I wasn’t expecting my brother to be drinking when I got home. I hadn’t expected him to be home until the next morning. He didn’t say anything when I walked in, but I was expecting that. We had not spoken to each other for more than a week. The childish, petty part of me wanted him to talk to me first. When we were younger, he had always been the one to make amends after a fight.

“Do you forgive me?” he used to say, pulling out a lollypop from his pocket and giving it to me. “Do you?”

Of course, I had always forgiven him. I was used to forgiving him, even when it was my fault. I waited for him to put down his drink, but he continued to stare at the walls and sip at his beer.

“Hey,” I said, sitting down across from him. “You shouldn’t be drinking so late.”

He shrugged. For a moment, I was worried that he was going to ignore me or tell me to go to bed. But then, his mouth quirked up and he set down his drink.

“Early,” he corrected wryly. “It’s three in the morning.”

He smiled a tired little smile. Not the grin he might have given me four or five years earlier, but he was smiling with his eyes, as he had not done in a very long time.

“How’s school been?” he asked. It was so strange of him to ask such a question. Perhaps it was the alcohol.

“Good.”

“Ah,” he said vaguely. And then he shook his head, as if he were waking up from a restless sleep. “Are you still top of your class?”

“Yes,” I said. Thankfully, the other scholarship student was not in my class.

“Good.” He sat back, at a loss for words. He poured himself another glass and downed it in one shot. Then, another and another. He finished one bottle and reached for a second. He could be a heavy drinker when the mood settled over him. I would stop him when he reached his third bottle, I decided. Even an older brother needed to drink his thoughts away sometime.

“You were out with Kai again tonight?” he asked. His words were beginning to slur together. He worked out a kink in his shoulder and then leaned forward.

“Yes,” I said, a little unsure of how he would react. To my surprise, he smirked at me.

“Cheers,” he said, downing another shot. “My baby sister’s finally growing up.”

“It’s not like that,” I protested. “We’re just friends.”

“Okay, okay,” he said easily. He was really drunk now. “It’s fine. So what did you do? Kiss?”

“We really are just friends,” I said.

“You can tell your brother these things.”

It was hopeless trying to argue with him when he was in such a state. He could only deal with facts.

“We ran into your co-workers. Chanyeol and a few others,” I said. He pretended he hadn’t heard me, and started to pour himself another drink. I pulled at his arm, and he dropped his glass. It shattered on the floor. “Can you stop?”  

“What?” he snapped. “I’m tired. Let me drink.”

“You’ve had two already. No more.”

He got up and fumbled in the cupboards for another glass. He swore when he sent a plate flying onto the floor with a careless sweep of his hand.

“Look,” I tried again. “Just stop. Sit down and listen to me for once.”

He came back with a new glass, which he very pointedly set down on the table in front of me. “Just one more.”

“Do you know what Chanyeol said?” I said loudly, before he could touch his beer. “He said that you’re in serious trouble with your boss.”

“What?” my brother said, shaking his head in disbelief. “That’s impossible. I’ve done everything right.”

“Chanyeol said you should get out of town for a while.”

“Chanyeol said this and that,” he said mockingly. “Well, Chanyeol has no idea what he’s talking about.”

“He sounded serious.”

“You think I did something wrong, don’t you?”

When I didn’t answer, he stood and threw the glass at the wall behind my head.

It must have shattered, but I did not hear.       

My brother sat back down, and ran his hands through his hair.

“What do you think I do?”

I wanted to say I thought he worked in an office. That he was a hardworking employee who would soon get the promotion he deserved. That one day he would become a CEO.

But those were lies.

“What do you think I do?” he asked again, looking up at me.

I took a deep breath and met his eyes.

“Bad things.”

That was the truth.