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-In Young Lina’s point of view-
“I’ll come pick you up tomorrow. I promise.” These were the last words I heard from Ryouhei. When I was in elementary school, I used to be so proud of my oniichan. He went to an all-boy high school, so I never really got to see him a lot. But whenever he used to come for spring break, he always used to pick me up after school and let me buy all the candies from the little candy store next to our house. He always used to pat me on the head saying that I’ll get cavities.
2:15 p.m. I rushed out of my classroom. Hopefully, oniichan was already waiting for me. He wasn’t. I decided to wait.
2:27 p.m. Maybe oniichan met a friend and wanted to talk to him…
3:35 p.m. …
3:52 p.m. …
4:24 p.m. There must be a mistake! Oniichan would never forget about a promise! Just as the sun was slowly crawling behind the tall tree next to the school gate, my mom came.
My mom was really pretty. I knew my mom was pretty because she kind of looked like the people on TV every day. She had silky looking brown hair that pleasingly fell neatly near her shoulders. She said she was born with her brown hair, although she’s full Japanese. She always said that my dad, whom I’ve never met, fell for her hair. I don’t know if that’s true ‘because I’ve never talked to him, but I’m pretty sure it’s true.
Today she seemed a little bit sad. Maybe it’s because her usually neat hair looked tangled. Or maybe because she was about to cry. But she came and smiled faintly at me. She said “let’s go home, your brother is not coming.” I knew she wasn’t lying back then, but I knew that Ryouhei ALWAYS keeps his promise. “But Ryouhei said he’s gonna come!! Let’s wait a little more.” Finally, my mom snapped.
“NO HE’S NOT!! THE POLICE CALLED!! He said that he’s going to sleep over at his friend’s house yesterday. He didn’t even come home, so I got worried. I called the phone that Ryouhei left as his friend’s house. There’s no such number, and there wasn’t a “friend” to begin with!” she began to sob and I didn’t know what to do.

Then my mom started drinking.