49. Desireful Happy Ending

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/52/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

She had cut Sara down.
The girl who had adored her. The girl she herself had adored. Cut down for a reason that was righteousness itself, compacted into a single mass: because Sara had taken an improper course.
There was no sense of loss. If anything, a feeling of accomplishment wrapped itself around Lily.
No corpse remained. The shadows had swallowed it.
The vampire had collected it, no doubt.
What she meant to do with it, Lily did not know—and to Lily it did not matter. That had been only a lump of meat.
Ah. With this, she could still remain Knight-Captain.
There was no longer anyone to protect, nor any country left anywhere, and yet she had succeeded in preserving her own reason to exist.

By the time she noticed, night had passed, and the morning sun was rising.
Her gaze sat nearly level with the earth.
Far off, a horizon was visible.
In the whole of that spreading view, there was not a single living thing.
For nearly ten hours she had lain upon the ruins of Gravard; what she had done there, and why she was lying down, her memory held only in a haze. A trivial matter.
She stood. She wiped her eyes several times with the back of her hand. She beat the sand from her body, and she began to walk.
In search of a place where humans could live, correctly, as humans.

◇◇◇

 

For the time being, her destination was Savad, the neighboring country.
This kingdom had already fallen under vampire rule, but over there, perhaps, things might still be intact.
She did not imagine that the Knight-Captain of a nation that had plotted invasion would be welcomed with open arms. If it came to that, she could slip across the border quietly.
Alone, she could manage somehow.

About five hours after she formed that thought and began to move.
She passed through wasteland and came upon a marsh.
The water had run out.
Her stomach complained of hunger.
Loneliness wore her heart down, little by little.
Ah, if Sara had still been beside her … The girl’s smile rose unbidden, and Lily’s chest clenched hard.
—Do not think. Do not think. Do not think.
The values she was bound to obey had already soaked into her body. Any answer arrived at by thought was, in the end, only private sentiment.
Righteousness was something intuition already knew.
And so—do not think.
Muttering “do not think” like a curse under her breath, she went on.

Two hours further on.
There, for the first time since she had been alone, Lily encountered another person coming toward her from ahead.
A man.
The instant he saw her face, he started, and called her name in a loud voice.

“Lady Lily! Is that not Lady Lily!”

So saying, the man came running.
She could not clearly recall his name, but his face was familiar.

“You … I believe I saw you once in Gravard …”
“You remembered me! Yes—Will, of the intelligence unit. What a coincidence. To meet the Knight-Captain in a place like this! I had thought there might be no one left alive at all!”

The man had likely fled Gravard.
He might even be the only survivor.
The marsh lay a considerable distance from Gravard. To meet here could fairly be called a miracle.

“Are you alone, Lady Lily?”

Lily left a small pause before she answered.

“… Ah. You’re alone as well?”
“Yes. I managed to slip through their attack and get out, but besides myself, no one …”
“Vampires, then.”
“You knew. No … if you left the royal capital and are out here alone, that would mean—”
“You are quick. Precisely. The capital has already fallen. Which is why I am wandering like this, searching for some place still intact.”

The man bit his lip in frustration and closed his eyes.
She understood the feeling.
He, too, was a soldier who had offered his body to the country.
If that country had been seized by monsters, of course he would chafe.
But there was no time now to steep oneself in sentiment.

“The vampires that struck Gravard—what was their scale?”
“One.”
“Wh—a single person erased that enormous city!?”
“That’s right. She looked like a beautiful woman with black hair, but that thing was a monster. If I remember—she called herself Chigusa, or Glass, or something of the kind.”
“Glass … Chigusa.”

Chigusa had been, if Lily recalled correctly, the name of the woman Sara had said died immediately after the summoning.
Why, then, would she call herself Glass?

“Ah. I see. So that’s it—”

Why, when she had seen Glass, had Lily felt a sense of nostalgia?
It was perhaps because, without knowing it, she had sensed something like Camilla’s lingering fragrance within the woman.
And Chigusa, too—drawn by the Camilla that remained inside Lily—had approached her.

“In other words, the root of everything had already shown itself before me long ago … Haha. I’m beginning to despise my own incompetence.”
“Lady Lily?”
“It’s nothing. Talking to myself. Incidentally—what do you intend to do from here?”
“The same as you, Lady Lily. For now, I mean to look for a place where humans are still living. And you?”
“I am heading for Savad.”
“The neighboring country? Well, it may well be safer than this one, but—”
“But? What is it?”

The man hesitated, and still spoke the words.

