24. Believing We Will Meet Again Someday, I Will Keep Calling Your Name

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/26/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

Can human desire truly be so ugly?
Even though the world I came from had shown me that ugliness in vivid detail—and forced me to experience it firsthand—I could not help but frown when Ai told me what she had learned.

“An establishment beneath the city holds an event known as a slave auction. It is exactly what the name suggests: nobles bid as little as they can for slaves abducted from various places. A thoroughly vile form of entertainment.”

As a member of House Lindforg—and therefore a noble herself—Ai had apparently received invitations of that kind many times.

“I declined every invitation. Such things are not to my taste.”

For that reason, she had never attended one herself.
According to Ai, however, nobles who kept slaves were hardly uncommon. Like the people of the Discard District, slaves had no recognized rights and were subjected to appalling treatment.
Most of those put up for sale were very young girls. Boys were reportedly offered on occasion as well, depending on the buyers being catered to.
That distinction was beside the point. Once I had learned that human beings were being bought and sold, leaving matters alone would have been intolerable.
And so, on the night of the event, I dressed in a suitably aristocratic gown borrowed from Ai and made my way to the establishment.
The sun had long since set. It was dark outside—a most pleasant night.

 

◇◇◇

 

The establishment stood near a district crowded with nobles’ mansions.
At the end of a maze of streets, in a desolate area with no other shops in sight, stood a building conspicuously larger than anything around it.
Two guards waited outside the entrance.
When I approached, they spoke in unison.

“Your membership card?”

Ai had said nothing about membership, but apparently the place was not careless enough to admit just anyone.
With no other choice, I used my shadows to destroy, churn, and crudely reconstruct the two guards’ minds, leaving them incapable of resisting, and then went inside.
Immediately beyond the door was a staircase descending underground.
The farther I went, the darker it became. By the time I reached the next door, ordinary human eyes would scarcely have been able to see.
Perhaps guests were normally escorted through this passage.
My night vision made that unnecessary, so I reached the hall without difficulty—only to cover my mouth and nose as an overpowering mixture of perfume and cigar smoke washed over me.
The hall was larger than I had imagined, spacious enough to hold several hundred people with ease.
Around a hundred guests were already there, all of them apparently nobles.
Men overwhelmingly outnumbered women, though I also saw several heavily made-up ladies one might call madams.
The room was decorated with an extravagance that belied its underground location. The food, the wine, and even the servers carrying them made it look no different from an ordinary ballroom.
Several people noticed my entrance and glanced my way. Once they realized I was no one of consequence, however, nearly all of them looked away again.
One man nevertheless approached me, apparently drawn by my appearance alone.
How revolting.
I walked past him and stopped where I had a good view of the stage at the front of the hall.
The light vanished from the man’s eyes. He staggered out of the hall and headed away.
He would obey the command I had planted through my shadows and kill himself in some deserted alley.
At least, that was what ought to happen.
Though even if I had not chosen to kill him then, he would soon have died anyway.

I accepted a nonalcoholic drink from a server and was moistening my throat when a disreputable-looking older man—the apparent master of ceremonies—stepped onto the stage.
Every eye in the hall turned toward him.
The moment he proclaimed the opening of the slave auction in grandiose tones, cheers and applause erupted around the room.
The fervor of a crowd can feel wonderful when one shares in its unity. To me, watching with cold detachment, its heat felt like something foul clinging to my skin.
I drained my glass to distract myself. The first captive was promptly led out from behind the stage.

“Our first lot is Claire, a nine-year-old girl taken from a town outside the city only today! She has not yet been conditioned by any owner. Buyers looking for someone already broken in may find her less convenient, but those who enjoy molding a captive themselves will recognize an exceptional opportunity!”

The sight of the well-groomed little girl sent the crowd into an uproar.

“Nine? She might suit my son.”
“She’ll scream beautifully. The price will climb high.”
“Healthy, too. Her parents must have taken excellent care of her—all so that we could buy her.”

The nobles voiced their selfish appraisals one after another.
Claire’s face had gone deathly pale, and tears streamed down her cheeks.
The names she kept whispering were perhaps those of her parents.
Poor child. She had neither surrendered nor accepted what had happened. The auctioneer had probably told the truth when he said she had been abducted that very day.

