When Luman stepped outside, Temar was striding straight toward him. His face looked as blank as ever, but for some reason the look in his eyes seemed ominous.

Built like a hero who fought with his own body, with that kind of frame and muscle, he was intimidating enough walking like that to make even Luman’s knees go weak.

“Is he dead?”

That was why, if someone like Temar grabbed you by the throat for even a moment, dying was nothing unusual. Luman asked the question flatly and picked up the sack that had been thrown on the ground.

Ren had come to mind.

Judging by the fact that he’d dropped it when he rammed him, it was probably some kind of gift for Temar. Hadn’t he said it was for their one-year anniversary? Come to think of it, he had said he was going to give him something.

“He’s alive.”

Temar’s voice carried a sigh in it.

Thunk.

When Luman tossed the sack, Temar caught it easily.

“?”

“You’re supposed to ask what it is.”

“What is it.”

“Open it.”

“Later.”

With a frown, Temar set the sack down.

“Where’s Ren?”

A pair of new leather shoes poked their toes out through the loosened opening of the sack.

Unbelievable. Luman wanted to click his tongue.

No wonder everything keeps going wrong. Ren, you should be thanking me. If it weren’t for me, you probably wouldn’t even have managed to give him the gift.

“That’s a gift Ren got for you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I said Ren got it.”

“For you?”

“For you!!”

“You?”

“Do you not even know who you are?”

“......”

“To think you’d be this bad at communicating. And dense on top of that. Ren’s pitiful.”

“What about Ren. Where is he? Is he asleep?”

“......”

Luman, who had been standing there with his mouth hanging open, pulled himself together and shoved at Temar’s shoulder as he tried to head into the shack. At once, Temar’s eyes flashed darkly.

“Luman.”

“The sack your little brother Ren threw on the ground has the gift he prepared for you in it. If you wear those and go, won’t that ease how upset Ren is at least a little? (I don’t even know why I’m explaining this....) Go open it. Stop just standing there staring at me. (How can someone be this dense?)”

Muttering to himself, Luman gave Temar a sharp tongue-lashing.

When he shoved hard at the shoulder of the man who was trying to ignore him and walk inside, Temar finally turned with obvious reluctance and picked up the sack he had set down.

One of the leather shoes that had been caught at the opening dropped to the ground.

Temar’s hand slowly picked it up.

“......”

Temar fell silent and ran his fingers over the shoe.

They were leather shoes that looked hard to come by in a tiny village like this. On top of that, Temar’s initials had been engraved inside.

“Better than I expected.”

Luman said it with pure admiration.

Getting your hands on these in a backwoods dump like this? Not bad.

If even sharp-eyed Luman was saying that, then they were definitely not something bought in this village.

“You’re not going to wear them?”

But contrary to Luman’s expectations, Temar put the shoes back in the sack and started tying it shut again.

“What are you doing?”

Now there was a faint anger in Luman’s voice, one so light even he himself didn’t notice it.

Temar stared at the sack for a long moment, then turned toward the storage shed.

“Temar. I asked what you’re doing.”

“To Ren, I’m nothing but a hero.”

At those words, Luman was so dumbfounded he could only stand there with his mouth open until Temar came back after putting the sack Ren had prepared deep inside the shed.

***

“Brother!”

Ren was a bright, lovable child.

Their parents were gone, but he was brave, and he was a good boy who listened well to his older brother. Temar wanted to raise his little brother as best he could. In place of the parents they no longer had. And to do that, he needed money.

There were very few things someone underage could do, and it was even harder to get paid properly for them. Even the hard bread that barely lasted a day or two, Ren could only swallow if it was soaked in water first. And even then he often threw it back up, so Temar lived in constant fear.

That Ren might die at any moment.

Then one day, an opportunity came to him.

It had to be a chance sent by heaven itself.

<Youth Soldier Conscription Order>

A call to recruit boy soldiers just to fill headcount, just to put on a farce.

For the first time, Temar lied to Ren.

“Brother got chosen to be a hero.”

“A hero?”

Not really knowing what that was, Ren blinked his little shining eyes. He still looked half asleep, rubbing his eyes with chubby, not-yet-grown hands. It was heartbreakingly cute.

“Yeah. A hero. You know that storybook the old man gave you, right? The kind with a hero who slays dragons and saves princesses.”

When Temar explained it gently, Ren finally seemed to understand and stared at him with his mouth hanging open.

“I know! Ren knows heroes too!! ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) The old man gave me a storybook! Right! Brother, you’re a hero?! You save princesses and kill dragons too?!”

Wild with excitement, Ren chattered away and swung his arms around.

“Woooow!!”

His eyes sparkled like stars had been set inside them, full of pure admiration.

Temar, who had lied to him, felt a sharp aching stab through his chest. He hadn’t expected Ren to love the idea this much. But he couldn’t take the lie back now. And it was a necessary lie. It was less sad to say he’d been chosen as some great hero and was going off for that than to say he was volunteering as a boy soldier because they needed money.

