How to Survive as the Second Son of a Mage Family

Chapter 339

Chapter 339

The words that came out of Luka’s mouth lingered in my ears. I could not believe what I had just heard. You survived until now because of me? You, Luka?

“Eli, I do not know if you will believe this, but what if I had known you even before I became close to you?”

Luka’s clear voice spread through the night air. It sounded unreal for no particular reason, and a vague fear I had never felt before welled up in my chest. Even though I knew I must have looked foolish, I flailed my hands.

“You have always known me! And I knew you too. …Through Pleroma, I mean. And can you really call that knowing someone? It was just hearing a name secondhand. We first greeted each other and became close in our second year of high school~”

“…….”

Luka smiled at me in a way he never had before. Ah. I recognized the emptiness carried on that face. It was the expression I used to make as a child, whenever Leo, my father, Yulia, or my few remaining friends asked after me when I returned from something suffocating.

“Elias, there are many things I am hiding from you. Not just from you, but from everyone.”

I knew.

Luka had always been like that. He always knew information we could not know, could not explain it, and yet used its solutions to truly succeed. He always spoke as if he were certain of our future. How could I not be curious? Was it that he did not trust me, or that he bore a heavy burden alone to obtain that knowledge and therefore could not speak of it? There were more than a few times when I wanted to grab Luka by the shoulders and shake him violently!But I could not. A person’s heart does not move according to my will. Everything flows with time, and everything I believe I possess scatters like sand clenched in my fist, flying off to places I cannot see. Following the lineage of my thinking, just as Marcus Aurelius and the philosophers and ancient epics taught, my uncle Friedrich Hohenzollern had long ago taught me that nothing in this world goes as one wishes. My first magic instructor taught me helplessness, and showed me how thorough malice could destroy a child’s talent. My weak-willed and timid father tearfully showed me that because of his child’s existence, he himself might be forced into exile. My literature teacher, with his peculiar pettiness and aggression, taught me that even a single copy of the Iliad was enough to uproot a child’s interest in words and writing entirely. Relatives of various ages showed me how abject absolute submission to power looked, and demonstrated who it was that protected and reinforced power. The world urged me to be completed by what I had learned.

I surpassed my teachers in magic long ago. Sing, goddess, the rage, I love the dusty, choking air of the Iliad, like the cloud of dirt trailing behind a chariot. I have gained the leeway to pity my father, whose lifeline was held in the benevolent hands of my older brother, and to sorrow over the blue veins beginning to surface on his wrinkling wrists. I neither condemn nor defend my many relatives, archetypal opportunists. Leaving behind the countless memories that fed and raised me from infancy, I became myself.

My uncle was right. Just as the world does not bend to my will, neither could the world subdue me according to its own. Just as I flatly refused to become the person those around me wanted me to be, this was no different anywhere else. The hearts of others do not move according to my will either. My life has been made entirely of resisting hostility, so when it comes to winning a person’s heart, I am little better than blind. Therefore, when it came to winning a friend’s heart, perhaps I should have set aside my defiant experiences and approached it differently. Still, I believed this much was shared. I did not need to urge Luka toward what I wanted. I had to wait for him to come to me. If his heart was the same as mine, then one day he would gather himself and tell me everything. When everything properly converged.

“I will have to keep hiding it from you all in the future too. Unless circumstances force me, I cannot tell anyone. There is nothing to gain by saying it. Beyond that, our relationship might even run toward the worst. You would probably want to ask why I think that, right?”

I could see the movement of the water reflected beneath Luka’s transparent eyes. He was speaking aloud what he had to hide. With a smile close to resignation, he continued,

“I know this is not right either. This was not my will, and I still do not understand how this came to be.”

“…….”

“Won’t everything return to the starting point someday? Even if I say now that I do not want to go back, would that not be right? Because that is the natural order, or so I believe. Regardless of the things I have come to love.”

