Half-Brother

Things were quiet for a while.

Everything was going quite well. We moved to a two-bedroom apartment I booked for a month. The boy found a job at a bar and was working diligently. The money he earned, although not a lot, was enough to cover our day-to-day expenses. He also took care of all the household chores, groceries, laundry, cleaning, cooking… He was unexpectedly skilled. I guess it was worth keeping him around.

I got him memberships at a gym and a shooting range, so that he could somewhat continue his training. This way, he might be able to provide some backup for me when I'd need to face the organization again.

Aside from that, my life pretty much returned to the norm. I spend all of my days doing whatever I felt at the moment. I frequently visited all the casinos around the city, sometimes gambling just for fun, at other times breaking the reality laws a bit to ensure that my profits were higher than my losses.

In the evenings, I usually went to clubs, drinking, and often bringing some random girls home.

Just like that, time was passing by, without the organization making a single appearance.

***

I sat by the table, playing with the breakfast the boy made, pushing the food around the plate. I didn't have much appetite. I had a bit too much to drink last night, and now had a bit of a hangover.

The boy was standing by the kitchen sink, doing the dishes. Droplets of water were dripping from his messy brown hair, which he forgot to dry properly. When I woke up, he has just returned from his morning run. Seeing me up, he immediately went to prepare coffee and breakfast, and only then went to shower.

I didn't even need to ask him to do anything. By now, he always took care of all the household stuff on his own initiative.

"Is the food bad?" Seeing that my plate was still pretty much full, the boy bit his lip, slightly worried. "I can prepare something else."

I shook my head. "Nah, it's alright. I'm just not hungry."

It actually was more than alright. The boy was a pretty decent cook from the start, and throughout the time we spent together, he adjusted his dished to match my taste. Now, everything he prepared was exactly to my liking.

Hearing my answer, the boy dropped the topic and returned to cleaning up. He knew that asking any more would only get me annoyed.

"By the way," I started, drawing circles with my fork on the plate. "How long did you say it took the organization to find you for the first time?"

"When I became an outlier?" The boy glanced at me over his shoulder. "A month, why?"

"A month, huh…" I put the fork away and leaned back in my chair.

It's been over a month since we arrived in this world, and there was still not a sign of the organization. I should be happy about it, but somehow, I felt rather bored instead. I kind of missed the thrill of fighting against them.

What was taking them so long?

Well, they needed almost 20 years to find me for the first time. Would it take another 20 years for them to find me again?

"Are you wondering why they haven't found us yet?" The boy seemed to have guessed what I was thinking. "I'm not sure… But when they found me, that was in a different sector. Maybe they are not as good in this one?"

"A different sector?" I immediately straightened up. "What do you mean?"

"Oh, the organization is divided into different sectors. After I got picked up, they transferred me here, because…" The boy suddenly paused, looking behind me. His face turned red.

I glanced back. The girl I spent the night with just woke up and came out of the bedroom, wearing only lingerie and my shirt, unbuttoned, giving a perfect view of her body. She seemed to still be half asleep, as he hasn't even noticed the boy at first. As soon as she did though, she quickly pulled the shirt, covering herself up.

She cleared her throat, trying to hide the embarrassment. "Mo-morning."

"Morning." I sipped my coffee, disinterested. The boy threw me a glance, as if asking whether he should prepare some breakfast for her too, but I just shook my head. I was hoping she would just get dressed and leave.

However, she came over and sat by the table, across from me. "I didn't know you had a housemate."

"It's just my brother," I answered with a frown.

A frying pan dropped on the floor with a loud clang. The boy bent down to pick it up, but ended up dropping it again, due to a sudden increase in his previously absent clumsiness.

"Hmm…" She observed the boy, resting her chin on her hand. "You don't look alike."

The boy had brown hair, big, grey eyes, a pointy nose, and a round face. That was indeed quite different from my jet-black hair, black eyes, and rather sharp facial features.

"Half-brother," I added.

I grabbed a pack of cigarettes that was on the table and lit one, ignoring the boy who was wiping a clean counter with a cloth completely soaked in water. Because he forgot to squeeze it out, the water soon started dripping on the floor. However, he hasn't even noticed. He just stared at the counter absentmindedly, with a smile so wide, that it looked as if his lips might tear at the seams.

The woman just kept on glancing at me expectantly from where she sat across from me. She was not bold enough to ask for breakfast herself, so she kept waiting for me to offer it. But I ignored her too.

I just reached out for my phone and started scrolling through one of the pages I had opened in the browser.

The boy finally snapped out of it, finished cleaning, and went to do the laundry, also acting as if the woman wasn't there.

"Ahem, then I will be going now." Against her words, the woman was still glued to the chair. Was she hoping I would stop her? Come on, it was just a random one-night stand, wasn't she expecting a bit too much?

I just nodded without sparing her a single glance. "As you wish."

With that, the woman had no excuse to hang around any longer. She slowly got up and went to the bedroom to get dressed. Then she walked out without a single word.