Morning. The Sun shines through the blinds of my room, and yet I can't even turn around to face it.

"Sigh, "situation normal; all fucked up", I guess. Damn Issei, I told that bastard not to go anywhere near my family, and yet he..." I then recalled something he said before.

It was brief, but I definitely remember it word for word. "But given the circumstances, I can only really say I did what was asked of me" is what he said. I now know that Eleanor was the one to ask this of him and Othelia, and by the way they're acting, it seems they've all got a pretty good relationship between them. Then, is that what's happening? Issei, is he just fulfilling Eleanor's wish until he and Othelia inevitably leave this world? Now that I think about it, she wouldn't stop crying and asking Issei to hug her the entire evening after we got back home (much to my chagrin...)

"M-Morning, bro." Eleanor knocked on the door anxiously as she called me downstairs, "Breakfast is ready, so..."

"I'm not hungry." I refused to turn around as I still lazed around in bed.

"Ugh, what's your problem!?" She got mad, "So what? You're gonna throw a childish tantrum on me for finding happiness!?"

"Finding happiness!?" I shot back, "In a guy like him!?"

"...Screw you." She scoffed before slamming the door closed.

I'm perplexed. Is Issei a scumbag for basically turning my sister into his side chick, or is Eleanor just a homewrecker that used the good mood everyone had going on to pry herself in between those two? Either way, I somehow seem to always end up as the villain in both scenarios, so does that suggest I should just quit and let them do their own thing? Somehow, as her older brother, I feel like taking such a laidback approach to the situation is the worst option of them all. And to think, none of this would've happened if Meil didn't run into all that money to begin with...

"I'm gonna go for a walk." I told myself before jumping out of bed and getting changed, "Fuck breakfast. Fuck Eleanor. Fuck Issei. Fuck Othelia. I came here to help Meil fix his reverse debt problem, and that's exactly what I'm gonna do. Nothing else matters, just do the bare minimum and return to your own wife so you can at the very least talk with her about all your troubles. Yeah, that's the play."

Walking downstairs to where everyone was eating, I couldn't help but sense a strange spring in my step. Was I... excited to go on this walk? I'll admit, I was interested in seeing a bit more of the campus, but I doubt it's that elating. Or maybe... Maybe I'm just excited to be alone with my thoughts for the first time in a long time again. And I don't mean internally, I mean literally talking to myself with my own voice. Audibly. Alone. That's what I want to accomplish with this walk. Well, along with...

"Meil, give me as much money as you can." I asked nicely enough.

"What is this, Edward?" He neatly stopped eating before replying, "Please, take your seat and eat with us first. We have time, so I will go with you if you wish to spend it again."

"But I don't want you to go with me. I wanna go alone." I'll admit I sounded rather childish with this answer, "Either way, it doesn't change the fact that I wanna help you spend all your money for you. Trust me, I won't come back until I've spent every single byte."

"...Sigh, do as you will." Meil reluctantly got up from his chair before going into the other room and returning with a literal backpack of gigabytes, "That is all I have taken from the Server Room the last time I visited. I would be very grateful if you could spend it all for me."

Server room?

"Yep, s'why I came here." I glanced over to the threesome quietly eating their food behind me, "I wanted to finish this up way sooner, but certain events slowed me down along the way."

"......."

"Uncle, let them..." Nelly went to say something.

"In any case, bye!" I smiled and waved as I walked out of the house, "Haha, damn! They looked PISSED after I said that! Come on, do they really think they have the right to get mad at me over that much? I'm the victim here!"

"Oh, would you SHUT UP already!?" Grim's voice startled me from behind, "Look, I don't see what the problem is here in general. If my brother told me he was shagging a female friend, I'd dap him up and end it there."

"A brother and a sister are two different things, though." I sighed, "A better analogy would be if you said your brother came out of the closet by announcing he likes getting backshots from Issei."

"Ah, I think I see the problem here." He finally understood, "So your issue is with Issei, not Eleanor?"

"That much was obvious, dumbass. I want my sister to find a good guy to take care of her, not someone who already has a loving girlfriend."

"Then the issue isn't Issei either!" He got pissed, "It's Othelia!"

"Well, I can't exactly blame her for this." I shrugged, "I think she just had to find a way to keep both Eleanor as a good friend and Issei as a boyfriend. This might've been her way of resolving the problem."

"Sounds to me like you've figured it out yourself a long time ago." Grim flashed me a confident smile, "All three of them are kind of in the wrong for this, but when you start to dig deeper, you'll soon realize they all mean well."

"You just can't stay mad at them when that's the case..." I sighed, "Hey, you free right now? Join me for a walk."

"Yeah, I don't mind. I make my own breakfast way before everyone else wakes up, so I'm free right now." He sounded full of himself, "No biggie, but yep, ever since I became a full-time parent with Cene, I've been having to wake up way earlier."

"Honestly, you've been a part-timer long enough."

