My Brother's Double Life
Lily tilted her head, her eyes sparkling with curiosity as she stared at the object in my hands. “My lady, what is that? It has such a unique shape. Could it be a precious perfume bottle from a foreign land?”
She was still riding high from our pudding adventure, her voice bright and eager.
“Um… I’m not sure. Maybe? Since we’ve come too far to find its owner, I’ll just hold onto it for now.”
I tried to sound casual as I fiddled with the silver cylinder, but my fingers wouldn’t stop tracing its surface.
Was it just my imagination?
An unpleasant vibration kept pulsing from the cold metal, refusing to fade.
The moment my latent ability unconsciously brushed against the cylinder’s surface—
Click!
A tiny snapping sound rang out, and the smooth silver cylinder suddenly began rotating with the precision of interlocking gears.
Then, from the center of the tube, a hidden symbol popped out with a soft pop.
…Huh?
The instant I saw that emblem, the blood in my veins froze solid.
It was the exact same chilling crest I had seen a month ago—when my good-for-nothing second brother, Cassian, had secretly shown it to me while forcing me to run that insane errand.
—Listen carefully, little sister.
The people who use this symbol are all complete lunatics.
You must never, ever get involved with them.
If you ever see it, run. Immediately.
My brother’s warning echoed in my ears like a hallucination.
Crazy. Crazy! This is insane!!!
The young boy I had bumped into earlier was, without a doubt, a messenger for the rebels—or at the very least, someone carrying something extremely dangerous.
My peaceful daily life! I barely escaped that hell, and now this time bomb has landed in my hands?!
I was screaming internally, already preparing to hurl the object onto the street, when—
“Over there! He just ran into that alley!”
“It’s the one in the black hood! In the name of the Imperial Guard, seal off all entrances to the shopping district immediately!”
Heavy clangs of armor and sharp shouts erupted from the mouth of the alley.
The Imperial Guard? Oh no.
The very knights from the imperial palace that I had desperately shaken off last night were now charging into the shopping district with swords drawn.
“Oh my goodness! Why are the knights here…? Did something terrible happen?”
Lily clutched my arm in terror.
I looked back and forth between her pale face, the approaching guards, and the silver cylinder I was unintentionally holding.
If the guards saw this thing right now?
The Duke of Lucerne’s daughter would be perfectly framed as having made contact with rebels and received classified information.
Our entire family would be finished by tonight.
I quickly shoved the silver cylinder deep into the sleeve of my dress.
“Lily. It looks like we’ll have to save the pudding for another day.”
I spoke to her quietly, my face drained of color.
“Hic, my lady! Why do you look like that? You’re covered in cold sweat…!”
“My stomach is churning. I think I suddenly got indigestion. Let’s head straight back to the carriage. Hurry!”
Using indigestion as my excuse, I grabbed Lily’s wrist and ran without looking back.
There was only one thought screaming in my head.
Second brother definitely knows something about this!
My sweet, honey-like break hadn’t even lasted half a day.
And the silver cylinder vibrating faintly against my chest like a heartbeat was radiating a terrible sense of foreboding.
**
The place I dragged Lily to wasn’t the ducal mansion.
It was White Haze, a popular bakery among the younger crowd located a few blocks from the main shopping district.
“Huuung, my lady! You’re not feeling well, so you should be resting at the mansion! Why are we at a bakery?! If it’s because of me, I’m really fine! Do you know how shocked I was when I saw your face go completely white? I feel like I lost ten years of my life!”
Once my complexion had returned to normal, Lily’s tension finally broke and she poured out her grievances.
I sat her down by the window and, pretending not to hear, stacked three slices of freshly baked chocolate cake into a towering pile for her.
“Lily, I think I got a little startled after running into that strange person and the guards in the shopping district. But you know how long it’s been since we last went out together. It would be such a waste to go home now, wouldn’t it? Here, you eat this first. I’ll just pop into the restroom for a moment. I’ll be right back, so don’t you dare leave this seat, okay?”
“What? Then I’ll go with you!”
Before she could follow me, I shoved a heaping spoonful of chocolate cake into her mouth.
It was her favorite dark chocolate.
Struck by my decisive blow, she melted instantly.
“Ah, my lady…! Mmm, this cake is so… so delicious…!”
Her mind was completely captured by the rich sweetness.
After that, I walked naturally toward the staff-only door at the back of the bakery, as if I’d done it a thousand times.
A large, intimidating chef who had been kneading dough blocked my path with a fierce scowl, but I whispered in a low voice filled with the dignity of a duke’s daughter.
“I haven’t seen your face before. I’m simply curious about the taste of ‘frog legs coated in flour and fried thin.’”
