I Will Protect My Brother - Chapter 1

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

Chapter 1
Chapter 1. Protecting the Lamb
“What did you just say, brother?”
I dropped the cookie I’d been eating onto the table with a soft thud.
Looking up at the boy with disbelief in my eyes, he laughed awkwardly and avoided my gaze.
“Well… it seems I’ve somehow caught the Emperor’s attention. He asked if I had time on the night of the festival.”
“Surely you don’t mean that Emperor—the one I know?”
Not the mad Emperor of Delpiam, the one with a taste for beautiful youths and a notorious habit of replacing his concubines every year?
Surely not. It couldn’t be.
Even though we’re currently in Delpiam, and Kalian went to meet the Emperor with the Family Head this very morning.
Still, it couldn’t be that Emperor.
I forced a laugh and picked up the fallen cookie.
But before I could even brush the dust off it, Kalian answered weakly with a bitter smile.
“Well, if you mean the ruler of the Delpiam Empire, then yes, that would be correct.”
I dropped the cookie again.
Oh my god.
My brother is about to be dragged away as a concubine to a tyrant Emperor.
* * *
Brilliant platinum blonde hair and vivid crimson eyes.
A lithe frame with defined lean muscle and delicate, sculpted features—a beautiful youth among beautiful youths, Kalian Wynack.
Fifteen years old this year, bearing the immense position of next Family Head of the transcendent Wynack Family of the Abuye Kingdom, this boy is my brother.
Though not a single drop of blood connects us.
It’s a long story to explain.
I came to the Wynack Family three years ago, around the age of nine.
Kalian found me on the streets, filthy and starving, rummaging through garbage bins for scraps, and brought me to the mansion.
Fortunately, I had a talent for swordsmanship, and the Family Head of the renowned Wynack sword family accepted me as a member of the family.
This was an exceptionally rare occurrence.
Because receiving a surname in a transcendent family means inheriting a portion of the Star’s power that protects the family.
The “Stars” are divine beings that gaze down upon this world from the distant cosmos.
There were five Stars that directly influenced this world, Rahnar.
“The Judge of Darkness and Chaos,” “The Linguist of All Things,” “The Creator of Beginning and End,” “The Herald of Negation,” and “The Eye of Prophecy.”
Each had formed sacred covenants with five families, lending them their power.
Families blessed by a guardian Star are called transcendent families.
Wynack was one of them, blessed by “The Judge of Darkness and Chaos,” a renowned sword family whose name echoed across the entire continent.
They held recruitment examinations each year, accepting only swordsmen of exceptional talent as family members.
And only a select few of the most exceptional were granted the surname “Wynack,” imbued with the guardian Star’s power—a harsh world where even direct blood relatives were cast out if they lacked talent.
Yet here I was, a filthy nine-year-old, suddenly becoming a member of Wynack overnight. It was shocking, far beyond merely exceptional.
This was possible for two reasons: first, because I was no ordinary genius, and second, because Kalian, despite being the heir to a renowned sword family, was considerably fragile.
Let me explain the first reason. Why am I no ordinary genius?
The answer is simple. I died once before, and I was reborn with all the memories and abilities from my previous life intact.
My original name was Rosien Kirges.
The original me was a candidate for Family Head of Kirges, one of the transcendent families that possessed a guardian star like Wynack.
If Wynack was a family that reached the pinnacle of the sword, Kirges was a family of sorcerers who wielded “word magic.”
A gathering place of those who invoked supernatural phenomena by uttering words imbued with the power of stars.
Though I live as Kalian Wynack now, there was once a time when everyone in the Delpiam Empire knew the name “Rosien Kirges.”
As “the mutant born of Kirges.”
I was certainly born in Kirges, but I possessed far superior talent with the sword than with sorcery.
So at seventeen, I lost to my brother in the succession contest to determine Kirges’s heir and died.
The contest allowed only the use of sorcerous power, you see.
Damn it, if I’d been born in Wynack, I wouldn’t have had to die!
Whether my final thought before closing my eyes had some effect, I was struck by the sorcery my brother unleashed and died a meaningless death, only to be reborn in the neighboring Abuye Kingdom.
When I opened my eyes, I found myself swaddled in cloth and abandoned on some wooden board—as a newborn, no less.
“Waaaah! (Alpien Kirges, you bastard. How dare you hurl lethal sorcery at me, no matter how much you hate me?!)”
Just you wait. Someday I’ll come for your head!
A middle-aged woman living next door took in me, who could only cry in bitter resentment, and in an act of moral responsibility, kindly left me at the orphanage entrance.
So I grew up mingling with the orphanage children until I was nine, when I was discovered by twelve-year-old Kalian.
Even when Kalian was younger than now, he possessed an exceptionally beautiful appearance.
“Are you hurt somewhere?”
“What? Get lost!”
And I was rather disagreeable back then.
It was unavoidable. Not only had I suffered an absurd death, but the crumbling orphanage gave us only one meal a day.
