Chapter 146
Chapter 146
Lucius stared blankly at Cassian through the smoke rising from the grill.
'Why on earth is this man asking me something like this?'
He had seen straight through him.
Then just what was I...
Where had I let my guard down again, allowing him to infer my feelings?
Lucius had lived his entire life hidden behind a mask.
Having someone read his true thoughts meant having a weakness seized—and suffering a fatal defeat.
As Lucius thought that, a chill suddenly ran through him.
'I hadn't felt particularly wary.'
At the moment he felt his innermost thoughts laid bare.
Normally, his stomach should have lurched instinctively, while intense hostility and defensive instincts toward the intruder in his territory surged to their peak.
Why.
Why was Cassian the exception?
Then Cassian, who had remained silent, furrowed his brow slightly and asked.
"Are you saying you don't want me to ask?"
"……Did it look like I wanted you to?"
"Then, no?"
The question he had thrown out had come back as a question.
'I did?'
I wanted him to ask me?
'……Ah.'
Lucius lowered his head slightly.
That's right.
So that's why, for no reason at all, he had sought this man out using the laughable excuse of 'just because.'
This was why having a narrow circle of relationships was frightening.
Because Lucius had spent his entire life isolating himself, believing he needed neither friends, acquaintances, nor allies—only Sophia.
He had made such a novice, fatal mistake.
Without even recognizing the weak unconscious desire to confide in someone, he had let it spill out.
"You're right."
Lucius bit his lip bitterly.
"I might as well have asked you to ask me. I'm sorry."
"You don't need to apologize."
"No. It was my mistake. Please think of it that way."
Strenuously suppressing his emotions, Lucius tried to pull his firm mask back over his face.
"Whatever, then."
Cassian answered indifferently.
Sizzle, crackle.
The only sound filling the awkward silence between them was the popping of samgyeopsal grease on the grill.
Lucius quietly looked down at the whiskey glass set before him.
Why?
'Whatever, then' was merely Cassian's rough manner of speaking, and presumably meant that he would accept without complaint Lucius's request not to pry any further.
'Then why does it hurt even though I know that?'
He drew a line, then felt hurt when the other person did not cross it.
What a contradictory, foolish emotion.
Just as Lucius was trying to swallow a self-mocking chuckle inwardly.
At some point, an employee had brought over fresh whiskey, tongs, and scissors.
He opened the new crystal whiskey bottle, then quietly filled Lucius's empty glass.
"I don't know much about this, but."
Cassian set the bottle down.
"I think you should talk about it."
"……Why do you think that?"
Even as he asked, another question arose in Lucius's mind.
Does this guy have some kind of mind-reading ability?
Had he somehow read that fleeting hurt he had just swallowed down inside?
"We're already entangled."
Cassian picked up the tongs and flipped the meat on the grill.
"You had your own reasons and something desperate you needed, so you asked me to look after your twin sister. From that moment on, I was practically involved in your family's mess anyway."
"……That may be true. But didn't you draw the line and say you'd only see me one more time because you found it bothersome and didn't want to get involved?"
Cassian set down the tongs, then reached for the whiskey bottle to fill his own glass, but paused.
The hand holding the bottle froze in midair.
Trickle.
Then, as though resigned, he filled his own glass as well.
"That's true, but I've changed my mind a little."
"What do you mean?"
Fidgeting with his whiskey glass, Cassian spoke while keeping his gaze fixed on the ice inside it.
"First of all, don't get the wrong idea and assume I'm going to see your little sister in a romantic light. Absolutely not."
"Yes. I know."
"And I know you're in a situation where you desperately fucking need help right now."
Cassian shifted his gaze to Lucius.
"I realized that if I really wanted to avoid getting tangled up in troublesome things and live in peace, I shouldn't have even had that first meeting with you in the southern part of the capital last week."
"……What?"
"So, use me for all I'm worth."
Cassian lifted his glass.
"I'll cooperate as much as possible."
At those words, something stirred inside Lucius.
Looking back.
From the moment he heard Baron Hamel's vulgar abuse that morning, perhaps he had wanted somehow to pour out this terrible anguish and anger to someone.
He had simply never done such a thing in his life.
He had only forgotten how to rely on others, after spending his whole life repeatedly kneading and compressing the knot in his chest until it became as hard as a stone.
So he could have just let it pass this time, too.
'This man.'
Why, of all times.
Why was he offering his hand like this on a day when Lucius so desperately felt he needed someone's help?
'……Ah.'
A faint smile spread across Lucius's lips.
Because I went to find him.
Because I had gone to him first, unable to endure it any longer, and hovered before his eyes.
Was this why the father who remained only as a hazy memory had taught his young self that 'a connection is not something you leave alone, but something you create through your own efforts'?
Lucius felt the heavy boulder pressing down on his chest being lifted away by someone.
At the same time.
He found the strength to smile confidently once more, without wavering.
"Yes. In that case."
Lucius straightened his back and raised his glass.
"I won't refuse."
Cassian let out a short, derisive snort.
"Look at you putting your mask right back on in an instant. You rude bastard."
"Haha. Isn't that my charm?"
Lucius held his glass out.
Clink─!
* * *
'Fuck. I almost gave everything away.'
The reason I suddenly changed my mind and decided to get actively involved in Lucius's problems.
There was no way I could tell that whole story to this slick bastard.
