everyone around him dies

Part 18

It just didn't feel real. Roksu wasn't paranoid, per say, but in his experience things going right for too long was merely the prelude to something horrible.

He was constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Getting a scholarship and going to university alone had felt like an impossible fantasy but maintaining a peaceful life on top of that felt... bizarre.

It wasn't that they had a normal life.

Often Cale still came home with strange bruises or there was an accident near his workplace that Roksu knew the reason behind.

Cale kept it quiet though. He knew what Roksu would think about the world trying to kill him.

Roksu's curse trying to kill him.

Roksu didn't know how or why he was cursed like this, but in a world where monsters sometimes crawled through the rift and his brother was a reincarnated noble from another world, having a curse seemed comparably normal.

The thing was that Cale kept living. Roksu despised the comparison to a cockroach but Cale truly was as difficult to kill as Hans.

In some ways, it filled Roksu's heart with the hope that they could continue like this. That despite it all, they really could survive together and maintain a modest happiness. Even if Roksu was never able to make any other friends in his whole life, that was okay so long as he had his brother.

In other ways, it filled him with dread. The constant knowledge that one day Cale's luck would run out. That something would tear them down.

That all the happiness and peace they'd built up would be torn down in a blink of an eye.

So when Roksu walked out of the last test of his second year of university, fairly confident that he'd passed, he wasn't filled with joy or excitement.

Pure dread.

A fear resounded so agonizingly in his heart that he almost couldn't focus on the test.

Throughout the semester, the constant fear had built to a crescendo and he was unable to deny the paralyzing terror any longer.

It was a lot easier to detach himself from reality. To distance his own emotions and feel that this couldn't possibly be real.

Roksu stopped on his walk home.

He couldn't quite bring his feet forward. Every step felt like further confirmation of something awful. Something disgusting.

It couldn't be that easy.

It hadn't been easy, every day was a struggle. They were always tight for money, Cale always worked too hard, the threat of the curse and monsters hung over them, and even after graduating there was no guarantee of getting a good job in this economy.

It was hard.

But Roksu's expectation of life was that it always got harder. Whenever there was the slightest victory, that would mean yet another challenge was awaiting on the horizon.

It was suffocating.

Roksu looked down at his feet.

Move.

He should go and pick up his brother from work. Then they'd have a normal night together. There was no point in anticipating that something was wrong before the terrible thing had even happened.

What if today he was already too late?

What would happen next?

Could they survive it?