I Am the Hero's Immature Younger Brother

"Young Count-!"

An urgent voice rang through the room.

The man lying on the bed slowly blinked his eyes.

"Young Count! Have you come to your senses?"

In the calmly suppressed voice, impatience that had not been fully erased was buried.

His blurred focus gradually began to settle, and he began to see the person lowering his head and looking down at him.

Had he blinked once, twice, perhaps three times?

At last, the man’s mouth opened.

"Tom......?"

"Haa...... Yes! Young Count. It is me, Tom."

When Peruan called his name, only then did Tom let out a breath with a relieved face. He had been so tense that for a moment all strength left his legs. Tom, staggering as he braced himself against the bed, breathed out again and again.

"What is the matter that you are sighing like that? The floor will cave in at this rate."

"Really, you are impossible. How is your body?"

Tom gave a small laugh and straightened his bent waist.

When Peruan tried to raise himself, Tom helped him. After even carefully placing a cushion behind his back, Tom examined Peruan’s complexion in detail.

"Hm."

Peruan quietly blinked and looked around the room.

"This is not the mansion."

"No, it is not. Do you perhaps not remember?"

"Well, I am not sure."

Peruan fiddled with the corner of his mouth.

The place he was in was a high-class inn. However, because it was “high-class” by the standards of this region, it fell far short in the eyes of a noble like him.

The place where they were was a fairly large harbor, but there were almost no shops aimed at travelers. Those high-class shops were deeper inside the harbor, while the outer side was crowded with facilities for sailors.

Because they had hurriedly moved Peruan to a place close to the harbor, the place they were staying could not help being cheap.

The room had only a few rough decorations, and was extremely simple.

The only thing worth looking at was the blue sea visible through the window above the bed.

Outside, everything was submerged in blue, and people were already swarming.

As fishing boats docked at the harbor, sailors got off the ships carrying wooden boxes stacked in layers.

He could see the crowns of people’s heads filing one after another under the tents.

Looking down at the noisy morning, Peruan smiled loosely.

"The morning at the harbor comes early."

"Young Count......?"

"Hm?"

Tom’s voice as he called him trembled very much.

Peruan turned to look at him with a puzzled face.

"That."

Tom rummaged awkwardly through his chest, then took out a handkerchief.

"Tom."

Peruan called him with a very serious face.

"Yes?"

Tom, who had been about to hand him the handkerchief, froze with his hand extended.

"Do you perhaps like me?"

"Yes?"

"I will gratefully accept only your feelings."

Peruan curved his eyebrows downward in apology and made a sorry expression. A clear refusal spilled from his mouth, saying he had no desire to receive a handkerchief from a man, and even less desire if it was something already used.

Without realizing it, Tom let out a "Hah!" At his insolent aide’s behavior, Peruan twitched one eyebrow.

"Young. Count. I also like women."

"Then why are you holding out a handkerchief, and one that looks used at that?"

"Because you are shedding tears, Lord Peruan!"

Tom shouted with a sour face.

"......So I am."

"Why are you suddenly crying?"

Lowering his voice, which had risen without him realizing it, Tom asked worriedly.

These past few days, he had thought his young master seemed strange, and yesterday, he had suddenly fainted. Then, after sleeping through an entire day, he had only regained consciousness this morning.

Perhaps he had cried even in his sleep, because Peruan’s face was wet and swollen.

"The reason I am crying."

Only after touching his damp cheek did Peruan accept Tom’s handkerchief. Pressing the tear-wet cheek with the handkerchief, he turned his head toward the window.

"That is."

Tom gulped. Surely he had not caused some accident? He had never seen Peruan’s face crying like that. To begin with, Peruan was someone who hid many things inside his smile. He had never seen him expose his emotions so nakedly.......

Tom paused.

Now that he thought about it, there had been.

When was it...... Ah, in front of a certain boy. What was his name again?

When they had received their mission, when Peruan had given him the alias John, and when he had run around the underground air-raid shelter being called by a name so common it was everywhere.

For an instant, a blond-haired boy flashed into Tom’s mind.

"It is a secret."

Peruan turned his head with a mysterious smile.

It was a strange feeling.

Tom looked at Peruan’s back with his mouth closed, then threw his gaze toward the window Peruan was watching.

The sun was rising, pushing away the blue dawn.

He looked at the light spreading like water mist.

He had never forgotten, and yet for some reason, it felt as though he had forgotten for a very long time.

Ren.

That boy.

In Tom’s memory, he remembered him only as a somewhat special boy, and as the boy to whom his young master had confessed love for the first time. That was all. There had been no other reason to think of that boy, nor any need to remember him, so his everyday life had been busy with handling work.