“No matter where we run, isn’t it all the same? After Gravard fell, I went around the surrounding towns. Every one of them had already fallen.”
“That is why I said I am heading for Savad.”
“In military strength, no nation surpassed ours. And yet where is the proof that Savad is intact?”
“Do not show weakness. Are you a soldier or not!? Yes, we were defeated this time. But the cause was that the enemy had been lurking inside us from the start. Now it is different. We know the threat exists, and we know its power. If a nation can raise countermeasures as a whole, there ought still to be a chance of victory!”
“It’s impossible. It’s impossible, Lady Lily! I saw it—a black mass swallowing everything, melting it away! That isn’t something you can handle even if every human in the world joined forces, let alone a single country!”
“Then what? You mean to give up!?”

Lily seized him by the collar and tried to spur him on.
If he was a soldier—if he was a man who had resolved to offer his life for his country—this ought to rouse him. So she decided, selfishly.
But the man’s expression did not change.
The resignation lodged in the depths of his eyes had already rooted itself in his brain past any hope of salvage.

“I … I think that is the best course.”
“Are you a fool!?”
“I never want to face that thing again! Running to a place their eyes can’t reach, and living quietly—that’s the best there is!”
“Pathetic—a defeated man’s way of living, with his dignity thrown away, is no different from being dead as a human being!”
“So what if it is!? Dead as a human—but I’m alive! Is that not allowed!? I don’t want pain. I don’t want suffering. I want to be at ease. Anyone would wish that, ordinarily!”
“Wrong! That sort of thing is mistaken!”

She could not forgive it.
This man was saying he would tolerate a mistaken world ruled by vampires.
Such a creature could no longer be called human. He was their collaborator. Their kind.
Then—what was to be done?
He was a precious Gravard survivor. Belonging to the intelligence unit, he might still have uses.
But what of it?
Lily had killed Sara for her crime.
Lily had killed Sara because Sara had been wrong.
The princess. The princess necessary to sustain this country. The princess who had treasured Lily more than anyone. Sara, who ought to have been precious to Lily as well.
She had—killed her. And yet why was it necessary to let this mistaken man live?
Intuitive justice whispered.
If he is wrong, then to pass sentence is only reasonable.

“Lady Lily …? W-wait. Why are you drawing your sword!?”
“Why? A foolish question. You are mistaken. You are not correct. Therefore you must be judged.”
“That’s—for a reason like that!?”

Sara and Camilla must have felt the same.
Why, for a reason like “that,” for a reason of “that degree,” would she kill them and offer herself to her mission?
No one else would understand.

“That degree? No. In the business of living, this is the most important element. From childhood I was raised by the people around me to believe so.”

By no one, that is, except the woman who had walked that life.

“Gah … a-ah …”

Lily swung without mercy and cut the man down.
From chest to throat a deep, straight wound was bound, and a great quantity of blood burst out.
For a little while the man lay on the ground, writhing, but the blood loss was too great. He would not be saved.
She looked down on him as he suffered like a worm, and while she held him in contempt, he ceased to move.
She kicked the corpse harder, to confirm a reaction.
There seemed no chance he was feigning death.
An intelligence man might well have tried such a clever trick.
Reassured, Lily kicked him as he was into the sucking mud.

 

◇◇◇

 

She left the wetlands, passed through a forest, and came out onto grassland.
The border was there.
It ought originally to have been guarded by soldiers, but strangely not a single soul was in sight.
For a person of a Knight-Captain’s rank to cross a border without leave would ordinarily have been a matter grave enough to become a diplomatic incident.
Lily looked at the state of the border zone, gave a short, self-mocking laugh, and stepped openly into Savad.

Not far beyond lay the first town.
Perhaps because the soldiers posted to the border forts used it often, it overflowed with amusements rare for a country town.
But in the village there were no soldiers, nor even residents.
No—perhaps the soldiers were somewhere.
Lily’s nose had caught a faint scent of blood.
Even if they were found, they would likely have been made into some tasteless objet, or left in no decent state.
With that premonition, she did not trouble herself to search the village.
She borrowed a bed in a room that had been left as it was, and spent the night.
The next morning, she set out for the next town.

In that town, she was not met with the spectacle of an empty populace.
There was no shortage of living things.
Only—there were no men, and the women who remained had already all become vampires.
When they saw Lily, they invariably looked at her and spoke in small, whispering voices.

“A human. There’s a human.”
“How unusual. What shall we do?”
“Her eyes are frightening. Let’s leave her to Lady Chigusa.”

