I Saved My Brother, But He Killed Me Softly Chapter 08

I Saved My Brother, But He Killed Me Softly Chapter 08

My funeral was a small, quiet affair.

Ethan hadn’t notified a single relative. Years ago, when our parents died in that horrific car crash, those so-called family members had fought tooth and nail, tearing each other apart just to get their hands on the insurance payout. We had cut ties with them long ago.

The memorial hall was entirely empty, save for Ethan.

Dressed in a stark black suit with a white rose pinned to his lapel, he knelt before my framed picture, staring at the flickering memorial candles, one after another.

The flickering orange flames danced across his hollow, gaunt cheeks. In a matter of days, he looked as if he had aged an entire decade, his hair already half-bleached into a dull, shock white.

“Sienna, make sure you take plenty of money with you on the other side,” he muttered to himself, his voice a low, raspy cadence over the crackle of the fire. “Buy whatever you want. Don’t worry about saving anymore.”

The sharp click of high heels suddenly cut through the quiet.

Nadia walked in. She was wearing a bright crimson trench coat, looking hideously loud and out of place in the solemn, monochromatic memorial hall.

Ethan didn’t even look up, treating her as if she were nothing but air.

“Ethan, are you seriously breaking up with me over this?” Nadia stepped up to him, staring down at his knelt form.

“Get out,” Ethan whispered, his voice dangerously low.

“You’re actually going to abandon your own flesh and blood for a corpse?” Nadia hissed, her fingers clawing into her stomach as she gritted her teeth.

Ethan finally raised his head.

He looked at Nadia, his eyes completely hollow, stripped of a single ounce of human warmth. There was only a bottomless, venomous disgust.

“Nadia, the pregnancy was a lie, wasn’t it?”

Nadia’s face went entirely pale in an instant. “What… what the hell are you talking about?”

“I went to the hospital. You were never pregnant; you just had a stomach virus.”

Ethan slowly hauled himself to his feet, closing the distance between them, cornering her step by step.

“You fabricated a pregnancy just to back me into a corner and force Sienna into that county asylum. You knew exactly how sensitive and fragile her mind was, yet you deliberately spewed those vile words right in front of her!”

Panic finally set in, and Nadia scrambled back two paces. “I… I was only doing it for our future! Who in their right mind would want to be chained to a useless ball and chain for the rest of their life?”

“She wasn’t a ball and chain! She’s my sister!”

Ethan suddenly snapped, a violent roar tearing out of his throat as he kicked the memorial table right over.

The porcelain fruit bowls and the heavy bronze incense burner crashed to the ground, shattering into a million jagged pieces.

Nadia let out a piercing shriek of terror.

“Ethan, you’ve completely lost your mind!”

“I am out of my mind! I should have gone crazy a long time ago!”

Ethan pointed a shaking, rigid finger straight toward the double doors.

“Get the hell out of here before I lose whatever sanity I have left and kill you! Don’t you dare taint the path my sister takes into the afterlife!”

Terrified by the sheer malice in his eyes, Nadia turned and fled, scrambling out of the memorial hall on her hands and knees.

The funeral home fell right back into a dead, suffocating quiet.

Ethan dropped heavily back onto his knees amid the ruined, scattered mess. Working in silence, he picked up the broken pieces of the offerings one by one, carefully rearranging them before my framed picture.

“Don’t be scared, Sienna. The bad person is gone now,” he murmured softly.

Then, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small knife.

It was the exact same paring knife I had used to slit my wrists five years ago—the one he had secretly hidden away ever since.

He slowly rolled up his sleeve, staring down at the rhythmic, steady pulse beating beneath the skin of his wrist.

“Sienna, Ethan promised you… if you die, I won’t survive a single day without you.”

“I’m coming to keep you company now.”

He closed his eyes and dragged the blade across his flesh with a brutal, unhesitating force.

Crimson blood sprayed violently from the laceration, washing over the sheets of funeral paper scattered on the floor. He collapsed right in front of my framed picture, a faint, liberated smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

But he didn’t manage to die.

The security guards patrolling the funeral home discovered his bleeding form and dialed 911.

He spent three grueling days in the Intensive Care Unit, the doctors ruthlessly dragging his soul back from the precipice of death.

When his eyes finally fluttered open to face the sterile, blinding white ceiling of the hospital room, tears began to stream uncontrollably from the corners of his eyes.

“Why didn’t you just let me die?! Why?!”

The nurses quickly stepped in to push a heavy dose of sedatives into his IV.

As the drugs pulled him under, he saw me in his dreams.

I was wearing that faded, light blue dress, standing just a few paces away, watching him quietly.

“Sienna!” he cried out frantically, sprinting forward to pull me into his arms.

But I simply took a step back into the light, giving him a slow, gentle shake of my head.

“Live your life, Ethan. I don’t blame you anymore.”