TuxedoTranslations

Chapter 69

Moon pressed his forehead against his younger brother’s, feeling that vivid, warm pulse of life.

Regret surged through him like the rising tide, endlessly washing against his heart.

If the “reversal” was real, then his brother had already died once — in a time and place he could not see.

Yet he had remained completely unaware, even handing his once-lost-and-found brother into the care of the very murderer who killed him. It was no different from personally pushing his brother back into the abyss.

He had almost lost his brother all over again.

Albin noticed his sadness and smiled.

“But that wasn’t real, right? Brother, there’s no need to be sad.”

“Whether it’s a prophecy or whatever, it’s just a comic. Didn’t you say you usually don’t feel anything from stories like that? Just think of it as reading another comic with the same name.”

He cupped his brother’s beautiful, delicate face, squishing it this way and that to make funny expressions, laughing brightly as he did.

Moon gently pinched his brother’s cheek — the soft, yielding skin made him handle it with great care. The real sensation under his fingertips made the memories of his fragmented soul slowly merge with the present.

“If…” he studied Albin’s expression, “if all that had actually happened before — would you hate him?”

Albin blinked in confusion, thought for a moment, then suddenly realized,

“Ah — you mean rebirth?”

He tilted his head, thinking it over. Maybe because all he had heard were secondhand summaries of the comic, he couldn’t really feel like he was the person it described.

“Hmm… even if it was true, from the way you described it, Mr. Dragon didn’t mean to kill me, right? He lost control. It’s all that bad rat’s fault!”

He puffed up his cheeks in indignation.

Dad had always been kind-hearted. To lose control and become a killer must have been agony for him. And all those others who were hurt or killed — they were all so pitiful.

It was clearly just a hypothetical thought, but the more he thought about it, the sadder he felt, as though someone had shoved a wad of paper into the back of his throat, leaving his chest tight and heavy.

“That rotten thing!” he muttered, cursing the rat. “If I really did get reborn, and already knew everything that happened, then of course I’d change it all! I wouldn’t let anyone get hurt again, or let any of that repeat itself.”

Albin looked up at him eagerly.

“So… what happened to Mr. Dragon afterward? Did the comic say anything more?”

“I don’t know,” Moon replied curtly, frowning a little at how much Albin cared about Zeman.

“Eh? Didn’t you read the comic, Brother?” Albin asked, incredulous.

“I’m a solo stan,” Moon said matter-of-factly.

He had no real interest in Fatum as a series — he had only read it because he was drawn to “Albin.”

But Albin’s appearances in the comic were scarce — maybe not even nineteen pages in total.

Moon had skipped every chapter that didn’t feature him, ignoring the entire main plot and only reading the flashback scenes where Albin appeared.

If his brother had later become a fan too, he might have gone back to read the rest just to have something to talk about with him. But before that could happen, he’d been dragged off to a convention for cosplay… and then his brother…

Receiving such an unexpected answer, Albin didn’t know whether to laugh or sigh.

Still, seeing his brother’s gloom, he ran behind him, pounced on his back, and wrapped his arms around his neck, grinning.

“Who cares if it’s a prophecy or reincarnation? I’m right here, aren’t I?”

Resting his head playfully on Moon’s shoulder, he winked.

“Just being here with you makes me happy. That’s more than enough for me.”

“I almost thought I’d never see you again in this life,” he whispered, eyes reflecting his brother’s face, his expression glowing with contentment.

“By the way, why are you here, Brother?” His smile faded into worry. “Don’t tell me… you also died and came here after death?”

“No.” Moon hesitated.

The god of darkness and death was not a name with a good reputation — he was afraid his brother would be frightened by who he truly was.

After a pause, he explained softly,

“I was once a god of this continent. The ‘me’ you knew in the modern world was only a fragment of my soul. But when my divinity shattered, that fragment returned to me.”

Albin froze.

His brother… was a god?

“Wait, what does it mean for your divinity to shatter?”

That sounded really serious!

“Is a divinity… like an organ?” he asked worriedly, quickly climbing off Moon’s back to inspect him for injuries.

Moon brushed it off lightly.

“Divinity represents a god’s status. Mine probably just… expired.”

He was supposed to have remained asleep for several more years, but for some unknown reason, both fragments of his divinity broke at once — causing him to awaken early, and reunite with his brother.

If that was the price for seeing Albin again, he would gladly pay it.

Albin was stunned.

Divinity… could expire? Like food?

He suddenly thought of limited-edition skins and time-limited items in games.

