Chapter Text
"Wow," Melissa began, clearly amused, as she rubbed her cheek against the little boy's. "You've been really cuddly today, Mingrui."
Klein twitched at her comment, silently nibbling on his share of bread for breakfast. He stared listlessly at his empty plate. None of them really needed it. They usually ate with their hands. Alongside a cup of water to dip the dry food in to avoid accidental choking while swallowing. The Lady knows how many times it happened over the years already. However, his little sister liked using plates for the sake of proper presentation, and he'd never discouraged her. What was the harm, anyway?
Klein's appetite waned at the sound of a childish giggle. He didn't look up, merely sitting still as he set his food down on the wooden plate Benson had bought somewhere at a cheap, forgettable price. "Aren't you hungry?" little Mingrui asked innocently.
Klein glanced up instinctively, catching the child's strange black eyes. He stared for a moment, as if into an abyss, his mind empty of refusal. "A little," he answered, shaking his head a bit too quickly, because for some reason he couldn't quite form the words—'no, I'm not hungry.'
Mingrui watched him for a moment longer before tilting his head back against Melissa's collar, smiling a smile that was impossible to read. "Don't you want some more?" he asked, his voice light and airy, as though carried by a passing breeze. Klein flinched. Just slightly. Not out of fear, but from something instinctive. Something deeply rooted in his soul.
His little sister laughed softly, brushing the child's bangs back. "Maybe later," she said. Then, without any hesitation, she tore her half-piece of bread in two, and offered it to the little boy with a gentle smile. "Don't you want more?" Mingrui stared, and Klein caught the subtle pause as he absorbed the sight. His once-abysmal eyes softening into a warm brown under the glow of the early sunlight.
"Won't you be hungry?" Mingrui asked instead, making no move to take the piece of bread as he leaned back, and looked up at Melissa. "You hardly ate," the little boy added. "Miss Melissa should eat more so she'll be very healthy."
"Take mine, then," Klein cut in lightly, already snapping his barely eaten bread in two. "I'm not that hungry," he added. "I'm staying home today. I don't need to eat much," he finished, just before his little sister could comment. "Take it," he insisted.
As Klein urged Melissa to take it—because of course, it was never that simple, she had always been stubborn—he wondered if he had imagined the fleeting change in Mingrui's eyes.
For a moment, Klein could have sworn he saw a quiet flicker of realization, as though something mortal had brushed against something ancient and mysterious, leaving that being with the briefest trace of humanity.
Klein let out a quiet sigh through his nose, brushing the nonsensical thoughts aside. 'How stupid.'
Only after Melissa had left for school did Klein—deliberately cradling the five-year-old boy—abruptly realize that he was once again alone with something he could only hope to comprehend.
It began with curiosity. Or perhaps it began with Welch's offer. To decipher a notebook from the Fourth Epoch. Before he realized what was happening, he was already adrift within a boundless expanse of gray fog and drifting mist. The memory came to him in fragments, distant and indistinct, like something glimpsed through deep water. Blurred, muffled, fundamentally incomprehensible. Nothing made sense. Nothing could be grasped. 'It felt like drowning, dying, suffocating—'
Klein vaguely recalled a hand brushing against his cheek. The touch was so light it carried no weight, no pressure, as though it merely existed to guide him upright. Yet even that sensation felt unreal, slipping away the moment he tried to focus on it. His vision dimmed, swallowed whole by fog and darkness.
Then, without warning, words materialized out of nothingness. "Would you like to be saved?" The voice was faint, as if it came from a distant shore, carried across an endless sea of thick, impenetrable fog. Yet it echoed clearly within his mind.
'Saved?' he dumbly asked, 'from what?' Or rather, Klein tried to ask. His lips barely obeyed him. Stranger still, he realized with unsettling clarity that he felt no panic—none at all—despite knowing he should have been on the verge of hysteria.
"Death," it replied. In an instant, memories surged forth. The texture of yellowed paper beneath his palm. Then... cold metal. A gun. And finally, the sharp, fleeting pain of a bullet piercing through his skull.
Before Klein knew it, he was back in his room. Bathed in the cold, crimson glow of the Evernight Goddess' gaze. And there, seated on top of his study desk, was a little boy. "I'll be in your care, Mr. Moretti!" the child said brightly, his face lighting up with an innocent, radiant smile. "I've never had a big brother before!"
Klein froze. He did not have a younger brother. And yet, the memories churning within his mind told him otherwise.