Until You Wish for My Death

My brother and I had different last names.

I first met my brother when I was a young child, back when my peers were attending kindergarten. My father introduced him by saying he was now a member of our family, but my brother, with his bruised face and cold eyes, felt like nothing more than a stranger.

Moreover, in a house with more than enough rooms, my brother started using the underground storage room as his living quarters. Even at my young age, unaware of the world, I knew that wasn’t normal.

Around that time, I was very fond of my brother. There was no reason for me to dislike him, to begin with.

My brother was far more handsome than the celebrities I saw on the television, which we only watched on rare occasions. His pale, melancholic features suited his beautiful face perfectly. Even dressed in a shirt with frayed sleeves in the old basement where a cheap incandescent bulb barely lit anything, he possessed an undeniable, refined elegance.

I often sought out my brother, avoiding my father’s eyes. In the basement, which was cold enough to chill your feet even in the summer if you didn’t wear socks, my brother was always reading a book with a face as pale as a corpse. Though it must have been too dark to see clearly, the book never left his hands.

Knowing that my brother only ate one meal a day for dinner, I always brought him food or snacks when I went down to the basement. Unlike his pitiful situation, everything was abundant for me. Tearing off a piece of that abundance to give to him felt less like sharing and more like charity.