44. Danger Zone XXX

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/47/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

She dreamed a nightmare.
A dream of slick, misshapen things crawling over her whole body.
In time the misshapen things tried to enter Kishiri from the mouth; her jaw was locked, and they could not.
So they looked for other openings.
A human body has fewer holes the will can close than it likes to think.
Against an abominable fluid organism, it is helpless.
She was entered.
From below to the face, through every opening that would not shut, they came into her, writhed, swelled, and tried to force their way out.
No matter how thoroughly one cut off stimulus from outside, if one was being changed from within, there was nothing to be done.
Kishiri’s flesh was being changed.
A body trained slender and supple became a swollen monstrosity, closer in shape to the misshapen things assaulting her than to a person.
Comrade.
You are a comrade.
The thing writhing in her ear whispered it to her, over and over.
Kishiri shook her head and resisted with all she had.
And on the other hand, she thought this as well.
If her flesh had not rejected magic—if she had been an ordinary human, without a trained mind.
She might already have been at ease.
Then the “true body” of the misshapen things appeared before Kishiri’s eyes and peered in.
It looked like Ashera. It looked like Lalilalai. It looked like Kishiri herself.
It jammed its own skull into Kishiri’s mouth, and tried to force its way into her.
A grind.
The jawbone came out of joint.
The flesh of the cheeks tore with a series of snaps.
The throat, too, was avoided; blood poured in quantity from the neck.
And the thing went in as far as the heart, fused, and began to pulse.
The blood was contaminated, or replaced.
The blood running from the split neck went black and stagnant.
The body was being fatally remade.
And even so—what Kishiri’s body felt was not pain, but a pleasure so strong she nearly slipped into rapture—

◇◇◇

 

—She woke to the chirping of small birds.
A vicious nightmare. Her head still pounded.
To have seen a dream that vivid and that real meant the brain had not fallen fully into sleep. It must have been a shallow rest.
Kishiri looked out the window with eyes barely open.
Sunlight came through a gap in the closed curtains.
Morning had come.
There was no one in the room.
Perhaps because of the dream, Kishiri was strangely sentimental now, and that fact alone made her unaccountably glad.
She wanted, if she could, to take more of the sun.
Thinking so, she got down from the bed and stood—and realized that her body was heavier than usual.
She looked down. An unfamiliar mass of flesh was there.
She turned, and faced the full-length mirror.
The figure reflected was so plump, so womanly, that she could hardly think it herself.
A shape “they” would be very likely to prefer.

“… nh, u …”

Kishiri, nausea rising, covered her mouth and hurried to the washstand.
Then she emptied her stomach onto the basin in one rush.
She had eaten almost nothing yesterday, so the contents ought to have been almost entirely—her own fluids.
That only sharpened the chill.
Kishiri repeated it until she was retching empty, and when she had finally settled, breathing with her shoulders, she looked at her own face in the mirror opposite.
Needless to say, her color was bad.
That was not much of a problem.
But when she touched herself with her own hand, there was sensation.
A ticklish, faintly sweet feeling that recalled yesterday.
Even the inside of the mouth, which had always been without taste or smell, now tasted of stomach acid.
Needless to say, it was the effect of being remade by Lalilalai.

“Uhh … kh, fuuu …!”

Kishiri had, by the record she had built up, possessed the confidence that she was strong.
In body and in mind, she could carry out any order given—she had prided herself on having that much ability.
But when one collided with an enemy outside the ordinary, confidence that lived inside the range of human imagination collapsed easily.
She had always lived in a place where even tears, even a word of weakness, were not permitted.
She had never been indulged by a parent. So she had probably cried properly only at the moment she was born.
Such a Kishiri was now—before the despair of being changed while still in her right mind—shedding tears for the first time.
The drops that ran down her cheeks fell from her jaw.
Some of them wet her lips.
The tears were salty.
That she could taste even that was itself a part of the despair.
Kishiri set a tightly clenched fist on the rim of the basin, bit down hard, looked down, and let the drops fall without stopping.

“Poor thing. Did something painful happen?”
“…?!”

There had been no presence.
But she reacted to the voice that had suddenly sounded, and looked into the mirror before her.
Behind her, Ashera was already standing.
Gooseflesh rose.
She had probably used those “shadows” to slip into the room.
Shadows existed everywhere in the world; a power that commanded them was already anything-goes.
She ought to counterattack. She had been trained and broken to be able to do so in any situation.
But—Kishiri had already been taught, in the body, that counterattack was meaningless.
Ashera put her arms around her gently from behind.
Kishiri no longer even showed an intention to resist.

“No need to look so bleak. This body is a lot nicer to hold than the old one.”
“I didn’t want that …!”
“It isn’t that you didn’t want it. You didn’t know. Once you know, anyone wants it. Anyone would. That’s how it is.”

Ashera’s sweet whisper.
Kishiri glared at her through the mirror, and answered.

“But I don’t think so.”
“That’s your preconceptions. Sure, I’m a monster now. A Demi-Vamp. But that’s just a difference in what you call it, isn’t it?”
“You killed our comrades, and you still say that.”
“That’s nothing new. Knights are all inhuman killers. Me. You too, Kishiri. So what’s supposed to change if we quit being human a little late?”

Killers, and inhuman.
Knights were, in fact, a gathering of such people.
Kishiri understood that. It was not for any such reasoned cause that she was refusing the invasion of her heart.

“If you’re going to be that stubborn, shall I make it easy for you again?”
“Stop—!”
“No, no. I won’t mess with you that far this time. I’ll just take away a little of Kishiri’s disgust. That’s all.”
“That’s what I—…!”

Ashera’s palm covered Kishiri’s eyes and forehead.

(Ah. Again—that—)

A wet sound.
The noise sounded inside her head, and Kishiri’s body jerked in Ashera’s arms.

◇◇◇

 

After that, Kishiri’s preconceptions were gone.
What followed does not need to be followed beat by beat. She clung to Ashera and, in a voice that was still hers and yet not, thanked her for the remade body, and said that being held now was nothing like before. Ashera agreed, called this the Kishiri she preferred, and received that thanks.

Then Ashera used her shadows to change her own flesh as well, and invaded Kishiri from within. With her aversion stripped away, Kishiri took the violation as proof that she was loved. When it ended, she did not faint. Ashera praised her for understanding, and they continued until even Ashera thought they had reached a way of loving no human could.

They said they loved each other more times than could be counted, and it was still not enough.

◇◇◇

 

After that, Kishiri exhausted her strength and slept, and when she woke—Ashera, who had apparently been holding her the whole time she slept, came into view.
The “preconceptions” had already returned.
Kishiri, her proper values restored, remembered everything she had done, and from the feel of her mouth understood that the remade flesh remained as it was, and vomited while still clinging.
What overflowed from her mouth was only Ashera’s fluids, which she herself had swallowed, and even the sensation of them passing the throat felt good, and she was made to know there was no going back.
She vomited, and wept, and her heart broke.
And still, sick of the humanity in herself that clung to “normality,” she murmured at Ashera’s ear.

“Break me … so I can’t go back …”

To that plea, Ashera answered as follows.

“You aren’t gonna break. You’re just gonna learn love. And become the right shape.”
“That’s fine. So … please.”

Kishiri clung tight.
Then the sounds that rang from her room were not ones a human ought to make—but they did not reach the only remaining sound humans in this castle, not her and not him.
As she had wished.
The heart was broken, love poured into the gaps, and it was shaped until it became a convenient form.
Until she could accept, from the bottom of her heart, the existence called a Demi-Vamp, the union went on.