(BL) Mafia Love; He who falls the hardest loses-Chapter 89: Family 3

"Come in," Aki shouted waving him over.

The address . . . it had not reminded him of this place. The road didn’t either but everything else did. He felt he was hallucinating. There was no way he was back to that house.

He turned to the statue of the fish in the fountain and its tipped-off tail thanks to his playful hands when his mother sculptured it but she had never bothered repairing it for the memories.

It really did bring back memories, painful suffocating memories. The last thing he wanted was to step into the house. He would rather have his existence disappear from the face of the earth.

He looked down at his bag. He could not remember when he had dropped it on the gravel ground. "Brother, aren’t you coming in?" Aki asked from the window.

The front door opened like the mouth of a dragon ready to spit out fire. His college classmate stepped out and looked at him. "Why didn’t you come in?"

"Oh, nothing. I just found the landscaping and the architecture quite interesting," he responded very casually as he locked up every emotion that had built up in the past few minutes. Not just the emotions, the memories too and everything else.

With a confident happy smile, he took the first step up and the next. The steps felt never-ending but soon he was at the door and his friend gave him a light friendly hug.

"What was wrong with him? I was too busy to contact you before."

"He developed peptic ulcer but I think he is good now. I think he went on a hunger strike after the break-up."

"Oh, he told you about the break-up?"

"Yeah he did but maybe he was not just eating well generally," his friend replied as they took the steps up.

Aki threw his hands around Haruki as soon as he saw him. "Brother you came."

"Yes I came," Hiroshi said. His words made him sound like an ultimate pillar of support. "I heard you got yourself sick with peptic ulcer."

"I heard it is pretty common, especially among people who want to diet. I am fine now though."

"That’s a relief then."

"He is lying. He just got a bit of strength when you told him the plane had landed. I think he needs to be watched seriously considering he might just go back to starving himself without someone there to watch him," Hiroshi’s friend refuted.

"He is exaggerating things."

"you have done a lot helping me take care of this stubborn boy," Hiroshi joked reaching to touch Aki’s head but Aki moved away from him fast only to wince after he got away. "Yeah, you really don’t look too good," Hiroshi observed.

Hiroshi discussed for a while with his friend about Aki’s condition and he was relieved that it wasn’t serious but it definitely could get worse if Aki does not begin a healthy diet and maintain it.

It was when his friend left and he went to the room that he realized how thin and pale his younger brother had gotten.

"When you said you were coming, I could swear that it was a joke but you came. There is nothing wrong with having your friend look after me after all it is not as though I am lacking care."

Hiroshi ignored his words as he sat on the sofa in the room. His gaze drifted around the large room but he ensured to sever every memory and emotion connected to the room.

"What do you think about this house?" Aki suddenly asked.

Hiroshi slowly turned to look at his brother with his brown eyes void of any emotion as he bottled up all he would have said before looking around the room casually.

"This is the house I grew up in. How did you get it?"

"Oh really?" Aki asked his pupils dilating.

"Yes," Hiroshi replied almost a hundred per cent sure that Aki knew this house before he moved in.

"A friend of mine leased it to me. He said it is surrounded by nature and I could use the fresh air since I was sick," Aki replied. "I had no idea I was moving into your childhood home. He told me he was managing the property for a client."

"That client would be me."

"No wonder you don’t believe I am richer than you. With a property like this, I am sure you’re a millionaire, right?"

Hiroshi shook his head ignoring what Aki asked. The value of this property was more than its weight in gold if that could be possible to estimate it. There was a reason why he never sold it even though he was only coming to the place for the first time since he left after his mother’s death.

He had thought abandoning the property in the care of an SFO would mean the house was not inhabited but he could only guess that the house was being leased out along with a few other properties he inherited from his mother that was left in their care.

"I always dreamt of living in such a house," Aki said as he sat on the bed and pulled the covers over his legs.

Hiroshi didn’t know whether he should tell Aki someone died in the house and there was nothing special about it or let the young man continue to believe this was a dream house and not a nightmare.

"Could you sell it to me?" Aki suddenly asked leaning forward. "Please, I will pay you any amount you ask."

Hiroshi was very surprised by how calm he was with what Aki was saying. He simply shook his head as though refusing to give a child candy and said, "I won’t sell it. It looks like the perfect retirement home for me."

"For us then," Aki suggested excitedly. "Let us all live in this house, it is large enough, almost too large," Aki continued as his excitement increased along with the brightness of his smile.

"I will think about it," Hiroshi said shaking his head.

"Since you don’t want to sell it to me, could you give me back my rent and let me stay here for free?" Aki asked. "It was very expensive, you can’t be too stingy with your younger brother who is sick."

Hiroshi did not hesitate to agree. He knew everything just required a single phone call to his SFO or he could just send the money to his brother from his account.

"Thanks!"

Hiroshi sighed thinking he would have to spend the next two weeks nursing his brother back to health, he could only hope he got through it without overthinking, no, without thinking at all.

"I am hungry," Aki murmured just in time for his stomach to grumble.

"I will order something for you to eat first while I go grocery shopping," he told Aki as he rose up from the seat he sat and stretched a bit. He was hungry too and despite how his body protested, he still prioritized going shopping first.

His flight took off in the morning he arrived in the morning after more than ten hours of flight. He did not give his brain time to process the confusion before he asked Aki, "Where’s the key to your car?"

"I was too sick to drive when I came here yesterday so your friend brought me," Aki replied. When Hiroshi sighed tiredly, Aki suggested, "Take my phone, and call a taxi."

***

Haruki could not remember ever having a meeting with his family without them looking like vultures waiting for him to die so they could feast on his carcass. Even though they feared and respected him, it was ingrained in their nature to pray for a means of devouring him.

One of them was missing time though. The man had a thing for going around with his sons even when meeting with him unlike the others so two people were missing from the conference.

Those that had set the room up didn’t even bother providing a chair for them. Haruki could see that that attention to detail has caused some of the old people in the room to become enraged but even without Ren standing behind him, none of them would be bold enough to step forward for a physical attack.

Everyone was dressed in black fitting perfectly into the room with dark wooden furniture and brown wooden walls giving it a traditional feeling.

Their faces were equally as dark as the clothes they wore after all, they had lost their brother and his son. The police of that country were very effective and the bodies were handed over to the grieving family members when those Aki sent requested the bodies.

His grandfather’s younger sister had insisted on following them on a phone where he could confirm that she had been crying before she called him. He did not hold her back and grandfather’s elder brother and nephew’s bodies were brought into the country immediately.

A date for their funeral was to be set in this meeting as it was in their tradition for the family to handle the funeral of their dead regardless of gender or generation.

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