Return where? You say you have come to love, and yet say it is unrelated to what? No matter what news you bring, I will not abandon you. It is impossible to return to the starting point now. The dense trust you showed me in this short span of time is already deeply engraved in me. Is that really possible now? To a hundred-and-eight-year-old me, a few months would be nothing more than inertia repeating itself, fleeting moments that never reach the heart and merely graze the skin. But to an eighteen-year-old me, that amount of time is more than enough to form the foundation of a lifetime. Every time I cross the threshold of death in the future, I will remember the spring when I was eighteen. Even after decades pass, even after centuries…. Thinking that, Elias listened in silence. Luka said he could not tell me anything, but that was not true. This, everything he was saying, was Luka’s confession. He was awkwardly telling me a story he had never spoken anywhere else.

“Of course, this is just groundless speculation. My power was not involved from the beginning, so the end is not in my hands either. All I can do is wait for an unknown future and avoid the death that will come around graduation, by any justification. I cannot simply let go and allow others, already deprived of free will because of me, to die meaningless deaths. And as for myself, I would rather die by my own hand than be killed by someone else’s. No matter how much I desire an ending, I do not want to entrust myself to the hands of someone I did not choose.”

“…….”

“But I do not know how to turn this around, Eli. I truly have no idea how this came to be. So… I will apologize in advance. I was not trying to deceive you.”

Hearing the moisture in the end of his words, I parted my lips. But contrary to my brief thoughts, Luka’s eyes did not waver. He gazed at me calmly, like a tree deeply rooted in the earth.

“I cannot reveal exactly what I am apologizing for right now, but I wanted to tell you this much.”

Luka smiled faintly, as if recalling something, then continued after a moment.

“Elias, I am alive up to now because of you. Choosing your story at the final moment was the best decision of my life.”

I felt the weight of words I had never imagined I would have to bear. Luka said he had lived until now by looking at the trajectory of my life. What did that mean?

“Chose it.”

A faint question escaped my mouth.

“In a time you do not know, I admired you, hoped for your victory, and wished you happiness more than anyone else in this world. You overcame everything I failed at, and showed how every moment of my failure could lead to victory. It is similar to what you said to me earlier, right?”

Had Luka always been receiving news of me? No, it was beyond that. As he had already said, there was a story tangled here that he could not tell me. Whatever secret Luka carried did not matter. I focused on the moment where he was laying himself bare.

“You thought I was someone who made everything possible. That is too much praise. I was someone wandering because I did not know where to go. Unlike you, who know yourself, I did not even know who I was, Eli.”

At those words, I felt strength flow into my spine. I quietly raised my head. Luka let his gaze wander through the air, his voice carried away by the wind.

“You called me a machine, right? It is true. Maybe I was. I had nothing I liked and nothing I disliked. That is my nature. The small elements that form a person’s identity scatter before they ever have time to pile up in me. My childhood was nothing more than emotionlessness given shape through time. I have never loved stories, and people are made of their own stories.”

Those words sounded as if he had never loved people either. Luka continued, holding the light of the water in his eyes.

“To be precise, after spending such a long time like that, I did not even know what I loved. You have no idea how foolish it is to only realize afterward that something was what it was, after sending everything away. That was when I met you.”

“…….”

“To someone like me, who likes nothing and hates nothing, everything in the world passes by without meaning. I have nothing I truly desire, and no will to truly strive for anything. At that point, fitting in with my peers was already impossible. Goodwill and hostility always clung to me, but since I liked nothing and hated nothing, I did not think much of it. By luck, from the outside, it looked like I passed my school years without any hardship at all, yet nothing remained for me. I was just tired.”

Peers, school years…. Luck. I felt my mind go blank. More than anything, though, the words that caught in my ears were the ones he had repeated.

“Nothing you like, nothing you hate.”

“Would an example help?”

“Yeah.”

“Even if someone stabbed me in the stomach with a knife, I would not hate them. The momentary irritation, pain, and defiance I feel are not genuine, so they collapse without lasting long. That is what I meant by liking nothing and hating nothing.”

“Are you talking about Robert Müller?”

Luka shook his head. When he did not continue, I swallowed and asked again,

“Then why do you not hate him?”

“I guess I did not love his existence enough to allow that much interest.”

The answer came immediately, without a trace of regret. Even while talking about himself, his tone sounded detached, as if he were speaking of someone else. At the same time, I could feel the countless hours of contemplation behind that instant reply. I could not understand his words, so I asked again.