She had come to a human town, and yet she was being treated as if she were a foreign body.
It was they who were the foreign bodies.
This was wrong.
Lily found herself extremely displeased.
And so she seized the hair of a young girl who happened to be near, dragged her into an alley, drove her knee into her several times, and then stabbed her repeatedly with the sword.
She was executing justice.
She felt as if her reason for existing had been fulfilled.
Another vampire who had witnessed it looked at her with a frightened face.
Lily swung the sword, and the woman went down easily, bleeding, onto the ground.
The execution of justice.
She felt as if her father were praising her: you have the right to live.
And yet it was strange. If they were vampires, a serious fight ought to have made a decent match of it.
Showing not the least will to battle, they let Lily cut them down one after another, laughing as she did.

She moved on. To the next town.
Perhaps catching the clinging smell of their fellows’ blood, the vampires were clearly wary of her.
And so Lily drove a girl to a dead end, and again split flesh with the sword in the same way.
Seeing her own kind fallen in a sea of blood, another vampire screamed in a high voice, like a child who had looked upon a corpse.

“Do you raise a fuss merely from seeing a lump of meat at the butcher’s? You are noisy. Harsh to the ear, and an eyesore besides.”

That one, too, was wrong, so she cut her down as well.
Once more, Lily had become correct.
The king, the people, her parents—each time she cut, they praised her.
Of course they did.
For those women were all incorrect.
If Lily did not set it right, there was no one left in this world who could.

She cut in the next town as well.
She cut again.
Cutting, cutting, cutting, Lily continued to uphold righteousness—and then, abruptly, she noticed.
Inside herself there were still the figures of those who praised her. The world, however, was praising her for nothing.
Rather, she was denounced, reviled, and at times had claws turned upon her.
“You’re a devil,” they said, hating her even as they mixed in vampire jokes.
Odd.
Why would no one applaud her for doing what was right?

Going from town to town, she at last reached the capital some two weeks after entering Savad.
Blood had crusted on her clothes. The sword that had shone silver had dulled with grease, and its edge had fallen.
Even so, it still held power enough to cut vampires.

However far she searched Savad, she never found a place where humans could live as humans.
And even this capital had already been seized by vampires.
Everywhere, women were laughing.
Happily, joyfully, chatting, holding hands, embracing—and now and then catching their breath.
And yet—never once did she see anyone like the Lily of before: bound by station, looked down upon, wanting to weep and not even permitted that, killing herself inside without cease.
This city’s appearance ought to have been wrong. Why, then, did misfortune exist nowhere in it?

“No … it is late for that. Righteousness and happiness are not the same.”

Then why must people be righteous?
She did not know the reason, but Lily had been wished to live so, and had been born only to live so.
Then she had to see it through.
She passed down the main avenue, climbed the stairs that led to the castle, and pushed open the ostentatious gates with her own hands.
Going straight on, she came to the audience chamber originally used for meeting the king of Savad.
Lily entered the room without hesitation, and stopped at the entrance.
A splendid throne stood at the far end, but her gaze was fixed on the black-haired girl standing before it.

“Glass … No. Chigusa.”

A beguiling beauty, her black hair stirring.
A summoned one called from another world, and a vampire who had inherited Camilla’s power.

“You have had a long journey, Captain. How was your solitary trip across countries?”
“Now that I know what you are, being called Captain by you is unpleasant.”
“Lily, then. And I will ask once more. How did you find the journey you continued even to the point of killing Sara?”
“It was the worst. Right and left, nothing but monsters. Mistaken scenes, like a joke, lined up everywhere. Those who made this, those who wished for it, those who accepted it—all of them are wrong.”
“Mistaken scenes, is it. Very like you, Captain. Which is why you went about cutting down so many girls wherever you passed.”
“Of course I did. Vampires walking a human town. One encounters a monster, one cuts it down. What is wrong in that? I am correct.”

At Lily’s unshaken will, Chigusa let out a long sigh.

“To be honest, I thought the shock of cutting Sara might change you a little. It seems to have had the opposite effect. ‘There is no going back now’—that thought has only made your curse more solid.”
“Perhaps. As I am now, there is nothing left that I fear. Whoever the opponent may be, if they are wrong, I will cut them down. That is my duty as Knight-Captain.”

So saying, Lily drew her sword.
The point turned toward Chigusa, the root of every mistake.

“Even Camilla could hardly have anticipated stubbornness of this degree. If the people who would evaluate Lily’s righteousness disappeared, Lily would be freed from the curse. That assessment itself was probably not wrong—and yet you cut Sara down and made even that into fuel.”
“I will say this: I regret nothing at all.”
“You do nothing but lie. You collapsed on the ruins of Gravard and wept for a good ten hours.”

After killing Sara, Lily had quietly walked away from that place.
“I have done what is right,” she had meant to tell herself, and to paper it over as if nothing had happened.
She had not been able to. The fact that she had killed Sara had shattered Lily’s heart more than she had expected.
A little way on she stopped, and though she had had no such intention, she noticed tears traveling down her cheeks of their own accord.
However many times she wiped them with her hand, they would not cease.
Then she crumpled, went to her knees, could not even hold that posture, and fell to the ground, and simply wept.
She raised her voice, called Sara’s name, and cried like a small child.

