Chapter 36

Strike him. That single phrase raced through Garmon’s mind. A surging rage drove his body to fight, making him forget his exhaustion and pain. He didn’t feel a shred of hesitation about striking the precious brother he had believed in so deeply until yesterday.

No—perhaps he was this furious precisely because they were family.

The person he trusted most had trampled upon his dream and his knightly pride, which was more precious to him than life itself. To Garmon, it was an unbearable betrayal, as if his entire existence had been denied.

‘Why? How could you, of all people, be the one to reject me? Why?! Why?!’

Blinded by fury, Garmon drove a heavy blow into his younger brother’s head, knocking him down.

But in the next instant, a powerful impact rocked Garmon’s jaw. He stumbled back, his mind momentarily blank.

Nagi bared his teeth and roared, seizing the opening.

“Uraaaaaah!!”

“Guh—?!”

Nagi’s fist buried itself in Garmon’s right cheek, slamming him into the dirt.

Only then did Garmon finally realize the situation he was in.

He had been lured into a counter-attack when he swung that big, reckless punch. That was why he’d faltered, allowing Nagi to land a clean hit.

‘Damn it, how pathetic of me!’

Garmon excelled with a spear, but he had almost no experience in a fistfight outside of his childhood. He’d learned the basics in training, but since he never had a reason to use them, his skills had completely rusted away. Back then, Garmon’s superior physique ensured his victory, but Nagi had grown enough to be considered a man in his own right. If he was in the militia, he likely had his fair share of rough scuffles.

‘Was I… looking down on him without even realizing it? Down on Nagi?’

He might win with a spear, but in a brawl, the advantage lay with his brother.

Garmon gritted his teeth, stung by the blunder of his own conceit—the belief that there was still nothing he could lose to his brother in.

Before he knew it, the younger brother he had stopped truly looking at was now glaring down at him.

“I don’t care about your Orc Extermination or whatever! This is the difference between us! You acted all high and mighty, bossing me around and never really looking at me, but your little brother caught up to you a long time ago!!”

However, Garmon’s rage was not so cheap that it would subside after a single counter-attack.

“So… what of it?! There’s no way I’m losing to a monster who’s fallen as low as you!!”

The impact of the punch brought on a wave of headache and nausea, but his anger painted over it all. He couldn’t think of anything beyond hitting Nagi. He couldn’t forgive this selfish younger brother who had rejected him and his dreams.

“You’re the one who’s a monster!!”

“Nothing you say makes any sense!!”

Intending to deny everything his brother stood for, Garmon struck Nagi. Denying his older brother in turn, Nagi struck Garmon back. After that, it was a brawl fueled by stamina and muscle, devoid of technique or a single shred of reason.

With the blood rushing to their heads, neither bothered to guard. They swung at faces, stomachs, arms—anywhere they could reach. Even as blood dripped from their mouths and their vision narrowed behind swelling eyes, they kept swinging. Hitting, being hit, falling, and rising again, two grown men raged like fools.

Eventually, as exhaustion and pain tore them down, the true feelings they had kept locked away began to spill out along with their fists. Garmon was frustrated and miserable that his brother wouldn’t stay down and that he couldn’t finish it. Once the emotions started overflowing, they couldn’t be stopped.

“When I brought you gifts, you said you didn’t like them! When I gave you my first paycheck, you threw it away, saying you didn’t want it! Do you have any idea how I felt when I—guh!?”

“You just kept sending money and things, thinking I’d shut up and be a good boy since you were indulging my selfishness! Don’t screw with me!! You’re acting just like Dad and Mom, and it pisses me off that you’ve become exactly like the two people you hated most!!”

A headbutt followed by a liver blow. Blood mixed with the saliva Nagi spat out.

Even so, the shouts and fists continued their exchange.

“I didn’t want any of that crap! I just wanted us to be equals, not ‘big brother and little brother,’ but you never listened!!”

“You’re the one… who wasn’t listening!! You denied everything about me!!”

“No, you were the one who denied me! You said you’d protect me, but you didn’t hesitate for a second to leave for the military academy!!”

His brother’s words stung. That was, indeed, a fact Garmon felt guilty about.

However, seeing his brother criticize him while ignoring his own faults only made Garmon’s rage flare up further.

“All you ever do is complain!! I’m not your servant!! I have the right to chase my dreams, too!! I tried to be your brother even if it meant sacrificing part of that dream… and yet, you!!”

“I’m saying, why are you only telling me this now?!”

By now, it was unclear what either of them was even arguing about.

Their fists collided with each other’s faces simultaneously, making a dull thud.

The impact sent them both falling back into pathetic heaps on their backsides.

Garmon felt as though the sinking sun was looking down in exasperation, tired of dealing with them.

“…Why does it have to be you?”

“…Huh?”

“Why does it have to be you?! Why did you commit a crime right in front of me? Why are you the one denying the way I live? Was I the only one… who believed that if we were family, you’d at least support one of my dreams…?”

His throat trembled, and he couldn’t stop the hot tears spilling from his eyes.

The more he tried to endure it to avoid looking pathetic, the more they flowed.

The rage that had dominated Garmon’s body had failed, leaving only misery in his heart. He had done the very best he could for his brother and for his own dream, and this was his reward. Now that everything he had built as a person and as Nagi’s brother had crumbled like sand, Garmon felt hopelessly wretched.

“—That’s my line.”

“Eh…?”

“That’s what I wanted to say!!”

Unlike his brother, who had lost the will to fight, Nagi seemingly still had enough rage left for an explosion. In the next moment, Nagi grabbed Garmon by the collar with all his might. Despite having surely exhausted his stamina, his hands held an unbelievable amount of strength.