Now that he thought about it, had the things Peruan instructed him to do, and the business trips they took together, not also been related to Ren?

No, he had never forgotten.

Why was he ruminating on it as if he had forgotten?

Tom pushed his own thoughts away. It was not a matter he needed to brood over.

What mattered was the recovery of the master he served.

"The sun is rising."

It was quite a beautiful sight.

The light that soaked the sea, colored the clouds, and stroked the earth.

The purple hair, too, was dyed reddish by the sunlight pouring fully into the room.

Tom murmured to himself without realizing it. Toward Peruan, who gave no answer, he added that after breakfast was over, he would bring a physician.

Peruan’s face was reflected faintly in the cheap glass.

He was still shedding tears.

The sound of the door closing behind him came.

Tom said something and left, but it did not reach Peruan’s ears.

Perhaps Tom, too, was feeling that something was strange.

Otherwise, there was no way he would have left so quickly, leaving him when he had not come to his senses.

"Why......."

Peruan was blaming himself.

"Why could I not hold on to you?"

He was recalling the situation just before he had fainted.

At the harbor where the midday sun hotly heated the ground, and the sound of people’s voices went on noisily.

Sailors rapidly loading goods, nobles in splendid attire leisurely driving their servants along, and ordinary passengers hurrying their steps between them.

Among them, he saw Ren.

"......."

Ren, who was said to have left the royal castle.

***

Peruan heard that news on the day he held the twenty-seventh certificate concerning purity in his hand.

In order to make a pure courtship before Ren, without one inch of shame, Peruan had been going around to the women whose names had become entangled with his own.

However, in truth, half of it had been an escape.

It was not that there was falsehood in that resolve, but Peruan...... the time during which he could not meet Ren was far too painful.

After cleanly handling the matter of the slave caravan, he had tried to enter the capital for the cleanup, but what came back was refusal. The only answer returned was that the rest was a matter requiring top-level security, not something the son of a count’s house should touch. When they entrusted him with the work, they had gone on about “young count,” and now it was the “son” of a count’s house.

It was laughable, but there was nothing he could do.

Barely through his father, he left a few words of request for Ren and picked up small bits of news.

Meeting him at Duke Gannion’s funeral, and parting from him in the garden, was the last time he had seen Ren.

The memory of that final day sometimes gouged into Peruan’s chest.

The kingdom’s Hero, who had asked them to leave the place so he could speak with Ren.

However, Peruan and Coco did not take their eyes off Ren. They poured all their nerves toward the place where they were.

And sure enough.

Perhaps they were having an unpleasant conversation, because Ren’s expression grew darker and darker...... then he curled his body and gasped for breath.

Peruan immediately ran toward him. The sight of Ren finally collapsing formed deep in his retinas.

A long hand snatched the hand he stretched out toward Ren.

Cold, unmoving eyes stared coolly at Peruan.

Giselle, who had twisted and seized the wrist of Peruan, a sword user, with a gesture that did not seem to take even a bit of strength.

"What have you done? No matter how much you are the king’s Hero, you cannot treat that boy carelessly...!"

The wrist he had been caught by did not come free, and only Peruan’s hand, with no blood flowing through it, bleached white. Giselle did not say a single word.

"Why is he like that......! Ren--!"

Coco, who belatedly screamed and ran over, too.

"I will take him. Give Ren to me."

He had ignored even Peruan’s words that he would take him away, and the moment he opened his mouth was after receiving a whole lot of hostile gazes.

"He, too, has a duty. He cannot remain a child forever. If he has received a summons from the royal castle, then answering it is the duty of a citizen of the kingdom."

Giselle was not speaking while looking at Peruan. His gaze was aimed not at Ren in his arms, nor at Coco surrounding them, but at Kirky the priest, standing a little way off.

Surprisingly, that was a gaze seeking understanding,

and it was a look in which a conviction that would never retreat was embedded.

What was that understanding and conviction?

Without even a gap to ask, he left in a prepared carriage, and Peruan had no choice but to return.

Had it been a perfect escape?

He recalled Tom’s face as he had looked at him worriedly when he was joyfully collecting certificates proving his purity.

He, too, must have guessed but said nothing.

The moment Giselle mentioned the duty of a citizen of the kingdom and took Ren away.

The days after that, when he received no replies.

He wanted to steal Ren away, even if he had to do it by force.

However, Peruan did not carry out the plan. No, he did not. He could not. It was impossible. Because he, who had watched Ren all this time, knew.

That before Giselle’s words, which dragged in the kingdom, Ren would consent.

And that Peruan, too, was not free beneath the name of “kingdom.”

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