“I have no memory of that.”
“I thought it a very human expression of feeling.”
“… Hmph.”
“When bluster goes this far, it is an illness. Anything I convey in words will be wasted, so let us leave the opening remarks here and come to the main business.”

In time with Chigusa’s words, a sphere parted from the shadow stretching behind her and came to rest between her and Lily.
The shadow that had only stained the ground black began to deform into three dimensions, and from within it, as if being dragged out of a hole, a man appeared.

“F-Father …?”

It was Brams Clearlights himself, Lily’s father.

“He was alive … No. But if he emerged from the shadows, a fake, then.”
“He is genuine. I thought I would need him, so I kept him alive. Though capturing him proved more troublesome than I expected.”
“Of course. Father was once a military officer. Even a vampire would not take him so easily!”
“… You are proud of your father.”

Chigusa, for a moment, remembered the parents she had left behind in Japan.
A worthless mother who had conceived a child with a man other than her father, borne her, and foisted her on a father who knew nothing.
A father who hurled his hatred of the mother at Chigusa because she resembled her, and yet, now and then, put on the face of kin, and was insufferable for it.
There was not a single thing of which to be proud. Even if it were a fiction, to have a parent one could be proud of was, for Chigusa, a thing to envy.

“Release my father, or else—”
“I have no particular intention of killing him. I merely want this man to speak the truth from his own mouth.”
“The truth?”
“Yes. A father who receives the full respect of a Knight-Captain who bears a nation upon her back—he must have conducted himself splendidly. Come, Mr. Brams. Tell your daughter. How you tried to escape our hands.”
“… nnh.”
“You, who drilled righteousness into Lily. What you have done.”

Brams stubbornly would not open his mouth.
Chigusa, losing patience, moved the shadow at his feet and snapped the thumb of his right foot.

“Nh—o … ooh …!”
“Father! Chigusa, you—!”
“Please calm yourself, Lily. This much will not kill him.”

The instant she heard those words from Chigusa, Lily’s feelings, which had rushed to her head, wilted as if cold water had been dashed over them.

“Wh … what was that, just now …?”

Lily was bewildered.
But Chigusa offered no particular explanation, and continued the interrogation of Brams.

“Hah … hah …”
“Come. If you do not speak, they will break one by one. When they are all broken, I will tear them off one at a time. Crying and screaming will not stop me. Not until you have spoken everything with your own mouth.”

She whispered it at his ear.
She was in earnest.
If he defied her and hesitated once more, she meant to break a finger without mercy.

“I—I … used … the children I kept … as shields … and ran …”
“The children you kept? Father, what are you saying!”
“You know it as well, Lily. It was fashionable among the nobles of the capital to keep slaves. Mr. Brams, it seems, attended those auctions frequently.”
“Kh … b-but that was—that was in order to use them as servants!”
“Now, Mr. Brams. Your daughter says so. How did you use the children you kept?”

Brams’s gaze wavered.
He looked at Chigusa and was terrified by those red eyes, so deep one might be swallowed merely by looking; he looked at Lily.
But there, too, he found a gaze that clung to him blindly, expecting “righteousness.”
He could not bear it, and averted his eyes again.

“Yes. That is the second. Or rather, this is a bother—shall I do both feet together?”
“Guh … agh—hh! Hih, hyuu … fuu, fh, fuu …!”
“Father, Father!”
“Not raising a proper scream—very like a soldier, I suppose. But a poor showing at the end is unattractive. Answer my question promptly.”

When the fingers were gone, the feet next.
When the feet were gone, the calves, the thighs, and then the torso—Chigusa’s unsparing torture would likely continue as far as it could while keeping Brams alive.
There was no path left to him but to give in.

“I … used them. Those children. As tools to satisfy my lust.”
“So he says. What do you think, Lily?”
“Father … is he not being made to say this …?”
“Even if I tell you it is fact, you will not trust me. But you have some inkling, do you not? Mr. Brams was apparently famous from the first for his habits with women.”

Indeed, Lily had some inkling.
She had several times seen him quarreling with her mother.
But she had never imagined that he had bought slaves into the house, still less that he had used them in such a way.

“Incidentally, Mr. Brams—may I have the names of those slaves?”
“…”
“Have you not been broken enough? Ah—or do you still think you might be saved, and amuse yourself with those children again? In that case I ought to have started by taking the organ first. Little by little, from the tip, tearing it, grinding it to pieces.”

