How to Protect the Heroine’s Older Brother – Episode 161
* * *
“Um, I heard Jeremy was here, so I came…”
“Come in.”
The Agrit siblings were visiting my room late in the evening.
More precisely, they came to see Jeremy, who was in my room.
At the time, I was sitting in a chair, arranging the flowers that Jeremy had brought in a vase.
I explicitly told him not to, but in the end, Jeremy picked a whole bunch of flowers from the greenhouse and gave them to me.
Jeremy looked so proud that I couldn’t bring myself to refuse them.
After that, I didn’t leave the flowers to a servant; I arranged them in a vase with my own hands.
“What’s going on? If you have something to say, just say it tomorrow. Why did you bother to come all the way here at this late hour?”
Jeremy, who had been watching the scene with a happy face from across the room, showed his displeasure the moment his half-brothers entered the room.
When I opened the door myself, the Agrit siblings entered the room with some hesitation.
Thanks to Jeremy’s ironclad defense, this was the first time I had met the Agrit siblings so closely and privately since coming to Yggdrasil.
So they seemed a little awkward with me. Well, we weren’t that close when we were in Agrit in the first place.
“Jeremy, we came to see you, the head of the family, because we have something to say, so please welcome us a little more warmly.”
I went to Jeremy, who was exuding a cold aura, and gently stroked his chin. The moment my light touch reached him, Jeremy’s intensity softened.
“Okay. What’s the reason you came to see me?”
His voice towards his half-brothers was also much kinder.
Seeing Jeremy change his attitude as easily as flipping his hand, the brothers made a sullen expression.
Looking at their faces, it seemed that Jeremy’s policy of ruling Agrit was indeed a reign of terror, as I suspected.
Of course, there was no more effective way to deal with the Agrit siblings than that….
“Take your eyes off my sister.”
As they sometimes did when they were in Agrit, the brothers, who were alternately looking at Jeremy and me with subtle gazes, soon heard an eerie voice ringing in their ears and quickly averted their eyes from me.
I shook my head slightly and returned to my seat.
“The main point.”
“I think I should tell you what happened during the day with Hyperion….”
I listened to their conversation and picked up a flower on the table.
“What?”
After a while, an absurd question escaped Jeremy’s mouth.
The reason why the Agrit siblings came here was to inform him of what happened with Hyperion during the day.
I wasn’t surprised because I had already heard about it through the poison butterflies [magical creatures used for surveillance].
Jeremy seemed to find the work his half-brothers had done troublesome.
“You guys….”
I opened my mouth before Jeremy could express his annoyance.
“It seems like you’ve become very close to Hyperion in the meantime.”
When I, who was sitting quietly and arranging the flowers, spoke, Jeremy and the other half-brothers looked at me.
I raised my head, looked at them, and smiled.
“So the point is, you had a friendly card game with Hyperion’s people.”
Of course, the actual facts were a little different from that.
“Even though you still have a sore heart from what happened with Hyperion, you’re thinking of building friendship like this.”
A reign of terror would definitely be the most effective for the Agrit siblings, but originally, good things required alternating between carrots and sticks [rewards and punishments].
Besides, they didn’t hide what happened during the day and came straight to Jeremy to tell him. Isn’t that admirable in its own way?
“Jeremy has been praising you a lot to me anyway.”
So when I brought it up, Jeremy immediately narrowed his brows and retorted.
“Sister, when did I….”
“Why are you pretending not to know when I’ve told you so many times? There’s no need to be so shy, Jeremy.”
“Shy….”
Jeremy was speechless for a moment at my words with a smile.
The other Agrit siblings were also making faces that doubted their ears.
They asked back with dumbfounded faces.
“Praise, what?”
“If you tell them one thing, they understand ten, and they all behave better than expected without having to give them detailed instructions separately.”
Pause.
Then, the brothers, who had been putting their heads together and plotting suspiciously before coming to Jeremy, awkwardly hardened their lips.
“Especially in Yggdrasil, there were several conflicts with Hyperion, but everyone dealt with it maturely.”
I said that and then trailed off slightly.
“Honestly, isn’t it all because of Father that we’re in this difficult situation?”
Acting with a pathetic expression was something I had been doing since I was a child, so it wasn’t that difficult.
“We haven’t committed any wrongdoings, but we have to face this situation… Our brothers have never done anything bad like Father, and we have no intention of doing so in the future.”
“Sister….”
Jeremy seemed to have read my mind and matched my tone with a bitter expression.
When I stimulated the resentment that he had clearly built up over the years, the Agrit siblings easily agreed.
“That’s right. It’s unfair.”
“We’re different from Father.”
When a common enemy arises in a group, their bond becomes even stronger.
When Lant, who was already dead, was targeted, the brothers, who had no affection for their father in the first place, rushed in and began to bite the rice cake I had thrown [participate eagerly in the opportunity].
