We headed back toward the room we’d slept in last night—specifically, to wake up my brother before my mother’s warning became a prophecy. It’s not the first time he’s done that. I think the longest time he slept was near 28 hours, which is impressive.

  Arthur, Trayn, and Taka came along with me, and so did Shizuku and Reika. The rest split off toward the dining hall, their footsteps fading down the opposite corridor.

  The moment I realized who was leading the way, I felt a weird sense of—something settle in my stomach. Shizuku and Reika were walking in front.

  Not just walking, walking, it was the excited kind of walking. Purposeful. Energetic. A little too energetic for people who were supposedly just here to wake someone up.

  Concerningly enthusiastic, even.

  I leaned toward Arthur and muttered, half-whispering, “Don’t you think they uh—look a bit excited?”

  Arthur glanced ahead, took in the scene for half a second, then shrugged. “Oh yeah. Don’t worry about those two,” he said casually. “At this point, they’re already pros at waking him up.”

  …Pros?

  I stared at him.

  Pros?

  How does one even become a professional at waking up my brother? I thought for a moment. I suppose I can consider myself a professional at waking him. I mean, I just throw pillows or grab him by the leg then pull.

  What confused me a bit was that, when did those two gain that experience? Then again… my brother did go to the capital city a lot. Sometimes four times a month for a few days, depending on his mood.

  Maybe Shizuku and Reika had visited the capital before? …Yeah. That explains it.

  Ahead of us, the two girls exchanged looks, knowing grins and picked up their pace just a little.

  I shook my head as I got a distinct feeling that my brother was about to have a very rude awakening.

  When we reached the room, I braced myself for the usual scene, blanket covering my brother who is curled up and refusing to acknowledge the concept of morning.

  Instead, the door opened to something… off.

  My brother was already awake.

  He was sitting upright on the bed, back against the headboard, shoulders tense. One hand rested limply at his side, the other pressed hard against his face. His right eye was shut tight, like opening it would cost him something.

  As we stepped inside, he lifted his head and looked at us—well, looked might have been generous. One eye fixed on us, sharp and unfocused at the same time.

  Reika was the first to move closer. “Ae? What’s wrong?” she asked, her voice becoming unusually soft and concerned.

  My brother inhaled through clenched teeth. “Half my fucking body feels like it’s on fire.”

  The words were flat. Not dramatic. Not exaggerated.

  Just… stated.

  Shizuku let out a small scoff, crossing her arms. “That’s a weird lie,” she said. “Even for you.”

  I didn’t say anything out loud, but inside my head, something twisted.

  He doesn’t lie about things like this. If he’s hurting or uncomfortable, he would make it a point to let anyone know. It’s usually me or my mother. Actually—he doesn’t lie much at all. And on the rare occasions he does say something that sounds completely insane? It always turns out to be true.

  When it came to our two Corgis, he said that he had to fight two British people so that they gave them for free. In hindsight, it was just Remy and his father. Even that thing about the radish, I thought he was just making weird stuff up. Instead, he actually got a title about that.

  I sighed and looked at him again.

  The way his jaw was set. The way his breathing was just a little too controlled. The way he hadn’t even reacted to Shizuku’s comment.

  Yeah. Whatever was happening to him, it wasn’t a joke.

  My brother shot Shizuku a glare sharp enough to cut. Then, he opened the eye he’d been keeping shut. It was bloodshot—angry red veins spiderwebbing across the white, like he hadn’t slept in days. Not tired red but strained red.

  Shizuku’s scoff died in her throat. Her expression shifted instantly, worry replacing skepticism. “…You look awful,” she muttered, quieter this time.

  My brother replied with a grin that didn’t meet his eyes. “You think?”

  “Is that contagious?” Trayn asked, taking an unconscious half-step back.

  My brother growled. Not metaphorically. An actual, low sound came out of his chest.

  Reika, apparently immune to self-preservation, leaned closer instead. She tilted her head, eyes flicking over him with a mix of concern and mischief. “Ae?” she asked lightly. “Which parts hurt?”

