Ex5. A Farce Like This, Once in a While

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/60/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

At some point it had become my daily habit to kill time in the park on the way home from cram school.
I would sit on a bench lit only dimly by a streetlamp that drew moths and gnats, and read, or else prepare for the next day’s lessons.
I did not think of it as pain. I did not think of it as loneliness, either.
Being at home was the greater pain. That was why I waited here for as much time as I could make pass.

My parents got along very badly.
I had never seen them when they were on good terms, so I assumed it had been that way since before I was born.
Every time they fought they would say they were going to divorce, but they did not seem to mean it.
They had, they said, a duty not to divorce until I could stand on my own.
I had been born.
Therefore I had to be raised properly.
That, apparently, was what the two of them believed.
Perhaps because I grew up in that environment, I never felt anything I could call love from my parents, and I never loved anyone myself.

I had a fair number of friends, at school and at cram school alike. The smile I had learned in order to manage my parents’ moods was, by itself, enough to draw people in.
I looked up at the streetlamp without quite meaning to.
I was a Moth Trap. They were those insects.
It was not a question of which was uglier, or which was more foolish.
Parents had a duty to raise their children. Human beings had a habit of approaching anyone who looked kindly. That was all.
So long as there was no feeling in my smile, the people who gathered around it were not coming for my character. They were only reflexively approaching a face that looked kind.
There was no affection in it.
So I felt none for them, either.

I killed time on the bench that day as well.
But on a certain day, someone was there before me.
A woman in a suit that suited her well, with short black hair.
Her face looked severe. She was not the sort one approached easily.
Still, that bench was one of the few territories I had, and I felt no urge to look for somewhere else.

“What?”

When I watched her from a little distance, she spoke in a low voice.
It was frightening enough that my resolve to ignore her and sit down anyway withered at once.
Even so, I had nowhere else to go.

“Do you want to sit?”
“ . . . Yes. I always kill time here.”
“Ah. So that’s how it is. Then I’m the one in the way. Sorry.”

She started to stand. I stopped her on impulse.

“No! I mean—it isn’t as if it belongs to me. So . . . you can stay sitting, miss.”
“No? Then I’ll take you at your word.”

She let herself down again and sat.
Then she crossed her legs and began a staring contest with her phone.
I left a person’s width of space and sat on the same bench.
A little unsettled, I opened the paperback I had been reading.
I could not concentrate. The woman had begun muttering under her breath, her brow furrowed.
Before I knew it I was looking at her, and she suddenly lifted her face and looked at me.
She burst out laughing, and I laughed too, without meaning to.
Our voices carried through the park at night.
At that time we did not even know each other’s names yet.

◇◇◇

 

I learned that her name was Kyoko a week later, the third time we met.
As for why she gave only her given name and not her surname—

“It’s friendlier if we start with first names. If I told you my family name, Ruka, you’d just tack a ‘Ms.’ onto it, wouldn’t you?”

That was her reason.
I clapped my hands in spite of myself. I had to admit she was right. If she had not done it that way, I would never have called her Kyoko.

On weekdays she appeared in the park every other day.
When I asked why it was every other day, she said, “The frequency doesn’t mean anything in particular.”
As if to prove it, within a month of our meeting she was coming every weekday, and within two months she was coming on weekends as well.
Kyoko in weekend clothes was more feminine than usual. The first time I saw her that way, my heart lurched as if it might stop.
Even after I had seen her often enough to grow used to it, the pounding did not settle.
That was not to say weekday Kyoko was any less fine.
She had a cool face, short black hair, a fairly tall frame, and a slender build that took well to a suit.
The aura of a capable career woman came off her in waves, and that, too, was good.
Her height, incidentally, was a hundred and sixty-seven centimeters.
I was a hundred and fifty-six, so standing beside her I looked distinctly stumpy.
—Or so I was saying, when—

“Honestly, Ruka, where do you think all your nutrition went?”

—she grabbed at my chest.
It was true that I was large there, but running hurt, my shoulders ached, and they would sag someday. I did not think there was much to recommend it.
And she had put her hand on me, besides.
That day the pounding in my chest would not settle even after I went home. It was a problem.

In short, I was probably in love with Kyoko.
First love, as they call it.
I had grown up without knowing affection, and I discovered love for the first time in an adult woman whose address I did not know, whose age I did not know, whose work I did not know.
She was the same sex as I was.
That had nothing to do with a feeling that existed nowhere else.
It might have had something to do with it for Kyoko. For me, it did not.
So once I knew I was in love, I confessed fairly quickly.

“I like you. Please go out with me.”

The words were startlingly unadorned. I bowed my head and held out my hand.
A thin wind ran past.
My hand, stripped of warmth by the cold air—

“All right. I like you too, Ruka.”

—was wrapped in Kyoko’s soft one, with that kind voice. I was so happy I wanted to cry.
Or rather, I did cry.
I cried, and she held me against her chest with a wry smile, and we became lovers.
At that time I was sixteen, a second-year in high school.
Kyoko was twenty-five.