“If we’re supposed to be family, then why won’t you face me?! Why don’t you ever get seriously angry with me instead of just dodging the issue?! If we’re family, then let me say my piece!!”

A bewildered Garmon looked up to see tears in Nagi’s eyes as well.

“When Grandma and Grandpa died and those shitty parents of ours didn’t even come home, you took the money they sent and threw it off this cliff… You screamed that you didn’t need a family like that…”

“I… remember that. Unlike the money I’d been accepting until then, I never went back to pick that up.”

“I hated them so much—those two who thought they could act like family without ever showing their faces as long as they sent money. But you supported me through all of that, Brother… And yet, ever since you joined the Knights, you’ve changed!”

“Changed… Me? That can’t be… Back then and even now, I’ve always…”

Loved you, and cherished you. Nagi cut him off before he could voice those words, his voice a ragged scream.

“Sure, you were a little better than those shitty parents! You showed your face a few times a year! …But that was it, wasn’t it?! When I had a fever, were you there for me? On my birthdays, were you there? When our friends in town kicked the bucket from accidents or disease, did you ever help shoulder the coffin even once?! Well, did you?! …You didn’t do a damn thing!!”

It was the first time in his years as a knight that Garmon had heard his brother’s true feelings.

Just as it had been for him, the resentment Nagi had suppressed for years finally burst through the dam.

“Whenever I wanted you there, whenever I was lonely, you were always off somewhere in the country hunting pigs! Then you’d come back on some random day, drop off some souvenirs and money, and leave again! You just gave me that smile like nothing I did even mattered, and then it was ‘hey, goodbye’ once you were done!”

“That’s not true… I tried to find time whenever I could, and I listened to you, and I tried to be considerate…”

“So as long as you’re ‘considerate,’ it doesn’t matter how I feel?! How is that… How is that any different from the hollow ‘I love you’ written for self-satisfaction on those slips of paper our godawful parents send every time?!”

“…Guh…!!”

Those words pierced him deep in the chest, and this time, Garmon was truly lost for words.

So that was it—the thing Nagi had been dying to say all this time. Nagi had sensed the same irritation from Garmon that he felt toward their parents—people who acted like they knew everything through their letters without actually knowing a thing.

Assuming he understood on his own, and unilaterally offering “trust” without ever exchanging real words.

Because they rarely met in person, and because Garmon backed down thinking he was the adult, it never even turned into a fight.

“I’m sorry…”

“Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare apologize now…!! You’re so unfair!! I know I’m asking for the impossible, but if you’re the one to apologize first…!! …Ugh, I… How am I supposed to look at you now…?!”

Garmon’s vision was blurred by tears, but he could easily imagine the face Nagi was making. It was surely that same miserable, messy, and—more than anyone else in this world—precious crying face he had seen when he’d made him cry as a child.

“I’m sorry for being an unfair Brother. But… this was a promise I made to Grandfather, you see…”

“A promise to Grandfather…?”

“Yeah. A long time ago, he told me. He said the older brother has to be the one to apologize first.”

How many years had it been? Garmon let out a self-deprecating chuckle, surprised he remembered it so clearly.

—A fight when you’re young can be settled by apologizing the next day.

—But a fight when you’re old leads to a lifelong parting of ways.

To the young Garmon, those words from his grandfather had been difficult to grasp.

When he asked why, his grandfather had simply smiled gently and patted his head.

“When you’re a kid, your heart is soft, so most anger fades after a night’s sleep. But it’s not like that when you get older. Since you remember how angry you were, that stubborn pride just keeps dragging things out.”

“You can’t forgive them even if they say they’re sorry?”

“If they apologize, you can forgive them. But… once you decide ‘I’m not in the wrong,’ you’ll never be the one to apologize first. If the other person feels the same way, you’ll be fighting forever. That’s why… after you fight with Nagi, make sure you’re the one to apologize, Garmon.”

“Ehh?! I have to apologize even when it’s not my fault?!”

Living with a younger brother meant there were mountains of small anxieties, frustrations, and seeds of conflict.

Just the other day, they had a massive fight over a single toy.

Garmon, who felt he was always the one holding back, had felt strongly that Nagi could let him have his way for once, and that had started the fight. Garmon had firmly believed it was his brother’s fault.

“I don’t want to! Being the older brother is nothing but a loss! You’re always just spoiling Nagi, Grandpa!!”

“Hahaha! No, my bad, my bad! I love you dearly too. But listen… when you’re fighting, you’re suffering, but the other person is suffering just as much. So when Nagi is suffering like that, help him out as his brother.”

“…Okay.”

The words hadn’t made sense to Garmon at the time.

Thinking about it now, perhaps his grandfather had been referring to a situation just like this.

Garmon pushed aside his brother’s trembling hand and pulled him into a hug with his battered body.

Looking back, perhaps he had unconsciously distanced himself from Nagi out of guilt for becoming a knight. He had been terrified of being rejected to his face, so he had frozen up when he should have been the first to speak. That was why it was time to face the pain.

“I’m sorry. Your big brother won’t be able to stay with you for a while. Maybe it’ll be like that forever from now on…”

“Yeah…”

“So… that’s why I don’t mind being a stupid Brother. Even if I’m a stubborn, idiot Brother, just yell at me every time I come home. Let’s keep fighting like that.”

“This time… it’s a draw, but—hic! Next… next time, I’m gonna win, I swear…!”

“…Unlike spear practice… I won’t lose… that easily…!”

On the horizon, the sun had begun to sink, as if it could no longer bear to watch such incredibly foolish brothers.