  Before anyone could stop her, she reached out and poked his right leg. The reaction was immediate.

  “STOP FUCKING POKING IT, YOU DAMNED, WOMAN!”

  He practically launched off the bed, clutching his leg like she’d stabbed him. Reika, while smiling slightly jumped back, hands raised, while Arthur, and Trayn burst out laughing.

  Shizuku ignored all of that. “Should we get somebody?” she asked, already half-turned toward the door.

  “No,” my brother snapped, then sucked in a breath and forced it out slowly. His voice dropped into a growl again. “As long as no one keeps touching my right foot or hand, I’ll be fine.”

  He slumped back against the bed, teeth clenched. “All I need is rest. Probably.”

  Once my brother shifted around enough to find a position that didn’t make him hiss, he leaned back against the headboard and let out a slow breath.

  “So,” he said, his voice still rough but somewhat steadier, “what did you kids get up to?”

  My eyes met Arthur’s. He lifted a hand and made a graceful, almost theatrical gesture—by all means.

  I sighed. Of course.

  Before I could even open my mouth, Reika stepped forward, practically glowing. “Ae, a lot happened,” she said proudly. “Breakfast with the king, your mom ended up running the kitchens, Lady Celestia collapsed from overwork, the prince got dragged out by the ear—”

  My brother’s lips twitched, looking a bit amused

  “—and,” Reika continued without mercy, “because of certain circumstances, you’ve been assigned minders.”

  That got his attention. The amusement died, almost instantly. He slowly straightened. “Assigned… what?”

  Reika clasped her hands together. “Three of us!”

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  Silence.

  “…Three,” he repeated carefully. Then he added, “People?”

  “Yes, of course, people” Reika said, counting on her fingers. “Lady Celestia—once she recovers—me, and Shizuku.”

  My brother turned his head inch by inch toward Shizuku. She looked away, refusing to meet his gaze.

  Then at me and Arthur.

  I nodded. Arthur nodded too, like this was a funeral procession and we were paying our respects. If you look at it from a different perspective, I suppose we were. Then finally he looked back at Reika.

  “I hate,” he said flatly, each word weighed and deliberate, “every single word you just said.”

  Reika smiled wider. Arthur, Trayn, and Taka chuckled.

  “Huh, you’re already adapting,” Arthur said, sounding amused. “And here I was thinking there was going to be shouting involved.”

  My brother dropped back against the pillow with a dull thump, covering his face with his left hand. “Great. I wake up in another world,” he muttered, “half my body feels like it’s on fire, and now I’m being babysat by a sick mage, an idiot, and—”

  “—and?” Shizuku prompted, an unmistakable warning threading through her voice.

  He paused. You could practically hear the gears grinding in his head and weighing the possibilities.

  Shizuku raised a hand and let it hover dangerously close to my brother’s right foot.

  “…someone very smart,” he said through clenched teeth.

  Her fingers twitched closer.

  “And beautiful,” he added quickly, though it looked like it physically pained him to say those words out loud.

  Shizuku withdrew her hand with a satisfied hum and smirked. “Good boy.”

  The room broke into quiet snickers as my brother growled at her. Even Arthur had to turn his head away, shoulders shaking.

  With that particular landmine carefully disarmed, we finally got down to explaining everything else. We told him about the knight captains—about how magic was woven into daily life here, not just combat. About the towns, the walls, the paranoia surrounding disease. About how nothing was left exposed or unplanned because monsters didn’t care about sentimentality.

  We even told him about the poop.

  He listened without interrupting, one eye half-lidded, nodding along like this was a lecture he’d already decided was worth attending. When we finished, Trayn tilted his head at him. “I thought you’d complain about us talking about poop.”

  “Not at all,” my brother replied immediately. “It’s fascinating.”

  We blinked.

  He continued, warming to the topic despite himself. “Did you know that manure can be used to make a component of explosives? Honestly, it’s just chemistry.”