 

◇◇◇

 

After I graduated from high school and passed into the local national university, I decided to live with Kyoko.
Unexpectedly, she was the one who suggested it.
She already knew that my parents did not get along, and that I wanted to live alone without taking an allowance from home, and she made the proposal anyway.
I wondered whether it was all right to lean on her so suddenly, but I nodded.
I was certain that living with her would be the happiest stretch of my life so far.

The new life that followed was almost entirely untried ground: an unfamiliar environment, my first part-time job, a room with only the two of us.
It was hard, and it was not all enjoyment, but I got through it because Kyoko was there.
Little by little my body adapted to those days. Once I had some margin, I tried new hobbies, we went on trips, and the things we could do increased.

The busier we were, the faster time passed.
Before I knew it the first year had gone by like light. The second year ran smoothly through summer vacation, and then autumn came.

When this season arrived, I always remembered meeting Kyoko.
At first she had been an unknown quantity, and I had been afraid even to speak to her, and then we had fallen into ease almost at once.
And now—when I woke in the morning, she was sleeping naked beside me.
Her hair and her looks had hardly changed since the day we met.
When I stroked her short black hair, she made a small sound and the corner of her mouth lifted.
Cute.
If I said so she would certainly flush and get a little angry, so I could not tell her, but I always thought it.
Cool, and beautiful, and cute.
That was Kyoko.
Watching her sleep so unguarded, I felt a warm, spreading heat in my chest.
My face loosened before I could stop it.
That bliss did not last long. When I glanced at the clock, reality yanked me back.

“Kyoko, you’re going to oversleep!”
“Nnnh . . .”

Kyoko was weak in the morning.
Raising my voice and shaking her was not enough to wake her.
Before she lived with me—I woke easily—her room had apparently been full of alarm clocks, and every morning they had played a noisy orchestra.
Strangely, though—

“Honestly . . . there’s no helping it.”

—when I kissed her, my beloved prince opened her eyes at once.

“Mm . . . morning.”

She smiled at me and touched my cheek with her palm.
She drew me in for a second kiss.
. . . Except this was no time to be lingering.

“Kyoko, you’re going to be late! We’re cutting it too close!”
“Huh? Ah . . . oh, crap!”

Kyoko burst out of bed and scrambled into a jacket, starting to get ready.

“Ruka, get my suit out!”
“Got it. Breakfast?”
“I’ll eat something light!”

I hurried as well, laying out her clothes and starting breakfast so we might save even a little time—not that every morning was this close a call.
Still, more or less, this was how we spent our mornings as lovers.

—But when was it that a small tear appeared in those days?

I could not name a clear date.
A few months earlier Kyoko had been right beside me. Now I felt distance.
The changes were slight.

She had begun waking more easily; there was no longer any need for a morning kiss.
When we slept, and when we sat on the sofa, a little gap opened between us.
Work grew busier. Drinking parties increased. She came home later.
The times she said she loved me, that she liked me, grew fewer.

Slight, but certain.
It was not I who was pulling away—Kyoko was.
I was not so sunny as to miss it.

I could more or less understand how she felt.
From what I had heard, she was not a lesbian as such. She had had boyfriends before, in the ordinary way.
Bisexual, I supposed.
So at the start there had probably been a freshness to it.
But we had been together four years now, and I had turned twenty.
I had studied, and tried, so that she would feel good, so that she would enjoy herself. There were limits.
When a handsome actor came on television, or when we passed a good-looking man on the street, she showed interest, plainly.
In the end, perhaps ordinary was best.
But if Kyoko left me, she might have someone else. I had no one.
Not my parents. Not my friends. A lover, of course, was out of the question.
Until now, and from now on.
Kyoko alone had shone in my world.

 

◇◇◇

 

One day in winter.
I came home from my job on a motor scooter, saw the cup noodles spread on the table, and held my head.

“You’re eating this stuff again. I should have made something and left it.”
“I’m not putting that kind of trouble on you. This is plenty for me.”
“But if I don’t force myself to have something ready, you never eat anything healthy.”

When we first began living together, her slovenliness had startled me.
She would try to get by on convenience-store lunches or cup noodles. She would let unwashed dishes sit in the sink for days without a qualm. She would take clothes straight from the laundry basket.
Had that collapsed the image of her I carried? Not really.
I had seen glimpses of it before. Still, it had been more than I imagined.

“If you keep eating like that you’ll get sick.”
“That’s fine. I don’t mean to live a long time anyway.”
“I need you to live a long time.”
“Why?”
“I’d rather be the one who dies first.”

I said it sulkily. Kyoko looked troubled and tapped the table with her index finger.
I did not want to upset her. Meals tasted better when the mood was good, especially during them.
But—it was as if she were saying she had no intention of growing old with me, and it made me angry.
If I was heavy, she could have said so.
I had meant it that way. Always. From the start.

“ . . . The bath is hot. Get in already.”
“Kyoko.”
“It was cold out, wasn’t it? If you don’t warm up, you’ll be the one who catches a cold. I’ll tell you now, I’m no good at nursing people.”
“I know, but . . .”
“Then be good and listen to your elder.”

