Chapter 8
Going Out (2)
As if he had predicted the situation, Soma Bastian walked into the shop at the perfect moment and charged straight at the woman confronting me, like a Matiz with broken brakes.
“Hey, Soma. If you keep doing that, you’re going to faint. Why don’t you back off a little?”
“She bullied my sister-in-law.”
Soma was so close that his nose was almost touching the back of the woman’s head. I stared blankly at him, then replayed what had just happened in my mind.
Had I been bullied?
I guess I had.
I gave a light laugh and said, “Then will you take revenge for me?”
The woman, whose face had gone so pale it was almost drained of all blood, trembled and shouted,
“M-Miss Ferdina!”
“Why are you calling for a stupid piece of trash?”
I threw her own words back at her with the same nasty tone she’d used on me.
Soma’s eyes narrowed as he repeated, with emphasis,
“Stupid… trash?”
After meeting my eyes as I shrugged, Soma put on his signature gloomy expression and slipped a hand into the inside pocket of his coat.
“This won’t do, Sister-in-law. Let’s take out ‘that thing’ I developed recently.”
I covered my mouth with the back of my hand and stepped back.
“Gasp! Young master! You’re going to use ‘that thing’ here?!”
My exaggerated dramatics turned the standoff even more theatrical.
Now the woman turned even paler. She clung closer, stretching her neck toward Soma’s other side, and shouted desperately,
“T-That thing… what is it?!”
When I asked, “Are you curious what ‘that thing’ is?” the woman answered, “Yes!”
But the instant she noticed Soma rustling in his pocket as if he was about to pull something out, she shouted “No!” at the speed of light.
It was the kind of sudden switch that almost felt legendary.
“So are you curious or not?”
“Sister-in-law. I’m taking it out. Step back.”
“Hiiiik!”
When Soma made a motion like he was pulling his hand out of his pocket, the woman rolled her eyes like she was about to faint.
I glanced at the woman’s servant, who was hovering nearby in panic, and signaled him to drag her away.
The woman, barely holding herself upright, fled the shop with her servant supporting her.
Soma’s dark eyes kept following her disappearing back.
I grabbed the back of the hand of the boy clutching a silver candy bag.
“Why are you here?”
“……”
Soma didn’t answer. He just looked down at the hand I was holding.
I didn’t press him further. I simply tugged his hand and led him deeper inside.
The place I brought Soma to was a VIP showroom furnished with a large sofa and a tea table, where I could stay as long as I pleased.
I asked the shop manager for two cups of tea and dismissed everyone else.
“You didn’t come here alone… did you? Did you come with McKenzie?”
“……Just me.”
Soma looked uncharacteristically timid, but I was too drained to force myself to smile.
Not bothering to hide my dry expression, I lifted my eyes and stared at the young boy.
Soma had suffered from a severe skin disease since he was a baby.
Because of it, he couldn’t stand other people’s gaze.
With a household that powerful, how much effort must they have poured into treating the second son?
They tried everything, but the boy’s condition never went away.
The peeling white patches, inflamed areas filled with pus, and red rashes became perfect prey for high society, where even the smallest flaw was unacceptable.
They said it was the side effect of forbidden alchemy.
That an evil spirit possessed him.
That he had been cursed with something terrible.
All kinds of malicious rumors clung to Soma.
No matter how powerful a family was, it wasn’t easy to completely erase rumors spreading in the shadows.
I knew that well, considering my own situation.
I tried to hunt down the people spreading rumors about me and crush them.
But Soma chose a different method.
To protect himself, he used the rumors against people instead.
Soma purposely acted even more gloomy, as if he truly had something wrong with him, just like the rumors said.
He grew his bangs long to cover his face.
He wore tinted glasses coated in blue-green lenses.
Even in midsummer, he always wore dark long sleeves.
When he went out, he never forgot to throw on a dull-colored cloak with a high collar.
That mad-scientist look gave off a hint of real madness.
Building a wall so people couldn’t approach him easily was Soma’s way.
But the boy who hated crowded places and rarely went out had come all the way to this busy district.
If he had stepped out here on his own, he must have had a serious reason.
I had already guessed the reason from the moment Soma entered the shop.
But I didn’t force it out of him.
My choice not to ask first seemed to reach Soma as some kind of signal.
The boy, head lowered as he silently endured my gaze, finally spoke, apologizing.
“I’m sorry.”
“Why are you suddenly apologizing? Did you do something behind my back that I need to forgive you for?”
“That bandaged wrist… did my brother do that?”
“……”
Instead of answering, I pulled my sleeve down and hid my wrist.
“So you’re going to throw him away?”
“Throw him away? What am I throwing away?”
“Don’t play dumb. Both my brother and I already decided to throw you away. That’s why you stopped coming around, and why you’re not even asking anything now.”
His tone was steady and flat, without any rise or fall of emotion.
Wearing a face exactly like his brother.
Using the same voice as his brother.
Blaming me.
Maybe that was why I let out a slightly cold laugh without meaning to.
