“…… what?”

Felix’s hand, which was holding Adrian’s shoulder, fell down. He only looked at him with a frown, as he did when he heard the news of a war overnight.

Felix, who couldn’t figure out what to say back, asked a dazed question a long time later.

“What do you mean…”

“literally.”

Adrian explained, looking at his brother with dismal eyes.

“Since I was very young, I knew father didn’t like me. The way he looks at me. ……his eyes that want me to disappear from this world. They look like they’re saying I shouldn’t have been born. Even though I was young, I could feel it all.”

Felix listened to Adrian and recalled his childhood memories.

Adrian was right. However, it was the same for Felix.

He also used to freeze like ice when he stood in front of their father, who was strict and never smiled at all. In front of his cold father who never says warm words, he also felt terrible fear and tension.

“……it was the same for me, Adrian. That’s the way he is. He’s a terrible person who’s even hard on his wife.”

At Felix’s words, Adrian’s blue eyes sank cold like a frozen winter lake. He opened his tight mouth and spouted out softly.

“When we were six years old, he strangled me.”

“…… what?”

His brother’s words were once again shocking, forcing Felix to ask back with a blank face.

“He wasn’t drunk or out of his mind. He was in a sober state of mind, he just strangled me without any guilt. As if that’s what he has to do at that moment.”

His distant voice seemed to penetrate Felix’s head once, then fly away and scatter.

He didn’t know what to say back. Confused, Felix just listened to his brother’s story with a stunned face.

“At that time, mother ran to stop father. She begged desperately. To save me. To not kill me.”

Adrian paused for a moment with a dark face as if he were recalling that time.

Two identical blue eyes stared at each other. However, the difference was, one side was in shock, and the other side was sinking like death.

“……but father didn’t stop. No matter how many times mother shouted that I was his child, he didn’t stop. Then mother changed her ways and began to persuade him in other words. Our faces are becoming indistinguishable, so he can use me somewhere. At that, he stopped strangling me. That’s all she could say to save me. I’m his son, but I don’t mean anything to him.”

Adrian let out a self-help laugh.

“That’s how I was able to survive. Like mother said, father didn’t try to kill me afterwards because he thought he could use me for something. He started using me as your replacement.”

When Adrian stopped talking, a terrible silence filled the room.

“Why in the world…”

Why does father want to kill Adrian?

It never happened to me. Not even once.

Adrian and him were twins born on the same day. He couldn’t think of a reason why he would kill only him.

“Why on earth would father…….”

Adrian laughed bitterly at Felix’s vain murmur.

“I don’t know, Felix.”

A desperate voice came out of his mouth.

“Like you, I also don’t know. Why did father try to kill me?”

It wasn’t until he heard this tremendous fact that Felix realized. Why their mother tried to protect Adrian as obsessive as she has been.

Why Adrian always came first to his mother.

“I think that’s when mother started over protecting me. Mother was always afraid that my father would try to kill me again when she didn’t know.”

Adrian, who struggled to finish his words recalling the terrible memories of the past, collapsed on the bed.

“So…… don’t tell me that mother loves me more. Because it’s not true.”

How can I respond to that?

Felix couldn’t say anything in front of his brother who confessed his trauma.

* * *

Felix quietly left the room. Now, he walked slowly in the dark along the campus, which smelled like winter.

Adrian’s voice was calm and quiet, but his words caused a stir in Felix’s mind.

Why did my father want to kill Adrian?

He already knew that he was crazy when it came to his family’s business, but he couldn’t understand that he tried to hurt his child.

Shortly after he walked, he found a person standing in front of a nearby flower bed and stopped walking. His mother, who stumbled out of the room, remained in the academy with the help of a maid.

With a pale complexion, her eyes widened when she found Felix.