Chapter 62: Brothers
A brief setback did not dishearten Lucifer; he quickly shook off the angels' pursuit and returned to observe the seemingly harmonious human family, a look of profound significance glinting in his eyes.
Humans were the ultimate petri dish for darkness; born of mortal flesh, they inherently carried the burden of Original Sin.
With even the slightest provocation, the dark seeds of sin could easily be drawn out and amplified.
There was no need to inflict the full spectrum of the Seven Deadly Sins; a single one would suffice to make darkness take root within the human heart.
Adam wished to multiply his lineage across this mortal earth?
Lucifer would ensure that Adam's descendants were instead plagued by discord, immorality, and alienation.
Using humans as his instruments, Lucifer experimented with the forces of darkness upon them: Pride, Envy, Wrath, Sloth, Greed...
Under the insidious influence of the Seven Deadly Sins, human emotions swelled to their absolute limits; yet, shielded by divine protection, they still refrained from committing any truly fallen acts.
Lucifer waited patiently for his moment. Heaven, after all, could not stand guard over humanity forever.
For both Heaven and Hell, the passage of time brought only limited change; yet for humanity, its effects and transformations were visible to the naked eye.
In the blink of an eye, seven years had passed.
Now in his early twenties, Cain was tall and lean, broad-shouldered and long-limbed, with handsome features—a remarkably striking and robust young man.
He spent his days ranging across the wilderness, intent on identifying the properties and uses of every plant he encountered.
Abel, by contrast, was gentle and good-natured—a soul naturally inclined toward smiles and serenity. In recent years, through the practice of hunting, his movements had grown agile and his demeanor far more decisive; though barely eighteen, he was capable of hauling water and game, keeping the household running with impeccable order.
The more Adam admired his second son's diligence, the more he grew critical of Cain's aimless wandering in the fields from dawn till dusk.
As this dynamic persisted, the rift between father and son deepened further; by now, not even Eve could persuade the two of them to sit at the same table for a meal. "Can't you, for once, try to learn something from Abel? He brought back fifteen rabbits from the hunt today; we won't have to worry about meat for the next seven days. But you? Look at you!" Adam pointed angrily at a scattered pile of dark, spiny fruits lying in the corner.
"You just keep bringing back these inedible, thick-shelled things that only serve to prick our mouths!"
"Now, Adam! Cain didn't do it on purpose," Eve tried to reason with her husband.
"Don't you always take his side! It's precisely because you indulge him like this that he grows more insolent with every passing day." Adam brushed off Eve's words, convinced that she constantly favored their eldest son.
"Have you forgotten? Last time, when you accidentally brushed against that patch of nettles, you couldn't eat meat for half a month and had to subsist entirely on wild fruit juice!"
"But Cain said..." Eve began to protest, but Cain had already cut her off, fixing his father with a cold, hard stare.
"I was conducting research! What would an old fool like you—who knows nothing about anything—possibly understand?"
His contemptuous attitude enraged Adam, who grabbed a handful of the inedible fruit pits and hurled them across the room.
"Research? Research what? What do you think you're going to discover?" The small, dark-yellow pellets rained down all over Cain; the room fell into a stunned silence, broken only by the deafening roar of Adam's fury.
"The long winter is nearly upon us. If we fail to stockpile enough food this year, I swear I'll eat *you* instead!"
Of all the seasons, winter was the most grueling to endure. Back in the Garden of Eden, they had never known such scarcity. Adam's eyes began to redden; he was a man of deep emotion—back when he stood before the Throne of God, he had always felt free to weep whenever the urge struck him.
Yet, ever since they had been cast down into the mortal realm, he had not shed a single tear.
"Through toil you will eat of the ground all the days of your life. By the sweat of your brow you will earn your daily bread."
His sin—his wretched fate—was entirely of his own making.
