Chapter 38: You Will Always Be My Big Brother

"What I’ve said never changes—if you finish by walking, you’ll still be penalized with an extra five laps!" the instructor called out from behind us.

"Big Bro, why don’t you run ahead first? I can limp to the finish line on my own!" Ryu Yu said, grabbing my arm.

"Cut the crap. Don’t let this bastard look down on us. Me helping you walk is way better than you dragging yourself forward alone—besides, doing this is practically a rest for me anyway," I said, putting on an impatient front.

Seeing how resolute I was, Ryu Yu said nothing more, though his grip on my arm tightened just a bit.

"Actually, the instructor isn’t wrong. If our situation happened on a real battlefield, delaying military operations would definitely get us shot," Ryu Yu suddenly spoke up as we drew close to the finish line.

I looked at him in confusion and asked, "Can’t you even rest when you’ve sprained your ankle? And after he insulted us like that?"

"Soldiers just have that kind of temper—they like to bark insults at every turn, and he did say before training started that he wouldn’t treat us like students."

"Don’t soldiers ever get injured during training? Don’t accidents happen?"

"A soldier’s duty is to obey orders. Even if you only have one breath left, if you’re ordered to die, you can’t even bat an eye! Not to mention these special forces guys are the elite among soldiers—obeying orders is already their golden rule!" Ryu Yu explained.

"I really didn’t expect you to understand the military so well."

Ryu Yu offered me a noncommittal smile. Not far off, our entire class was cheering for us at the top of their lungs. Ryu Yu and I picked up our pace, heading straight toward the finish line.

Just a few meters away from the line, I stopped and said to Ryu Yu, "You go cross first!"

"Big Bro, you... I want to run those extra five laps with you!" Ryu Yu instantly guessed my intention.

"Accompany me for what? Look at the state you’re in! Go straight to the school clinic in a bit."

"No way! When I fell, you didn’t leave me behind, Big Bro. I can’t be that unloyal!"

"Where’s all this nonsense coming from? I told you to go, so go! I didn’t become your Big Brother for nothing. Don’t worry, a tiny problem like this won’t beat me!" Saying that, I pushed him across the finish line.

After pushing Ryu Yu across, I stepped over the finish line right under the instructor’s nose.

Standing before the instructor, I said, "Instructor, my classmate Ryu Yu sprained his ankle while running. I’d like to request medical leave for him!"

"Granted. However, since you were the last to reach the finish line, according to the previous rule, you must run five penalty laps. But for the last few laps, you walked instead of running, which normally warrants a double penalty. Since you were helping a classmate, I won’t add extra punishment here—you just need to rerun those remaining five laps. Total penalty is ten laps. Any objections?" Instructor Jin asked.

Before I could speak, Ryu Yu shouted out, "Instructor, please let me run those other five laps for him!" The other classmates joined in one after another, offering to run in my place, which moved me to tears inside.

"What’s all this noise?! The military has rules—if you break them, you take the punishment! Where do you think you are, taking punishments for each other?!" Instructor Jin barked furiously.

"Instructor, I have no objections. But could we first have a classmate take Ryu Yu to the clinic?" Seeing signs that the instructor was about to blow his top again, I quickly spoke up.

The instructor nodded and instructed another student to help Ryu Yu to the clinic.

Ryu Yu looked at me, his eyes brimming with gratitude, his voice choking up as he said, "Big Bro, starting today, I truly admire you from the bottom of my heart. You will always be my Big Brother!"

I nodded with a warm smile, watching Ryu Yu hobble off the field, before turning around and bursting into a run.

"Sister, are you there?" I called out in my mind.

At the sound of my voice, Athena materialized beside me once again. She first struck me with a beam of golden light before speaking: "Fuitsu-kun, I feel like you’re very worked up today—even more excited than that day at Shin Garei’s place when you two were... doing stuff!" As she spoke, a rare blush washed over Athena’s fair face. She had originally wanted to say "making love," but such words were truly impossible for her to utter, so she substituted it with "doing stuff."

"Sister, I only realized today how beautiful life can be—having friends makes days so wonderfully happy!" I said as I ran.

"Hehe, what kind of insights have you gained, Fuitsu-kun?"

"Sister, back in middle school and high school, I never interacted with anyone. Deep down, I felt inferior because of family matters, always feeling like I was beneath others. Because of that, I was unwilling to communicate with people, so I could never find any friends. Every time I saw classmates playing soccer and messing around together on the school field, I felt so envious—even jealous. I could only watch them play from afar, and as time went on, many people came to think of me as a freak, becoming even less willing to befriend me. It wasn’t until today that I realized making friends is actually so simple: as long as you treat others with genuine sincerity, they will naturally treat you with sincerity in return!" I said.

"Hehe, Fuitsu-kun is starting to grow up! But you must understand that life has different stages, and different stages come with different trials. Looking at the exact same matter at different stages of your life, you’ll discover entirely different perspectives. Life experience is something you can only learn for yourself—no matter how powerful we are, we can’t learn it for you! Now that Fuitsu-kun is an adult, you need to start looking at people and things through the eyes of an adult."

"Through the eyes of an adult? What exactly counts as an adult’s perspective?"

"When we are young, we often only see the surface level of things, whereas adults look past appearances to see the true essence!"

"See the true essence? How do you do that?" I asked in confusion.

"Well, ’seeing’ can mean a lot of things! Broadly speaking, it refers to taking what your eyes see, combining it with what your ears hear, and analyzing it all together to arrive at a conclusion!"

"Oh, I get what you mean, Sister! You mean that some things seen on the surface aren’t real, while some things that seem unreal actually exist in solid reality. Just like you, Sister—in modern science, your existence completely violates the theory of evolution and shouldn’t exist at all, yet here you are right in this world, right?" I asked.

"Fuitsu-kun really is smart!" Athena smiled sweetly and praised me, making me blush with embarrassment.

"Fuitsu-kun, what I actually want you to understand most is that when you encounter anything, you need to think and analyze it. Take what happened between you and Hikaru Li at the auditorium that day—try analyzing his motive!" Athena guided me.

"What motive could he possibly have? We aren’t even close—we only met once at my eldest uncle’s place!" I said.

"Just as you said, since you weren’t close to begin with, would he out of the goodness of his heart invite you to dinner? And even try so hard to befriend you?" Athena led me further into the analysis.

Hearing Athena’s words, my heart skipped a beat—it really did seem completely illogical. After a moment, I came up with a somewhat plausible reason: "Could it be that because he’s pursuing Shizune, he wanted to use me to get closer to her?"

"If that were really the case, he wouldn’t have been so polite to you, nor would he have held back his temper when you rejected him so rudely! Don’t you ever forget how Shohi and Fuitsu view you!"

"Then what on earth was it about?" I asked.

Athena gave a gentle smile: "What position does Hikaru Li hold at school?"

"Student Council President... Could that be the reason?"

"Of course it is! You are the top-scoring student on the National College Entrance Examination, and your speech in the auditorium gave you an extraordinary standing in the eyes of the freshmen. The Student Council President election happens every year, doesn’t it? When the next election comes around, if you help him out and call on the freshmen to vote for him, just imagine how big of a boost that would be for him!"

"So he was being that fake?! Hmph, I will definitely not let myself be manipulated by him!"