"..."
Anna, sitting on the bed in her room, looked at the dark phone in her hand with a trembling hand.
She gritted her teeth, almost chipping one of them, and she then turned around and started punching the pillow.
"Brother! Brother! Brother! BROTHER!"
She screamed, then pressed her head against the pillow and sobbed uncontrollably.
Anna started kicking her legs against the mattress, like a child throwing a tantrum.
"...You’re supposed to be mine. WHO ELSE DO YOU HAVE? I am the only one you got, so why do you treat me such?
"YOU DON’T HAVE ANYONE ELSE, RIGHT? Did some stupid fucking whore come around and trick you?
"Oh, brother, you’ve always been so fucking naive. You just fall for any girl that acts even slightly kind towards you, tch, tch, tch."
Anna turned around with a scoff, and she pressed the pillow against her chest, hugging it so tightly that it was almost bursting at the seams.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!"
Outside her room, a couple of the maids happened to walk by and heard the sound of Anna screaming.
They didn’t react to it, except they rolled their eyes and sighed.
"Lady Anna is again having one of her episodes."
"...Is it because of her brother again? I thought Lady Anna was taking her medicine to stop those crazy episodes from happening."
"I think she has stopped taking the medicine by the sound of it. I think we should let the Medical Master to know."
...
Megaworld, 59th Floor, Caretaker Facility.
"...If I may ask, why don’t you want to join your sister’s guild?"
Chaewon asked curiously.
"Her guild, while it is her own, is still in the end part of the Fang Enterprise. She is in the alliance with our brother, Raikou.
"My brothers and my father act like I don’t exist, and I am happier with that. I don’t want to go there and be in my brother’s crosshairs again.
"Anna, my sister, is the only one that cared about me back in the Fang Village, and I am really grateful for it, but I am no longer Fang."
Fang Raon said.
"...Don’t you miss your family, though?"
Chaewon asked.
"Honestly..."
Fang Raon looked at her, smiled, and said.
"I don’t. If you knew my family, you wouldn’t want me to go back there, as they all have a few screws loose in their heads."
"Ah?"
Chaewon looked at him in surprise.
She had never heard anyone talk about their family like that, and she became really curious about his family now.
"...Can I know?"
She asked.
"Fang Family is huge, with hundreds of members, but I’ll just talk about my close family. I have a father, a mother, two brothers, and one sister.
"My father, Aizen, is the future head of the Fang Family. His father is currently leading the operations, but that will change in a couple of years, I bet.
"He trained my brothers in the art of the sword since they were young, as he wanted to teach them discipline, and it was tradition in our family.
"I didn’t get taught, because teaching me would be ’a disgrace to the tradition,’ according to my father’s words."
Fang Raon wryly smiled.
"...Your father is a horrible man."
Chaewon said angrily.
She wasn’t the type of person to really hate a person that she didn’t know anything about, but everything she heard about Fang Aizen made her hate him.
"He is actually a great man. At one of our earliest visits to one of the Large Cities, Anna, when she was still very young, got kidnapped.
"Some people wanted to ransom her for an enormous sum of money, but father discovered their whereabouts, and with just his sword, he killed them all and rescued Anna.
"They were unable to harm a single hair on her head because of him."
Fang Raon said.
Chaewon looked surprised at the mention of Fang Raon’s father’s heroics.
When she looked at Fang Raon, she could see that he respected his father, and that’s why it hurt him to hate him as well.
"...My mother, Sara, took care of my brothers and Anna most of the time. She never really did anything for me, but she also never did anything bad.
"She was just there, like a shadow basically, and I don’t think I ever had one lengthy conversation with her. It was her maids that took care of me most of the time."
Fang Raon said.
He really didn’t have a lot of memories that included her, but he could still remember her smiling face from the time when he could still see.
"Raizen and Raikou, my brothers. The prodigies. Nothing to say about them really. They always treated me like trash.
"They are certified psychopaths, and I am half-certain that Raizen will end up becoming a serial killer in the future.
"Raikou always followed Raizen like a pet. If Raizen bullied me, he bullied me. If Raizen ignored me, he ignored me too.
"Raikou also had this one prank that he always liked to do. Since I couldn’t see, you know, and I relied on my memory to move around my room, he liked changing the layout of my furniture.
"Occasionally he also placed some broken glass pieces and nails on the floor to make things even more interesting."
Fang Raon said with a chuckle.
It was a hollow chuckle. A sad chuckle. Those memories really left behind deep traumatic scars.
"..."
In that moment, Chaewon hugged him after seeing his sad expression, and she held onto him for dear life.
"Your family does not deserve you. They are horrible people. It is alright, though. You don’t need them, as you have me."
Chaewon said with a serious look.
She really meant it.
"Mm..."
Fang Raon made a small noise of acknowledgment, smiling at her gentle words, and would’ve hugged her back if he could.
"...And lastly, Anna, my lovely sister, as people like to call her. I honestly think she is the scariest one in my family. I love her, I do, but I think she doesn’t have everything right in the head."
He said.
"...Really? How so?"
Chaewon asked.
"I had friends in the Fang Village. I made some friends with other distant relatives, who were nice to me, and with some maids, servants, and even the chefs in the kitchen.
"They treated me all nice.
"And each and every one of them disappeared from the village without a trace. I heard that they either got fired, exiled, or other stuff.
"I heard a maid whisper once that Anna did it. She made them leave, for some reason, and it happened with everyone I made friends with.
"Everyone."
Fang Raon said with a frown.
It had always been nagging him in the back of his mind.
’...She wanted to keep you lonely so that she could have you all to herself. What a nasty family he has.’
Chaewon thought with a sad look, but she then sat next to Fang Raon in the bed, holding his hand with a comforting smile.
’You have me now.’
She pulled out her phone and snapped a selfie picture of the two of them, sitting side-by-side on the bed, their bodies pressed close together.
"Why did you take a picture?"
Fang Raon asked curiously.
"Hehe, just for some memories. I hope it doesn’t bother you. I can delete the picture if you want to."
Chaewon said with puppy eyes, looking absolutely adorable, and Fang Raon wryly smiled.
"It’s fine..."
"Yay!"
Chaewon cheered, and in secret, she sent the picture to one person—to Fang Anna—and immediately blocked her number so she couldn’t respond.
"Mmh~"
She smiled with satisfaction and could only imagine her reaction to the picture, but it only made her smile more.
’He is not yours anymore...’