The chair beside the desk was empty.
The bed was empty, too.
The blanket on it was still neatly arranged.
Clearly,
no one had rested in the bed tonight.
Where was his younger brother?
The woodcutter's mouth fell open. "...Younger brother?"
"Younger brother, where are you?"
"Younger brother?!"
The woodcutter's voice grew louder and louder.
His expression grew increasingly anxious.
In the middle of the night...
the Young Scholar wasn't in the room...
Where could he be?
The woodcutter rushed out of the room.
He searched the whole house.
He especially rummaged through the kitchen.
He wondered if his younger brother might have gotten hungry...
After all, he hadn't eaten much during the day.
Maybe he'd woken up hungry in the middle of the night—
No.
His younger brother hadn't even gone to bed.
He must have been reading the whole time, until he got hungry.
"Younger brother, younger brother..."
The woodcutter called softly.
Again and again.
By the end, his voice had grown hoarse.
Unfortunately,
his guess was wrong.
The woodcutter didn't find his younger brother in the kitchen.
The kitchen was clean and quiet, with no sign that anyone had been there.
The woodcutter was at a loss.
His younger brother was nowhere in the house...
Then where...
had he gone?
For a moment, the woodcutter didn't know what to do.
But soon, he gritted his teeth.
He made up his mind.
He strode out of the house.
Had his younger brother...
gone outside?
If he wasn't at home...
then he could only be somewhere outside.
But at this hour...
the woodcutter couldn't understand.
His younger brother didn't go out during the day.
Why go out in the middle of the night?
Had something happened?
A thought flashed through