Spoken to like that, I could only keep quiet.
I left the room with heavy steps.
The television news was reporting on the mass murders that had been in the headlines lately.
I wished they would just kill me.
If it was a choice between that and breaking up with Kyoko—that would surely carve me into her heart.
I thought such things on my way to the bath.

 

◇◇◇

 

On the weekend my job was off for once, and I thought we would finally spend time together.
But once one thing went wrong, none of the gears meshed anymore.

“I’m going back to my parents’ today.”

She said it over breakfast, her face blank.
My hand stopped with the chopsticks still in it.
The news was still running from the television, but the caster’s voice did not enter my ears.

“What? Alone?”
“Well, yes. I haven’t told my family about you.”

I knew that. She did not have to say it.
My chest tightened until it hurt. I bit my lower lip to bear it.

“Tomorrow . . . wouldn’t do?”

I squeezed the words out.
Kyoko’s face was still blank.

“I’ve already said I’m going, and it seems they’ve prepared a meal, so I don’t think so.”
“ . . . I see.”

I could not ask whether I might come too.
My former self might have. The self I was now did not have that kind of shamelessness.
I had no confidence.
I no longer knew whether Kyoko still liked me.

When the meal was done and she had finished getting ready, she left the room.
I said, small,

“Have a good day.”

She answered, in a voice without feeling,

“I’m off.”

The door shut with a clack.
I was left alone.
When the echo died, the strength went out of my eyelids and they closed of their own accord.
After a pause, my tightly pressed lips began to tremble.

“Hh . . . hh-hh, hh, nngh . . .”

Then the strength left my body as well.
I collapsed from the knees, sat on the floor, and looked up at the ceiling.

“Nngh— Kyoko . . . Kyoko—! Aaah—!”

Gravity drew the tears down, one after another.
I wished they would simply dry up. Once they had overflowed, the drops did not stop until dusk.

 

◇◇◇

 

Sunset lit the room; the curtains had not been closed.
In the end the time had passed with nothing done.
I could not summon the will to cook dinner, but my stomach was empty all the same.
I wondered, as I heaved my heavy body up, whether Kyoko would have teased me if she had been here—Ruka, you’re such a glutton, as usual.
I dragged my feet to the sink.
The face in the mirror was a ruin: eyes raw red, skin swollen. Cold water was only a stopgap.
I was in no mood to put on makeup now, either.
I changed my clothes and nothing else, took my wallet, and went out.
I looked at children passing by and sank into a self-loving sentiment: perhaps I was the only person in the world feeling this lonely.
The nearest convenience store was a five-minute walk.
A listless clerk’s voice drew me in.
The boxed lunches were in the section straight ahead. Kyoko’s face kept flickering over them, and I could not choose.
Because of that, it took longer than usual.
By the time I left the store, evening had taken the sky without my noticing. Purple had spread across the whole of it.
While I was looking up, even that faint brightness faded, and night arrived.

Walking the night streets alone in my present state was, after all, unnerving. I tried to return to the apartment a little faster.
On the way, I stopped short of the park.
There I saw something strange.
Or—perhaps it was odd for me to call it strange, but it was not something one ordinarily saw outdoors.

“Aren’t they embarrassed . . .”

I murmured it under my breath as I watched.
In the middle of the park, two women were locked together, facing each other, entangled.
If they had only been playing, that would have been one thing. The voices I could just hear were plainly moans.
The quiet-looking girl with black hair on the left was the one taking the lead, perhaps . . . people were not what they looked like.
The other woman looked like an office worker.
Kyoko and I, once, might have been seen that way.
Though in our case Kyoko had been the one in the lead—and remembering that in this situation only made me more wretched.
It was not something to stare at. I should go home.
I was about to leave the front of the park when a woman’s voice rang out, far louder—“nnaaaaah!”
It carried so far that a bitter smile rose to my face.
They could show a little restraint, I thought, and looked at the two of them one last time. What was happening there exceeded anything I had imagined.
She was biting.
The black-haired girl had her teeth in the other woman’s throat. Blood was coming out . . . and she was drinking it.

“What is that . . .”

My mind went white.
No.
Those were not lovers who had simply chosen a poor place to go at each other.
They were something else. Something far more hideous.
I suddenly remembered a rumor I had seen online.

The culprit in these murders is a vampire, apparently.

An absurd urban legend.
And yet a surprising number of people believed it, I had heard, because the person who first spread the rumor had been unusually specific.

“That can’t be—is that a vampire?”

