It was one of those days. A rainy day in mid-April that the servants and royalty alike were busy. Queen Eduron, my father, and even my stepsister Cherish were all busy, but no one was busier than Gash, Koruru, and I. Gash and Koruru had been put in charge of cleaning the floors of the entire castle from top to bottom, and our castle had a lot of top and even more bottom. So of course I volunteered to help as well. But that wasn't possible until they showed me how to properly clean floors. It took me a while to get it, but once I got it, it was easy enough. Of course the entire process was full of reprimands from Gash, my long-lost twin brother, and Koruru, my... she used to be my sister, but now was she trying to move even closer to my heart? I didn't know. My confusion...

But once I mastered the art of scrubbing the floor clean with what they called the "swish" motion, I was ready to tackle rooms on my own.

In all honesty, I had no idea how large the castle was. I had only ever seen the first and second floors, and even then I had never explored all the rooms. My father, since I was small, had trained me hard and I obeyed him. When he told me not to go into certain rooms I had been obedient and did not enter them. But that had been years ago, when the word of my father had been as infallible as the Word of God. Now, with the intelligence gained from simply growing older, I realized that my father's words were powerful, but not infallible. His punishment for insolence was not supreme.

We had decided to split each hall into threes, with the first person done having to go over the work of the other two. It wasn't a difficult set up, really, especially not to me since I already knew I would never be the first one done. The clothes I'd decided to wear were some extremely old clothes that miraculously still fit, though they gave off an odd musty smell to combat the harsh smell of lemon.

On days like this, all the doors were unlocked so we could clean them and get the floors in there too. However, since we were only supposed to do floors, these unlocked rooms were saved until we had cleaned the floors everywhere else. No matter how much I wanted to go and examine them, I couldn't do so. It would interfere with my work and Gash and Koruru would give me a beating the likes I'd never seen before. My screw ups would get them punished, so I had to be extra mindful about the jobs I do. Perhaps that's one of the reasons they implemented the second cleaner.

I learned that the castle had four accessible floors and one floor blocked from entry. That floor was entirely caked with centuries of dust, and yet... it called to me a bit, beckoned me to come explore what was hidden inside. But I refused it that pleasure and moved to get on with my cleaning. On this particular floor, Gash had finished first, so he dashed to my side of the floor and was about to start cleaning when he too was beckoned by the secrets of the unknown floor.

Strangely enough though, he seemed far more curious than I had been and even walked up to the lock that separated the secrets from him. I watched him for a moment, then realizing what he intended to do I went over to stop him. As soon as my arms got around him, he screamed and flailed and his voice sounded odd, like it didn't belong to him. His eyes were wide and frantic, as though he'd seen something he wanted more than life but it was slowly being wrenched from his hands.

"Can't you hear them?" He screamed around his tears, his hands holding on with more strength than a thought the boy had possessed. "The voices! Can't you hear them? Can't you?" I stared at him thinking for a moment that the cleaning liquid had caused my young twin brother to lose his mind.

"What are you talking about Gash? There are no..."

At that moment I heard them. It was as though there was a family, no, a town in the hallway above us. Young, adult, old, and in-between, I heard them all. I didn't hear what they were saying specifically, but I did hear their voices. It wasn't like those horror stories my dad told me when I was tiny, about the young hero hearing voices beckoning him to do something bad or illegal. These were cheerful, friendly voices that only asked for our attention, and our attention we gave, undivided. My hands had gone limp from those voices, and I hardly heard Gash fumbling with the lock, completely forgetting his lightning abilities in his hurry to be closer to Them. They were there... And I... I was here. I was so far away from the voices, the comforting voices...

It was Koruru who, after not seeing me or Gash, came looking for us and found us in such a state. She tried her best to awaken us, and although I was awoken easily, Gash was not. For him, as I could plainly see, whatever had happened to me multiplied by about two hundred was befalling him. He was screaming and crying and tugging on the heavy lock as though that would open it, as though with his limited strength alone he could rip off the lock. But it wasn't working. All he could do was thrash and cry. I could no longer hear the voices, but judging solely on my twin's reactions and cries, the voices were fading.

