Chapter 5. The Red of Withered Grass

The first time Zen met the twins was also the first time he saw his father again after such a long time. The man had dumped his baby self to the grandma to be taken care of, and only came back once in a while to check on him.

Not checking whether he was alright, but checking if he was awakened yet. He knew later that his mother was a guide, and had long died giving birth to him.

When he did awaken as a guide, his father came with a woman and two toddlers, dumped the toddlers to the grandma again, and took him to a scary building.

Well, his child self thought it was scary at that time, with all the espers looking at him like he was an object of interest. Or merchandise to be sold. Maybe because he was. He realized immediately that he was being sold—his ability, at least.

He had to prove he was worthy first, and had to endure harsh scrutinizing for a year, before Umbra decided they were satisfied and bought him. The contract money, obviously, went into his father's pocket, along with the woman who was supposedly the twins' mother. And then they were gone, leaving Zen with two toddlers.

Zen had never seen the man since.

He hated the twins, at first, even while he decided to keep them inside the small, empty house. The twins looked like his father, from the black hair to the grey eyes, to the contour of their faces. Except for the black hair, they looked nothing like Zen, who resembled his mother more.

He treated them with indifference; taking care of them was just his way of proving that he wasn't like that man. But no matter how cold and harsh he acted, the twins were looking at him and following him like a pair of imprinted ducks.

It was annoying. It was adorable. It gave reason for Zen not to succumb to Umbra and other espers. Because his downfall would be theirs, too.

He didn't know since when, but he get used to them. He didn't even get mad when the twins brought him matching charms, made by the grandma who always took care of them. He obediently wore it as a necklace.

He stared at that charms now, circling his brothers' wrists as bracelets. It was just simple beads, shaped like droplets of water, because everyone had been saying Zen's eyes looked like a pair of lakes. Not that they ever saw any bodies of water in this place. And the twins had painstakingly carved their names on that tiny beads.

Zen would've smiled if his facial muscle wasn't feeling dead right now.

Kneeling on the withered grass, he reached for the bracelets, and started to take them off. Slowly, as his gaze traveled to the sleeping face of his brothers. They looked strangely peaceful.

Why?

Zen had no idea. They should be in pain. They were in pain for hours. Was it relief? That they no longer needed to suffer in this devious land? In this cruel world that gave them no happiness?

Zen didn't know.

"Hey, you shouldn't take things from the deceased!" a voice shouted at Zen, a man in an agency worker uniform.

There was darkness fleeting on the deep blue eyes, but thankfully, another voice spoke first. "He's family, cut it out!"

"Huh? But isn't he that Umbra—uh... never mind..."

If Zen was offended by that, he didn't show it. Or perhaps he just no longer cared about such things. He just sat there in front of his laid brothers, unraveling the knot on the bracelets, taking the beads off from them.

One knot…two knots… people were coming and going; espers, agency workers, more figures being laid out above the field of withered grass. Some people were waiting, checking for someone they knew. Someone was making a note—a list of names, making numbers.

Still, Zen sat between his brothers, paid no heed to the rest of the field, fiddling with a simple knot that stubbornly refused to unravel. When it did, and Zen took out the beads, someone approached him; the surveyor.

"Name?" the question was asked in a cold voice.

And Zen answered in the same cold, almost numb tone. "Aiden, Hayden."

"Surname?"

"...none,"

"What?"

Zen rolled the beads in his hands, feeling the name carved there. "No surname," attaching that man's name to theirs would just tarnish the twins' already not-so-bright life.

"Eh, sure," and with that, the worker walked away, and continued walking along the rows of laying figures, making headcounts.

"Why are these people...ugh!" another voice came into Zen's hearing as he took off his necklace and put the two beads there. Alma watched as he fumbled with his necklace, before calling him with a soft voice that wasn't at all seemed like it was coming from her. "Zen..."

He wore the necklace again—it felt heavier now—and stood up, dusting his clothes off the dirt from the ground. From up here, they seemed more and more like they were just sleeping. He had cleaned their heads from the blood and the plaster dirt, and fixed their clothes as best as he could. He hummed in satisfaction.