She was certainly drinking blood.
And the woman being drunk from had a face of deep pleasure; her body was trembling.
It might have been my imagination, but her color seemed to be going white, centered on the place she had been bitten.
At last the feeding ended, and the woman slumped.
The black-haired girl gently gathered up the body that had folded against her.
Then—for an instant—the girl’s eyes turned this way.
In that flash my heart kicked.
Her pupils were too red, redder than blood. I felt as if my soul had been shot through.
Instinct was shouting that this was a being I must not meet.
And, belatedly—further in, beyond where the two of them were holding each other, was there not a blood-soaked corpse lying on the ground?
It was not a hallucination.
Yes. After all. That was a murderer. The culprit had been a vampire.
—I was already running.
I was worn out from crying, but I ran anyway, desperate to put even a little more distance between myself and the park.
I entered the apartment building and pressed the elevator button, and when it was slow in coming I grew impatient and took the stairs.
The room was on the fourth floor.
I was out of breath before I reached it. The muscles in my thighs were stretched tight.
With shaking hands I gripped the key, fitted it, turned it, and slipped inside.
I locked the door at once.

“Hah, hah, hah . . .”

Not yet. I could not feel safe yet.
On legs that would not move properly I went into the bedroom almost on all fours and burrowed into the bedding that still held Kyoko’s smell.
The real corpse, and the girl’s red eyes, were burned into my memory.
Shaking my head did not seem likely to erase them.

“Kyoko . . . why aren’t you here, Kyoko . . .”

I called the name of the person I loved, desperately.
I was trying to drive out the bad memory by recalling her face.
While I was at it, exhaustion took me, and I fell asleep without noticing.

 

◇◇◇

 

When I woke, it was morning.
The boxed lunch I had bought at the convenience store had been thrown on the floor as it was.
I crawled out of bed and picked it up—and my stomach growled.
I had eaten nothing since the day before. Of course I was hungry.
I went into the living room. Kyoko still had not come home.
Today was a work day.
My hair was a mess and my eyes were raw; I looked awful, but I could not take the day off.
I still had time. I would try to cover it with makeup somehow.
First, in any case, I had to fill my stomach—thinking that, I put the lunch in the microwave and sat in a chair to watch television while I waited.
The news was on again.

“I am now near the park where one of the new bodies discovered last night was found—”

The landscape on the screen was one I knew well.
The place where I had seen that girl yesterday.

“ . . . So it really happened.”

After a night I had almost been able to think it a dream, but if it was on the news, it was not.
That person had died.
Then what had become of the woman whose blood had been taken? I had never heard of a woman’s body turning up, and there had been no talk of anyone missing.
She might still be here.
She might have slipped into the town, pretending to be an ordinary human.
The thought made me unreasonably afraid. I had always assumed something like this could never involve me; suddenly it felt close.
Out of fear I snatched up my phone.
If it was Kyoko—if I could only hear her voice—I ought to feel calm at once.
I was about to call—and I stopped.
What if she chose that moment to end it?
What if a crack opened in us that could not be repaired?
That, probably, was more frightening than my dying.
If it came to that, being caught up in a murder would be far better.
Beep, beep, beep.
The microwave chimed. The food was already warm.
I put the phone away and took my first meal in a day.

 

◇◇◇

 

At work that day all sorts of people worried when they saw my face, but I managed to get through it.
Then the way home.
When I looked up at the dark sky, yesterday’s memory returned, and the fear came with it.
I could not bear it. In the end I contacted Kyoko.
She was probably already back at the apartment.

“What’s wrong? It’s about time you’d be heading home, isn’t it?”

Hearing her voice on the line, my heart, which had gone quite cold, recovered its heat all at once.
I understood it.
I really could not do without this person.

“I just wondered what you were doing.”
“Mm . . . I was smoking.”

My faint hope broke at once.

“Huh? W-wait, didn’t you quit?”
“I felt like it. What’s the problem?”

There was a problem.
There was every problem.
She had quit because, when I was in high school, I had said I disliked the smell when we kissed.
Back then I had been so happy she would go that far for me that I had rolled around on my bed after I got home.
And now even that—
I felt like crying again.
But I was still in front of my workplace. Crying here would be a mistake.
I clenched the fabric at my chest and somehow held on.
Ah, but I hated this. I hated it.
Why, when I was trying, when I liked Kyoko this much, were we still drifting apart little by little?

“ . . .”
“Ruka?”
“I-it’s . . . nothing. I’m hanging up.”
“No, wait. You had some actual business, didn’t you?”
“I just—a little—really—only wanted to hear your voice.”
“ . . .”

There was no reply. Silence.
Was it all right to hang up now? Going on any longer hurt.

“ . . . Hah.”

I heard Kyoko’s breath.
It sounded like a sigh. I thought she was exasperated with me, and my chest squeezed again.
But it seemed to mean something other than what I had thought.

“Ruka, are you really all right? Should I come get you?”
“Ah . . .”

It was a kind Kyoko voice I had not heard in a truly long time.
The Kyoko voice I loved.
I had thought I might never hear it again, and tears spilled at once.

“I-I’m fine. You’re tired too . . . right!”
“You don’t have to hold back over something this small. I’ll bring the car right now.”
“I’m not holding back. I’ll be home soon. Don’t go to sleep—wait for me!”
“ . . . Heh. All right. I’ll wait.”

