How to Stop an Older Man from Losing It

[Pseudo-siblings + melodramatic love triangle]

[9-year age gap / 15-year age gap]

[Blurb]

Ailike was sent to live with the Jimke family from birth. After nine years of living under his father's crushing pressure, Jimke finally saw the first glimmer of light in his life.

From then on, his little brother became his most precious treasure. He held him in the palm of his hand, gave him the stars and the moon, and spoiled him rotten until he turned eighteen. Then Ailike began to rebel, to hate the gilded cage his older brother had built for him, and to yearn for freedom...

Jimke went mad, but no matter what he did, he couldn't keep his little brother's heart.

So he decided to be cruel and let Ailike go out into the rain. If he got soaked through and could no longer stand, he'd understand how good he had it by his brother's side.

But Jimke was wrong.

Ailike left and never came back.

*

Ailike had never seen the world. After leaving his brother, he went wild wherever he could, but reality soon crushed him.

On the day he could no longer hold out and decided to go back and apologize to his brother, he was unexpectedly taken home by the down-on-his-luck driver Sangniye.

Sangniye was a race car driver who had spent more than a decade pursuing his dream in a foreign country, only to see it slip further away. On the day a test drive turned him down, he found a filthy "puppy." He'd planned to feed him once and leave it at that, but after thinking how lonely he was and how much he needed someone to talk to, he let the puppy stay.

To his surprise, life only got better from then on.

*

In the third month after meeting Ailike, Sangniye finally made it into the ranks of the world's top drivers.

At a sponsor's banquet, he'd already bought a ring and was preparing to make a proper confession.

But when he went to the restroom to wash his face and calm his nerves, he heard a familiar, pleading voice from one of the stalls: "Brother, don't do this..."

"We had a deal." Along with the sound of a kiss, a stranger said, "He has a seat now. Aili should come home."

The ring clattered to the floor.

[Important]

1. A fanfic of The End-of-the-World Start, next door, in a style inspired by AO3.

2. Pseudo-siblings + melodrama.

3. The Oreo from the original story will read this one, haha.

Theme: Growth