23. Hatred and Love Are Equivalent

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/25/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

“Hmm …”
“What is it, Chii-chan?”

I lay with my head on Mya-nee’s lap, resting my index finger against my chin as I thought.
We were relaxing on a sofa in one of the rooms at the back of the church.
The matter before my internal council was simple: our growing number of companions had made the church rather cramped.

“I was thinking that it may be time for us to consider moving.”
“We have gained a lot of people. We’re all usually crowded together anyway, so it hasn’t been a problem yet.”
“… Speaking of which, you spent last night with Ellis, did you not? How was it?”
“How was it …? I can only say it was wonderful. Nunnally, Rellie, Miri, Ai, and Chelsea—everyone made me feel welcome.”
“I am glad to hear it.”

I exhaled in relief.
It seemed Mya-nee had completely adapted to life here as a Demi-Vamp.
… But enough of that digression.

“Returning to the matter of moving—”
“Oh, right. What should we do? Borrow Ai’s manor?”
“About that. Our family will only continue to grow, so I wondered whether we might as well seize somewhere truly grand.”
“Truly grand …?”

Mya-nee tilted her head. I looked her directly in the eyes and smiled fearlessly.

“The royal castle. If we mean to change the country—and the world—then taking over its greatest symbol would be the quickest way.”
“Do you mean to deal with the students who were transported here with us at the same time?”
“I do want to determine what should be done about them. More importantly—some seeds have already been sown.”

I closed my eyes.
The image that came to mind was the girl who had faced me on the night Ellis acted so recklessly.
That pitiable girl could speak to other people only through a doll named after her closest friend.
Come to think of it, Lina—the name behind that black-cat doll—sounded rather like Lilina. Yet Lilina’s heart was far stronger.
Leia’s heart was a fragile castle built on sand, ready to collapse at the slightest disturbance.
Even tonight, she was surely recalling what happened and suffering between the supernatural compulsion I had left in her and her bitter remorse.

◆◆◆

—How long ago was it that vampires destroyed my home?

Even now, I dream about it nearly every night.
I dream of that day—the day I lost everything.

I had a best friend.
Her name was Lina, and this black-cat doll had originally belonged to her.
We played together almost every day. I loved her, and she loved me.
We were so close that everyone around us was exasperated. Almost every day, we linked our little fingers and made the same promise.

“Leia and I will always be together.”
“Yes. Lina and I will always be together.”

I believed that vow without the slightest doubt.
I could never have hated Lina, and I was certain that she could never have hated me.
Therefore, if anything were to tear us apart, it would have to come from outside.

When calamity struck the village, Lina was the first to notice.
Explosions sounded in the distance. People screamed.
The noise drew steadily closer, and when the shadow of a man who appeared to be one of the attackers came into view—

“I’ll protect you, Leia. Take this and hide somewhere.”
“What about you, Lina? What are you going to do?”
“I’ll find some way to distract him. Don’t worry. We’ll definitely see each other again.”

Lina tossed her short blue hair and grinned, showing her teeth.
I was frail in those days. I had some talent for magic, but Lina was always the one protecting me.
She was, without question, my knight.
And I, the one who needed protection, had no power to protect her.
Obediently, I took the black-cat doll she entrusted to me—a keepsake from her mother—and fled.
I did not know that those would be the last words we ever exchanged.

There was already nowhere left to escape in the village. “They” were closing in on me from every direction.
I was only a child, and home was the sole refuge I could think of. Gasping for breath and hugging the doll to my chest, I ran there as fast as I could.
My parents had apparently taken shelter in the house as well. Tears gathered in their eyes when they saw me return.
Our moving reunion lasted only a moment. Angry shouts came from just outside.
The attackers were almost upon us.
My parents pushed me into a storage cellar beneath the kitchen. I could do nothing but hug my knees in that narrow darkness and wait for the tragedy to pass.

