I saw a clumsy emotional response that I never expected to see from Andrew.
He silently mouthed my name, whispering “Noah.” Instead of answering, I blinked. A few teardrops that had been welling up rolled down my cheeks.
“Thank you, brother. You can let go of me now—ugh!”
Just as I was genuinely trying to thank him without any ulterior motive, the brother suddenly pushed me away as if throwing me. Then, without a greeting or scolding, he hurriedly disappeared in an awkward posture. Wow, he was truly impossible to view in a positive light.
While cursing at his retreating figure, I frantically checked the affection window. Did it work? Did it work? Please, please work…!
Favorability: -58%
“No, why? Why on earth? WHY!”
In previous iterations, I had never encountered him when I returned straight from the temple without resting. I thought it was good that a non-existent point of contact had been created, but what was this? This was worse than not meeting at all.
Was my approach wrong? But if an Alpha showed a response to an Omega’s pheromones, shouldn’t that be enough? Isn’t this an R-rated Omegaverse game made for exactly this purpose?!
Unable to comprehend the situation, I crumpled up the cloak left in my hands and threw it away. Though things didn’t flow exactly as expected, looking at his breathing that had grown rough alongside mine and the strength that had firmly set in his arms, he had definitely responded to my pheromones.
System can’t help but burst into laughter.ꉂ (๑¯ਊ¯)σ
“I’m already annoyed, so shut up and just be quiet.”
As I muttered through gritted teeth, the system bastard flashed a notification saying it wasn’t laughing at me and telling me to calm down. Great, that was such a helpful message for staying calm.
Damn it. What kind of Alpha in the world could have his affection level drop after smelling Omega pheromones! When I played as Allen, surely…!
“Ah, right. For censorship reasons, you couldn’t romance blood siblings.”
I belatedly remembered a fact I had forgotten. I had been lumping the first and second sons together with “Alphas who are crazy about Allen,” but the two brothers, being blood relatives, weren’t capture targets.
Those two were the only characters who showed no Alpha response whatsoever to Allen, whether he released pheromones or did anything else. Still, they clearly had a fond attitude toward Allen.
I’m not even a blood sibling, and we weren’t particularly close to begin with, so I wanted to raise his affection in advance as an Omega, but instead it dropped?
Does this… make sense? Is this situation even logical right now?
Even thinking back on it, I couldn’t understand at all. Is Andrew actually impotent? What Alpha in the world dislikes a dominant Omega!
The one good thing was that Andrew’s Alpha pheromones had been effective. Not only was the abnormal status lifted, but the manifestation pain that had been draining my energy until just now was much better. It shouldn’t happen again, but if I were to return to today again, I should definitely find any dominant Alpha and ask them to do the same…
“Little one!”
…was what I was thinking.
“Where’s our little one? Little one! Noah!”
A familiar voice boomed loudly.
‘Brother, Freddy, what’s wrong? Huh? It wasn’t me, I, I didn’t do it, you know that. I didn’t do that… Brother, it’s me. I’m Noah! You have to trust me. Frederick, you, at least you have to trust me!’
‘Shut up, filthy bastard. I’m ashamed to think I ever considered someone like you as my brother in place of Allen.’
… Memories I didn’t want to recall suddenly flooded my mind. I immediately felt nauseous.
“Noah! When you returned, you should have quickly looked for your brother first!”
A face I didn’t want to see came close in the blink of an eye. He was clearly walking, but it felt like a bison charging at me. I forced myself to lift the corners of my stiffening mouth and barely managed to say, “Freddy.”
“That tiny little kid! When did you grow up to have your blessed day, hm? So precious! You’re so precious I could die!”
The man with a large build just under 2 meters was Frederick Hamilton, the second son of the Hamilton family, three years older than me. Frederick scooped me up as if I were a teddy bear and spun around in place.
“Ugh, brother! If you suddenly do this…!”
“Hahaha, what? It’s fun? Alright! Leave it to your brother!”
“Freddy!”
His rough, enormous hands were almost large enough to cover my relatively small upper body, with just a bit of exaggeration. Just looking at those brutish hands, I could understand why he was said to have no match among the younger generation in pure strength. Getting hit by those hands really hurts. Despite having gone through all sorts of ordeals through multiple regressions and no longer crying over most things, I would still reflexively tear up from Frederick’s slaps.
The unpleasant eldest son would be better. I’d rather face the eldest son’s sleek face hundreds more times, even if his affection dropped to -58%, no, -580%. I wanted to put on a natural smile, but inevitably, not just my face but my entire body kept tensing up.
Damn, how pathetic. I’m scared. I don’t know when those hands that are now lifting me up and acting like they can’t get enough of my cuteness will transform to grab me by the hair. I know it’s not time for that yet… but knowing something intellectually and the feeling of my heart sinking were two different matters.
After Allen’s appearance, no matter what scenario this world entered, my dear brother Freddy would disappear without leaving even a shadow. What remained before me was always Allen’s faithful hound, Frederick.
“…I’m really dizzy, Freddy. I feel like I’m going to throw up. Put me down now.”
I whispered softly, barely suppressing the urge to scream. I forced out a voice that wouldn’t come, so faint that even I could barely hear it.
However, Lord Frederick, the genius of the Royal Knights who adored his younger brother three years his junior more than anyone, understood even that level of voice and immediately stopped spinning me around. Then he said, “Sorry, sorry, I just thought you were so precious,” with a broad smile. The clear forest-green eyes he inherited directly from the countess were as fresh as summer.
To ‘Noah Hamilton’ at nineteen or twenty, things were different, but basically, Frederick Hamilton was very simply and clearly a ‘good person.’ Of course, before Allen’s appearance, he was also the best brother in the world to me.
The second son might not have many memories of the real missing brother, but unlike Andrew, Frederick was kind to me from the beginning, even after I was adopted. Even when ten-year-old me showed distance from family members for several years after awakening memories of the original story and my past life.
Frederick came looking for me first every single day without fail, pretending to be strong and telling me to share my concerns with him. Even though he himself was just a thirteen-year-old kid. When a young Andrew would pick fights beyond what was reasonable, it was invariably Frederick’s role to quickly run and stand in front of me as a shield. On such days, Frederick would always sneak around outside my room door with warm milk and sweet chocolate chip cookies.
That’s why I ended up trusting Freddy, no, Frederick Hamilton.
In the original story, Frederick despised and hated Noah simply because Noah constantly envied Allen and tried to obstruct his future.
If I acted differently.
If I gave up the position of crown prince’s consort from the beginning and didn’t oppose Allen.
My dear brother Freddy would still love me. That was the foolish belief I held. As an adult who had lived through thick and thin until nearly thirty, working in society, it was an incredibly painful mistake.
To him, a fake brother he had grown up with for over a decade was someone he could easily trample for a single tear from his real brother.
The eldest son, who consistently ignored and disliked me from beginning to end, was much better. The feeling of betrayal when a beloved brother who had been warmly facing me just the day before suddenly became cold and turned away… honestly, it was a wound that still couldn’t be considered completely healed. Even when I was first betrayed by Kyle whom I trusted, I was less bewildered than when Frederick began to turn away from me.
If the reset point had been around when Allen returned, I could have quickly forgotten old memories and simply spat while calling him a bastard, but unfortunately, the reset point was always today, the morning of Noah Hamilton’s seventeenth birthday, still two years before Allen’s return.
During those two years, Frederick was consistently the same ‘Freddy’ to me as before.
Across both my past and present lives, he was the first true ‘brother’ I ever had.
That fact alone made me so foolishly attached.