“You, or him?”

Luka shrugged. Negative emotions are also a form of interest. Yes, I understood. I understood exactly what that meant. Yet there was a directionless emptiness melted into Luka’s words. Ironically, I thought he had loved too many things. Since I had no intention of imposing my ignorant judgment onto Luka, I stayed silent.

“Elias. From the moment I could remember, becoming someone else always came before becoming myself. I lost the ability to know who I was beyond recreating fictional characters. Even to my own eyes, I felt like a colorless, odorless, hollow person. Becoming a character in someone else’s story was the only option left to me. Back then, even if I had nothing, a fragmentary story created by someone else could become mine, if only for a moment.”

It was not a story of the Luka I knew. He let out a self-mocking snort.

“How empty a person must be if they cannot stand on their own….”

That was not true. I wanted to object, but it was not the time, nor did I have the right. I knew he was telling his own story.

“To have a profession that should contain one’s life, yet be unable to even create my own story, do you know how ridiculous that is? I did not know how to do it. My entire life was a succession of being pushed around. I had not lived long, and because of that, I knew how much time and possibility lay before me. With each passing day, past judgments crumbled like dust so easily that I realized there was nothing in this world I could be certain of. Every day, I came to understand kinds of people I had not understood before. Things I once thought were a certain way ceased to be so, and each time, I felt myself drifting farther from my past self. So this agonizing time is nothing more than childish anguish that will later feel like a fleeting dream. I know that such a future could exist for me too. But I did not feel the need to go that far.”

“Why?”

At my question, Luka tilted his head calmly, without any expression. Then, still wearing a face devoid of meaning, he answered,

“I was tired.”

He did not speak further on that point. Only the sound of water stirred by the wind remained. Soon, Luka began to smile lightly, as if something amused him.

“As I said earlier, that was when I met you. Just like in the catacombs, this time too, you would not ask me anything. I wish I could show you my time, even by tearing memories away. My labyrinth would surely reflect that time.”

“…….”

“I owe you a lot of time, and I still do. Thank you.”

I could not fully understand his words. Luka had not told me everything yet, and even if I tried to imagine from his words, it did not come easily. Every human has their own world, so his world and mine were different. Still, I knew that whatever the reason for his suffering, and no matter how long he had thought about it to now speak so calmly, it was not a story to be spoken anywhere. That was what mattered to me now. I truly felt how he thought of me, and sensing his emotions through his words made my heart ache. And at the same time, I did not know whether it was truly right for things to be this way….

I felt something well up from deep inside me.

“Luka.”

“Yes, go ahead.”

“Did you know? This is the first time I have heard your story.”

“Mm, I tell you every time, ”

“No, Luka. Not about your brother or your family. Not about survival, or incidents, or Pleroma.”

Luka’s pink eyes slowly turned toward me. Or perhaps my vision itself was flowing slowly. Trying to press down the joy I was feeling for the first time today, I let it out in my voice so it would reach his ears.

“Your story. This is the first time you have told me your story.”

***

I saw the light swirling in Elias’s eyes. As always, it shone far more intensely than I had imagined, brimming with perfect confidence, as sharp as the lifelong wounds he had endured, yet soft enough to embrace everything, as if revealing the understanding born from maturing early.

Ding, !

Congratulations!

‘Proposal 2: Increase Elias Hohenzollern’s favorability by +1 within the time limit (1/1)’ Success! ‘Route 1 ― < +5 point >’ has been confirmed.

I had not intended to say that.

I had not planned to gain points from this…. Yet in an unexpected place, I gained Elias’s heart.

“To be honest, Luka. As you know, just because you are friends does not mean you share intimate stories. Most of the time, it is just, ‘Want to grab a beer in front of the school after today?’”

“A high schooler saying that….”

“Fine then, ‘Want to work on assignments together after today,’ ‘Want to go to our family’s summer estate during vacation,’ ‘How is student council work,’ ‘A friend is annoying me,’ ‘I accidentally broke the dormitory stairs, should I replace the planks first,’ and so on. In truth, even friends rarely have the time, or feel the need, to talk about what is inside themselves. That is why friends you share intimate stories with are called your closest friends, right?”