In fact, it was also because of me that they were being treated like this today, but I shifted all the blame to Lant as if I had never tried to destroy Agrit with my own hands.
Currently, Yggdrasil was packed with people from four families, and Vertium was about to add a foot to it [join in].
According to the letter sent by the messenger sent to Vertium, Noel Vertium is scheduled to arrive in Yggdrasil in about two days.
So I had to abandon my arrogant and complacent thoughts.
It was impossible in the first place for me to control and manipulate everything here.
I couldn’t control the poison butterflies here either. All I could do was rely on the eyes of a few butterflies to look around.
That meant that there were countless variables that I couldn’t control.
For the past week, I came to Yggdrasil and observed the surroundings in detail. Since unfamiliar people were all gathered together, I needed time to watch them.
However, it was impossible to grasp all the cases of who would react to what stimulus and how.
So I had to move as carefully as possible, but….
It is not a virtue not to pick a fruit that is already ripe [to miss an easy opportunity].
The reactions that the Agrit siblings would show were at least within my prediction range.
“As we have always been, Jeremy and I are always on Agrit’s side.”
I said to my dear half-brothers.
“Now that we’re left with only ourselves without our fathers and mothers, we have to rely on each other and unite as one.”
Since I had already excluded Pandora Hyperion from the candidates, it wasn’t a bad choice to touch Hyperion’s people, whom the brothers considered eyesores.
“As Jeremy said, everyone is not forgetting the purpose of the social gathering even in this situation. You’re admirable.”
After all, the achievements I wanted from my half-brothers weren’t that great.
As confirmed by the poison butterflies, it seemed that they were planning to go to the people of Hyperion who had gambled together and secretly play mischievous pranks while avoiding the eyes of others.
I bent my eyes and smiled languidly.
“Since Hyperion approached us first, it’s okay for us to get along a little bit too.”
Seeing my smile, which was different from before, the half-brothers’ eyes changed.
“Only if it’s for the purpose of ‘friendship’.”
As they were clever Agrit siblings, I thought they would understand what I meant.
I moved my hand and brought the flower I was holding closer.
“Everything is behind the light.”
Then I whispered the Agrit’s motto while taking in the sweet scent.
“Don’t forget that in any case.”
* * *
On a night when the stars began to rise, I left Yggdrasil.
I wasn’t planning on going far, and I was planning on going to the monster habitat closest to my current location.
It was time to feed the poison butterflies.
Inside Yggdrasil, communication with the butterflies was weakened, so I couldn’t control them as I pleased.
So in order to feed the butterflies, I had to leave the land of Yggdrasil.
For that reason, I called back a few butterflies that I had released inside the building. I also temporarily took back the butterfly that Nix had planted in his newly moved room.
When I last checked, Nix was lying in the quiet room as if he was asleep alone.
I heard about the reason for changing Nix’s room from Cassis last time.
Perhaps because of what I said when I last met him, he made a fuss, saying that he saw Deon’s illusion breaking into the room.
Because of that, Cassis changed the room to ease Nix’s anxiety.
If Nix continued to make a fuss like that, it would be hard for the people standing guard outside, so Cassis seemed to be paying attention.
For some reason, I felt sorry for Cassis for being bothered by the mischief I played on Nix at that time, and I felt unpleasantness towards Nix at the same time.
After hearing the story from Cassis, I also moved the butterfly to Nix’s new room.
But for some reason, Nix seemed to feel even more uncomfortable after changing rooms.
In particular, when Fedelian’s guard duty came around, Cassis went to see his face to check, and he showed a strange appearance.
Nix was subtly more wary of Cassis than before, as if a hedgehog had raised its thorns.
However, Cassis’s attitude was the same as usual, and Nix also stayed away from Cassis and only showed wary eyes, but did not take any other actions.
So I soon turned my attention to Nix’s other changes.
After changing rooms, Nix’s sleep time increased significantly.
He seemed to spend almost half of the day sleeping. Besides, he seemed to be talking in his sleep sometimes.
I didn’t know what kind of dream he was having.
The voice he muttered to himself while sleeping was so small, and I wasn’t curious about what kind of dream Nix was having enough to bother listening to it.
However, I was concerned that Nix would sometimes jump up from his seat, feel his heart, and look around.
It was true that I was also wary of Deon, but Deon had not visited Nix since he changed rooms.
Nix also seemed to have more nightmares than before, but the incident of complaining that an intruder had entered the room, as he had done before, never happened again.
It was good that he didn’t bother me anymore, but instead, there was something that subtly scratched my nerves in other parts.
Then suddenly I stopped walking.
While moving in the dark, I felt someone following me.
“….”
It wasn’t Cassis, and it wasn’t Jeremy either.
This presence is….
I lowered my eyes slightly and then looked straight ahead again.
And as if I didn’t feel anything, I moved the legs I had stopped in place and moved back to the monster habitat.