The shadow at his feet stirred.
The instant Brams saw it, he spoke as if screaming.

“L-Lily! I had named them Lily!”
“So it was. Did you know? This man named every slave he kept Lily. Pathological, isn’t it.”
“My … name?”

Chigusa shook her head.
It was the same name, certainly, but he had not taken it from his daughter’s.

“The name Lily itself, I am told, was taken from a woman who was Mr. Brams’s first love, and also the partner of his first experience. She had a fiancé, however, and met a tragic death, so marriage was impossible. Ah, yes, Mr. Brams—why did that Lily die, again?”

Brams no longer resisted.
He spat out toward his daughter a past he had sealed away.

“I threatened her. Threatened her, and took her. And then, after a while, she killed herself.”
“And when you heard that she had killed herself, how did you feel?”
“… Glad. I thought she had become mine alone for life, and I was glad.”
“A l-lie … It’s a lie—!”

Lily was distraught, but the sword would not come free.
Chigusa had sent that command into her brain.

“In short, the name ‘Lily’ was, for Mr. Brams, a symbol of domination. For example, the animals he kept before Lily was born. They died after he abused them, I am told, and those names, too, were Lily.”
“Then I … what was I, to Father …?”
“What was she, Mr. Brams?”
“… Th-that is—”

Even at this stage, Brams faltered.

“I will tear it off, you know?”

Chigusa brought her mouth close to his ear and whispered so.
His face went pale at once, and his jaw began to chatter.
There was no escape left. A dead end.

“I—my daughter, Lily … you … I thought of you as a convenient tool. The same … as the slaves.”

Lily’s heart, already stripped of allies and driven into a corner, was about to break under her father’s confession.
Cracks ran through the whole of it. A little more shock, and it would come to pieces.

“When I ran as well … I knew vampires hardly lay hands on women. I used the slaves as shields. Once I had gotten away … I mixed among the citizens, and lived by sacrificing others. If I used Lily’s name … most people lent me their strength.”
“Father … you told me to live correctly, as a Knight-Captain should.”
“Yes.”
“Is it a correct act, then, to sacrifice the citizens one ought to protect, and survive alone?”
“No. It is not.”
“Is it justice to buy up slaves and use them as an outlet for lust?”
“… It is not.”
“It is not? You forced me so hard to live correctly. As the price, you took everything from my life … and you yourself—you alone—knew your conduct was wrong! And still you did as you pleased to satisfy your desire! Are you saying I—was a tool to satisfy your desire!?”
“Ah … that is exactly so, Lily.”

Lily’s teeth chattered. She stared at her father without blinking.
Her arms hung limp. She closed her eyes.
She looked up at the heavens, clenched her teeth with all her strength, and made fists of both hands.

“Nh … nnh, nnnnhhh …!”

Was it anger, or grief?
Lily sent a long, long growl, like a beast’s, echoing through the throne room.
Blood began to run from her clenched hands.
At the same time tears overflowed from her eyes, traveled from cheek to jaw, from jaw to throat, and fell at her breast.

“Nnh … n-kh, aaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

A moan shifting into a hoarse roar.
As if to spit out the feeling that had gathered and gathered in her chest, Lily howled at the full volume she could produce, and still she could not catch up with putting her heart in order.
Her own past memories flashed back.
It was like a lantern of a life turning.
Her reason for existing wavered. She was dying. The human being called Lily Clearlights was collapsing.
A life for what? Lived for what? Killed for what?
Herself, her comrades, people precious to her—she had cut them away, over and over, taught that this itself was the correct way to live.
And yet, and yet, and yet, the very person who had taught her that had been more wrong than anyone, and had, for all that, satisfied his desire more than anyone.
Why.
Why must the correct self become unhappy, and the mistaken human be happy?
It was—surely because the righteousness Lily had believed in, the purity the world at large named, meaning to trouble no one, meaning to devote oneself to someone—was nothing more than a convenient existence for mistaken humans.
She was a victim.
Not something that had arisen of itself, but something produced deliberately by a perpetrator, in order that she be unhappy, solely to satisfy another’s happiness. Fuel.

“Th-this is enough, isn’t it? I kept my promise, so …!”

Before his own daughter’s breaking heart, Brams began to beg Chigusa for his life.
The voice did not reach Lily, who was sinking into disappointment; that may rather have been fortunate.
Had she heard it, she would have been struck down so completely that she could never have returned.

“There is one last condition.”

Frankly, Brams’s life meant nothing to Chigusa.
But in order to free Lily from her curse, one more necessary ritual remained.

“What? I’ll do anything. Only spare my life!”
“Then offer your daughter to us. That is the last of it. You will be released from here.”
“Understood. Do as you like. I don’t care anymore. So long as I survive!”

