The Way to Love in the Place of Dead Chapter 21

Aran, as always, did not avoid his father’s gaze fixed intently on him.

“Now tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

Both of them knew he wasn’t asking because he didn’t know. And Aran also knew that his father, as ever, was only wearing a gentle face—while inside, he was angry.

“I heard you made a deal with the Center. In exchange, it was a contract staking your life.”

“It was top secret. I wonder how you found out.”

“You wouldn’t have done such a thing without a reason, so tell me that reason.”

“I took a liking to him.”

When Aran used the exact phrasing he’d heard from Commander Tato, Sahan’s expression went rigid.

“For some esper from Willamere?”

“Does someone’s origin matter when you take a liking to them?”

“You’re not that stupid.”

“But I’ve fallen in love, you see.”

“Aran!”

When Sahan Rapperd finally couldn’t hold back and shouted, Aran put down the Mega Minx in his hand onto the table with a thud.

“I’m sorry.”

Then he lowered his gaze and apologized in a subdued voice.

“I couldn’t help it. It was necessary, I mean. Falling in love was a lie. Don’t be angry.”

At the honest apology, his father instead apologized for his own outburst.

“No… I’m not angry. I’m not angry. I’m sorry for raising my voice.”

Aran gave a faint smile at the sight of Sahan pressing his forehead. It was a situation so familiar that it was transparent to him.

Here, in the Rapperd family, there exists one absolute yet tacit rule.

The family head, Sahan Rapperd, unconditionally protects Aran Rapperd.

“I was merely trying to think of a solution. If you had no particular reason, if you didn’t have a plan to turn that contract to your advantage, I was asking so that I could resolve it with my own hands.”

The current family head’s direct line has seven members in total. The youngest among them was Aran.

Sahan, as a father, naturally loved all his children, but his love for Aran was absolute beyond comparison. Whatever his youngest son wanted, he granted it, bought it for him, made it possible for him. He had the power, the influence, and the capital to do so.

There was no way Aran himself didn’t know that. No—he had internalized it. From a very young age.

That was why he remembered it vividly.

The day his father refused his request for the first time.

“Whatever the reason, there is no esper in existence worth staking your life for. So.”

To Aran, Sahan Rapperd refusing his request was something that was simply not possible. And the place he followed him to, wanting to know the reason for that “impossible thing,” was where he saw—

“‘El,’ he was called.”

The moment he spoke the name, Aran tried to observe every single change in his father without missing a thing. Sahan stood frozen, like a soldier pierced through the heart by a bullet. That in itself was a testimony.

“That esper from Willamere told me.”

“…”

“Haha, well? Has the fellow’s value gone up a little now?”

Sahan was shaken, but there was none of the usual signs—no trembling hands, no blinking, no dry swallowing. He was simply still, like a person for whom all time and space had stopped.

Aran waited for as long as it took the second hand to make one full rotation, then slowly rose to his feet. Turning his back on his shocked father, he moved back toward the window.

“Wait.”

Aran, who had placed his hand on the window, looked back. Sahan asked, still standing frozen in place.

“You haven’t answered my question yet.”

Answer his question?

“Ah, you mean why I staked my life for some mere esper from Willamere?”

“If falling in love was a lie, then what was the necessity?”

At the words that struck straight to the heart of it, Aran was reminded once again that his father was no easy opponent. Someone else would have naturally taken it to mean it was necessary “to win the war.”

“…I see.”

Aran gave no answer. But Sahan, after turning it over in his mind, clasped his hands and rested his chin on them, murmuring quietly as if he had realized something.

“Understood.”

Aran had hoped he wouldn’t catch on if at all possible, but it seemed the brain of a once-in-a-century genius had not yet dulled, despite age and the march of time.

“Don’t worry, Aran.”

Sahan, too, slowly stood and turned around. Then he approached as if to see off the son he hadn’t seen in a while.

“You can do whatever you wish.”

At the promise, which sounded almost like an oath, Aran’s lips pressed into a straight line. Then slowly curved upward. It was easy. The act of giving someone the smile they wanted.

After jumping out through the window and heading toward the back gate where no one was watching, Aran found a middle-aged man in a butler’s uniform standing before him. It was Willer, the head butler of the Rapperd household.

“A vehicle has been prepared.”

Aran kept walking and headed straight for the car parked in front of the back gate.

“Mr. Aran.”

“Yeah.”

“Might I be so bold as to ask a question?”

The head butler, who had bowed 90 degrees in farewell, voiced a curiosity that might well have been reckless.

“What exactly did the master come to understand?”

Having listened to the conversation in the study, Head Butler Willer needed to understand the thoughts of the master he had served his entire life. Especially if it concerned the youngest son.

“I cannot even hazard a guess. Why on earth would Mr. Aran need to stake his own life?”

“I didn’t.”

At the concise reply, Willer raised his head.

“Pardon?”

Standing before him in the dim night, Aran caught even the smallest light and reflected it, arresting the gaze like a luminous being.

“Just as you said, Willer, I don’t need to stake my life to obtain that fellow. Not in the slightest.”

Exactly as he said.

He is Aran Rapperd. If he wanted, he could get his hands on someone from Willamere without even making a deal with the Center, and even if he did need to deal with the Center, there is no reason whatsoever to wager his “life.”

“Nevertheless, I staked my life. What do you think the reason is?”

If he could have known that, he wouldn’t have asked in the first place. Seeing Willer still unable to grasp it, Aran’s expression hardened a little. It seemed the man still hadn’t understood that his question itself was wrong.

Aran tapped his own forehead with a finger. It was a gesture of calculation—where to start explaining so the other person could understand.

“Change the question. Me staking my life wasn’t the price to bring Kay here. That in itself is the means.”

Strictly speaking, there is no causal relationship between bringing Kay and staking his life. The reason Aran put his life on the line was because he wanted to confirm something else.

“You mean… there was a result you wished to bring about by staking your life?”

“Now you’ve understood.”

With a relieved expression, as if his words had finally gotten through, Aran climbed into the vehicle.

“Is that all?”

When Willer asked just before the car door closed, Aran’s eyes widened. As if to say, what more could there be?

But after reading Willer’s expression, Aran let out an “Ah” and realized he had only half understood.

“Willer. Think.”

Through the gap of the automatically closing door, Aran smiled bitterly.

“It’s not a difficult problem.”

Isn’t the answer blindingly obvious, right in front of you?

Aran Rapperd stakes his life. His father, who protects him unconditionally, would never stand by and let that happen. In that case.

What would a father who loves his youngest son so dearly end up paying as the price of that life to the Center, which stands in opposition to the family? That was what Aran had been curious about.

Passing through the nightscape and arriving at the Center, Aran unbuttoned the shirt fastened up to his neck and entered Room 5101.

After two consecutive days of battle against the anomalies, and then meeting his father without even being able to rest properly, his mind was exhausted, too. The one thing keeping his condition from being worse was…

‘Still asleep, this guy.’

He approached Kay, who was still curled up asleep on the sofa. Seeing him breathe softly, even with a shadow cast over his head, it seemed the effects of the guiding were still lingering.