How strange.

He couldn’t really grasp what “divinity” meant, only that it sounded powerful and important.

Even though Moon said it so casually, Albin was still full of worry.

“Will it affect you, Brother?”

His brother’s complexion was paler than before, frailer — he really didn’t look well.

“A little,” Moon admitted. “I’ll lose my godhood and some of my strength.”

And not just that — losing his godhood meant losing his immortality as well.

He could create a new one, but…

Moon pulled his young brother into his arms, eyes closing as unfamiliar tenderness filled his heart.

If his brother could not have eternal life, then to him, immortality would be nothing more than an endless sleep — no different from death.

Albin, sensing his emotions, hugged him back.

“It’s okay! From now on, I’ll protect you instead, Brother!”

Ah, such a kind father and such a fragile brother — clearly this family would have to rely on him!

After understanding the situation, Albin decided to go find Zeman, but Moon stopped him with the excuse that it was getting late.

Albin gave him a suspicious look.

“You’re not mad at Dad, are you?” he asked, tugging his brother’s hand. “I don’t know what the comic’s version of Dad is like, but I trust my Dad! So please don’t be angry with him over that, okay?”

He really seemed afraid that such a thing might happen.

He hopped about to show his brother he was perfectly fine now.

Moon gazed at him — his little brother, so lively and full of trust in his family — and yet his mind kept drifting back to that comic scene of his brother’s death.

At the bottom of that chapter was a highly liked comment analyzing Albin’s death:

We already talked about Sultanlai’s death before. This time, let’s look at Xiao Bai’s death from a rereader’s perspective.

The cause of Xiao Bai’s death is actually simple — it’s the result of three overlapping factors leading to severe blood loss.

First, the rat — it caused his long-term bleeding and poor health. The bonus comic at the end of the volume showed that even just walking out into the snow once made him so sick he was bedridden for over a month. The rat thought he was going to die.

Second, Zeman’s attack when he lost control — a serious piercing wound that forced more blood loss.

Third, Xiao Bai deliberately bled himself to bring Zeman back to his senses.

Because of that, Zeman received a large amount of Xiao Bai’s blood, which filled the one weakness he’d always had.

That’s the part I really want to expand on.

Many people believe Xiao Bai could have been saved — after all, there’s magic, right? The main group had faced worse: Xiao Hei was nearly killed once, but Ye Ye pulled him back from the brink of death. With Zeman’s talent as a six-attribute fighter, his healing magic shouldn’t be weaker than Ye Ye’s (who’s literally a dog), so he might have had a chance to save Xiao Bai.

But I think Xiao Bai couldn’t possibly have survived then. The problem wasn’t the wound — it was that he had completely lost the will to live. That’s totally different from Xiao Hei, who would crawl back from hell itself to take revenge.

Look closely at these panels: once Xiao Bai realizes it’s the rat — that everything was controlled by his father — and that his father sent him to die, the hand he could once lift just falls limp, and the shine in his eyes vanishes right then.

Even though the rat is despicable, he always kept up the façade of being a good father in front of Xiao Bai. Xiao Bai’s memories before age eight are a blank; the memories after eight were all cultivated by the rat, like a sheet of paper the rat freely doodled on — thoroughly PUA’d.

So no matter what others say, he treated the rat as his most important, most trusted family member.

But at that moment the “father” who said he loved him pushed him to die with his own hands. Coupled with Zeman’s loss of control and the city’s destruction, the image the rat had built in Xiao Bai’s heart completely collapsed — everything he believed was overturned. At that point he might even have seen himself as the rat’s accomplice.

Clearly, there wasn’t need for that much blood to pull him back to reason — yet he gave away all his blood and even transferred the God-slaying Spear, because by then he had already fallen into despair. His heart was dead ash; he had no desire to live. He was fully self-destructive.

Familiar, isn’t it?

Zeman is actually the same — except Zeman still had the breath of Xiao Bai holding him on, all the way until… cough, I won’t spoil the rest.

It’s precisely this similarity that makes us the father-son pair! The rat can get lost!

…】

Moon didn’t want to accept that comment, because he didn’t want his lively, cheerful little brother to become that way.

He didn’t want his brother to suffer family betrayal; he feared that if Albin were hurt by Zeman again, everything would replay.

The best solution, then, was to make those family members disappear — as long as his brother had him, it would be enough.

—

Next room over.

Zeman woke from that terrible nightmare he didn’t want to remember.