There were some oddly specific examples mixed in, but I nodded for now.

“That is true.”

“We crossed life and death together, so we do not share the same emotions as ordinary friendships. That is certain. You, Leo, and Narce became especially precious friends to me, and I think you feel similarly. To me, you are friends who are like parts of my life.”

“Yeah. Same for me.”

“The emotions we share are the result of transformations brought about by external pressure. The world bound us tighter, and we made ourselves this way. But even so, comradeship does not always make you open up about the most fragile memories within you.”

That alone is not enough to hear another person’s life. More is needed to bring out what lies inside. Elias was speaking of that.

“Sharing your back does not mean you share your heart. I waited for today. The day I would hear the sound within your heart.”

As he said that, Elias smiled and pointed to his ear. Yes, this beginning had been necessary. We were already friends as precious as life itself, and now we were trying to cross that line once more. I smiled back at him and said,

“You know today is just the beginning, right?”

“Oh, sounds like you have more to tell me?”

I nodded. But not now. Even if I was going to talk, we could not come all the way out to play just to keep having serious conversations, and Elias would soon find it hard to stay in the water. It would be better to talk before sleeping, or tomorrow.

“Then, Luka.”

“Yeah?”

“Let’s go in one more time!”

“…….”

Elias pointed at the water. Who was tired? Had I just thought Elias would be tired from staying in the water? Smiling, I clenched my teeth and said,

“We are drying our robes. No.”

“Then just take them off and go in!”

“That is an extremely obvious statement. No. I am done playing.”

“Aaaahhh~”

Elias clung to my knee and whined. His grip gradually tightened, and I tried to kick him away. Yes, I tried to.

“…!”

Some kind of plant grabbed my shoulder. Before my head could hit the tiles behind me, I slammed my elbow into the ground. I spread my magic to absorb the impact, but even so, there was no shock transmitted to me.

‘Huh.’

Looking now, the floor was completely covered with plants drawn in from the surroundings. I reflexively turned around. Leo, dressed in a way that did not suit a bathhouse at all from head to toe, was leaning against the inner gate. After standing still for a while, he smiled and said,

“Looks like you had fun.”

“…….”

From where I was sitting, I could not see him, but Elias would have. When I gestured to Elias, asking how long he had been there, Elias shrugged as well. Then he pointed at Leo.

“What kind of manners are those? Aren’t you going to change?”

“What about it.”

“Who comes into a place where people are playing while fully dressed like that?”

I had no idea what he was saying, but since I agreed with Elias for once, I did not stop him.

“My arm has not healed yet, so I cannot go into the water. I want to, though.”

“Then get out. Who comes into a hot spring wearing a jacket?”

“Then Lukas?”

Leo nodded toward me. Was he really comparing me? I patted my clothes and said,

“At least show the courtesy of changing into a shower robe.”

“That is the same thing….”

Leo crossed his arms, snorted, then asked quietly,

“Why did you take off the artifact?”

“Because I was playing with Elias.”

At my answer, Elias tilted his head and joined in.

“Why~? Can’t he take it off?”

“It is not just an accessory like your piercings. It is for its function. Playing is fine, but something dangerous could happen, so wouldn’t it be better to leave the artifact on?”

It was definitely for function. A very good function called smashing cores. I briefly wondered if this moment, when I had removed one artifact and was only taking half the impact, was a chance to punch Leo’s core. But I decided not to attack a friend recklessly. When Elias stuck out his lips and scowled, Leo shrugged with a what-do-you-want-me-to-do expression.

“Come out now. There is something I need to say to Lukas.”

“Why?! No. I’m going to play with Luka for 100 more hours.”

“That figures.”

Leo continued, looking unsurprised. Then, with a gentle smile, he crooked his finger.

“Lord Ernst.”

“…….”

Now of all times? The absurdity made all kinds of thoughts whirl through my head, and I let out a hollow laugh. Elias’s words from the hospital room flashed through my mind.

‘So this really is the chance to punch his core.’

He would not call me over for no reason, so whatever he was about to say would decide the future of that core. I stood up with a polite smile.