By Zephyria 
I decided to use a one-handed sword from now on.
It wasn’t a grand decision. It wasn’t because I still liked Mikael, but simply because Mikael had always had a keen eye for things related to Sword Art and swordsmanship. Since Mikael told me that a one-handed sword would suit me better than a two-handed one, I just…
…Right, it was impossible to stop having feelings for him in just one week.
I had my excuses. Mikael, believing we had become completely close, smiled more often and acted more sweetly. Every morning when I opened my eyes, I desperately hoped that today he would appear as a cheeky, clueless boy, but while he was indeed cheeky and clueless, he was just too cute.
I had considered bottling up my emotions for about three years.
But if possible, I just wanted to stop liking him. It hadn’t even been a full semester since I met Mikael, yet my life was already a mess. At night, I couldn’t sleep because I missed him, and during the day, Mikael’s blue eyes flickered in the corner of my vision, making daily life difficult.
Every time I woke up, I clutched my head and muttered, I’m going to die at this rate.
Yet, I came to see Mikael again, still alive. It was a severe case.
Mikael loved his family and talked about them often.
Now I know well that Mikael wasn’t raised as a tool—a Shadow Guard or a family assassin. Mikael was raised with love. I laughed for a long time because it was just too cute that he had loved fairy tales about knights since he was a child, and since he happened to possess genius talent, the synergy exploded in a strange direction.
It was then, while Mikael was fiddling with my hand, oblivious to my inner turmoil, that he suddenly dropped a frightening remark.
He said that my lineage and status were burdensome, and that he had no intention of helping me by borrowing his family’s name.
I wonder what he would say if he knew I had considered turning against Valentia because of him. Regardless, having heard this sudden declaration, I tried my best to keep my voice calm.
“…Is the fact that I am a Prince hindering you from becoming close with Young Master Ernhardt?”
“Yes.”
I didn’t choose who I was born from or how I was born; did he really need to answer without a shred of hesitation? Though I felt a great void in my chest, I, who always became flustered in front of him, struggled to defend myself.
“…Why? I mean, are you worried that being close to me will be a burden if I become the Emperor?”
“It’s not exactly that… As the Sierran Empire is vast, I believe the Emperor’s authority will be equally high. Naturally, there will be more people coveting the throne.”
“…Right.”
“The safety of my family is very important to me, so I do not wish to be swept up in things like succession battles.”
“Wait a moment, Young Master Ernhardt.”
I hurriedly grabbed Mikael. I squeezed out the words as if pleading.
“The succession battle for the throne of the Sierran Empire isn’t that violent. It’s not something where blood is shed.”
Even to my own ears, it sounded loathsome.
Mikael didn’t believe me. If I were Mikael, I would have laughed and asked what kind of bullshit I was talking.
However, Mikael was an innocent freshman who had only taken history classes for about a semester, and I had an excellent talent for spinning sophistry. Even while thinking that I shouldn’t do this, I blurted out whatever came to mind, terrified that Mikael would distance himself from me before I could stop liking him.
“Of course, my brother and I are competing for the throne, but we are meant to compete fairly. The Retired Emperor said he would choose the person to inherit the throne through several tests after the three of us have become full adults.”
I had never once called Richard ‘brother’ in my entire life. From the moment I gained reason, I knew well that only one of us—either him or me—would survive to see children. This was thanks to the world Kate had shown and told me about, which was not so sweet.
Fair competition? We were competing even now. Richard and I were given the same number of businesses under the same conditions. Thanks to being born before me, he had played various tricks while I was trapped in the Academy, and I racked my brain every day to avoid the traps he had laid.
Mikael listened, and I kept talking.
“Most importantly, the Retired Emperor desires peace.”
He probably does desire peace. The Emperors of Sierran never handed over the Imperial Throne before they died. So, while he manipulates this world, he likely wants to live while testing his sons—who crawl beneath his feet to become the Crown Prince even at forty or fifty. For now, he didn’t seem to have any intention of dying.
As if the extreme fatigue I felt whenever I thought of Beneto’s predicted longevity were a lie, I played the part of the devoted son.
“I’m the same. No matter how bad my relationship with Brother Richard is, I don’t want to kill him.”
For me to live, that bastard had to die.
We had never been left alone in a closed space. It was by the Retired Emperor’s order. It was one of the measures to prevent us from harming each other.
We could only converse after both sides were accompanied by two guardians—one servant and one knight—and even that was the last time we saw each other’s faces before entering the Academy. I don’t know what kind of face that man is wearing as he walks around these days.
“…I see.”
As expected, Mikael didn’t believe me.
I tried my best to persuade Mikael, bringing up all sorts of stories.
I’m not a scary person, I’m not that bad of a person, my family won’t harm your family…
Some of it was true. Whether I became the Emperor or not, there were dozens of ways I could ensure that no harm came to Ernhardt or Valentia. I could ask for Withrow’s help, or use Grimsvein as a shield. I was ready to protect anything that Mikael cherished.