The boy’s fragile shoulders flinched.
“S-Sorry.”
“Do you think I’m going to eat you? Why are you so scared? You’re not acting like yourself.”
“……Then why are you like this, Sister-in-law?”
As if my sarcasm became the trigger, Soma glared at me with hurt eyes.
“You’ve been looking at me like I’m a stranger… like you’re someone who’s about to leave far away. You’ve been acting weird!”
“…….”
The truth was, I didn’t care much about Soma.
He was the younger brother of the man I liked, so I treated him as someone I needed to impress.
Soma’s skin disease had made me uneasy as well.
(Now that I had memories of my past life, it seemed like Soma’s condition was probably eczema, atopic dermatitis.)
After thoroughly investigating and confirming it wasn’t contagious, I started interacting with him.
In other words, my relationship with him began with calculation.
Is this all my karma coming back?
Even for me, I felt guilty about using a child eight years younger than me and then cutting him off once I no longer needed him.
For a boy who lived with limited relationships because of his skin condition, I was practically his only friend.
I couldn’t pretend I didn’t understand how much I might mean to him.
Because I didn’t have friends either.
Even after breaking off the engagement with Bastian, if I continued maintaining a relationship with Soma, annoying rumors would definitely follow.
Even in this short moment, I calculated that much about our relationship.
And yet…
“I’m buying a gift for my mom. Come help me pick one.”
“A g-gift…?”
I couldn’t abandon a child who was sniffing and on the verge of tears.
If I couldn’t abandon him, then all that was left was to take him with me.
“I’ve only ever bought things for myself, so I’ve never bought a gift before. Can you choose something that fits my mom’s taste?”
I snatched the candy bag Soma had been holding the entire time, took one candy out and put it in my mouth, then took another and placed it into Soma’s slightly open, blank mouth too.
Soma pushed up his round glasses, his eyes going wide, then rolled the candy around inside his cheek with a little clacking sound.
Then he bounced in his seat and raised his voice.
“Pick? Yeah! I’m good at picking things! I’ll pick one for you!”
***
By the time dusk fell, Soma returned to the mansion.
He was walking down the corridor when he stopped.
“Brother.”
Sirius, approaching from the opposite side, noticed Soma in his outdoor clothes and then glanced out the window.
The sky, stained red with sunset, showed that the afternoon was already ending.
“This is rare. You stayed out until this hour.”
His low voice was cold and indifferent.
The woman walking beside Sirius gave Soma a small gesture, using her eyes as a substitute for greeting, as she passed him.
Pity for a young boy with a skin disease…
And disgust she couldn’t completely hide…
A clumsy smile, barely covering her discomfort.
It was a reaction Soma had seen so often since he first began recognizing people and things that he had become numb to it by now.
But maybe because he had just been with Marie, who was honest with her emotions…
Today, that fake smile made him feel sick.
Soma stared long at the woman’s back without any expression, and Sirius called to him.
“I told you to take McKenzie when you leave the mansion.”
Soma felt like he couldn’t breathe at his brother’s dry voice.
He barely held back the urge to gasp for air like a drowning man, and forced himself to turn and face his brother.
Soma felt miserable.
Those blue eyes, even drier than his voice, eyes where you couldn’t read any emotion at all, pressed down on him.
Once, in the northern territory during winter, Soma had looked down at the surface of a frozen lake.
It reflected neither his face nor the surrounding landscape, nor anything at all.
Staring down at that icy wall, Soma had thought of his brother’s eyes.
No matter how hard you jumped on it, no matter how many stones you threw…
It never broke.
And standing before that quiet winter lake, Soma had felt a despair he couldn’t explain.
But now…
Soma knew the one weapon that could shatter that cold, solid ice wall in a single blow.
“I just came from seeing Sister-in-law.”
Soma watched his brother’s face grow frighteningly cold, while he stared back with eyes like ice, just like Sirius’s.
In House Bastian, the colder you got, the angrier you were.
“It’s about time you stopped using that ridiculous title.”
“The engagement hasn’t been annulled yet. Ridiculous? If my brother marries her, then she really is my sister-in-law.”
“Stop.”
“You have to take back the annulment before it’s too late. If you don’t—”
“Soma.”
“Brother.”
“Once I make a decision, I do not reverse it. My connection with Marie Ferdina ends here.”
“Because you keep saying stupid things like that!”
The frozen lake Soma thought he had shattered recovered quickly.
No matter how much he pounded on that ice wall, begging it to listen, it didn’t budge.
Hating it so much it drove him mad, Soma threw away his calm and shouted.
“You were the one who got dumped by Sister-in-law!”
“Nonsense.”
Sirius sneered coldly.
“What scheme did you two plan together? Did Marie Ferdina tell you to say that?”
“If only she had!”
Soma’s lips trembled. Furious, he wiped away the tears that burst out with his sleeve.
Then, filled with resentment, he glared at Sirius as he brushed past him.
“You’ll regret that decision. Brother, you’re an idiot who doesn’t even understand your own heart.”
