Dein Hand, in Meine

Chapter 2

You'll never stop running, will you my child?

My heart slammed in my chest, and it felt like it would toss itself out once it got the chance. But as I shut the door to my home behind me, I began to calm down a little.

It had been mere luck that I got out of that situation and I personally never wanted to be in it in the first place. I didn't want to go back. I didn't want to be in that office with that monstrous man ever again. But I could only wonder out of pure curiosity; who was that man who had stormed in, and more importantly, what had he been so infuriated about?

This thought came and went as I darted for my usual place on my father's chair and pulled out from deep inside the cushion, the book I had been reading, The Hobbit. This book in particular, was my guilty pleasure, for it was written by an English author and somehow I had been able to get my hands on it. I can thank Gilbert for that.

Gilbert is my one and only bruder (brother). He is the oldest of us two but is slightly shorter than me; as I am 180 cm and he stands 179 cm, so not that much of a difference. The thing that has always puzzled me about Gilbert is that he looks nothing like either me or our vater (father). While my father and I share the same blonde hair and the same cerulean eyes, his hair is a grayish blonde and his eyes are the deepest red you could ever find. Not only did his looks differ from me and father's, his personality did too. Which is the reason I assumed he left mutter (mother). The reason I could never be so sure is that my father refused to talk about her and never had I seen her once, even when I was born. But Gilbert, he had to be all her.

Gilbert is obnoxious, a real pain in the ass to say the least. But nonetheless, I love him. Which brings me back to how I got ahold of this book; him.

About a year ago I was sitting in father's chair, bored out of my mind, when all of a sudden Gilbert comes barging in, a devious grin playing on his lips. Oh, just from that I had expected something was about to go wrong; if it had not already.

"BRUDER!"

Oh lord, I thought. Here comes the obnoxious yelling.

"Ja, Gilbert?"

I replied, sighing.

"Guess what I brought?"

His face was bright red, so he must have been in a hurry, surely, to show me whatever he had gotten. I had hoped and prayed he hadn't stolen something but little did I know; it was much worse than that.

"Kesesesesese!"

There goes that laugh. I had also always wondered if that was also the reason father left mother.

"Huzzah!"

With a thrust of his arm in the air, tightly held in his hand, was a book. It was nearly burnt to a crisp. My heart stopped.

"Gilbert...where did you get that?"

My voice was now low and shaky and I had a bad feeling forming in the pit of my stomach. Not only did the fact that the book was burnt make me unsettled, seeing that the cover was purely in English made me almost fall out of the chair.

"Well I knew you liked to read and I knew you wanted to learn more English so I thought I'd bring this to you..."

He trailed off, his eyes avoiding my face.

"Gilbert. Where did you get that book?!"

I asked again, my voice growing increasingly serious as an overwhelming anxiety plagued me.