Chapter 24: Brothers Quarrel

I wanted to have a tea party! So I went to the Virgil’s mansion with great enthusiasm and brought with me the recipe for the dish I had promised to make. So now, I was being treated with the Virgil family’s special herbal tea.

“I had heard from Will before, but Alice really has changed. She always was loved by the spirits…I’m so relieved.”

Aunt Felicia sipped her tea while saying so.

“That’s true. Besides, ever since Alice has recovered, I’ve been enjoying every single day.”

I smiled back at Brother Will who said that to me. I was also very happy to be surrounded by such kind relatives.

We were chatting while enjoying our tea like that, but I didn’t try bringing up Brother Oluris in the conversation.

“Oh, so then, Auntie, Brother…I would like to have tea with Brother Oluris as well. When can I see him?”

The moment I said that, the air changed completely.

Brother Will’s face became grim, and Aunt Felicia’s face became sad.

“…Alice, forget about my brother. That man is no longer the person Alice knew.”

“Eh…what does that mean?”

I wonder how they misunderstood me.

“You know, Alice-chan…I don’t want to say this about my own child either, but…Oluris has changed. You shouldn’t get too close to him.”

Even his own mother, Aunt Felicia, seems to think that Brother Oluris as a danger to me.

“…Is there something wrong?”

When I asked that, Brother Will looked down with a gloomy and sad face. Then he blurted out a few words.

“…I was almost killed by him.”

“What?”

When I questioned him at those incredulous words, Brother Will looked up with a snap and cried out in anguish,

“I was almost killed by him a year and a half ago! My brother…and I…I…”

Brother Will clenched his trembling fists as he said this, and took a deep breath before speaking slowly.

“My brother Oluris has been reclusive since around the same time that Alice got sick. But as a legitimate son of a nobleman, he wouldn’t be forgive for that, would he? My parents and I tried to find out what was going on. We tried to talk to him, we tried to convince him—we did everything we could. But my brother just kept getting darker and darker.”

Hmmm, it seemed to have gotten worse. I guess it’s like that thing where telling a depressed person to hang in there just adds an extra burden. I don’t know if that might have been the case with Brother Oluris…

“Oluris was still out and about at the time…but ever since that one incident in the greenhouse, we haven’t been able to have tea parties anymore…”

“The incident in the greenhouse?”

When I muttered that, Brother Will finally looked up as if he was in pain.

“Ah. That day, as I recall, I went to call my brother in the greenhouse because there was a tea party at a relative’s mansion. But my brother didn’t want to go and asked me to leave him alone…I was so frustrated with him that I couldn’t help but yell at him, saying that he didn’t even know what the family was thinking. And then…”

Shuddering, Brother continued in a low voice.

“He was crouching down with his head in his hands, and a plant behind him grew rapidly and tightened around my neck. Then a poisonous pollen from a nearby flower suddenly shot out and surrounded me.”

“…!”

It certainly couldn’t be helped if he thought that he was trying to kill him with plant magic.

“My husband noticed the commotion and immediately administered first aid, which saved Will from any side-effects, however…It was too much to be a mere brothers quarrel. Ever since then, Oluris has become even more withdrawn from the world. It’s a shame, but he doesn’t even talk to me either.”

There were tears in Aunt Felicia’s eyes as she said this regretfully.

“Fortunately, though, as long as we don’t provoke him, he doesn’t do anything. He’s either in his private quarters or in the storeroom reading something, though he comes down to the greenhouse once in a while…Disinheriting an heir apparent is a threat to the family’s reputation, so we’ve been left to wait and see, but I don’t think his father will allow it anytime soon.”

“That’s…”

The situation was more serious than I had expected, and I was rendered speechless.

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