Brams answered without an instant’s pause.
The moment he said it, Lily’s cry stopped dead.

“… So he says, Lily.”
“Ah … nnh, what … what am I to do? I am empty already. Now that I know what I believed correct was wrong, I do not know what to take as a mark by which to live. Camilla and Sara, who ought to have guided me—the people who were precious to me, I killed them all with my own hands.”

An anxiety like floating without aim in a tank that had neither surface nor floor pressed in on Lily.
She was so weakened that she turned even toward Chigusa, whom she had decided was an enemy and at whom she had pointed her sword.

“You want a destination. Is that what you are saying?”
“Ah … is there one? A place I ought to go.”

Chigusa’s gaze turned behind her.
Then someone embraced Lily from behind.
Thin arms went around her about the stomach. The face, perhaps, was at about the height of her chest.
From that slight frame, Lily took her at once for a child.

“Who … is it?”

She murmured in a voice that seemed about to vanish, and the other answered in a tearful voice.

“Lily’s precious person!”

It was a voice she had heard any number of times.
And yet a voice she ought never to have heard again.

“Prin … cess?”
“Mmph. I don’t like it when you call me that.”
“Sara …”
“Yes! It’s Sara. I am here. I came to fetch you, Lily!”
“Sara, Sara, Sara—!”

Lily turned and held that small body as tightly as she could.
It had been obvious, and yet: her eyes were red, her skin paler than before, and the feel of holding her a little different.
She had ceased to be human.
But for Lily, released from the curse, that was a trivial thing.

“You were alive. You were alive for me, Sara …”
“Chigusa recovered me in haste and healed the wound.”
“I see … Haha. I feel like punching the self who thought she meant to toy with a corpse. Everything … I really am a fool.”
“You are not a fool. I know well that this is the result of Lily having done her best.”
“But I cut you down, you know? Ah. I still had not apologized. I am sorry. I am truly sorry. By my selfishness, I hurt you.”
“I would like to say you need not apologize, but it hurt, so I will accept it for now. But with this, the ledger between us is truly at zero.”

Though she was the one who had nearly been killed, Sara showed not the least sign of resenting her.
Struck by the depth of that love, Lily went on shedding tears alone, held against Sara’s chest.

“Sara. Even someone like me—will you stay with me?”
“I came to fetch you because I want to be with you. Come, Lily.”

From behind Sara a single shadow stretched, took a sickle’s shape, and opened a wound on her wrist.
Then she showed Lily the wound, from which a great quantity of blood welled.

“This is …?”
“I am sorry, but there is no time to use charm. When Lily drinks a great deal of blood that holds magic, the preparations to become a Demi-Vamp will be complete.”

To come and fetch her—that meaning was that Lily, too, would cease to be human.
The choice she had refused to the point of dying, to the point of killing, the Lily of now accepted without fuss.
She put out her tongue to Sara’s wrist, licked, and swallowed.
A viscous, iron taste spread through her mouth all at once.
And yet, thinking it had flowed from Sara, she found it strangely sweet.

“Fufufu. Lily, you are like a dog.”

Pecha, picha.
Watching Lily lick the blood, making unseemly wet sounds, Sara smiled.
Lily, for her part, felt the magic soaking into her body, and felt her heart growing lighter, little by little.
Once one let it go, it was nothing; she hated herself for not having thrown it away sooner.
But it was because she could not that she had come even to a place like this.
So now she would simply be glad that she had been able to set the burden down.
And she would accept it.
A new world. Herself, become an inhuman being.
For several minutes Lily drank Sara’s blood with single-minded absorption.
As she did, a change appeared in Lily’s body, and a mark rose above her navel.
Sensing it, Sara closed the wound.

“… Is it over already?”

Lily looked up at Sara as if unsatisfied.
Sara’s affection was such that she wanted to pull her into an embrace at once, but that could wait.
She rolled up Lily’s outer garment and reached toward the heart tattoo that had risen on the belly.

“Ah … ah—hyau!”

When Sara’s fingers stroked it, Lily made a small, startled sound.

“Just now … what … was that. A sensation I do not know …”
“You do not know? Could it be that Lily has never …?”
“You mean … that sort of … intimacy?”
“Yes.”
“Of course not. My mother raised me strictly to believe such acts were improper. And so … I have never even touched myself that way.”
“… At Lily’s age?”
“Have you, Sara?”
“Well. I have thought of you often. Many times.”
“I see … You were thinking of me. I am sorry. I do not well understand being loved by another, or loving another. I may be a burden to you.”

Lily had always seemed the elder, and Sara had imagined being led by her; here, she revised her thinking.
In one sense Lily was extremely mature, and in exchange, in another sense, she seemed extremely young.