The key reason I had been dragged into someone else's family mud fight despite truly not wanting to get involved was a certain deal with old man Wilhelm.
And it was also because I remembered the Red Moon Liberation Front, which had suddenly blindsided me.
The latter was obviously something I could never reveal—the moment I said it aloud, I'd be sent straight to a psychiatric ward instead of the Academy while people said, 'This bastard's finally lost it.'
The former was no different.
'You must never reveal, even in private, that you are pursuing this matter because you accepted my request. Keep it strictly confidential.'
It was one of the exacting conditions old man Wilhelm had imposed when making that damn 'sucker deal.'
Well, it was a reasonable concern: things would become politically troublesome if the son of a father who headed the Intelligence Department openly started meddling in another family's power struggle.
But the problem was.
'I feel fucking guilty because it looks like I'm trying too hard to be a really nice guy.'
Lucius probably thought I had been so moved by the tragic circumstances of his siblings that I had reached out purely out of loyalty, and was deeply touched.
Sorry.
I'm not doing this for free.
The terms of my being old man Wilhelm's 'client'—with that old man holding my leash and yanking it—matter a little more to me than you do.
Maybe my conscience was stinging a bit.
I was craving alcohol more than usual.
I picked up the whiskey glass I had filled a moment earlier.
And without even taking time to savor its aroma, I tipped it back in one gulp.
The hard liquor came rushing down my esophagus.
The heavy, stabbing burn in my insides was accompanied by a smoky aroma exploding at the tip of my nose.
'Ah.'
Looking at the menu, this stuff was ridiculously expensive liquor.
I just knocked it back like cheap soju at a gukbap joint.
Tsk. What a waste of money.
As I frowned and set down the empty glass, Lucius finished chewing his meat, wiped the corner of his mouth with a napkin, and spoke quietly.
"This is likely to be a somewhat lengthy conversation."
"Go ahead. I've got plenty of time."
I picked up the tongs again and brought a well-cooked piece of samgyeopsal to my small plate as I replied.
Lucius toyed with his fork and began calmly recounting what had happened at his mansion that morning.
"My uncle came to see me today."
The story he told was extremely dry and concise.
There was no excess of emotion or playing the victim.
How his uncle had treated Sophia, what the marriage proposal from the old marquis meant in the family's power structure.
And even what cards he had held while enduring those insulting words.
'He definitely isn't the type to display his feelings messily in front of others.'
It was one of the reasons I didn't think too badly of this guy.
I asked while chewing on a jalapeño.
"Didn't you start this knowing he'd react that way?"
"You anticipated it?"
"Of course. From the moment you asked me to seduce your sister, you'd already calculated that your uncle—the baron—would be left clutching the back of his neck and collapse. You'd already calculated that much."
Lucius nodded with a faint smile.
"Even knowing that."
He added bitterly while staring into empty space.
"The weight of such a family disgrace when you witness it directly with your own eyes is heavier than I expected."
Hearing that self-deprecating answer left me with complicated thoughts too.
No matter how deeply the egalitarian values of 21st-century South Korean democracy were embedded in my bones.
This was an empire ruled by a rigid class system and the ironclad order of bloodlines.
'Uncle or not.'
To barge in on the rightful direct heir of the family and humiliate him like that.
To try to trade away his own niece, a direct blood relative, as though selling off some item in a marketplace?
If other nobles found out, they would have cursed him as the world's biggest fucking bastard, saying it would be perfectly legal to kill him.
Because they were people who loved the hierarchy of status far too much.
Even if someone killed him, it would at most be a matter of being hauled before a noble tribunal, paying a moderate fine, and calling it a day.
'Just how did the balance of power become this tilted?'
The previous head of the family dying young didn't explain why House Rohanna had rotted so thoroughly inside that the direct heir had to live with his head bowed this way.
And the terrorist organization 'Red Moon' that had briefly surfaced in my memories.
What justification had led to its creation?
How far, and in what way, should I intervene to avoid wiping out this family or leaving it ruined?
Even while chewing meat, my head filled entirely with troublesome variables.
Ah, I'm seriously tired.
It's not as if I'm some great detective of the Empire.
I pressed my throbbing temples and unconsciously looked at Lucius sitting across from me, sipping whiskey.
Beneath the chandelier's finely scattered light.
A face with fine, delicate features.
No matter how I looked at him, he had an effeminate pretty-boy appearance so similar to his twin sister's that I could barely tell them apart.
But as I quietly looked at that face, a fortunate thought suddenly rose from deep within my chest.
'Still, thank God this guy is a man.'
Of course, there was the troublesome problem involving this bastard's twin sister, Sophia.
But in the end, the central figure in this family's corruption and ruin was the guy in front of me, Lucius.
Let's think about what happened with Elysia.
I tried to prevent her corruption and ruin, stepped forward to give her some emotional support, and comforted her on the terrace.
In the end…… well, things kind of turned out that way.
I got caught helplessly in a romance vortex against my intentions, didn't I?
But this guy was a man.
A man with a pair of balls, so I had nothing to worry about him turning out like Elysia.
No matter how much I cared for his mental state, solved his family's problems, and acted as his dependable supporter.
At most, we'd grow close in a deep bromance, like sworn brothers who put their arms around each other's shoulders and clinked their glasses, and that would be the end of it.
Phew.
It's really a relief this bastard has balls.