no Shuyaku wa Wareware da (Wrwrd)

Nii-san~ Promises

“Promise me that one day, we’ll leave the Organization and start a life of our own.”

   
He never forgot those words. How could he? It was all you ever spoke about.

   
Despite being apart of the Organization for years, it wasn’t a lifestyle you wished to keep on living. When available jobs are scarce and there’s a desperate need for money to take care of loved ones, that’s capable of driving someone to do unthinkable things. For you, that meant joining a dangerous organization solely with the intent to make enough money to support your sick mother.

   
Even so, you refused to take an innocent person’s life. There was no denying that there was blood on your hands, but only the blood of people who deserved death for their crimes. It wasn’t a job that brought a smile to your face nor made you feel like you were doing good; it was merely just a job necessary to support you.

   
From the day you were assigned Nii-san as your partner, you were intrigued by the mysterious man. Every other person you met through joining the Organization had a backstory similar to yours as to why they decided to sign up for such a dangerous lifestyle. Not him, though.

   
No, he killed for a different reason. He killed because he wanted - no, needed - recognition for his strength. He didn’t want to be some weak boy that people looked down upon. He wanted the strongest person he knew to recognize his strength; recognize him as a man instead of just a boy.

   
Something in Nii-san changed when he met you. At first, he was just as cold towards you as he was to anyone else. He wanted you to feel like you had to prove yourself to him similar to how he felt the need to prove his worth to Gruppen. Instead, you barely even seemed to notice or if you did, you paid very little mind to it.

   
He was almost surprised by your lack of fear towards him. Like the other members, you held the highest respect for his power, but that power wasn’t derived from fear. You respected him but at the same time, you pitied him; pitied him because it was evident in his lifeless eyes that he yearned power for the wrong reason.

   
He found himself drawn to you. He couldn’t decide if you were simply someone working for the group until a better offer came around, or if you were a threat to his role. When his tactic to strike fear into you finally became evident to him that it would never work, he was out of ideas. He wasn’t acquainted with having a partner nor was he used to a member of the Organization being as talkative as you.

   
The fact that you were surrounded by cold-blooded killers didn’t appear to phase you. Although you rarely took part in it, the killings didn’t phase you either. You were simply committing heinous acts without a second thought just to get by. Perhaps you and he did have different motives, but he was quickly beginning to realize that the two of you weren’t all that unalike from one another.

   
You didn’t even seem surprised when Nii-san finally contributed to the one-sided conversations you always had with him. Even after months of barely any words uttered from him to you, it was almost as if you expected that he would eventually warm up to you. He was a closed book that you could perfectly recite from memory.

   
You were working for the Organization for over a year when your mother finally passed away. Almost all the money you needed to start her treatment was saved up when she couldn’t hang on any longer. That brave facade you so carefully put up was slowly beginning to crumble away.

   
Nii-san instantly knew something was wrong when you failed to show up to work that day. Ignoring his orders, he stormed into your apartment, ready to drag your ass back to the Organization before noticing your curled up figure.