a quiet laugh. It did not suit the situation at all, yet for some reason, he found it difficult to suppress his amusement.

“So you really are a star in the end. Something special can never stay hidden.”

Loneliness passed over Verdi’s face.

“A star?”

“There are seven stars in the kingdom, each with a different purpose. All of them work for this land.”

Though it seems a few abandoned that purpose and let their hearts become attached to a single person instead.

The final words were murmured almost under his breath. Verdi looked at the boy with gentle eyes.

“Then do I also have to work for this land?”

“......You already are.”

Verdi answered shortly.

The boy nodded. Golden hair swayed softly. Those fearless, lucid eyes stared straight at Verdi.

“So my death will help the kingdom.”

The boy slowly closed his eyes. His green eyes disappeared from sight.

“......Hey.”

“Yes.”

“That’s all?”

“What is?”

“Aren’t you going to ask more? Why you have to die. Aren’t you upset? Doesn’t it feel unfair?”

The boy’s attitude was detached. As though he had already finished preparing himself for death long ago.

Yes. He had been like this in the forest too.

Even after seeing Verdi’s sword pointed at him, he had never once tried to avoid it. Instead, he had simply opened his eyes clearly, as though calmly accepting his own end. And when Verdi saw those shining eyes, bright as falling stars, he ultimately failed.

The softened blade never reached the boy.

Instead, Verdi alone had been wounded.

“I don’t know.”

Lying on the bed with his eyes closed, the boy answered quietly.

“I know something inside me changed. And I think it’s probably something I can never get back.”

What had that longing been when he looked at the sea?

Who had that young man with the violet eyes been?

“It feels like no matter what happens, everything will be fine.”

“What does that even mean?”

Verdi frowned. The hand gripping the sword had long since lost its strength.

“Are you giving up? Just that easily? Without even thinking about the people who’d grieve because of you?”

He knew how ridiculous it sounded coming from someone who had arrived to kill him. But Verdi was angry. It was not that he wanted the boy to cry and scream desperately to live.

But the sight of him giving up so easily was unbearable.

Verdi felt as though his chest were burning.

Had he really grown attached during the short time they spent together in the royal palace?

‘Ragniel suffers while doubting your loyalty.’

Giselle’s warning resurfaced in his mind. Verdi tightened his grip on the sword once more.

“Fine. Maybe an easy surrender really is better.”

Verdi raised the sword again, but then the boy spoke.

“No. It’s not surrender.”

“Are you just rationalizing it?”

“It’s not like that.”

“.......”

The boy opened his eyes.

He looked at Verdi, who stood frozen like a statue.

Inside the darkened cabin, Verdi’s face remained clear even within the shadows.

“I think I made up my mind a long time ago. Maybe I even expected something like this.”

They were words Verdi could not understand. His brow twitched.

How could someone who had lived an ordinary life possibly expect a death like this? He was far too young to be imagining death.

Following that thought, Verdi suddenly remembered that the boy before him was not even an adult yet.

A chilling sensation swept through his chest.

It was something separate from guilt.

“I think I’ll be okay. It feels like I already did everything I wanted to do.”

The boy blinked slowly. Beneath thick lashes, his eyes drifted across the cabin floor before returning to Verdi. The gently curving shape of his eyes carried a smile that truly seemed to say he was fine.

Verdi realized the boy meant every word.

This was not pretense, despair, or resignation.

It was the attitude of someone who had already accepted and understood everything.

“If it’s fate, then I want to accept it willingly.”

Yes. If it was fate.

The boy recalled the journey that had brought him all the way to the harbor. His memories began in a dense forest.

No, from a forest growing distant.

He remembered staring blankly at it from inside a carriage. And every memory afterward consisted of people who had treated him with care.

Throughout the entire journey here, the boy had never once been troubled or mistreated. He had been cherished.

Perhaps all of it had been for this very moment.

The boy accepted it quickly.

Maybe every strange thing had existed for the sake of this moment.

So that this man could take his final breath.

Perhaps something would only be completed through his death.

The rolling seawater and shimmering blue light seemed to waver before his eyes.

A low, warm voice—one he could no longer remember—seemed to ripple through his chest.

Though he could not remember it, the boy knew.

Some warm memory—his warmest memory—still remained inside him.

Because of that, he was not lonely.

Because of that, he could leave this place calmly.

And the man before him probably did not have much time left to give him.

So this moment would likely be his final chance to speak.

“Please tell them it’ll all be okay.”

“.......”

As though he had finally spoken words he had long wished to say, his chest suddenly felt lighter. A faint smile rested at the corner of the boy’s lips.

“Tell them everything will be okay. That I’ll be okay after leaving, and that the people left behind will be okay too. Tell them someday they won’t hurt anymore. And if there’s anyone grieving for me, please tell them that.”

The boy’s memories had been thoroughly washed clean beneath the massive ritual and magic, but it seemed they had failed to scrape away everything left within his heart.

Why did a voice without even a trace of tears sound so unbearably sad?

The light trapped inside the orb swayed violently and spilled from beneath Verdi’s collar.

The boy quietly watched the semicircular glow spreading across the floor and ceiling. Suddenly, he found himself wanting to see a bonfire and blazing flames. Then he lifted his gaze toward Verdi’s face, hidden in the backlight.

“You can at least do that for me, right?”

It seemed he would not look away until he received an answer.

Even the object hidden within Verdi’s coat began shining more intensely, as though urging him to respond.

Once the light inside the orb vanished, Verdi too would completely lose all memory of the boy.

Not only him. Every human living upon this land would lose him from their memories.

Perfectly. Completely.

Without even a single trace of his name remaining.

Unable to be remembered or missed by anyone, he would scatter into nothingness, less than dust.

Buried beneath the enormous magic circle and cast down beneath countless rituals, even the one who had given the order would forget everything.

“Fine.”

There was no way of knowing whether anyone would remember the words that everything would be okay.

Could people grieve for someone they no longer remembered?

“I’ll do it.”

But Verdi resolved that at the very least, he would fulfill the boy’s final wish.

The boy would understand.

This loyalty that moved for the sake of what one believed was right.

That some convictions stood above any morality.

Just as the boy calmly accepted a death his family never could.

Then staining his own hands with the boy’s blood belonged to the same truth.

Verdi too was merely accepting something he never wanted, as though it were fate.

Verdi, who had remained motionless until now, finally moved.

The cold blade resonated with his aura and let out a chilling cry. The air trembled and tightened from every direction.

Time broke apart into slow-moving seconds.

While everything else held its breath in silence, every detail became unbearably vivid—the faint sound of the boy’s breathing, the teal eyes touched with pale golden light, the softness of flesh at the sword’s tip and the hot blood flowing beneath it, the widening pupils, the fist clenched tight to endure pain, the pale fingertips, the halted breath.

Before he could drive the sword in any deeper, Verdi could no longer endure it and committed a taboo.

A name that should never again be spoken.

A name buried beneath the ritual.

He spoke it aloud.

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