Chapter 6: What Little Brothers Don’t Do
762 Words
It started with a phone call at 10:13 p.m.
Yena was in the library again, surrounded by a spread of outdated epidemiological reports and dust-rimmed atlases, when her phone buzzed once. A short, sharp chime. The name on the screen was simple:
MIN-WOO
She didn’t answer immediately. Something about seeing his name lit up in a private space felt too intimate.
A second buzz came ten seconds later. Then a message.
> Come downstairs. I’m outside.
She stood so fast her chair tipped over.
---
The night air was sharp, autumnal.
Yena found him in the side courtyard, leaning against a sleek black sports car she didn’t recognize. One hand rested loosely on the door handle; the other held a small medical kit.
Min-woo looked up as she approached.
“You didn’t tell me your hand was infected,” he said.
Yena blinked. “It’s not.”
“Your bandage said otherwise.”
She glanced down. Her left hand had begun to swell—angry red around the knuckles, dull throb beneath the skin. It had been tolerable until now.
“I’ve had worse,” she said, echoing herself.
He gave her a flat look.
“Sit.”
She sat on the stone bench near the car, not because he ordered it—but because she didn’t want to fight about something this small.
Min-woo knelt before her, set the kit on the ground, and opened it.
He didn’t speak as he cut away the gauze with small silver scissors. The silence pressed heavy around them, broken only by the occasional rustle of wind through the garden trees.
When he touched her wrist to steady it, she almost pulled away. His hand was warm. Familiar in its steadiness. Unfamiliar in how it lingered.
“This isn’t from fencing,” he said eventually.
“No.”
“I suppose I should ask what it’s from.”
“I suppose you know I won’t answer.”
He glanced up. Their eyes met. A beat passed. Then another.
“You’re not lying,” he said quietly.
“What?”
“You’re not a good liar, Seo-jun. But lately… when you speak, I don’t hear lies. I hear something else.”
“What?”
“A different kind of truth.”
She looked away.
He cleaned the wound with deft, almost surgical care. When he pressed antiseptic into the split skin, she didn’t flinch.
Min-woo noticed.
“You used to cry if you got a papercut.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“I do.”
The silence came back. He started wrapping her hand again, slower this time.
“You know,” he said, not looking up, “I don’t mind the changes.”
She didn’t speak.
“You’re colder now. Stronger. Quieter. You take up space differently. It’s unnerving, yes—but not unwelcome.”
“Then what is it?”
He tied the last loop of bandage and sat back on his heels.
“I just wonder,” he said slowly, “if you’re really my brother anymore.”
That cracked something in her chest.
She looked at him sharply, ready to lie, ready to deflect—but Min-woo wasn’t accusing her. His face was calm. Curious. Like he’d just asked a question to a stranger he wanted to understand.
And that made it worse.
“I’m still me,” she said. It came out hoarse.
Min-woo reached up.
His fingers brushed the edge of her jaw, just barely. Not a caress. Not quite.
His voice lowered. “Then why do I want to keep looking at you, when I never did before?”
She froze.
His eyes were unreadable in the dark. But close. Too close.
This wasn’t something brothers did.
Not even in families where rules bent.
Yena stood abruptly.
The world tilted, but she steadied it.
“I’m going back inside,” she said.
Min-woo didn’t stop her. But his voice followed, soft and sharp.
“You’re good at hiding things now.”
She turned halfway, just enough to see him still kneeling there in the dark, the bandages and scissors scattered at his feet like forgotten declarations.
“So are you,” she said.
Then she left him there—alone with the truth they both refused to name.
---
That night, sleep never came.
She stood in the shower long after the water turned cold, her wrapped hand pressed against the tile.
The memory of his fingers on her jaw lingered longer than it should have.
It didn’t feel like a warning.
It felt like a promise.
- Writer