“We will open the bidding at three hundred—”

As the nobles began shouting prices at the auctioneer’s urging, I reached my limit.
That was enough.
I had known what I would find, but witnessing such corruption only strengthened my conviction.
The conviction that I was right.
That a world filled with love—a world humanity could never create—was right.

“Every place untouched by light is shadow. And shadows are my domain. In other words—”

I lightly clenched one hand and extended it before me.
As the bidding grew more heated, I alone closed my eyes and concentrated.
I had never used my power against so many people at once. I needed to take the greatest possible care not to catch the captive girl in it.
Once I had fixed upon every target, I opened my closed hand in a single motion, as though kindling a light.

Pop-pop-pop!

Dull bursting sounds, too heavy to be balloons, rang out from every direction.
At once, the auctioneer and nobles fell silent.
A moment later, the smell of blood began to fill the room.

“The inside of the human body is shadow as well. That, too, belongs to me.”

The hall had changed in an instant from a crucible of ugly desire into a field where human bodies had blossomed grotesquely.
Every person in the room except the captive girl had died, their heads ruptured from within.

“Ugh … ngh …”

With nearly a hundred bodies, the smell was so dense it could almost make one dizzy. It was only natural that Claire, an ordinary human child, vomited.
I approached her and had my shadows break the restraints binding her.

“P-please … please don’t kill me!”

I placed a hand against the frightened child’s cheek and smiled as gently as I could, hoping to ease her fear.

“Do not worry. I will not kill you. I came here to free the slaves.”
“Y-you did? But … all those people are dead …”
“Yes. I had no use for them, so I killed them.”

Apparently, smiling had been counterproductive. Terror left Claire speechless and trembling, her eyes wide as her body lost control.
… This was no good. I seemed to be drifting ever farther from ordinary human values.
But there was little point in letting that discourage me.
I had my shadows lift Claire and carry her toward the area behind the stage, where the other captives were presumably being held.

 

◇◇◇

 

“And that’s why you brought back so many girls.”

When I returned to the church after rescuing the captive girls, Ellis sighed at the sudden increase in our number of residents.
Every girl I had brought with me looked bewildered. Claire, who had been enslaved only that day, visibly flinched whenever our eyes met.
Even I found it somewhat hurtful to be feared so intensely.

“You should’ve told me you were going, Sister. I might have been able to help.”
“I thought it would be wrong to trouble you.”
“Being with you matters more to me than that!”
“Now, now. Getting that angry will only frighten the children.”

At Mya-nee’s admonition, Ellis finally lowered the spear of her anger.
Because of what had happened with Leia, I did not want Ellis pushing herself too hard … but she was right. If matters became dangerous, I could simply protect her.

In total, I had rescued five girls from the auction hall.
I intended to entrust four of them to four different members of our group, who would each charm one and bring her into our fold.
Some had suffered severe abuse under previous owners and carried deep trauma. Surely even those wounds could eventually be healed.
The fifth girl, however, presented a different problem.

“So … what are you going to do about her?”
“I will care for her. Humans could not restore her after what has been done to her in any case.”

The child had been subjected to such extensive mutilation that it was difficult even to recognize her as a girl.
Her hair had been shaved away. She had lost her ears, nose, eyes, teeth, and all four limbs, while further deliberate injuries had left her unable to speak normally. Other parts of her body had also been gravely damaged through prolonged abuse.

“Her internal organs must be badly damaged as well. It is astonishing that she is still alive.”
“Were they even feeding her properly?”
“They were, in a manner of speaking. Look.”

When I held a hand near her face, she sensed its warmth and responded with a conditioned reflex left by her captors.
Ellis’s face twisted openly in disgust.
I understood. There was no need to state what her captors had trained her to do.

“I believe they conditioned her to react that way.”
“That’s depravity taken to its absolute limit. How can humans do something like this?”
“The other girls said her captors did not use a name. They referred to her only by a degrading term.”
“… Even worse.”

Ellis spat out the words.
Then she reached toward the girl’s face.

“It doesn’t feel like someone else’s problem—not after growing up in the Discard District. She might even have come from there, like me.”
“In that case, would you like to help me, Ellis?”
“Help you how …?”
“I intend to make her a Demi-Vamp and restore her body.”
“Oh … right. Of course you do. I guess that’s the plan for the others too. Then I’ll help you, Sister. But, um … what should we call her?”
“Until we learn her real name, perhaps we can call her Jane.”
“Why Jane?”
“I once heard that it was a traditional name used when someone’s identity is unknown.”

