To be honest, he was uncertain of how he could ever retell this story.
His memories were dark on this day, though it had been very sunny...
To be honest, in his life, most things had always turned out fine, he had not been the luckiest, not been the best, he had never really been over-the-top at anything, aside from magic, and even there he was not the best of the best, there were just too many in the field for that, too many with more experience than him...
But in the end he had to be honest and say that anything always turned out good, he had never really lost anyone, aside from his great grandparents, a huge loss for a small child, but perhaps even something good for them as they had been very old, even for great grandparents, that he had to admit, and they had died of cancer, both, so it was also an end to suffering and a reunion, the same went for his cat that had once died of a sickness as well, choosing to spend it's last days with them, tired, so much so he had even built a stair made of pillows so it could get up onto the bed, not even realizing it was really dying back when he had first heard of it.
However, even if that had all happened, this one, this death, shortly before his seventeenth birthday, was different, it was someone dear to him, closer than almost anyone else, only surpassed by his parents who had been with him since day one instead of her who had been with him a year after point zero.
It had been the funeral of his sister, Amelia, fifteen years old at the point of her death, died of mana poisoning, she had always been obsessed with surpassing him in magic after all, wanting to prove herself to him, though he understood that only later, breaking down because of it once more, in a bathroom stall of a restaurant, a few months after it happened, not right now.
It was actually kind of funny, he had tried to surpass her in alchemy even though she had a great talent in that, as well as many other things, such as flexibility, whereas he was pretty good with muscles, able to grow them easily and be really strong despite training fairly rare, they both had things they liked, many different from each other as siblings would just be like that in the end, but they also both had talents, still most different, and they both were special to their parents and each other, that was just how siblings were too, after all...
No, to be honest, he just couldn't bare it when he thought back on that day, the day he had broken down in a bathroom stall for the first time, the day he had missed a big deal of the beginning of the sermon, but nobody had really cared, the day everyone had seen his eyes, red and full of tears that had dried up, where he had his mouth open because he just didn't care about anything, because he just breathed and couldn't stop thinking back on the days he had spent with her, regretting the days he hadn't spend with her.
Years later there would pass days where he didn't think of her, there would even pass day where he wouldn't even think his own name, or think much of anything at all, that's just how humans worked, but never, did he go more than a week without remembering his sister through something while he was out on his job.
Though he had also realized something else, aside from the fact of the matter that bathrooms, especially toilets, are good from when one is breaking down and needs a place to completely rest and just do nothing aside from sitting, breathing, feeling their heart beat, something he used often in the first months after he lost his little sister, someone he had called honey, her always saying that it sounded like a eastern woman was talking, a type that supposedly tended to say that a lot.
Yes, she had always been like that, she had been annoying, she had never really done her work, and her room hadn't been clean in years, but they had always been, not friends, but siblings, they had been eternal enemies and also eternal friends, truly, a relationship impossible to explain.
Still, that was just how siblings were.
Even now, at seventeen years old, the first year after his job, his mouth still hung open as he sat on a chair, silently eating the scrambled eggs he had just made using magic, the one thing he had really put effort in in the months after it had happened, something that had saved him from so many bad thoughts, and also, still, the thing that had killed his sister.
When she had died he swore to never use it again, but his parents talked with him, and soon after, he realized his sister died because she wanted to use magic and understand it, so why would he stop, instead of letting her watch from the great eastern star, letting her watch the secrets he would find, the secrets he would tell others.
But he didn't want to be a teacher, those were paid badly, he wanted to help others defend themselves, he wanted to fight, and he wanted to fight monsters, that was his wish now, he would be a arcane hunter, one of those that kept the outer ridges of their country save, one of those that killed monsters inside the country, that was what he wanted to be, that was what he thought he should do.
Caused by Amelia's death, his sister's end, at seventeen years, he already knew what he wanted to do one day, kill monsters, perhaps, partially, to relief the anger over her death, using magic that had killed her, the spell that he had found so easy, shooting an icy arrow.
So simple, and yet, she had misfired, onto herself, her own mana having become the attraction, being pierced right through her innocent heart, right next to Rondel's room who had seen her corpse, a book with his notes next to her, something he would never forget, never truly forgive himself for, until the day he died.