When I got back, Kyoko was waiting outside the building. The moment I saw her face I threw myself against her chest.
She held me properly, too.
That day’s Kyoko was kind even after we went inside, kind enough to remind me of the old days, and I was able to cling as much as I liked.
But I knew.
She had been kind only that day. It was nothing more than pity.
A mere palliative.
We would go back to how we had been, and we would keep drifting.
Little by little, an end would come into view.
An irreversible one. Probably the end of my life.

 

◇◇◇

 

Another week passed after that.
I finished my Sunday shift, stopped at a building on the way, and went up to the roof.
Today had been a wretched showing.
Worse than last week, in my face, in my feelings, in my body.
How many mistakes had I made? Everyone had worried each time.
I hated it. I was only holding people back.
Looking back, I must have been nothing but a burden to Kyoko as well, an obstacle all along.
Someone that wonderful would not be left alone by men, either.
Twenty-nine was already too late.
She ought to have married much earlier, had children, and become far happier.

What’s this?

I should not have noticed.
If I had not, I could have gone on dreaming a little longer.
But yesterday I had found the envelope Kyoko had brought back from her parents’ the week before, and I had asked.
So it was over.

Ah, that’s . . .

Kyoko hedged. I had a bad feeling.
I was not deft enough to look away without asking, so I stayed quiet and waited for her words.
Then she spoke, as if it hurt.

A matchmaking photo. Mother insisted, so I agreed to go this time.

Once she had put it into words, the rest seemed easy.
Smoothly, as if she had prepared it, Kyoko laid out a death sentence.

I’m not getting any younger. It’s about time I married and settled down.
Well, it’s true more of my friends have gotten married and had children.
I thought maybe I ought to start thinking about that sort of thing too.

About time—what did that mean?
Ought to—what did that mean?
If her friends were doing it, why did she have to copy them?
What had I—been?

Why . . . why would you take a thing like that when I’m here?
We’re both adults. You understand that much, don’t you?
I don’t, I don’t! I want to stay together forever. I want to be your lover until I die!

Hearing my desperate words, she spoke as if she were tired of me.

I don’t dislike you, Ruka, but spending our whole lives together—at my age, I can’t dream that kind of dream.

It was not a dream.
It was not a dream at all.
If the feeling was there, that alone should have been enough to make it real.
In the end I understood that Kyoko’s heart was already gone from me.
That day I tottered to the bedroom, fell onto the bed, and slept as I was.
When I woke the next morning, Kyoko had gone out, though it was Sunday.
Going to work, said the note left on the table, and nothing else.
Even then I meant to go dutifully to my job. I hated my own sense of ethics, just that once.

And—that brought me to now.
I do not think I need to explain why I had gone out of my way to a roof this high.
A world without Kyoko had no meaning.
My parents had already divorced. The people who called themselves my friends did not actually interest me. At university, at work, there was no one who would support me in Kyoko’s place.
I had become alone.
After being made to know, to a sickening degree, how sweet it was to lean on someone else, I had been weakened and then thrown away.
It was all right now, wasn’t it?
Yes. It was all right.
No one would grieve anyway, and I would not be sad, so goodbye, world that would not love me—

“Life is a precious thing. It’s a waste to throw it away so easily.”

A voice came from behind me as I put my hands on the fence.
There had been no presence a moment before.
I turned in a hurry, saw the girl, and—forgetting even to breathe—opened my eyes in shock.

“We met eyes the other day, didn’t we?”
“You are . . .”
“Formerly human, presently a Demi-Vamp. Chigusa Hinata. A pleasure.”

The girl who named herself Chigusa smiled with a friendliness I would not have expected from a murderer.
Seeing it, my heart tried of its own accord to drop its guard.
No. Absolutely not. I must not let someone like this in.

“Please don’t be so wary. I have no intention of killing you.”
“Then the one who was dead in the park that time really was . . .”
“Yes. I killed him.”

Chigusa said it readily, without a shred of guilt.
I shuddered.
At the same time, I understood.
She probably did not think killing a man was a bad thing.
That was what a Demi-Vamp was.

“That hardly matters, does it?”

Of course it mattered. A person had died.
But Chigusa, at least, meant it.
It would be better not to provoke her carelessly. I would play along for now.

“More to the point, let us talk about you.”
“Me?”
“Yes. First, please tell me your name.”

I thought it would be dangerous to refuse.
So although I did not really want to, I gave her my name.

“Ruka Kitaya.”
“I see. Ruka, then. Why were you about to jump from here and die?”
“Because . . . the person I love stopped wanting me.”
“A shock, certainly, but to try to die—you must have loved that person a great deal.”

That was something I no longer needed confirmed.
I had thought it was my first and last love.
I had wanted it to be.

“If you don’t mind, would you tell me the details?”

Honestly, I did not have to accept so meekly.
But I did not know what she would do if I refused, and besides, I was going to die anyway.
In that case, vampire or not, I might as well spit it all out.

I talked.
From meeting Kyoko, to becoming lovers, to living together, to the happy life, to arriving here.
Chigusa listened as if she cared.
Other people’s love affairs ought to have been nothing but dull, and still she missed not a word, her ear fully given.