  Reika stared and said slowly, “Ae, why do you know that?”

  He shrugged or as much as his condition allowed him to shrug. “No particular reason other than curiosity. Same way I know piss, horses’ or humans’, can be used to make mild, ammonia-based stink bombs, or to make nitrates used in explosives.”

  There was a beat. Yeah, no one believed him. Then again, if it turns out to be true, honestly, I don’t know what I’d do.

  “And I’ve always wondered,” he added thoughtfully, “how powerful a pipe bomb made with human poop could become.”

  The room went dead silent.

  Trayn slowly leaned away from him. “Right, you’re never touching anything I own.”

  Shizuku pinched the bridge of her nose. “We’ve been here less than a day.”

  Arthur let out a dry laugh. “And he’s already planning war crimes.”

  Taka sighed. “I think this is the reason why he has those weird titles.”

  I agreed. “Yeah, this definitely falls on the ‘Researching substances they shouldn’t be’ title.”

  My brother smirked faintly, then winced when that small action apparently hurt him.

  “Relax,” he said, settling back against the pillows. “I’m bedridden. For now.” The pause that followed was just long enough to be ominous. “I can’t wait to be the problem,” he added, letting out a quiet, dangerous little laugh.

  “You already are!” Shizuku said angrily, rounding on him. She pinched the bridge of her nose again, like she was physically restraining herself from doing something regrettable.

  “How rude,” my brother replied, offended in principle if not in tone. “I haven’t done anything yet.”

  “Besides, I’m not a hero.” The way he said the word hero, made the title sound more like a curse than an honor.

  “So really,” he went on, glancing lazily around the room, “it’s you people who are in danger of turning into real-life murder hobos.”

  There was a beat.

  “A what?” Reika and Shizuku asked in perfect unison.

  “It’s a D&D term,” Taka answered immediately.

  That surprised me.

  Taka went on to explain about tabletop roleplaying games, about wandering adventurers who solved every problem with violence, looting first and asking questions never.

  I blinked. So did my brother.

  “You know D&D?” my brother asked, genuinely taken aback. “Unless I’m mistaken, not a lot of Japanese people do. At least not the ones in Japan.”

  “Yeah, well,” Taka said, scratching the back of his head, then pointed both thumbs at Trayn, and Arthur. “I was always hanging out with these two.”

  “We did our best to induct Taka,” Trayn said proudly.

  Arthur shrugged. “Though playing D&D with only three people is kind of—”

  “—less fun?” my brother finished for him, a grin tugging at his face again—slower this time, more careful, like he was testing how much his body would let him get away with.

  “Yeah,” Arthur admitted. “Yeah, being a dungeon master with only two players gets boring once you do it every so often.”

  That earned a quiet chuckle from my brother. “Figures. Too much power, not enough chaos.”

  We lingered a little longer after that, talking about nothing important—games, dumb hypotheticals, small bits of normalcy that felt oddly precious now. Eventually, though, the pull of food won out. When we told my brother we were heading to lunch, he waved us off lazily.

  “If Mom’s cooking,” he said, closing his good eye, “bring me some. Breakfast, lunch, I don’t care. Just make sure it’s hers.”

  Reika lit up instantly. “Ae, I can feed you if you can’t use your hand.”

  The room erupted into snickers.

  “No,” he shot back without missing a beat. “Absolutely not. I’m ambidextrous.”

  He cracked one eye open and added smugly, “It’s in my title.”

  Reika pouted at that.

  On the walk back to the dining hall, the conversation drifted easily. Arthur, walking beside me, tilted his head. “So, Wills, you also have that Ambidextrous title, right?”

  “Yeah, weirdly enough,” I said with a shrug. “It runs in the family. All our uncles have it.”

  “Only the boys, though,” I added after a second. “No idea why.”

  “Huh,” Arthur muttered. “That’s… oddly specific.”