So please.
It wasn’t intentional that the conversation turned to Kate while I was rambling haphazardly.
“…My mother is…”
Honestly, it didn’t matter what I said about Beneto. He had done nothing other than dump me into Kate’s womb.
But Kate was a bit different. She did truly many things to ensure at least one of her children survived.
“…She is someone who never touches things that are not honorable.”
When I was three years old, my mother tried to poison me and failed.
In Sierran, the age of five was very special. A tradition that began to prevent childhood illnesses became entrenched over time, and children under five were treated as something not yet born. Only after passing through early childhood—a period where it was considered rude for outsiders to even glance in—did a child become a person.
However, I was something too ominous to become a person.
In Sierran, twins bore an ominous meaning. Because they supposedly split one soul that should have been born as one, it was said that one of the two could not live a proper life. That superstition, which reportedly began to ease the grief of pregnant women during times of high infant mortality, still dominated the thoughts of some people.
The fact that I was born on October 31st was also a factor. In Sierran, October 31st was the day the Ninth God scanned the world to find the first human he had crafted. It was a day when an unusually high number of people died because the mad god would pick up any human, decide “this isn’t it,” and throw them away.
It was a nonsensical superstition, but because solar eclipses occurred or torrential rains poured periodically on October 31st, many people believed it.
Black hair and black eyes? Needless to say, they were the symbols of the Ninth God. Originally, it is said that there were more people with dark hair than light hair in the history of the Sierran Empire. To stop ignorant people from killing infants just because their eye or hair color was slightly dark and “scary,” the story of the Black Dragon Bel Vifer was compiled into books just two generations ago.
In such a Sierran, I was born as the first of the twins on October 31st. With hair as black as the Ninth God’s shadow and eyes just as black.
Ridiculously, Lucilla’s birthday was November 1st, a few minutes apart. Lucilla’s hair was a lush brown, and her black eyes were actually a dark brown if you looked closely.
I was quiet and shy from a young age, but Lucilla would readily throw herself into anyone’s arms with a beaming smile.
If one had to choose between the two as a candidate for Emperor, Lucilla was better.
After the birth of Lucilla and me, the Emperor never once came to see us.
At that time, Richard Flo Searon had the legitimacy to borrow funds from Floyd, and the current Emperor, Beneto, was suppressing the maternal relatives by noticeably ignoring Kate while longing for his deceased first wife.
The Marquisate of Antines was wealthy, but not enough to oppose a kingdom. If the resources were split in two and Richard became Emperor, not only the two children but also Kate and everyone in the Marquisate of Antines would lose their heads.
So, the idea must have been to give everything to one child.
And that child wasn’t me.
Marquis Antines decided, and ordered my mother to poison me. Kate complied with his words. Well, I think I would have made the same choice if I were in that position. Regardless, I was given milk laced with poison.
The one who noticed this was my nanny. At the time, Lucilla and I each had different nannies, and when Kate—who didn’t usually do such things—ordered the nanny to deliver the cup of milk to me, the nanny found it suspicious and confirmed the poison by feeding the liquid to a rat.
I had started speaking early enough for people to find it frightening. Terrified that she would be held responsible if I died, or that she would incur the grudge of a cursed Prince’s ghost, my nanny informed me of all these facts and knelt to beg for forgiveness. Thanks to that, I used the nanny’s help to summon the Nobility Yearbook.
The poison Kate had tried to feed me ended up in the Emperor’s hands. On the charge of attempting to harm the imperial grandchild, the Emperor secretly stripped Kate of several of her powers. With the Emperor’s tacit approval, this matter was not widely known.
However, even after going through all this, I was far too young.
Imperial grandchildren under the age of five had to grow up under the shadow of the Empress. My nanny disappeared to maintain secrecy. I heard she became part of the Nobility Yearbook, but I believed she had been killed.
Having suddenly lost my savior, I trembled with great anxiety. I couldn’t trust anything I ate or drank.
To make matters worse, a harsh education began.
At the time, I thought Kate was trying to kill me again. I learned to read and write while unable to sleep or eat.
Back then, Lucilla was the only being I could trust unconditionally. Whenever Lucilla wailed after being whipped by Kate, I rebelled. Using my new nanny and the Emperor’s knights as shields, I fought against Kate.
Kate was conscious of the fact that I remembered what happened when I was three. She couldn’t act brazenly toward me, nor could she be affectionate toward Lucilla.
While various tutors grilled Lucilla and me from morning till night, she rarely showed her face. Then, she would visit once or twice a month with a haggard face to check the insufficient state of our education and wield the rod.
Before long, Lucilla, exhausted by the harsh early education, declared that she would never become Emperor. Having heard it from somewhere, she threw tantrums, singing that all resources should be given to me. She climbed trees and rolled on the floor. Around that time, Marquis Antines shifted his interest from Lucilla to me.
And so, time passed.
In the year I turned five, I gained independence from Kate under the pretext of a birthday present.