“ . . . A little late to say so, but your lover was a woman.”
“Yeah. That’s right.”
“And you are twenty, Kyoko twenty-nine. From what I’ve heard, I don’t see a problem on your side. So the cause is age, after all?”
“Kyoko said so too. That she’s a grown woman now, that it’s about time she got married.”
“Tiresome, isn’t it? That sort of human entanglement.”

I truly thought so.
Vampires seemed free of it. It looked easy.
No . . . vampires might have their own troubles.

“Any age is fine. Why isn’t it all right to live with me?”
“Human logic would not allow it, I suppose. The older people grow, the more they begin to deny emotional action.”
“You mean becoming an adult?”
“You could also say becoming a coward.”

Did being with me take that much courage?
I was confident, though.
I was sure I could make Kyoko happy.
But it would not work that way, I supposed. That was human common sense.
Human common sense.
Human—

“Hey, Chigusa. Can I ask something?”
“What is it?”
“The woman you were drinking from in the park that time. What happened to her? Did she die?”
“I would not let her die. She is living happily with the one she loves now, as a Demi-Vamp like me.”

Hearing that, a devilish thought began to sprout in me.
If it was human common sense that had made Kyoko break with me, that had led me toward ruin—

“Why do you kill men?”
“Because they are unnecessary. To love one another, to have children, for everything—isn’t it enough if there are only women?”

What we needed was surely what counted as nonsense to humans.
A childish, emotional love that would smash through reason if it had to.

“If—if, say . . .”

I swallowed. My throat moved.
What was I about to say?
I ought to have ignored Chigusa and jumped, much earlier.
For Kyoko’s sake, that was what I should have done.
I was terribly selfish. I talked about loving her and had not considered her circumstances in the slightest. In short—I was about to betray her.
All of it.
Everything we had piled up.
But it could not be helped, could it?
Because . . . I had always wanted to keep piling it up as it was. I had not wanted it broken.
In that case, cheating to put it back the way it was—that was only natural.

“If I said I wanted you to drink my blood and make me a vampire, would you do it, Chigusa?”

At my question, Chigusa smiled in a way that sent a chill through me.
She came a step closer, then another, and said,

“Of course. We welcome you, Ruka.”

I had been welcomed.
There was no running now. I was about to stop being human in order to have Kyoko.
She put her mouth still closer to my ear and whispered.

“There is nothing to fear. You need only surrender yourself. There will be no pain and no suffering. All of it is simply, purely pleasant.”

Good. I had not wanted it to hurt.
But . . . unpaid pleasure surely did not exist in this world.
Some price would have to be paid.
In this case, what I offered would be my life as a human, I supposed.
Ah, what should I do. I could not imagine it at all.
What did it feel like, becoming a vampire?

 

◆◆◆

 

Two days had passed.
Two days already since Ruka had not come home.
Empty cans of chu-hai were rolling around the living room. It was filthy enough to make me laugh: only two days without her, and it had come to this.
I had left everything to her.
Ruka had apparently felt guilty that I paid the rent and the food, but that was wrong.
Without that girl, I could not do anything.
If I got promoted further and my salary went up, I even wanted to keep her as a housewife.
And yet . . . knowing that, I . . .

Vrrrrr—

The phone on the table vibrated.
The display showed my boss’s name, waiting for me to pick up.
I grabbed it and threw it at the wall, taking it out on the thing.

“Shut uuuup!”

It bounced, hit the floor, and went under a shelf.
Even then it kept buzzing, loud.
I had skipped work without notice, so of course my boss was furious.
But I did not care.
Let them suspend me. Let them fire me. Whatever they liked.
Ruka was gone, Ruka was gone, Ruka was gone, Ruka was gone!
Ah, damn it. I had understood. I had known. Why was I suffering like this anyway!

I had liked her. The whole time.
From the moment we met I had thought this girl was my fate.
Even though we were both women, even though she was so much younger, it could not be anyone but her.
So—it might have been disgusting—I started going to the park every day, waiting in a fidget, wondering when Ruka would come.
But I had not had the courage to confess.
I was a working adult. She was a high-school student.
It was fairly criminal, you know. I had thought it would be better to watch her grow up as she was.
And then.
Ruka was the one who confessed.
Her face bright red, fidgeting, so dear I wanted to shout it on the spot, telling me she liked me.
I thought I was dreaming.
Could anything this convenient exist? Was someone like me allowed this kind of happiness?
And when I said yes, Ruka cried with joy.
I was the one who wanted to cry, damn it. I did not, because I was the adult.
No. That’s a lie.
I think my eyes were wet.
That was how much of a peak it was.