“That’s amaaazing! Brother, you’re so, so cool! My brother’s a hero!! A hero!”

“...Yeah. Ren, so brother has to leave the house.”

“Leave the house? Th-then I’m gonna be here alone?” 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

“Yeah.”

“Uuugh...”

At the words that he would have to be alone, Ren’s eyes filled all the way with tears. But little Ren bravely scrubbed at them hard with his hands and wiped them away. My brother’s going to become an awesome hero! If I stop him, that makes me a bad little brother! My brother’s a hero! Then I’m gonna be the brave little brother of a hero too!! Ren made that vow inside himself and nodded on purpose, over and over and over.

As if telling himself that his brother leaving the house was nothing.

So he wouldn’t cry. So he could keep the words he’d said praising his brother.

But Temar took Ren’s endless positivity the wrong way.

“Ren. Are you that happy that your brother is a hero?”

“Yeah!! Sooooo happy! Suuuuper happy! This much! Thiiiiiis muuuuch happy!!”

Ren flailed his whole body and spread both his arms as wide as he could, then toppled backward. Startled, Temar caught him as he fell. Ren beamed at him.

“Right. If Ren likes it, then I like it too.”

That Ren liked him very, very much as a hero.

It was the first time he had ever seen such an enthusiastic reaction.

Those shining eyes were brighter than when Temar told him any storybook tale. Ren’s clear, clean eyes, the kind that brought a summer forest to mind, sank into Temar’s chest like they were carving into it.

That was Temar’s clearest first memory.

On Ren’s face, where he clumsily tried to hide an awkward, uncomfortable little frown, a spring-flower smile bloomed. Temar wanted to protect that smile. To do that, he had to really become a hero.

Hero brother. From then on, Temar had to protect that.

He wore away the years and forgot what, exactly, he had once meant to protect it for, but he never forgot the vow itself—that he had to protect the “hero brother” Ren wanted.

Boy soldier Temar entered the battlefield with a resolve unlike anyone else’s. While the other boys who had only come to fill up the numbers ran away and hid behind grown men, he ran over torn-apart corpses and fought to kill even one more person.

To prove his usefulness, and become a true hero.

And so, by a miracle, he survived the first year.

The first thing Temar saw when he came back was Ren bragging about him.

That puffed-up back of the head, those swollen cheeks—it was unmistakably Ren. Temar crept up quietly behind him, planning to surprise him, when he saw some boys in front of Ren with their faces all twisted up, fists clenched. The words Ren threw at them stabbed into him like blades.

“My brother’s a hero!! Who the hell are you, idiot! I’m a hero’s little brother! Hero! Hero!! Are you idiots so stupid you don’t even know what a hero is?! A hero is someone amazing and incredible and way, way beyond your parents—!! A hero catches dragons that breathe fire, saves princesses, and makes tons of money!”

He was happy, and yet bitter too.

He’d had to prove his usefulness even on the battlefield.

And now, even to his little brother, he had to prove his usefulness as a hero.

Because Ren was the little brother of a hero. Because he wanted to be the little brother of a hero. Because that could be the one and only thing Ren, who had no parents, had to be proud of.

Temar vowed he would gladly do it.

Gladly become something Ren could be proud of. In place of their parents, gladly protect his little brother’s pride.

To do that, he had to make a lot of money too.

An ordinary soldier wouldn’t be enough. He had to command the battlefield.

Temar absolutely had to become a “hero.”

He couldn’t bring himself to let Ren know he was there.

His heart had hardened like iron with that vow, and yet it still felt like he had lost something. The hometown he had returned to after wandering battlefields for a year, the side of the little brother he had come back to... it all seemed filled with pressure. But Temar had neither the confidence to explain that nor the confidence to think it through properly.

Ren was too young for that, and Temar too—

was only a boy.

A boy. Just a boy.

He was too young, too immature, and so Temar never understood.

That Ren, too, had needed to prove his usefulness in this tiny village.

That to protect himself from children his own age, he had needed to inflate everything, wildly, excessively.

That “Temar” was the only thing he could thrust out like thorns to defend himself against the children who pointed fingers and said Temar had abandoned him and run away.

Perhaps the beginning of the brothers’ rift was that Temar’s hearing—dulled by the screams of the battlefield—failed to catch that Ren’s voice had been full of tears.

Things like that repeated often enough.

And by the time those misunderstandings had become an ordinary fact that could no longer be untangled—

After the Battle of Del Burk.

A second chance came into Temar’s life, and it was the chance he had wanted most desperately.

Under the call of the oracle, Temar was chosen as the seventh star, and along with it came explosive power, and a violent blue aura that wrapped around his whole body like armor being reconstructed around him, savage enough to feel as if it would tear even his veins apart.

He became the Seventh Hero.

At last, a “hero” who could stand proudly before Ren.