I did say I wanted to be alone with my thoughts for the duration of this walk, but in essence, talking to Grim feels the same as talking to myself. I'd like to think that makes us in sync, but in truth what's probably happening is we're both just on the same wavelength of idiocy.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

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"Hey." I looked around anxiously, "We've been walking around for a while, but I've been meaning to ask."

"What is it?"

"Where exactly are we going?"

"Oh, that." He chuckled, "Beats me. I'm just going where the wind takes me. Y'know, just like old times."

"What the-!? We spent our entire morning walking around aimlessly because I thought you were taking me somewhere!"

"Well yeah, I was taking you for a walk."

"I'm not a dog, goddammit..."

"No duh." He reasoned, "I couldn't ever imagine having such a fun conversation with a dog."

That's... Well, I guess we did talk a lot about all sorts of things. Be it about how he misses Cecily and Cene, to him asking about how Anna and I are faring in terms of trying for a child (we decided we aren't yet ready for that undertaking), then onto our plans to make sure Nelly doesn't make any moves on Meil, or Gods forbid vice-versa, and before long... We found ourselves laughing and cracking all sorts of stupid jokes only a pair of idiots like us would laugh at. Really, Issei and Eleanor were the last thing on my mind. What a successful outing.

"Hey, we ended up quite a ways away from the campus." I sort of fretted a bit, "We kept following the gravel road even though it led us straight through a damned jungle, but I wonder if this path is still used, given its state."

"Probably not." He kept wading through the shrubs, "But hey, this reminds me of back when we first found the hideout."

"Ahhh, the nostalgia~!" I felt it wash over me, "It's all coming back to me now! Man, I wish I could've gone with you to see it, even just once."

"Hm, maybe next time. Until then, we're just gonna have to settle with the one we find here." He jested, "Ahaha, just kidding! There's no way we'd find another hideout... in... this jungle."

"Well, lucky us, I guess." I chuckled as we stared at the giant rusty, hole-filled warehouse engulfed in the jungle surrounding it, "What do you say? Wanna go explore it?"

"What a dumb question." He smirked before speeding towards it, "Of course I do!"

Not but a second after we ran inside though, we noticed two things immediately. Number one, this place was depressingly empty. The eerie vibe made it feel like it was haunted by a bunch of ghosts, but no matter whose presence we felt right behind us, we saw no one whenever we turned around. Creepy, we thought, but that just made us more excited to find something. We didn't dare move any of the boxes or containers, since they were all so rusty and filthy, but I doubt we'd find anything worthy of note anyways. Oh, and number two:

"It smells like absolute dogshit in here." I pinched my nose, "Where the hell is this stench coming from?"

"Dude, it's a warehouse in the middle of the jungle." Grim reasoned, "Just imagine how many animals come here to take a dump or piss in it. It's practically their version of a public toilet now."

"No, this smell is something far more rancid." I described it in short, "Like meat, but spoiled. You think there's an animal carcass or two stinking up the place?"

"Or maybe a deadly beast is nearby?" He joked.

"Dude, keep the scary stories to a minimum. I've barely slept a wink these past few days as is."

Be that as it may, we still weren't satisfied with just seeing this much, especially after we found another mystery to solve, namely involving the mysterious stench. We eventually deduced that it was probably something out in the back, where the soil was kind of wet and looked like it had been dug up a while ago.

"I don't think there's any animal or beast out there that buries their prey's carcass in the ground..." Grim looked wary as we noticed a bunch of soft spots in the mud, "Only a human could do that, precisely because..."

"Grim, Materialize some shovels for us."

"What? Hell no, I don't wanna die." He outright refused, "Use your brain, Ed. We just found a bunch of graves, so this is probably the work of a crazed murderer. Let's run back and report to the authorities. They say a murderer always returns to the scene of the crime, so I don't wanna give him any time to do so."

"Grim." I repeated, "Shovels, now."

After a short pause, he sighed and begrudgingly gave us a few shovels to use to at the very least dig one grave up. It felt weird, the soil that is. It was obviously a higher grade or two above any other soil you could find in the market. This one was super easy to plant stuff on, so to speak. And another thing, each patch of mud had a super pretty plant on them, which only made it easier for us to figure out where to dig. The holes were deep, too. It took a while until we hit something we thought was a torso, so we jumped back and fearfully dug around it, making sure not to damage whatever it could have been.

"My Gods..." Grim stood there horrified, "What kind of a sick maniac could've done this?"

"Not even laying them out flat, they made sure to bury their victims upright and upside down." I looked at the small group of human skeletal remains embedded in the soil, "These bones come from the feet. People are buried here, and a whole lot of them."

"So that's why it smelled...!" Grim began rushing to climb back out of the grave, "Ed, we need to report this to the police this instant! I don't know when these people died, but the killer might still be at large!"

"Can't we at least stop by a few shops?" I glanced back at my backpack, "I do feel bad about these dead guys, but I promised Meil to spend his money while I'm outside."

"Who cares about that! Don't you notice what situation we're in, Ed!?" Grim pulled me along by force, "This is usually the part of the story where the protagonists run into the kill-!"