Little brother

His parents had another child when he was twelve, a boy. After that, the nanny took care of that little boy instead of him. He was getting too old for a nanny anyway. He didn't see any use in having any kind of contact with the child. The age gap between them was so big that by the time the little boy would be old enough to have meals with him, he would be old enough to be too busy to spend time with him anyway. Trying to be part of the little boy's life would only result in broken promises on his part, and in the little boy expecting visits that would never happen, he knew it. With that logic in mind, he continued living almost as if he was an only child.

When the little boy was one, he got a very bad fever. The doctor said he could die if he didn't get better soon. Both their parents were out of town at the time. The nanny decided that his "big brother" should keep him company. He didn't know what he was doing in the room. If comfort was what little boy needed, one of the people who had actually been taking care of him should be giving it. He stayed up all night, holding the little boy's hand, unsure what else to do. The next morning, the little boy had gotten better. But he didn't want the little boy to get used to having him around, so things went on as usual.

When the little boy was two, their mother died. Once again, house employees expected him to provide comfort. His aunt and uncle came, and gave news about their own children. He hadn't realized they had children until then. They explained him that they had been born just a few days before his little brother had been, and that he had probably missed the news because of that. They were twins, a boy and a girl. The local newspaper's photographer came to the funeral also, and later turned out to have caught him while he had the little boy on his lap, more with the purpose of keeping him from running around unsupervised than anything else. And again, he had done it mostly because nobody else had seemed to be thinking of doing it.

When the little boy was three, there was a fire. They lost everything, including their father. Signing the adoption papers so the little boy could go live with their aunt, uncle and cousins felt like the right thing to do. He ended up going to school in the town they lived in, so he visited them during the time during which most students went to visit their parents. Sometimes, his aunt and uncle had him watch the kids while they went out to run errands. All three of them were so full of energy that they ran around the house and climbed on everything they could climb on when left to their own devices. By pure luck, he found out that if something caught the attention of one of them, it soon quickly caught the attention of the two others. Eventually, he figured out how to keep them busy, and started enjoying the games he set up for them a little himself. Next thing he knew, all three children would drop whatever they had been doing to greet him whenever he came. He quickly found out the reason: in spite of how little he thought he was doing, he was still paying more attention to them than his aunt and uncle were. As things weren't going well in school, playing with them became one of the few bright spots in his life.

After two years, all the problems he was having in school became too much to handle, and he decided to quit academia. The day after he left, he saw an army recruiting poster, and knew what he'd do next. That evening, he told the rest of the family about his decision. He also noticed that the two little boys had hair of different lengths, his little brother's being longer. He asked about it.
-Ah, that. He really wants to have your haircut, and we didn't see why not. It will also make it easier to tell the boys apart.

By his second year in the army, his uncle and aunt started to fancy themselves Silent World explorers by proxy, and turned to him when they need a cleanser for their expedition crew. They briefly swung by his aunt and uncle's house on the way to the expedition's departure point, and he got to say goodbye to his little brother and cousins. He decided that once he'd come back from the mission a famous hero, he would find a way to give them a better life.

He really wished he had spent more time with them. At this rate, that farewell was going to be the last memory his little brother and cousins had of him. But he had to keep going, so both he and Lalli would have a chance to make it back out of the Silent World alive. He couldn't let the thought that it may already be too late for Lalli last for more than a fraction of a second. Tuuri was already dead, but he could at least try to save her cousin. He hadn't really paid any kind of attention to his brother and cousins until they were three, and they were currently seven, yet he dreaded the idea of leaving them behind. Tuuri's brother Onni had been paying attention to Tuuri and Lalli since the day of their respective births, grown into adulthood with them, and raised them longer than their own parents had. He didn't dare imagine what would happen when he found out about his little sister's death.
-He probably already knows. The stupid foreign novice must have told him by now.
Emil wondered who the voice could be talking about. After some amount of thinking, Reynir, who according to Mikkel thought himself a novice mage, became the most likely. Mikkel had also mentioned Reynir having older siblings in the military. Tuuri had also told him about how Mikkel himself had younger siblings. Onni, Reynir's older brothers, Mikkel. Comparing himself to them, Emil didn't feel he had the right to call himself Sune's older brother.
-Onni is scared of everything, the stupid foreign novice ended up here because his brothers talked about travelling too much, Mikkel is annoying also. If they can be big brothers, you should be able to be too. But that won't happen if you keep imagining that they are much better than you instead of paying attention to what's around you.