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Tatyana tossed a bundle of papers she had taken from the drawer onto the table.
“Memorize all of them, Brother.”
Judging by the way they scattered lightly, there seemed to be over twenty sheets. Ivan picked one up and peered at the paper with a peculiar look in his eyes.
“What is all this? Your lovers?”
“Do you really think I’d enjoy myself with such hideous uglies?”
“……You, don’t tell me this is—”
“Yes, portraits. Portraits of the rebels you contacted back when you were acting as a double agent.”
A double agent? He performed such a dangerous mission?
Since she spoke in the past tense, it seemed to be something from his minority, and perhaps that was why Ivan looked different to me today. No, not just Ivan, but all my siblings.
At most, I had just held hands with Vasily and done some community service under the guise of reforming him.
That was nothing more than playing house.
“It’ll be slightly less than thirty sheets. Ivan, can you add a few more here before the public prayer service? Focus on the terrorists Libertan is likely to trust.”
“……Roughly seventy.”
“Hmm. Not as many as I thought. A hundred in total? You can memorize them all, Brother? Of course, Ivan and I will memorize them too. I wouldn’t want to be assassinated in the middle of praying.”
“And what am I supposed to do after memorizing them? You want us to just avoid them on our own?”
“Of course we have to filter them out. Once the public prayer service begins, a white carpet is laid from the central plaza to the holy hall, right? If a terror attack is planned, they’ll surely be stationed near the carpet, whether disguised as reporters or whatever. If we leave it to the Guards, the information might leak, so we have no choice but to move quickly ourselves.”
“Hey. Can’t the three of us—no, the four of us, including Valentin—split the load? I’m already busy enough, and it’s not like our eldest brother is any diff—”
“I’ll do it.”
Half of it was impulse, and the other half was courage.
The moment everyone looked back at me, I pushed myself up from my crouched position and approached the table.
“Sorry for interrupting. But hearing this, I think I’m the perfect fit for that role.”
The three of them froze, literally. But without time to check on them, I picked up the messily scattered papers.
“……I see you couldn’t sleep. It’s late, so please return to your room, Lara.”
“Are these the faces?”
“Lara.”
“You said you’d make more, right? Give me the rest too. I can memorize these thirty right here—”
“Stop it, Larisa Novarov!”
It was a call so firm it stung my eardrums, making it impossible to keep pretending. When I looked up, Tatyana spoke with a face that looked ten years older in an instant.
“Lara, have you forgotten? You are not attending the public prayer service. Let go. There is no role for you to perform. We will not push such things onto you.”
Tatyana gripped my hand and whispered affectionately.
“Lara? Be a good girl, okay?”
The other siblings were no different. Vasily watched me with calm eyes as if trying to read my thoughts, and Ivan looked at me with an expression of sheer disbelief.
‘What should I do?’
What do I have to do to stand side-by-side with my siblings?
Now, let’s imagine.
The priority should be persuasion.
We are siblings connected by blood, so if I convey my sincerity, it will surely work. If I say, ‘I don’t want to just watch anymore. I want to be helpful too. I want to be the one protecting, not the one being protected,’ how would Vasily respond? Probably like this: ‘Your safety is our peace, Lara. I would rather give up the Pope and Valentin than lose you. If you wish to help us, always think of yourself first.’
As expected, I’m the one who would end up being persuaded.
Then, how about a somewhat violent method?
I could hold the nearly thirty portraits over a blazing candle and threaten them. ‘If you don’t take me along, I’ll burn all these portraits and make them useless!’
Then how would Tatyana respond? Probably like this: ‘Burn them to your heart's content. I kept the originals separately.’
Considering Tatyana’s meticulousness, my threat would be utterly futile.
Then, finally, the method of wearing the opponent down?
I could climb onto the table and scream at the top of my lungs. ‘I’m going to the public prayer service too! If you keep locking me up and refusing to acknowledge my usefulness, just watch—I’ll sneak out of the Imperial Palace at dawn and run far away!’ How would Ivan react to that?
Probably like this: ‘Is this crazy mudfish daring to mention running away? Do you want your head pierced for real this time? That’s it, come here. You need to experience what actual confinement is. You live while receiving every possible service, and you’re talking about confinement, blah blah blah.’
……Damn it. There’s no answer. No matter what I say or do, I feel like I’ll just hit a wall.
But I can help.
I alone could remember faces most accurately.
“Ivan, do you remember September 4th of the year you were nine?”
I stared at Ivan without letting go of the papers. He had a look on his face as if he couldn’t even gauge when September 4th of the year he was nine was.
“That afternoon, you took me to the study. You were too busy boasting about how you’d finish reading the <Epic of the Great Founding Emperor> in a few days. That day, you were supposed to read from page 48 of Volume 2, but you gave up on reading after page 51, claiming the book was wrong. But actually, I had swapped the covers. I put the Volume 2 cover on Volume 3. You didn’t notice at all.”
I turned away from Ivan, whose expression had become peculiar, and looked at Tatyana this time.
“Tatyana, on November 9th of the year you were eight, Mother’s maids took care of us. We played a game where we’d close our eyes and guess which part of our clothes had been changed while the maids dressed us, and you immediately guessed that the white gloves had been changed to yellow. The maids praised your accuracy, but actually, you were wrong. There was one more part that had changed. The maid’s lips. She had reapplied a darker pink, but they let it slide even though you didn’t notice.”
“…….”
And finally.
“……August, seven years ago.”
Vasily’s violet eyes sank coldly.
“It was a rainy day, wasn’t it? I saw the sword that killed the attendant remaining in the fourth-floor drawing room.”
“You have a good memory, Lara.”
“Thank you. You wiped the hilt of the sword. But the blood had originally splattered up to the top. Right, Vasily?”
Tatyana’s face turned pale. Recalling the scene of that terrible day didn’t seem to be a pleasant thing for Tatyana either.
“I remember everything. The faces, the voices, the words. Once I see it, I never forget. Moreover, Libertan doesn’t know this fact.”
My siblings focused on my words. This was a decent reaction. Now all that remained was to drive the wedge home and change their minds.
“Use me. Trusting your cliché memories is the biggest gamble of all gambles. There is a probability of failure. If you still treat me like a child and try to protect me after I’ve gone this far……”
First, I swallowed hard.
Second, I closed both eyes with a sorrowful face.
Finally, I spoke in a gloomy voice.
“I’m going to marry a fifty-nine-year-old old man.”
“…….”
“For your information, that old man supposedly has four concubines living in the royal castle and seventeen children.”
The three of them looked at me with shocked eyes.
“And all those concubines are men.”
Fury flared on the faces of the three.
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