“It is all right. I will teach you what I can, and where we do not know, we can feel our way forward together.”
“I see. Together …”
“Yes. The two of us.”

So saying, they faced each other and smiled.
There was the real sense that their hearts were in communication.
Lily found herself wondering why she had avoided this until now; it was the most comfortable moment of her life thus far.
Then Sara moved.
She seemed about to bury her face in Lily’s neck.
Lily tilted her head of her own accord and offered the place, so that the blood would be easy to take.

“All right. Do it.”

There was no fear.
Only the sensation of some part of someone she loved entering her body.
Lily was rapt in it.
Her hands went naturally around the back of Sara’s head, and in the shape of an embrace she stroked her head gently.

“Nh … aah, haah …”

She did not pant extravagantly, but with flushed cheeks and narrowed eyes, her expression must have looked, to anyone, like happiness.
In fact she herself felt a happiness beyond compare, and was drowning in it.

“Nnah, au … Sara, it is … it feels good, Sara …”

The knowledge that she was making Lily feel so lifted Sara’s spirits as well.
The hot, melting blood passing her throat, together with Lily’s scent, growing gradually heavier, was enough that the taking of blood alone seemed about to carry her over.

“Ah … aah, so this is … ceasing to be human … nnh … as if it could be a mistake … haha … when it is this good …!”

What a ridiculous stubbornness she had clung to.
All of Lily’s memories were turning into farce.
This was rebirth, exactly. She was being born again.
This time she would not be wrong … No. Righteousness, mistakenness—none of that mattered anymore.
She would live seeking only happiness.
Together with the one she loved.

“I am going … nnh … a little … more … Sa … ra …”

Strength left Lily’s body, and she slumped against Sara.
Sara took her mouth away, held that body, and stroked her head as if in return.
Watching the exchange, Chigusa rejoiced at the birth of a new companion.

“Camilla. Are you satisfied with this?”

There was no reply to the question, but a warm feeling spread slowly through her chest.

“I see. Not to mind even if your own love does not bear fruit—you have a generous heart.”

Camilla’s personality no longer remained anywhere.
It was only talking to herself, and yet Chigusa had the sense that, somewhere, she was smiling.

She closed her eyes and steeped for a while in the happy ending—then, abruptly, remembered his existence.
Brams.
She had gone to the trouble of letting him go, and yet he was still watching Sara and Lily’s union with an expression of terrible fear, for some reason.

“Why do you not run?”

Chigusa asked it of him where he sat on the floor.

“Why? In a state like this, how could I run!”

Where Brams pointed, Demi-Vamp girls were watching the throne room with keen interest.
They were not particularly trying to kill him.
They were only onlookers who had come because Sara had gone about saying that Lily was joining them as a new companion.
But to him, a human who had seen men being killed before his eyes, they looked like nothing but a pack of monsters come to eat him.

“If you had run without concerning yourself, you might truly still have survived.”
“What …?”
“It is too late now, Mr. Brams. The rest is a family matter. Please take your time.”
“Wh-what are you saying. A family matter? You cannot mean …”

In Sara’s arms, Lily opened her eyes.
The skin that had been covered in wounds from countless battles had become beautiful and smooth as pearl, and in the depths of eyes dyed crimson there burned, like a flame, an ardent love turned toward Sara.

“Good morning, Lily.”
“Ah. The finest waking I have ever had, Sara.”

At last able to live in the same place, the two of them gave form to a joy that threatened to overflow, in the shape of a kiss.
For Lily, and for Sara as well, it was unmistakably a first kiss.
The sequence of bringing their lips together and laying them one upon the other was somewhat awkward, but if the two of them were satisfied, that was enough.

“Hafh … is it all right? That was actually a kiss of vows, you know.”
“An eternal partner. That is not so bad. But first we must become lovers, or nothing begins.”
“Fufufu. You are unexpectedly the type to care about such things.”
“I am a beginner.”
“Then I will go first.”

For Sara, it was not her first confession.
Until now, however, she had done it with nothing to lose.
This time was different.
And so, in a very fresh mood—with an exaltation as if she were telling Lily of her affection for the first time.

“I have always loved you. I am sure I will go on loving you forever. And so I want you to be my lover.”
“Ah. I love you as well. This time I will not do anything so foolish as to throw away a person I hold dear with my own hands. Let us be happy forever, Sara.”