The chef’s pupils trembled slightly.
Without a word, he pushed hard against the stone wall beside the oven.
Grind—
The massive stone wall rotated, revealing a dark staircase that yawned open like a mouth.
This was, in fact, a secret passage leading to Eclipse, the empire’s largest information guild secretly operated by the House of Lucerne.
After descending the stairs for quite some time, an enormous underground space appeared—one that was impossible to imagine existing beneath a mere bakery.
I strode past the guild members bustling about as busily as the ducal household, clutching the silver cylinder that continued to emit its unpleasant vibration from inside my sleeve, and headed straight for Cassian’s office.
I was going to grab my second brother—the one who had thrown me into this mess—by the collar, shove this bizarre object in his face, and demand to know exactly what was going on.
Just as I reached for the door, an ice-cold voice slipped through the narrow gap.
“It seems you still don’t understand the scale of the disaster your mistake will bring.”
My hand froze on the doorknob.
That wasn’t a voice I recognized.
It was far too brutal and murderous to belong to the sly, giggling Cassian I knew.
I held my breath and peered through the crack.
Cassian stood before a massive mahogany desk, his lips pressed into a blade-like line.
Kneeling and trembling before him was a guild member wearing a black robe.
“G-Guild Master…! Someone collided with our messenger in the shopping district… and he dropped the item containing the information. We’re searching the entire area right now, but…!”
“Shut your mouth.”
Cassian’s voice cracked like a whip.
“If what’s inside that thing reaches the emperor’s ears, not only will our guild be finished—Lucerne itself will be destroyed.”
Bang—!
The sound of Cassian slamming his fist on the desk made my heart drop to the floor.
“Recover it by tonight, no matter what. Whoever picked it up, drag them before me even if you have to wring their neck. Understood?”
Goosebumps raced down my spine.
The person I bumped into in the shopping district. The dropped object. The information that would end our entire family if it reached the emperor’s ears…
The silver cylinder in my pocket suddenly felt unbearably heavy.
This can’t be happening… Cassian, what the hell have you been doing?
Don’t tell me you weren’t helping the emperor… but trying to stab him in the back?
My mind went completely blank.
At that exact moment, Cassian’s gaze shot through the door crack like an arrow, and his head snapped toward me.
“…Who’s there? The rat hiding like a coward.”
Before he even finished speaking—
Whoosh—! Thud!
A sharp sound tore through the air as a dagger embedded itself deep into the doorframe right beside my head.
The eyes glaring at me were not those of the incompetent, doting second brother I knew.
They were the eyes of a predator lurking in the dark, waiting to tear out its prey’s throat.
I couldn’t even scream. Pure instinct made me stumble backward.
In the filthy back alleys where the stench of rotting garbage and sewage mixed with mud that clung to the ankles, a boy wearing a deep black hood ran through the maze-like streets, gasping for breath.
“Haa… haa… Did I lose them?”
When the sound of the knights who had been relentlessly pursuing him finally faded, the boy twisted at the end of the alley and dove into an old bookstore whose sign had long since collapsed.
Among the dusty bookshelves, he expertly pulled out a worn old book tucked away in a corner.
Rumble. Thud!
With a heavy vibration, the floor split open, revealing a spiral stone staircase that seemed to descend forever.
The further the boy descended, the more the miserable surface landscape gave way to a majestic underground space.
After passing every torch hanging on the pillars of what looked like an entire ancient ruined kingdom’s temple that had been transplanted underground, he cautiously approached the deepest part of the sanctuary—directly beneath a giant goddess statue draped in a blood-red curtain.
Beyond it waited that person, someone he didn’t even dare raise his head toward.
“I have returned.”
The boy knelt reverently and reached into his chest pocket.
It was time to offer the holy relic he had kept deep inside his inner pocket.
But what his fingertips touched wasn’t the cool sensation of silver—it was only empty air.
“……Huh?”
The boy’s eyes shook violently as if an earthquake had struck.
He turned his pockets inside out and tore through the lining of his robe, but there was nothing.
His face gradually turned as pale as a corpse.
It was gone.
“…Did you bring it?”
At that moment, the voice that flowed from beyond the red curtain dropped the temple’s temperature to subzero in an instant.
Low, heavy, and filled with absolute authority, it crushed the boy’s shoulders.
“T-That is……”
The boy couldn’t even form a proper answer. He crawled across the floor, shaking like a leaf.
Just the gaze he felt from beyond the curtain was enough to make him feel as if his soul was being ripped to shreds.
The heavy silence of the underground temple pressed down on the boy like a death sentence.
[Cassian Lucerne]