When I explained, Ellis looked at the girl again and said, “Nice to meet you, Jane.”
There was no response … but a name made it far easier to think of her as a person. For the time being, that would have to do.

 

◇◇◇

 

And so our life with Jane began.
Though “life” was perhaps the wrong word. It was closer to providing constant nursing care.
I had entrusted the other four girls to the companions with whom I had shared my power. Within two days, all four would likely have become Demi-Vamps.

For the moment, Ellis and I maintained physical contact with Jane while talking together about ordinary things.
We had many questions. Could she hear us? Did any recognizably human emotion remain within her? First, however, we needed to charm her.
Perhaps because there were two of us, the Mark appeared beneath Jane’s eye by the following morning.
Still, she gave us no response.
I tried touching the Mark. Her body moved slightly, and a faint, rasping breath escaped her throat, but it was difficult to tell whether she was reacting consciously.

“Maybe they already broke her completely. I don’t think anything will change until you drink her blood.”

Ellis was probably right. Biting her immediately would be the fastest solution.
And yet, for some reason, I remained determined to communicate with Jane as she was now.
Perhaps it was a premonition.
I felt there was some reason I needed to do so.
As I pondered, she suddenly began opening and closing her mouth.
She had done the same thing several times the day before, and I had assumed it meant nothing. But when I leaned close to her mouth, I realized Jane was trying to say something.

“Eh … ee … ah …”

Eh. Ee. Ah.
Once might have been a coincidence, but she repeated those sounds over and over.

“Sister, what is it?”
“Eh, ee, ah … They are all vowel sounds. Could they mean something?”
“Eh, ee, ah? Isn’t she just groaning?”
“Then why does she keep repeating the same sounds—?”

Eh-ee-ah.
I felt that I had recently heard a word much like it.
If she could form only vowels because she had no teeth and could not move her tongue properly—keh, seh, teh, neh, heh, meh, reh … reh?
Reh-ee-ah.
That name was—

“Leia Hersig …?”

Was that too great a leap?
Yet there was this girl, mutilated to an almost unimaginable extent, and there was the witch in the castle.
I possessed one piece of information that might connect them.

“The mage who lives at the castle? Why would a slave know someone like her?”
“Leia was originally a child from a peaceful country village. Mya-nee told me that a vampire destroyed the village, which is why Leia hates vampires.”
“So you think this girl was another survivor?”
“But was Leia’s survival truly a miracle? The story of the village’s destruction is strange in itself. Ellis, what would you do if you attacked such a village?”
“What would I do? I’d try to bring the people there into our fold … Wait.”

She had noticed the same inconsistency I had.
If the attackers truly had been vampires, they would not have killed every human in the village.
Just as humans instinctively wish to have children with those they love, vampires instinctively wish to draw humans into their own kind.
And yet, for some reason, the supposed vampire who attacked Leia’s village had killed everyone.
It made no sense.
I could not escape the suspicion that the true culprits had never been vampires at all.
To lend further weight to that theory, I leaned close to the girl who was still repeating “eh-ee-ah” and whispered:

“Lina.”
“Uh … ah, ah …!”

At the name, she repeatedly jerked her head in a clumsy nod.
As though she had been waiting all this time for someone to call her by it.

“Huh? Sister, wasn’t Leia’s black-cat doll called Reese?”
“Yes. But it was a keepsake from her best friend Lina, and its name appears to have been derived from hers.”
“I’m getting confused. Leia survived the attack on the village, the black-cat doll was a keepsake from Lina, and this girl is … Lina herself?”
“I believe that is correct. If the attackers were not vampires, they may have abducted Lina and sold her afterward.”
“Then the hateful people who blamed everything on vampires were …”

I had a likely answer.
But I still had too little evidence to be certain.
My gaze drifted to the bright daylight beyond the window.

“Ellis, I am going to see Leia now.”
“Wait—what about the attackers? Who were they?”
“I will tell you once I have confirmation.”

And when I did, Leia would surely abandon humanity of her own free will.
She would lose all faith in it after confronting the depths of human ugliness.