26. Simple Manipulation: Leave Them the Choice and Make Them Bear the Responsibility

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/28/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

Thinking back, I should have realized it from Chigusa’s clothes when we fought before.
The stronghold of a Demi-Vamp dressed in a robe resembling a nun’s habit was, quite literally, a church.
Then again—perhaps she had simply judged that it would not matter if I discovered where she lived.

“… By the way, Leia, is it all right for you to leave the castle without permission?”

I did not want to walk beside Chigusa, so I had been following a short distance behind her when she abruptly asked me that.
I frowned.

“You’re the one who brought me out here… Is that something you would normally ask?”
“I didn’t expect you to come along so readily.”
“It was practically a threat.”
“I had no such intention. Though if you had stubbornly refused, I was planning to use my shadows just a little.”
“… So you were going to threaten me.”

Using her shadows—what a terrifying thing to say.
This creature truly was inhuman.
Even the thought of them made my body react involuntarily.

“Come to think of it…”

I looked at her and suddenly noticed an alarming fact.

“The sun… doesn’t bother you?”

The sun was ordinarily a vampire’s weakness.
In fact—setting aside whether the culprit truly had been a vampire—the attack on my village had happened at night, and so had the attack the other day.
Naturally, I had assumed these creatures were weak against sunlight too.
Yet Chigusa was strolling calmly beneath it now. She looked a little warm, perhaps, but otherwise entirely unaffected.

“I am a Demi-Vamp, after all.”

Chigusa answered with a bright smile.
Once again, she casually said something horrifying.

“Sunlight is harmless to us. We can eat garlic, we appear in mirrors, and running water poses no problem. We can even live without drinking blood.”
“… That makes no sense.”

Could something like that even be called a vampire?

“We can subsist on either blood or ordinary food.”
“Then don’t drink blood… You should be able to coexist with humans that way.”
“Impossible.”
“How can you be so certain?”
“My instincts cry out for me to create more companions, and more importantly, I want to. The human world is rotten through and through. It is impossible to fill this world with love and bring it peace while its people remain human.”

I felt sick.
Love? Peace? How could a murderer speak of such things?

“After killing soldiers and nobles… you have some nerve saying that.”
“Their lives had no value.”
“How selfish.”
“Call it whatever you like. Every living creature is selfish. You selfishly summoned us to this world too, did you not?”
“Urgh…”

I had no answer to that.
There had been no way to ask for their consent, and I had also wanted to see people from another world for myself.
She was right. It had been selfish beyond measure, and I could not offer a word in my defense.

“I will simply use my power to realize my ideal.”
“And then… when there are no humans left in the world… what will you do?”
“Rejoice.”
“It won’t work… Anyone who takes pleasure in killing people will eventually… want to hurt her own kind too. Your ideal can’t exist.”
“Heh. Hehehehe.”

I glared at Chigusa when she suddenly began to laugh.

“What is… so funny?”
“Everyone says that before they know any better. But I do know, and so I can say with certainty that vampires feel love far more deeply than humans. Ellis was terribly jealous of Mya-nee, and yet now even Ellis and Mya-nee love each other.”

Mya-nee… Could she mean Miyako?
Ellis was the name of the Demi-Vamp who had attacked me the other day.
Those two loved each other? I could not understand it.

“You look baffled. Then consider this: I love Lina. It was through trying to build a loving bond with her that I realized she might be Leia’s best friend.”
“Are you saying… only a vampire could do that?”
“Humans called her a ‘hole.’ It is obvious that there was no love in that.”
“Even so, if a decent person had found her… they would have tried to help her too.”
“Would they? Could a human love a limbless piece of flesh reduced to little more than an opening?”
“… Limbless?”
“A human being with no arms or legs.”

Human beings were not so heartless that something like that would make them incapable of love.
But—if that truly was Lina, then it had been humans who abducted her and cut off her limbs.
And for all the years since my village was destroyed, no one had saved her. That was why I now had to go to this church.
… No. That was not right.
If I had found her sooner, I would have tried to save her then too.

“Humans… aren’t as hopeless as you claim.”
“Is that so? Then you should see her for yourself and consider your answer again.”

That ended our conversation, and we continued in silence.
Before long, we reached the church in the lower quarter.
This was enemy territory. Ellis was probably not the only Demi-Vamp living here.
I checked my remaining magical power, then counted the gemstones I had prepared to cast spells without incantations.
It would be all right. Even if I could not defeat them, I should at least be able to escape.
I exhaled deeply, then followed Chigusa into the church.

◇◇◇

We passed through the chapel, and she led me to a bedroom beyond it.

“Ugh…”

The moment I entered, Ellis grimaced at me from beside something vaguely human.
I felt the same way about her, but I was stronger, so I had no need to display my disgust as openly as she did.
The instant our eyes met, I snorted and turned away.

“Sister, why did you bring someone like her here!?”
“Showing her is the quickest way to settle the matter. Do not worry. As long as I am here, I will not let anyone harm her.”

As she spoke, Chigusa gave Ellis a few pats on the head.
Ellis blushed, lowered her face, and fell silent.
It was only an imitation of love—an imitation of human behavior.
The sight alone disgusted me.

“So… where is Lina?”

I looked around the room, but saw no one who resembled her.
There was Chigusa, Ellis, and the human-like thing seated in a chair beside Ellis—

“She is Lina.”
“This has gone far enough. I don’t need… your jokes.”

