1. The Union of a Girl in Pieces and a Vampire

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/1/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

I killed myself.
It was less an impulse than an inevitability.
Something I had always contemplated simply happened to be put into action today. There was no particular significance to the fact that it was Monday, October 2, after school.
It was just that, when I went up to the rooftop, I felt myself being drawn toward the fence.
As though lured by a sweet fragrance.
I leaned over the fence and looked down at the ground. My body was pulled toward it, slipping slowly over to the other side.
Whoosh. Thud.
Then my body buckled as though it were shattering, as though it were being crushed.
I died.
Without pain or suffering, I became nothing.
Ah, my life is finally over.
The thought made me so happy I could hardly bear it.

 

◇◇◇

 

Looking back, my life was utterly worthless.
I learned that I was not my father’s child in the winter when I was eight.
I was told that my mother had left home and that my suspicious father had arranged some kind of test, but I do not know the details.
That day was Christmas Eve. I had been looking forward to Santa bringing me a present the next morning, but instead I spent the night outside.
My father looked at me as though I were something filthy, kicked me away, and threw me out of the house.
The next morning, I was found cold and unresponsive. My father had come to his senses by then, and he took me to the hospital, where my life was saved.
While I was in the hospital, my classmates brought me a message board.
When I removed its careful paper wrapping, I found their heartwarming words arrayed across it.

“You should have died.”
“Why are you still alive?”
“Don’t come back.”
“Disgusting.”
“A hospital is just the place for a ghost girl.”
“Your father should have killed you.”

My heart felt so warm that I immediately threw it in the trash.
Nothing changed when I entered middle school, and nothing changed when I entered high school.
Still, events that seemed trivial to me might sound quite serious to everyone else.
So allow me to list what was done to me during those years.

My right ring finger is missing.
I am blind in my left eye.
The muscles in my cheeks are permanently contracted, making me look as though I am always smiling.
My hair is always ragged and uneven.
My entire body is covered in bruises, and I am never without a fresh wound.
I have never had a lover, but I am not a virgin.
If you search my name online, you will find nude pictures of me.

That was the worst of it. I never considered any of it especially painful.
Besides, there were kind teachers among them too.
One female teacher was violated by a man while protecting me. Afterward, perhaps because something inside her had broken, she often hit me—but she was a very kind teacher.
After all, she only hit me.
She was a very, very kind teacher.

 

◇◇◇

 

In any case, I died.
I leaped from high above and was reduced to a mangled wreck.
Once I had become scraps of flesh, or something like them, I assumed that a great many people would laugh the moment they learned the remains were mine.
But when I next awoke, it was not scornful laughter that greeted me.

“Yes… There can be no doubt. If blood and flesh remain… they may yet become a life.”

The speaker was a dying girl whose manner of speech sounded curiously archaic.
Pale-skinned, golden-haired, and red-eyed, she seemed to shine like a flower—in stark contrast to me.
I knew instinctively that she was a heavenly being far beyond my reach, so much so that it did not even occur to me to envy her.
For a girl like her to speak to me—perhaps this was a reward from God at the very edge of death.

“Do you truly think so highly of me? Hm… To my eyes, you are the one who… ngh, heh… seems to shine.”

The girl said the strangest things.
Come to think of strange things, she seemed able to hear my voice.
I had not made a sound once since awakening, so how could that be?
There was no use wondering about it, however.
The same was true of exchanging compliments with the girl before me.
We would both be dead soon. Praising what we were about to lose was an empty exercise, no more than licking each other’s wounds.
Though I no longer had a tongue, so I could not even do that.

“If something is missing… we need only supply it.”

Supply what was missing? But I had nothing to offer.
My character, appearance, talents, intelligence, and strength—every part of me was as worthless as garbage. At this point, one might as well call me nothing at all.
I had killed myself in the hope that I might truly become nothing.
And now, reduced to a single eyeball, I was about to vanish just as I had wished.

“You are not… nothing. What you possess is ‘negativity’—it is power, existence, life…!”

This was my life?
No one had ever said such a thing to me before.
A worthless creature like you sins merely by existing.
That was what I had always been told.

“Those fools had no eye for worth… Though we both stand at death’s door, if you and I supply what the other lacks, we may yet become a single life.”

Supply what the other lacks. In other words, she wished to become one with me—with someone like me.

“That is… what it means, yes.”

In that case, she was welcome to do as she pleased.
If a being like me could save her life, I would not complain about how she used me.

“…I said we would supply… what the other lacks. The scales will not tip… toward either one of us…”

What a pity.
I thought I would finally be allowed to disappear.

“…Well, no matter. That, too, is your power. Now… open your heart. Accept me, and let our souls… become one…”

Very well, but first, there was one last thing I wanted to ask.
Her name, and perhaps… her occupation as well.

“Hm… I am a vampire… My name is Camilla… though that name, too, will soon lose all meaning…”

A vampire—such beings truly existed? As I reeled in surprise, she reached out to me—or rather, to the fragment of me that remained: my eyeball.
My vision was enveloped in light.
Warmth reminiscent of the womb and a dreamlike drowsiness enfolded my consciousness, and then I blacked out.