"Zen?"

"How are they going to proceed with the bodies?"

"…fire. Unless the family wants to bury them. But most of them had no family left anyway…"

"Yeah, figured," Zen looked at the far side of the field. He could see now, some agency workers had dragged out woods, either from the trees or from the houses.

"What about…" Alma looked at the twins, and then at Zen's unchanging eyes, still staring at the pile of woods. "Don't you want to bury them?"

"In this land that is always riddled with leftover miasma?"

Alma could hear a sneer in the young man's voice. She could only sigh, and nodded in agreement. "Yeah, you're right."

Zen gave one last look at his brothers, a long unblinking gaze as if he wanted to capture the sight. It would be the last time he saw them. Since he wasn't asking for burial, the agency people would automatically proceed them to be cremated.

He nodded, as if saying his goodbye, and then he walked away with Alma in tow.

"Where are you going?"

"To the house. There's something I need to take," Zen answered without stopping, walking straight to the barricade. The subjugation was almost over now, only searching for the hidden beasts that managed to come inside the houses. It was safe enough for the clean-up workers to start taking the beast corpses and human bodies out, so there were no longer guards stationed on the fence.

There were, however, espers still congregating inside. In fact, there were quite a lot of them, standing around a small group with a defensive posture. There was only one instance when this kind of scenery happened; someone was near eruption.

Alma and Zen went toward the leader of Scarlet Moon—Alma's mercenary group—that was on the outer side of the encirclement. From the gap, Zen could see someone with black purplish smoke seated on the ground, the sclera had started to turn red, and the edge of the hands had turned black.

A black-level corrosion; just one step away from eruption.

"How can someone even reach this far of corrosion?" Alma asked with a frown.

"Being too confident and lack of self-knowledge, mainly," the leader, which happened to be Alma's brother, Zach, shrugged. "He's too far gone to be brought to the camp, so we just waiting for someone to call a guide."

"Hmm..." Zen narrowed his eyes. He recognized that esper, regrettably.

"Oh, here's a guide," Zach smiled, glancing at Zen. His voice wasn't particularly loud, but it was enough for the other superhuman to hear with their advanced hearing. "I don't know if you want to, though~"

It wasn't a taunt for Zen as much as it was a scoff toward the other mercenary guild. As it happened, the one near eruption was the young esper who called Zen as 'Umbra's dog' earlier. Naturally, people would think Zen wouldn't bother guiding someone who antagonized him so much.

But Zen walked ahead, to the small, agitated group. Even in his daze, the young man still managed to glare at him, which made Zen smirk. Obviously, they could not see it from behind his mask, but the man probably could feel it, because he snarled.

"I don't...need you..." it was a pathetic-sounding voice.

Zen, still smirking, crouched down so they were at eye level. His eyes were deep, staring piercingly at the esper's hazy reddish eyes.

Did he want to help this person? Not really. He probably wouldn't want to do it if the man begged him to. Luckily for the esper, Zen was full of spite today. And he wanted to spite at the arrogance of this esper, who preferred to indulge in his pride even as he could explode anytime, putting people in danger.

The one who interrupted first, however, wasn't the young esper, or his group. It was the Steel Blood. "Zen, shouldn't you rest now?" the hulking esper suddenly kneeled beside Zen, grabbing his arm.

Zen would throw him a cold look if it wasn't for the genuine concern on Askan's face. "I rest enough," he said instead. Yes, he had sat there on the withered grass for a good portion of half an hour.

"But can you still do it? You've been guiding non-stop..."

"He's just a 1-star," Zen shrugged. And he was empty, basically. He could probably even guide a high corrosive 4-star right now.

"Fuck! Who said I want to be guided by—gakh!" the young esper didn't manage to finish his spat before a hand grabbed his face and slammed him down to the ground.

There was a dull cracking sound and a choked wheeze. But there was nothing besides that. The other espers either stared with wide eyes or with a sneer as they watched the guide press his hand on the trashing esper's face.