This—this hideous creature could not be Lina. It could not even be human!
Missing limbs were one thing, but her face—no, Chigusa had said she no longer retained her original appearance, but this… It was as though she no longer had a face at all.
She had no hair or ears. Every feature that might identify her as a woman had been removed from her emaciated body, and obscene tattoos covered her from head to toe like a record of abuse.
My hand flew to my mouth.

“I told you that you should see her for yourself.”
“… Why?”
“Hm?”
“Why did you think… this was Lina?”
“For two reasons. She repeatedly made sounds resembling Leia’s name, and she reacted when I tried calling her ‘Lina.’ Why not speak to her yourself?”

At Chigusa’s urging, I took a step toward the ruined figure they called Lina.
The smell was appalling.
There was the stench of excrement, but the ingrained odor of her body was repellent too. I did not want to imagine what she had been fed or the conditions in which she had been kept.
Even so… if this truly was Lina…
I—I—

“Lina.”

I brought my mouth close to her ear and said her name.

“E… ia… a, aaah… e, i, a. Ee… i… ah…”

She reacted unmistakably.
Perhaps her throat had been crushed, because she could produce only a faint, rasping voice. But the instant I heard it, every memory I had of Lina rushed back to me.
I had no choice but to accept it.

“Is it… really you, Lina?”
“Ee… i, uaaah… aa… aau…”

Perhaps there was something she wanted to tell me.
Perhaps she had been waiting for me all this time.
The thought made tears spill from my eyes.
No… that was not the only reason.
When I first saw her, I had decided that she was not human.
Not even the faintest desire to help her had entered my mind. My first reaction had been revulsion, and I had scorned her as nothing more than a piece of flesh.
Even though she was Lina.
Even though some part of me should have known.
More than anything, I was ashamed of myself.

“U-uuuh… Lina, Lina, I’m sorry… I’m so sorry, Lina…!”
“Auaa, aa! Uu, kh… au, eo…!”

When I embraced her, she smelled.
When I held her tighter, her body felt rigid.

“I missed you. All this time, all this time… I missed you so much…”
“E, i, a, aua… i, o…!”

Had Lina missed me too?
After everything they had done to her, had she still kept thinking of me?
Or had she believed that someday I would come to save her?
I’m sorry. I’m so terribly sorry.
If I had been the one to find you, I might never have realized you were Lina.
I might have despised you and abandoned you somewhere.
Even if I am that cold… would you still embrace me, Lina?

“I suppose that settles it.”
“Yes. It appears she truly is Lina.”
“So what will you do? Give her to Leia as she is?”
“If that is what she wants, I have no objection. But Leia, I have a proposal for you.”
“… Wh-what?”

I was in tears, scarcely able to think, and Chigusa addressed me like a devil whispering temptation.

“If I drink Lina’s blood here, she will regain her original body.”
“…!”
“With the current state of medicine, even magic would be unlikely to heal her. That applies to both her body and her mind.”
“But… that would…”

I wiped my tears with my arm and answered between sniffles.
That would mean making Lina cease to be human based solely on my decision.

“I doubt my guarantee means much to you, but life as a Demi-Vamp is far happier than life as a human.”

That frightened me more than anything.
Her values would change, and she would become happy with a life that her human self could never have considered happiness.
The being left behind would be neither me nor Lina, but some other creature reborn in her place.

“I understand your reluctance. There are certainly some changes. But without them, would we not be just like humans, who repeatedly kill their own kind? We are happy precisely because we come to love our own kind more deeply than humans do.”
“What is Miyako… doing now?”
“Shall I bring her here? She is in the next room.”
“No… don’t. I’m afraid. Just tell me how she is.”
“There is little to say beyond the fact that she is spending time with our companions in the next room. Of course, she and I love each other as well. Leia comes up in conversation occasionally, and she worries about you.”

Honestly, that surprised me.
I had assumed that once someone became a vampire, humans would cease to matter to them.
But when I thought about it, if humans meant nothing to Chigusa, she would never have brought me here to reunite me with Lina.
They changed… but perhaps they did not become completely unrecognizable.
Perhaps much of the person they had been as a human remained.
If so… would Lina still be Lina after she changed?
At the very least, it would be far better than forcing her to go on living like this—

“Could you give me some time?”
“Certainly, but given Lina’s condition, she could die at any moment.”
“I know… That’s why I only need a little. I’ll settle this by tomorrow morning.”
“Please do not tell the knights that vampires are living in this church.”
“I won’t… The knights would probably only get themselves killed.”

I knew how powerful Chigusa was.
I had been unable to stop her, and the knights were no match for me even in great numbers. They could do nothing against her.
No—even if the army were mobilized, could it defeat someone who commanded every shadow and had killed nearly a hundred nobles in an instant?
Viewed that way, resisting her at all was probably futile.
And yet she had still left the decision to me. For an inhuman creature, perhaps she was at least someone with whom there was room to reason.

“I’ll be back soon, Lina.”
“E… ah…”

Lina’s mouth moved.
Was it only my imagination, or had she smiled faintly?
I could not leave her this way.
But even magic had been unable to heal her.
If I wanted to end her suffering, my only choices were to kill her or turn her into a vampire.
To make that decision, I left the church and headed for a certain noble’s mansion.
My answer was all but decided—but first, I had to learn the truth.
I wanted to believe that some human goodness remained there.