Everyone but Me Is a Spy - Chapter 54

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 54
Whirrrrr—.
Nina stared at the blade glowing blue and vibrating, and realized her suspicion had been correct.
‘It was the same reaction when I cut that severed flag in the dust pit room!’
It seemed the Short Dagger reacted to things that were “severed”—when struck, the hidden blue circuits in the blade would light up.
But the door and its frame showed no change.
Slide. Click.
Whirr-whirr-whirr. Thud.
Something shifted and moved, producing faint sounds—but they came from behind her, not from the door in front.
‘What’s happening? The door and walls are still the same, so what’s changed?’
Nina turned toward the sound and scanned the room.
Whirr-whirr. Thud.
‘There.’
The noise was coming from a storage compartment.
The last time she’d been here, the compartment had been packed with candles and yarn—nothing that would make a whirring sound like that.
‘She said everything in the Townhouse belongs to me now, so I suppose I can open it.’
Eager to learn more about her grandmother, Nina didn’t hesitate long before opening the nearest compartment.
“…….”
She froze at the sight of its completely transformed contents.
The compartment itself looked unchanged from the outside, but everything inside was different.
Nina thought for a moment, then reached into the compartment, feeling along the surfaces her eyes couldn’t see.
Her fingertips traced the faint edges and seams underneath.
‘Just as I thought. It’s a Double Storage Compartment. It must require the Short Dagger to open. I might actually find something!’
Nina’s eyes gleamed with determination as she checked each Double Storage Compartment one by one.
She discovered many things inside.
Notebooks, magazines, documents, and more.
But to Nina, they were filled with graphs and formulas that made no sense. She’d never studied such things and could only feel dizzy looking at them.
She opened and closed several drawers.
Finally, she found something she could understand without knowledge of mathematics or chemistry.
It was a small Photo Album, no larger than a palm.
When she opened it, it was nearly empty except for a single photograph tucked in the back.
Nina gasped in surprise.
The photograph contained a face that looked exactly like her own in childhood.
‘This must be a photograph of Grandmother when she was young, isn’t it?’
Nina remembered her family saying she looked exactly like her grandmother had in her youth.
The young Lekita in the photograph appeared to be about ten years old, wearing a Jumpsuit bearing the flag of the Dotchen Kingdom, and she hung from a tree branch.
Behind the young Lekita stretched a bleak building, with a small sign on which were drawn a feather and a leaf.
‘Wait? Could those drawings be…?’
Nina narrowed her eyes to see the sign more clearly, tracing the drawings with her fingertips.
Then she nodded with conviction.
‘My guess is right. The drawings on that sign aren’t just pictures—they’re a code.’
It looked like an adorable doodle, but it was actually a cipher.
She could recognize it because she’d copied similar ciphers as a servant, helping the Countess.
‘What kind of place would have a code written on its sign?’
Nina squinted at the faint cipher and struggled to decipher it.
‘Spy… Training… Academy… Training… Facility.’
Spy Training Academy. That was definitely what it said.
Before Nina could even feel satisfaction at cracking the code, she gasped for breath.
‘……Spy Training Academy?!’
Nina might not know much about the world, but she understood what spies were.
‘This… this can’t be real.’
She barely choked back a cry that almost escaped her lips, but the shock that came with it could not be swallowed.
With trembling hands, she set down the Photo Album and looked up, her gaze meeting directly with Lekita’s portrait.
Those were piercing eyes—they seemed to see through everything, as if no one could ever deceive them.
Nina turned her head away from that gaze and stumbled backward, sinking to the floor.
‘Grandmother was… a spy……!’
Outside the window, a pair of gleaming eyes watched her every move.
* * *
The next morning.
Nina blinked her tired eyes as she made her way to the dining room.
She’d spent all night fighting to catch even a moment of sleep, but in the end, she hadn’t slept a single hour until dawn broke.
‘What am I going to do?’
She’d resolved not to think too deeply about the explosion in that room or sink into despair until she’d examined the rest of the films, but her heart refused to obey.
‘Grandmother was a spy.’
She’d stumbled onto a secret far too enormous.
Last night, Nina had ransacked the storage compartments and uncovered several pieces of evidence about Lekita’s spy activities.
At first, she’d nearly fainted at the revelation that her grandmother was a spy for a Defeated Nation, but the various Military Decorations from the Winning Nations she’d discovered afterward told her the truth: Lekita wasn’t just a spy—she was a Double Spy.
Thinking simply about it, spies for Defeated Nations seemed like bad people, so the fact that her grandmother had been a Double Spy working for the Winning Nations felt like a small mercy to Nina.
And now she finally understood why her grandmother had been so secretive about everything.
Though none of that explained the explosive device that had tried to kill her.
Still, was that why those words were written on the tattered flag in that dusty room?
That the entire room was a mark of shame and debt—
‘But why did she tell me it was debt that I carried?’
Despite having uncovered such an enormous secret, nothing made sense.
‘Is this another trial for the heroine?’
The heroine’s days were truly merciless.
If she hadn’t repaired the Film Projector, if she hadn’t watched the films, if she’d simply remained ignorant about her grandmother—she could have avoided this feeling altogether.
Nina found herself spiraling into such thoughts that she patted her own cheeks briskly before entering the dining room.
She forced herself to focus, to pull herself together.
“Good morning. The bouquet you arranged yesterday is truly beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, dear. Good morning. Good morning, everyone.”
She greeted them with deliberately cheerful energy as she took her seat, and her family answered with warm smiles.
“Did you sleep well?”
“It’s so lovely and refreshing to have a vase of flowers on the table.”
“The weather’s a bit overcast today, but I don’t think it’ll rain.”
“Cloudy weather lifts my spirits. The shade and coolness help me study—er, I mean do my experiments better.”
Yet despite their efforts, Nina and her family all had dark circles under their eyes.
The servants, too, bore the same shadow beneath their eyes.
Everyone simply hadn’t slept at all.
‘When the employer is despondent, the servants feel it too. They’re really good servants.’
Seeing her weary family, Nina steeled herself once more.
‘As the employer, I need to pull myself together.’
The breakfast hour was unusually quiet today, though the silence held no peace.
Even Excy, who’d claimed the overcast weather lifted his spirits, reached for his fork with glazed eyes and missed twice.
When Nina picked up the fork and placed it in his hand, he mumbled his thanks, looking startled.
‘Poor innocent Excy. He has no idea Grandmother was a spy…’
As the faint clinking of silverware filled the air, Nina’s somber heart grew heavier still.
Simply watching her family eat quietly filled her with both bitterness and ache.
‘Ah, my tender-hearted family… They’ll never dream that Grandmother was a spy…’
Nina worried whether she should watch the rest of the films with her family present.
There were so many films—if they watched them together, her grandmother’s secret might come to light, and she wasn’t sure her family should know.
Natalisha and Excy had already been terrified by mere mention of the explosion.
Hadn’t the rest of the household wandered dark hallways sleepless all through the night?
Learning that the grandmother they’d lived with had been a spy might send them into deeper shock—they might collapse under the weight of it.
She didn’t want to frighten these small, precious family members like fragile chicks.
‘I’ll keep this to myself for now. I’ll let my family remain in the dark.’
Nina felt suffocated by the guilt of harboring such an enormous secret from her family.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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