"Do you even know what kind of shit will happen if you erupt here, now?" the blue eyes that usually looked like a serene lake while guiding were raging now. "Or do you not care since you thought the place is a ruin now?"

That's right. Zen could just let the man erupt and die for all he cared. But even a 1-star esper's eruption could result in a kilometers-wide explosion. Then his house would get destroyed before he could retrieve his brothers' keepsakes.

The esper still struggling and cursing, but it had weakened now. Torrential rain came upon the esper's system, harshly washing the corrosion. It wasn't unpleasant, just harsh. Like standing in the middle of heavy rain. But even then, for someone who was on the verge of eruption, even a storm felt like a blessing.

Slowly, the black hue on the struggling fingers was fading, and the red eyes retreated into their white. As the corrosion was being sucked away, the esper finally calmed down, and just laid still with widened eyes, staring at the stormy blue of the guide's eyes.

It was silence all around, with most of them unfamiliar with Zen's swift and precise guiding. They were probably as shocked as the young esper himself. And while they were still standing rooted watching, Zen pulled his hand away.

"That should be enough," he had absorbed about half of the corrosion, so the imminent danger was gone. And the mercenary guide that was being called finally arrived, so they could sort it out between themselves.

He stood up and walked away. If the esper could afford to loiter around, it would mean the beast's subjugation had finished. So he slipped away in haste, ignoring people calling at him.

He saw clean-up crews on his way, carrying bodies. He saw one in front of his brothers' building. Once the clean-up was done, they would start the cremation process. He hastened his step and jumped into the second floor again.

The collapsed roof was still there, now laying flat on the floor. In that condition, there was not much that Zen could salvage. Thankfully, the only bedroom was still intact, and Zen entered it with a heavy heart.

There was only one thing he wanted to retrieve. Inside the wardrobe, in the dark corner, was a bag. It was something akin to an emergency bag—something that his brothers were supposed to bring when something occurred and they needed to run away. It was filled with essential things; Identification cards, birth certificates, contracts, money—things that should help them.

But his brothers had been adding things every year. When Zen checked on the content of the bag, it was also filled with first aid kits, emergency rations, and even miscellaneous things like flashlight and lighter and photographs.

Zen sat on the bed, looking at the small pictures in his hand. There was a picture of the twins and the grandma before she died. There was a picture of them on their school excursion—probably new. And then there was a picture of them and Zen.

It was probably the only one, taken when Zen came home one day, and Hayden ran with a camera he took from the grandma's son. They took it hastily, Zen didn't even completely look at the camera, brow raised at his brother's shenanigan.

For a while, he stared at the picture, at the twin's wide smiles and curious look. At his own confused face. The people inside that photograph looked like they live in a normal world. The world depicted in that leaflet—a peaceful world. There was no mask to filter the murky air, no furrowed brows, no sickly complexion. Just brothers doing brothers' things, whatever it was.

Ah. He could feel it, stabbing pain in his gut. A choking lump in his throat.

Zen forced himself to blink, to tear his gaze away from the picture, and put it back inside the bag.

He stood to look for his clothes inside the wardrobe, and saw a small notebook laying on the floor, probably falling over from the impact. When he picked it up, a folded leaflet came falling too. It was the same leaflet he still had inside his jacket—the one from the museum.

There was a heaviness that he couldn't help but felt on his fingers, as they flipped the notebook open with a tremble. Just a glance was enough to realize that it was a diary. There, on the page where the folded leaflet was used as a bookmark, was Aiden's handwriting.

—We'll be living in the higher zone when brother Zein becomes an official guide. Then we can go to a good school, and get a good job, and we'll earn money so brother Zein won't have to. He can live however he like then, just like us—

Zen stared at the handwriting, at the words, at each letter. He gripped the notebook, hard. So hard his knuckles turned white.

He remembered the thing Aiden said on his back earlier.

[you have to live your life]

There and then, surrounded by the vestige of his half-brothers, Zen could no longer manage to stop the lump in his throat to go up.

And he crouched down. In silent. In tears.