"No!" He screamed, yanking at the heavy lock so much that it seemed plausible he might dislocate his shoulders. "Come back! Don't go! Please..." He slumped onto his knees, his hands holding the lock in a softer hold instead of the death grip it had been in moments ago. "Don't go..."

And with that, his hands finally fell off the lock as he repeated to himself one last time: "Don't go.." and lost consciousness.

It took a little while, but Gash finally woke up. He seemed to have no recollection of hearing voices or screaming to be let into the fifth floor of the house. In fact, when we told him about it he merely looked at us like we were the ones hearing voices and not him. We tried to reason things out to him, but our efforts only served to confuse him even more, so we decided to just stop trying anymore.

"I think," Koruru said, standing and cleaning her plain dress with a few soft pats. "It's time for us to go back through the rooms."

And she was right. Of course, for the most part my side of the castle didn't have many rooms to clean, but I did find one interesting room. It was unlocked, of course, and inside was an entire sleuth of books. I knew without even really thinking that this wasn't the library. There were dusty boxes and books that looked more like photo albums than books. I went forward and took out one, opening it to a random page. It... I didn't know who it was. I think it was the king before my father. Another one, my father and mother, both freshly married. It stared at her happy, young face and that image of her ten years ago streaked across my mind. She was dying. The shadow of this youthful face...

I shut it and replaced it on the shelf before I stained it with my tears, and returned to cleaning my assigned few rooms.

Dark had fallen by the time I got to the second floor, but Gash and Koruru were still cleaning rooms on the floor above. They had a lot more rooms than I did, probably on purpose. It was the last room in the hallway where I had cleaned. It, like the others, was unlocked. I opened the door...

And saw Cherish sitting at her desk writing in a little book that was obviously a diary. I remembered with a hint of discomfort that even though my father and her mother had been married for months, we had never exchanged so much as even a greeting. It seemed that she was completely unaware of the my presence, probably thinking I was just a servant come to clean her floor.

"Uh... Cherish?" I said, feeling awkward.

She glanced over her shoulder and gasped, shutting the tiny book much faster than was necessary. "Oh, Zeon... what are you..." She took in my clothes and the cleaning instrument in my hand and scowled, her face becoming angry before taking an aloof air. "Oh." She said, almost sounding snide.

All I felt I could do was sigh in exasperation.

"Yes, oh." Well, now I wished I hadn't said anything. Now that my stepsister had given me her share of flack, now I could set about doing "servant work" as her mother called it. I had finished cleaning the area furthest from the door when she decided to acknowledge my presence again.

"Why do you do such menial tasks?" She asked, tossing her long hair over one shoulder in a prissy manner.

I gave a sigh. "Because I want to."

The sound of chair screeching back against stones made my head go up and stare at her. "Oh Zeon..." Her arms went around me, and since she had caught me while I was leaning over to put actual strength into my scrubbing, my face ended up smushed into her breasts. I was frantic to pull away. "You do those things to impress that Koruru girl, isn't that right? Well, I have everything she has. Instead of trying to impress her, impress me. We're only related by marriage... Our love would not be too forbidden..." I finally managed to pull myself free from her raunchy embrace.

After composing myself I looked at Cherish. She and Koruru were roughly the same age. They had similar body types, and if I was correct, Cherish had a better bust. "You may be bodily the same, but there's one thing Koruru has that you don't."

Cherish seemed amused that I remembered the female's name. "Alright then. What's that?"

"A heart."

And with that I left her room, dragging my cleaning supplies with me. Like before someone would do this room behind me, and I only hoped it was Gash.

And then there was a new chapter. I'm sleepy though. Next in my line of updates is Loyalty: A Bond Between Friends.