Cain had been conceived shortly after that fateful moment when they had stolen and eaten the forbidden fruit. To look upon his son was to look upon the irreparable error he himself had committed. Adam swallowed back his tears, offering his eldest son nothing but a look of bitter irony. "If that doesn't work out, just go hunting with Abel. Even if you only catch a pheasant, we'll be a little better off."
Cain could bear it no longer; his father's lack of understanding filled his heart with bitterness. Without a word, he stormed out, slamming the door behind him, and walked all the way to his fields several miles away.
Gazing out at his barren land, he fell into silence.
He did not want to spend his life endlessly searching through thorny thickets for the rare edible fruit they might yield. If he could cultivate his own edible crops—grown by his own hand—then even during the long, harsh winters, they would never go hungry.
Yet, no one could understand him.
The early autumn breeze carried a natural coolness, sweeping away the last lingering traces of summer's heat. Cain lay upon the earth, and beneath the wind's gentle caress, his restless heart gradually found its calm.
He did not know how much time had passed until he heard the sound of approaching footsteps. Without even opening his eyes, he asked in a low, detached voice:
"What are you doing here?"
Receiving no reply, he opened his eyes—only to see Abel kneeling on the ground, gently straightening the crooked young shoots and carefully mounding the soil back around them.
"Can food really grow from this?"
Cain sat up from where he lay on the ground.
"I don't know."
"But whether it be wild fruit growing on trees or berries ripening in the bushes, they all spring from the earth. This very ground beneath our feet—this is our greatest treasure."
What is it that makes the earth yield food?
Is it the plant's leaves? Its flowers? The fruit itself? Or something else entirely?
What things are edible? And which can be preserved for the long haul?
"If we can just unlock its secrets, we can change everything." So spoke the embodiment of the Tree of Wisdom. In that fleeting instant, it seemed to Abel as though a golden light enveloped his older brother; yet Cain remained utterly oblivious to it. His eyes, bright and gleaming, were filled with unshakeable confidence.
"We rely on ourselves—not on some vague, ethereal god," Cain declared. At that very moment, the golden light vanished abruptly—and still, he remained unaware. "From the moment of our birth until now, has any god ever appeared before us? Have they granted us any revelations? Day after day, people bow and pray toward the heavens—yet has any divine voice or gospel ever descended upon us?"
"Brother, you must not speak disrespectfully of the gods," Abel said, disapproving of Cain's words. "Even if the earth is a treasure trove, it is a gift bestowed upon us by the gods, not something we possessed by right of birth."
Cain knew that Abel—much like their parents and sisters—would never see things his way, so he chose not to argue further. In any case, the notion of offering his piety to some god he had never even seen was simply something he could not bring himself to do.
Abel invited him to join him on a hunting trip; his mood lifted, and he agreed. Just then, however, a sweet voice rang out from the distance.
"Brother Abel!"
Radiant as the morning sun, a bright-spirited girl bounded across the fields and ditches like a bird, rushing straight into Abel's arms.
Upon seeing Acrylicman, a smile involuntarily blossomed on Abel's face.
He had grown into a dependable young man; he allowed Acrylicman to fling herself at him, and—yielding to her playful insistence—he bent down and hoisted her onto his back.
"Oh, you! Look how grown-up you are, yet you still want me to carry you? Aren't you ashamed?"
"I *want* you to carry me! It was so in the past, it is so now, and it shall be so forevermore!" Acrylicman giggled mischievously right next to his ear.
"And you are allowed to carry *only* me!"
Abel, well aware of Acrylicman's bossy nature, let a look of gentle helplessness show in his eyes.
"Alright."
"Not even for Avan!" Acrylicman declared imperiously as she sat astride Abel's shoulders.
"Acrylicman, for a big sister, you are being entirely too bossy," Cain remarked, casting a disapproving glance at the pair.
Acrylicman looked as if she had only just noticed Cain's presence; she hopped down from Abel's back and, adopting a prim and proper demeanor, offered a polite greeting:
"Brother Cain." Compared to the easy intimacy she shared with Abel, her interactions with Cain were noticeably distant.