While we were together, Ruka was always so full of spirits.
Every time I saw her I thought, is this girl an angel?
A kiss made her happy. When I found the courage to draw her down, she only laughed. She even said that as long as it was me, she would be glad of anything.
The truth was that I wanted far more than I had any right to want from a girl still in high school.
I wanted her under my roof. Close. Every day.
So I wanted her where I could keep her.
I already knew her home was a problem, so as soon as her university acceptance was decided I went to her and asked her to live with me.
Honestly, I was quite afraid she would refuse.
Jumping straight to living together was too high a hurdle, and too heavy.
But—she said yes at once.
And on top of that, Ruka cried with joy again!
Do you understand how happy that is?
The person I love most in the world is glad to be liked by me, and looks at no one but me!?
With that happiness alone I could do anything.
I thought I was invincible, then.

After that we began living together and passed days that seemed to have nothing to do with a slump. Ruka liked me, and I liked Ruka—
I was trying to play the adult woman, putting on a cool front, so I could not often be the one to ask for her. Even so, she would come to me now and then.
Every time I felt that she liked me too, I wanted to thank God.
But—the more I liked her, the more I also wanted to resent God.

I was a woman.
Ruka was a woman too.
Compared with the old days, the treatment of people who loved the same sex had softened, but that did not mean everyone would accept it.
I thought that was natural. You could shout about common sense and rights, but people could not make children unless they were a man and a woman, and that was ordinary.
However loudly you cried out, there would be people who disliked it.
I had no right to force a change in those people’s values.

And what I came up against was a reality too sad.
That no matter what I did, I might not be able to make Ruka happy.
For example, a handsome celebrity on television.
For example, a well-featured man we passed in town.
Those would make Ruka far happier than someone like me.
When I thought that, being with her suddenly felt like a mistake.
No—it probably really was a mistake.

So—I thought I ought to break up with her.

I did not match Ruka.
Even setting aside that we were the same sex, the gap between her worth and mine was heaven and earth.
If I wished for her happiness, I had to release her from the curse called me as soon as possible, and send her to someone better made.
I thought that from the bottom of my heart.
There are times when you have to step back because you love someone.
I forced myself to be cold to Ruka, hurt her while nausea rose in me, and even went as far as that impossible talk of a matchmaking meeting.
The man in the photograph my mother had given me would, I suppose, have counted as a good catch by ordinary standards.
But the truth was I had not a scrap of interest, and I could not imagine marrying him even a little.

And—as a result, Ruka had not come back to the room.
That was what I had wanted, so it should have been fine, but haha, once it actually happened it was not that simple.
Where had she gone? A friend’s house? Did she even have a friend close enough to put her up?
Even then, would she run away empty-handed, leaving her wallet and everything else?
Ruka liked me too. Setting aside the degree, I had never doubted that the feeling itself existed.
What was I going to do if this was suicide?
Ah, right, there were mass murders in this town now.
What was I going to do if a murderer had killed her?
I would die.
The guilt, yes, and I could not stand a world without Ruka.
Of course I would die.
And in the next world she would curse me and beat me to pieces, and I would apologize myself hoarse, and still not be forgiven.
Of course.
Someone like me had hurt Ruka, who was surely the most beautiful, dearest angel in this world.

“Ruka . . . I’m sorry. But this was all I could think of. For you to be happy . . .”

I knew it was self-serving.
None of it had gotten through to her. I was only hurting her, meaninglessly.
But see, I’m an idiot.
I’m not as grown as Ruka thinks, and the truth is I’m the type who wants to spoil and be spoiled until I go to ruin.
I don’t know my place. I know I’m a worthless human being, and I still became her lover, so I’m a complete fool.
I couldn’t think of anything else, and after hurting her so badly I still spin convenient fantasies, even though I did it myself.
Ruka is not coming back.
It’s all too late, because I did it myself.
But maybe she will come back.
Even after I hurt her that much, she likes me enough not to hate me, and she might cling and say, please don’t throw me away.

Heh. Heh heh heh. Ahahahaha.

It makes me sick, doesn’t it.
What is that. Too convenient. Die.
I’m a piece of trash. Better she never come back to someone like this, Ruka.
I can’t make her happy.
I can’t, someone like me can’t make Ruka happy!
I already know that!
Then if you know, give up! Just give up! You, you, you—!

“Nngh . . . aaaaaah!”

I folded my knees on the sofa, curled up, and clawed at my head.
Hating yourself, loathing yourself, being able to kill yourself—if it were that easy, no one would have any trouble.
Desire is like that.
Even if reason understands that I am not worthy of Ruka, I still want her.
Let me hear her voice, let her smile, let her hold me, let her say she likes me—the wants kept welling up.
Give up already.
I have to give up.
Please give up.
Give up.
Give up, give up, give up.
I told myself so, desperately.
Then—

Clack.

I heard a key turn.
My body jerked.

“You’re . . . kidding.”

The only person with a spare key was Ruka.
So the only person who would open it ought to be Ruka.
I must not be glad.
If I pushed her away now, she would surely be free of me.
The joy welling up would not stop. Tears spilled in broken drops, as if the murky black feeling I had stored in my chest were running out.
Ruka was there. She had come home.
That joy alone overrode every negative feeling and drove me.
Before I knew it I was on my feet, running for the entrance.
I stopped in front of the opening door.
The knob turned. A thin gap let in cold air, and then, and then—beyond it, Ruka was standing.
I had talked about giving up. I had pushed her away myself. And the moment I saw her, warmth spread through my whole chest.