His body still trembled; the scene kept replaying in front of him, the stabbing pain in his heart impossible to ignore.

He stretched out his trembling right hand and looked at his pale fingers, but all he saw was crimson.

He had killed his child with his own hands.

He had pierced the white-haired boy’s body, almost cutting him in two; he watched the huge wound pour out bright blood, quickly pooling into a shocking lake of red that dyed the boy’s snow-white hair crimson.

He watched helplessly as the boy choked on blood and weakly smiled an apology at him, using every drop of his blood to bring Zeman back to his senses — and then died in Zeman’s hands.

Albin…

A hole of blood tore at Zeman’s heart; his inner self was being ripped apart, bleeding out.

For him, that pain far outstripped anything the boy endured.

That boy who feared pain so much — what was he thinking then? Was he crying out in pain? Regretting knowing him? Hating him?

Why was it that the child died and not him?

“I killed Albin…” he whispered.

Padma in the room jerked to look, suspicious and shocked. “What are you saying?!”

“Had a nightmare?” Edward asked with concern.

At that moment the door opened.

Moon walked in step by step. He looked like a frail pretty youth, but his presence was overwhelming — his murderous gaze fixed on Zeman like a reaper come for a life.

Zeman sensed his arrival and weakly raised his eyes.

With just one look he understood: Moon had come to eliminate this danger for Albin.

He twisted his mouth and glanced at Edward. “Edward, can you go check on Xiao Bai’s condition?”

He didn’t want Edward to stop what would come next.

Edward frowned, sensing he was being sent away, and noticing the black-haired youth whom Albin called brother looked ill-intentioned. There seemed to be something he couldn’t intervene in.

“…Understood.” He tightened his fist weakly and went out.

When he brushed past the black-haired youth, he gave a smile that didn’t reach his eyes and said, “I won’t mind you roughing him up a bit, but… Zeman is the father little Albin chose. Don’t forget that.”

Moon, who hadn’t given him a look before, suddenly glanced sidelong at him.

After Edward left, the room’s temperature dropped to freezing.

Padma sensed something wrong and demanded of Zeman, “What do you mean you killed Albin?”

“It was that dream,” Zeman hung his head and stared at his hands. “I lost control. He tried to save me but I killed him.”

Padma suddenly understood; he was furious, his face went ashen, and he landed a heavy punch on Zeman’s face.

Zeman did not dodge — he took the blow squarely.

“A dream?” Moon narrowed his eyes. “So you already know what you did.”

A black scythe, emitting bone-chilling cold, condensed in midair. Its sharp blade pressed against Zeman’s neck; the intense killing intent and pressure rendered Padma and Emerald paralyzed.

“I came to eliminate the danger to my brother.”

Zeman sat on the bed. He did not resist the blade at his throat; there was even a look of relief in his eyes.

When he first met Moon, he already knew this moment would come.

“Albin…” his expression darkened as he spoke the name. “Is he alright?”

“I set up a barrier; he’s asleep.”

Zeman, like after their first encounter, confirmed: “Will you protect Albin well?”

Moon nodded. “He’s my brother. I will protect him. I’ll deal with that rat too.”

“If I lose control and my power runs wild when I’m near death, can you stop me?”

“I will kill you without hesitation. I won’t allow you to hurt him.”

After those three questions, Zeman closed his eyes at peace.

“Do it.”

The scythe rose high; the cold wind it brought stirred Zeman’s long hair. A few strands of his snow-white hair touched the blade and shattered instantly.

But Zeman felt nothing. He opened his eyes in astonishment and found Moon had sheathed the scythe.

He frowned and asked, “Why didn’t you strike?”

“Because you are the father Xiao Bai chose.”

Without Edward’s reminder, Moon had not forgotten this.

Whether dead by Zeman’s hand or now after the rewind, his brother had chosen that man as a father.

It was Albin’s wish.

Moon didn’t want his brother disappointed or in pain, nor did he want Zeman’s death to become a barrier between him and his brother.

At the same time, he would not permit Zeman to let his son fall into the same despair as before.

Zeman’s earlier behavior satisfied him.

There was another way to remove the curse on Zeman.

“Kill the fragment of the Sun God — remove the curse on you. Until then, I could kill you at any time.”

Zeman, of course, knew of that method — the problem was, it would be difficult to find the Sun God’s fragment quickly.

But Moon said, “I know where his fragment is.”

Zeman’s eyes sharpened as he fixed his gaze on him.

“His new host is a boy named Blake.”

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