Having conveyed their feelings, the two of them, unable to hold down the impulse that overflowed, laid their lips together again.
Lily felt something like resolve, or like certainty.
Most likely, without any particular need to strive, merely by living naturally, the happiness she wished for would come to her hand.
Surely that was the sort of world the Demi-Vamps created.
They were the happiest beings in the world.
In that instant the two of them believed it without doubt, but probably Demi-Vamps the world over were thinking the same thing.
Where there is light, shadow is born.
The human world is that sort of place.
And so humans cannot do it. Only Demi-Vamps, who are shadow from the first, can make such a world.

“… Ah. That reminds me.”

When she took her lips away, Sara remembered something.

“What shall we do about that?”
“Ah. Yes. That was still left.”

That, needless to say, was Brams.
He was Lily’s father, but to the reborn her he was like refuse lying at the roadside.
And yet she had hated him.
Hateful refuse—how ought it to be disposed of?
The two of them stopped beside Brams, looked down on him where he sat, and wordlessly extended their claws.

“Does it have to be Lily alone?”
“It is not good to monopolize one’s enjoyment. Still less, if one is a partner in love.”
“I understand. Then I will join without holding back.”
“W-wait. Wait, Lily! I am your father! I raised you until now, raised you splendidly as Knight-Captain—gah!?”

Lily began by kicking Brams in the face.
Several teeth broke. He fell to the ground clutching his face and glared at her.
“I do not like that look,” Sara said, and moved swiftly above his head, and with a precise degree of force drove a claw into an eyeball.

“Ah—aaaaah!”

Brams’s voice shook with terror.
At once Lily set a claw in another place—his cheek—and tore toward the mouth.
Sara laughed at the sight.
It would be pitiful to do only one side, she said, and opened a hole in the other cheek, split it, and widened his mouth.

“Hah, hahih, hyameh, hyamehe kureeeee!”

Hearing his pronunciation grow somewhat impaired, Lily laughed aloud.
Brams was a toy for the two of them.
Moreover, the more they hurt him, the more they could vent their own hatred.
There was no reason not to play.
Sara used her shadows and crucified Brams’s body to the ground.
Lily cut off the little finger of his right hand, and Sara cut off the little finger of his left.

“Ah, stop, stooop! Egeh, e-hih … higuuuuu!”

The ring finger, the middle, the index, the thumb—imitating Chigusa’s torture, they crushed the fingers one by one.
And when the fingers were gone, they cut away about half of each palm.
Severing an artery seemed likely to hasten death, so for the moment they left off playing with the hands there.
Next, the legs.
Several toes were already broken, so they cut those away first and tidied them.
Then the two of them sat down beside the legs and, as if mincing, sliced the legs little by little into rounds.
They passed the ankle, passed the shin, enjoyed the thick feel of the calf, and then slit the bone a little past the knee, and giggled.

“Forgih … me … forgivh me, please … I beg you, guh, gah …!”

Sara suddenly recalled something Chigusa had said, and worked her shadows.
If one traced it to the root, the cause of everything had been that he was male.
To dispose of that symbol before he died would, most likely, be the greatest punishment.
Sara had been given magic from Chigusa.
Her shadow, above Brams’s groin, took a shape like a propeller and began to spin at a tremendous speed.
Then it dropped as it was, and with wretched sounds—buchu, guchu—scattered blood and flesh and minced him there.

“Ah—agyaaaaaah! Hah, hahyuu, higu, gi-aaaaah!”

At the especially large scream, Lily’s mood turned clear.
But perhaps because it had hurt too much, Brams fainted.
It was no great problem. Sara jammed a shadow into his ear and stirred his brain, and he woke at once.
Unfortunately, from then on his reactions visibly thinned.
That last scream had been the final lamp, no doubt.
Leaving him alive forever was unpleasant, and filthy things are filthy, so the two of them decided to kill him promptly.
Deliberately, Lily drew her sword.
This sword was a fine piece sent by the country when she had become Knight-Captain.
It was a symbol of authority, and in a sense also the proof of Brams’s crime in raising Lily as a tool.
The two of them held it together, brought it near his chest as if cutting a cake—and drove it in all at once.

“Agh …”

A single thrust to the heart.
Brams gave a faint moan, his body jerked into a chevron for an instant, and he died.
To confirm that he was truly dead, Lily kicked the body several times and ground her foot on his face, but there was no sign of movement.

“… Is that all.”

That was the impression Lily held of the death of the father who had bound her so tightly.
Yes. It was only that much.
Compared with the happiness before her eyes, the unhappiness of the past ranked far lower in priority.

“You may forget it now.”
“Ah. Yes. Rather than the past, from now on I will think only of the Sara of this moment, always.”

And the two of them exchanged a kiss for the third time.
Of course, Sara was short compared with Lily, so one had to bend at the waist and the other to stand on tiptoe.
What was still lacking, they made up by using Brams’s corpse as a footstool.