Several hours later, all sound from outside ceased. At last, I summoned the courage to leave the cellar.
I emerged to find my parents cut down by someone, their bodies lying one atop the other.
I screamed their names and shook them, but their stillness only confirmed their deaths.
Exhausted by grief and emptied of hope, I stumbled outside.
The village I had known was gone.
Most of its homes had burned to the ground, and bodies lay everywhere—a vision of hell.
The strength left my body, and I collapsed to my knees.
I do not know how long I remained there. Eventually, soldiers from the kingdom arrived to render aid.
It was from one of them that I learned who had caused the massacre.

“Vampires did this.”

For a long time, I wondered what could have brought them to such a remote country village. But wondering was pointless.
They were inhuman creatures. They needed no reason to attack people.
Afterward, my talent for magic was recognized. I received an education and was ultimately employed as one of the king’s personal mages.
Apparently, my magical gifts were extraordinary even by the standards of the kingdom.

◇◇◇

My memories leap forward toward the present.
With the passage of time, a nightmare becomes merely a dream.
Once assigned to the royal castle, my duty was to defend it with magic.
Few fools would launch a sudden attack against a castle at the very heart of the kingdom, however, so it was a fairly uneventful post. I could devote all my spare time to magical research.
Research was really my principal occupation; guarding the castle felt almost incidental.
Through that research, I created many new forms of magic.

Magic that manipulated light, devised specifically to fight vampires.
Magic that moved dolls and made them speak.
Magic that summoned people from another world—people whom legend said would possess immense magical power.
And a variety of other spells.

The king was especially delighted when I presented the otherworld summoning spell to him.
That discovery may well have been the decisive factor in his choice to invade other nations.
In short, I summoned people from another world so they could be used in a war to expand the kingdom’s territory.
I had no interest in the war itself.
Yet that spell ultimately led me to confront vampires once more. Fate does seem to enjoy its little ironies.
A vampire—no, a Demi-Vamp.
Ordinarily, this dream replays my memories from the beginning and ends without incident.
Now, however, the memories are being overwritten, constantly replaced by newer information.
The freshest experience engraved upon my mind and body is—

My encounter with Chigusa returns as a confused rush of distorted sight, failing breath, black shadows, and terror.
I had rejected what she did to me. Yet her shadows overwhelmed my whole body and imposed sensations that did not match the pain and violation I felt. In that warped instant, she had treated domination as love.
The supernatural aftereffects had not faded when the encounter ended. They remained inside me, ready to flare whenever memory dragged me back to that night.

◇◇◇

“—! Hah … hah … hah …”

The nightmare hurled me awake. I sat bolt upright, breathing hard.
Sweat covered my forehead—my entire body—and my clinging pajamas felt repulsive.
It was a dream. It was a dream. It was a dream.
No matter how many times I told myself so, only my mind believed it. My body refused to calm down.
The compulsion Chigusa had planted in me demanded more.
I hated it. I wanted nothing that creature—nothing any vampire—had given me. Nothing, nothing, nothing!
And yet—

“I’ll kill you … I’ll kill you …!”

She was the same kind of creature as those who had stolen everything precious from me.
I would never forgive her.
Burn. Let the fire be vengeance, not desire. If that cursed heat rose, I would consume it with hatred.

“I’ll kill you. Kill you. Kill you!”

Even as I repeated the threat, the supernatural conditioning twisted my body’s reactions against my will.
The black shadows from that night filled my thoughts: the inescapable brand Chigusa Hinata had left upon me after becoming a Demi-Vamp.

“I’ll kill her … That monster … I swear I will …!”

Nothing I did could quiet the aftereffects or rival the overwhelming despair she had forced upon me.

“Kill her! Kill her, kill her, kill her!”

My thoughts had become such a tangle that I no longer understood them.
What did I truly want?
Hatred, rage, imposed longing, the urge to kill, and the wish to die had all been churned together.
And so, alone in the castle in the middle of the night, I remained trapped in that contradiction, whispering into the dark without relief.