Just as Cain had never cared for her since childhood, she, too, had never been able to warm up to him—so she simply didn't force herself to try.
She grasped Abel's hand—a hand twice the size of her own—and pouted with a hint of displeasure. "I didn't see you at breakfast; Mother told me you had come over here."
Abel gently smoothed her slightly disheveled hair, teasing her for being so clingy.
"It's alright. Just don't be in such a rush to find me in the future—it's not like I'm going to get lost."
Acrylicman pressed herself against him and gave a soft hum; only after she had buried her face against him to her heart's content did she finally look up. "It's a pity I can't stay with you for very long, though. After morning prayers, I still have to go make clothes with Avan."
"Where is Avan?" Cain asked, sounding as if he had only just found something of interest amidst the pair's cloyingly sweet banter.
"She walks rather slowly, but she should be here any moment now. Look—isn't that her coming right over there?" The blonde girl straightened up and waved toward the distance.
"Avan!"
Through Cain's eyes, a young girl he barely recognized slowly came into view.
With her long silver hair cascading down to her waist, Avan could not—based on physical appearance alone—compare to the striking beauty of Acrylicman. Yet, she possessed an indescribable aura—a temperament as pure and lofty as the clouds, as gentle and ethereal as the wind. As she approached with such light, graceful steps, Cain found it impossible to reconcile this young woman with the timid, shrinking girl he remembered from their childhood.
As he recalled, Avan had always been frail and sickly, rarely venturing outdoors; Cain had never realized—until this very moment—that she had grown into such a young woman.
"Brother Cain, Brother Abel, Sister Acrylicman," she called out, her voice clear and melodious. She did not approach any closer, choosing instead to stand beneath a nearby tree to remind her sister that it was time to go, after which she simply waited there in quiet patience.
A small bird alighted upon her shoulder, chirping sweetly as if whispering secrets into her ear; beneath the shade of the tree, a faint smile curved the young girl's lips.
With her silver hair and crimson eyes, she appeared all the more frail and pale.
"Do you think Avan might be a child of the fairies? I'm always hearing her talking to the animals," Acrylicman whispered into Abel's ear. She felt a twinge of envy that Avan got along so well with the little creatures—whereas whenever she herself tried to catch a bird to play with, they would merely shriek in alarm and fly away.
"That's only because Avan doesn't have as many ulterior motives as you do," Cain retorted with a jab. Fearing that the two of them were about to start bickering again, Abel quickly stepped in to play the peacemaker. "It's about time. Since Yawan has come looking for you, you go on ahead; I, too, must go hunting with Brother Cain."
"Hunting?" Acrylicman's eyes shifted slightly, casting a pointed glance at Cain. Annoyed, Cain was the first to rise to his feet.
"I'm leaving."
"Hey! Brother!" Abel called out, but to no avail; he could only stand up and follow. "Why must you always provoke Brother?"
He looked at Acrylicman with bewilderment.
"I simply cannot stand his haughty attitude—always assuming Father favors *you*," Acrylicman said coldly. "Yet he never stops to consider *why* Father would favor you specifically, and not him. And does Father truly favor you? After all these years, Father has only ever remembered *his* birthday."
"Are you jealous, Acrylicman?" Abel gave a light laugh.
"I am not joking with you, Brother. He is not a magnanimous man; you must be careful. You are ten thousand times the man he is—who knows when he might come to resent you."
The wind carried Acrylicman's words—every last syllable—straight into Yawan's ears. The young girl, her red eyes gleaming like琉璃 glass, watched Cain's retreating figure.
She reached up to steady the flower wreath atop her head, which threatened to be swept away by the breeze.
It was a wreath Cain had placed there as he passed by her side.
[Hebrew Mythology] The Arduous History of Raising a World — by the Great Author: Dan Mu'ai