Of course, the sorcerous power granted by Kirges’s guardian star hadn’t completely vanished. I could still use word magic, albeit weakly.
But the stars weren’t kind enough to feed me as well! I couldn’t conjure bread out of thin air!
There’s no escaping hunger. My character in this second life, perpetually starving, grew more wretched with each passing year.
Kalian didn’t receive kind words from me when he first approached.
“You have a wound on your cheek. There’s frozen blood. Doesn’t it hurt?”
“Why do you care? Mind your own business!”
“Why are you digging through that? It’s a trash bin.”
“None of your concern. I’m incredibly irritable right now, so stop bothering me and get lost, would you?”
“If you’ve lost something, shall I help you find it?”
Kalian was then as he is now—kind and oblivious. I snapped in frustration.
“I’m looking for tonight’s dinner, why!”
“Why are you looking for dinner in a trash bin?”
“Because there’s no food, no one to feed me, and no money to buy any! Can’t you see?”
“…Do you live like this every day?”
“Hey. Is this your first time seeing orphans scrape by?”
If you’re going to pity me, give me money!
Kalian listened silently to my outburst, then quietly corrected himself.
“Hey, not that. Big brother.”
“What?”
“Stop digging through that trash. Won’t you come with me instead?”
He wore his hood pulled deep over his head, revealing only a delicate jawline and reddish lips.
“I’ll feed you, give you money, provide you shelter. Come with me.”
“Who are you?”
I asked irritably, and he pushed back his hood.
The moment I saw his face, I forgot my irritation entirely—my soul simply left my body. The boy smiled radiantly, and I thought: Is this what they call a halo?
“Kalian Wynack.”
“Ah….”
“My name is Kalian Wynack. What do you say—will you come with me?”
Honestly, his name didn’t even register.
By the time I regained my senses, my mouth was already babbling on its own.
“I’ll follow you anywhere….”
I was simply enchanted by his face.
His beauty was that extraordinary—so much so that I couldn’t believe he was a person with warm blood flowing through his veins rather than a doll animated by springs and gears.
Only after I’d followed the beautiful boy by the hand all the way to the Wynak Mansion did I learn who he was.
The sole heir to the Wynack Family, the most formidable swordsmanship clan on the Continent…!
It was an incredible windfall I’d stumbled into by pure chance.
The Wynack Family of the blade! The transcendent house I’d yearned for every single day when I was with the Kirges!
Just how strong would the heir of such a family be!
My naive expectations were shattered just three days after I’d settled in as a freeloader at the Wynak Mansion.
“The sword is too heavy….”
“Too heavy? You can’t even swing it?”
“No. My arm feels like it’ll break. My legs are trembling too.”
Being unable to lift a single sword and whimpering about it became routine.
“How do you expect to lead the family when you can’t even effortlessly lift something like this? Give it here! I’ll do it.”
“Thank you, Rosy.”
He couldn’t even move five training sacks of grain at once.
“You foolish man. No matter how pitiful you were, how could you come back having given away everything you had and even your clothes?!”
“But I couldn’t just pass by when I thought of you, Rosy….”
Whenever he sees someone poor and pitiful, he immediately presses cash into their hands. He’s practically an artisan at distributing buttons from his shirts, brooches, and expensive jewelry piece by piece along the streets.
How is it that every time I let him out of the mansion alone, he returns in nothing but his shirt?
I should have realized it when he picked me up—looking like a beggar rummaging through food waste—and brought me to live in the mansion!
But that’s not even where it ends.
“Rosy. Look at this. I got so many flowers from Usella’s Salon to give to you! They match your hair color perfectly, don’t they?!”
He doesn’t understand the meaning behind the flowers that girls his age shyly offer, and he accepts over fifty flowers that someone wanted to give him, then brings them all to me.
“Brother, do you know those flowers mean ‘I have feelings for you’?”
“Oh, is that what they mean? Then Rosy should definitely have them.”
“You’re giving these to me? You said they’re a sign of courtship?”
“Yes. I want you to like me even more, Rosy.”
“….”
“You’re always too busy tormenting me every single day.”
Was he truly so oblivious, or did he genuinely lack the capacity to comprehend courtship as anything more than this painfully innocent interpretation…!
“Giving you this means I want to date you, you idiot!”
You’ve just created fifty girlfriends!
In the end, to prevent Kalian Wynack from building his harem, I had to take matters into my own hands—personally visiting each of the fifty offended young ladies one by one to return their flowers in this absurd turn of events.
How could I possibly manage this hopeless kindness and destructive naivety?
Because of Kalian Wynack, that living monument to obliviousness, I’d pressed my forehead in exasperation more times than I could count.
So eventually, I simply gave up trying to educate him.
He was living proof that the stars were truly impartial. The stars of Winyak had granted him beauty while stealing away his tact, common sense, and shrewdness.
And so, a conclusion was reached.
Yes, I would simply protect him myself.
If his mind was this much of a flower garden, he deserved to be designated a national treasure.

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