  By the time we reached the dining hall, the noise hit us first—low chatter, the scrape of chairs, the soft clink of cutlery. Everyone was already there, seated and mid-conversation, like the world had never paused at all.

  The other boys peeled off toward the tables, chairs scraping softly as they settled in, already slipping back into conversation with the rest. I hesitated only a moment before turning with Reika and Shizuku toward the kitchens. There was no need for them to come with me, I could have just asked a guard but weirdly enough they just did wordlessly.

  The moment we stepped inside, I did a double take.

  This wasn’t the dark, cluttered, half-chaotic kitchen you saw in shows or read about in old fantasy novels. There were no soot-stained ceilings or narrow workspaces packed with shouting servants. Instead, the room was wide and clean, almost airy. Everything had its place. Counters were clear, tools neatly hung, and the floor had been cleaned and scrubbed so thoroughly it almost reflected the light.

  And the light itself—

  Small glowing stone crystals had been embedded into the walls and pillars, placed precisely where shadows would normally gather. Combined with the daylight streaming in from the large windows on two sides of the room, it made the whole space bright without being harsh. Functional. Thoughtfully designed.

  At the center were two massive roasting pits. Over one of them turned what looked like eight large poultry, evenly spaced, their skins browned and glistening as fat dripped into the coals below. The smell alone made my stomach tighten.

  The second pit, though—

  I stopped short and stared. Reika, and Shizuku noticing me stopped, then also stared. Our parents were in each of their own station, talking to the ten servants there. My mother noticing us, approached cleaver in hand.

  “Mom,” I asked slowly, pointing, “what is that?”

  She followed my finger and answered without hesitation. “Their version of pork. I think they call them Boaroxes.”

  I looked again.

  It looked like a very large armadillo. Or at least, something that shared the same idea. It had what looked like thick segmented plating, bulky limbs, and a body that possibly suggested that it had once been far harder to deal with while alive.

  Seeing our hesitation, Mom reached over, cracked off what looked like a section of the cooked shell, and handed pieces to the three of us.

  “Try it,” she said cheerfully. “It’s like crackling.”

  Reika took a bite immediately. Shizuku followed, a bit more cautiously.

  I bit in.

  Crunchy. Salty. Rich with a hint of pepper. But felt lighter than pork.

  “Oh,” I said. “That’s good.”

  Shizuku nodded. Earlier though, she had clearly been bracing herself for something questionable. But after the first bite, she blinked and went back for another bite.

  “It really is delicious,” Reika admitted emphatically. “Mother, is this your own recipe?”

  It was still hard to get over her calling our mother, mother.

  Mom smiled, a hand on her hip, clearly satisfied. “Yes, it’s how we would cook food back in our country. Fortunately, it also applies here. I gave them the instructions this morning, they just didn’t know how to finish it.”

  “For a world full of monsters and magic, at least there are things that are universal. And one of them, good food is still good food.” She glanced between us, amused. Then her expression shifted, just a little, and she looked past us toward the doorway. “And your brother?”

  I sighed, already feeling the weight settle on my shoulders, and told her everything—how he’d woken up early, how half his body felt like it was on fire, how he’d snapped and growled and insisted he was fine as long as no one touched his right side. I left out the manure, piss, and explosives. Some things didn’t need to cross worlds.

  By the time I finished, Mom let out a long, tired breath of her own.

  “Why is it,” she muttered, rubbing her temple, “that every time we go somewhere else, your brother gets sick?”

  She looked up at the ceiling like it held an answer for her.

  “If he’s not throwing up, he’s bedridden,” she added flatly. Reika nodded at this weirdly accurate pattern. Shizuku giggled, but she caught herself and covered her mouth with a hand.

  Mom straightened, resolve snapping back into place. “Fine. Then we’ll bring him food. And after that, I’ll see if this world has anything that passes for medicine.”

  She looked at me pointedly. “You’re not letting him skip meals again.”

  I nodded automatically, though inwardly I was sighing. I was supposed to be the younger one, when did our role get reversed?