“Rukaaaaa!”

I could not hold back.
On impulse, shouting her name, I threw both arms around that soft, warm body and held on with all my strength.

 

◆◆◆

 

Kyoko would probably not be in the room at this hour on a weekday.
I would go back before she came home and wait for her.
Then, the moment she returned, I would bind her arms and legs with the power of “shadows” Lady Chigusa had given me.
Once she could not run, I would take her to the bedroom, pin her, charm her, and drink.
She was only human. She had no way to resist a Demi-Vamp’s power.
The plan would work.
I would never let her go. Kyoko would love me for life, forever.
I would not permit any other future.
She would surely try to run from me now that I was a monster. Even when I was human she had tried to throw me away; there was no way she would accept me in this body.
I would use any means. I did not care if I had to hurt her.
I had steeled myself that far.
But—

“Rukaaaaa!”

The instant I opened the door, what was waiting was Kyoko, her eyes swollen red from crying.

“Eh . . . ?”

I had not thought she would be in the room at all, and even if she had been I had not thought she would embrace me at once, so I completely forgot to use my shadows and stood there like a stick.
Her arms clamped around me hard enough to hurt.

“Ruka, I’m sorry! I was doing something awful! I was hurting you past any taking back! I’m sorry, I’m sorry, you probably won’t forgive me no matter how many times I say it, but I’m truly sorry!”
“Um . . . Kyoko?”

I had no idea what I was being apologized to for.

“I couldn’t do it after all, leaving you. I knew perfectly well someone like me couldn’t make you happy! And still, and still . . . I’m sorry, tying you down when I’m like this. But I want to be together. Without you, Ruka, I can’t . . . I can’t go on . . . !”

. . . It couldn’t be.
That?
Kyoko had been trying to leave me over that?
Then what had these two days been for—

“You don’t have to forgive me. I know I deserve to be thrown away like this. For all I know you came back to tell me it’s over.”
“I could never! Do you have any idea how much I like you? I have no one but you! I can’t like anyone but you!”
“Ruka . . .”
“Why are you crying? I’m the one who wants to cry. I thought you’d thrown me away and I was going to die! I thought you’d thrown me away, so I quit being human!”
“ . . . Hn?”

So I had been spinning my wheels alone.
What had she meant to do if I had died as I was? Would she have died with me?
If we could have been together in heaven that would have been all right too, but ghosts might not be able to touch.
I did not want that.
Not being able to touch Kyoko would be far worse than going to hell.

“Wait, Ruka. Just now . . . what did you say?”
“I told you, I thought you’d thrown me away, so I quit being human! I became a Demi-Vamp!”
“ . . . ? Demi . . . what? Eh, eh, what does that mean? Quitting being human—is that a figure of speech?”

Ah. Right.
Kyoko did not know anything.

“It means exactly that.”
“Wait, Ruka. Even as confused as I am, I’m not going to believe a story like that.”
“Hey, Kyoko. Have you heard this rumor?”

I stepped back from her body for a moment, put my feelings in order, and began to speak slowly, calmly.

“That the mass murders lately are a vampire’s work.”
“That’s a rumor going around online. An occult thing like vampires couldn’t actually exist.”
“Right. But it was true. These two days I was with a murderer—no. A vampire.”

Then I grinned.
Deliberately showing the fangs, sharpened to points.

“What’s with those canines . . . it’s true they weren’t that pointed before. But isn’t that dangerous when we kiss?”
“They’re not dangerous except when I drink blood. See.”
“Whoa, they went round! An ordinary human couldn’t do that. Which means, truly, actually . . .”
“Yeah. I became a vampire.”

When I said it outright—

“ . . .”
“ . . .”

Kyoko fell silent looking at me, and I was drawn into silence too.
We stayed like that, staring at each other, for about ten seconds. Then Kyoko spoke, looking troubled.

“ . . . Looking closely, your eyes have gone red too.”
“That’s what happens when you become a vampire, apparently.”
“I see . . . so, having become a vampire, what were you going to do with me?”
“There’s a power called charm. I thought if I had that, you wouldn’t throw me away and you’d stay with me. It all turned out to be wasted, though. Ehehe.”

It was ruined enough to make me laugh in spite of myself, but that was fine.
If Kyoko still liked me, that was the best thing.

“Ehehe, she says . . . why is this child so dear, honestly.”
“You’re saying things you would never have said before . . .”
“That’s how I always felt, honestly. I’ve already shown you the disgrace of clinging and crying. There’s no need to force an adult act anymore.”

She had thought that. I see. She had thought that of me.
It was embarrassing, but it made me glad.
When I put both hands to my cheeks, they were warmly hot.

“Well, murderers and so on—there are plenty of things I’d like to ask—but if you’re safe, nothing else matters.”
“But what now? I came back to make you a vampire, and if you aren’t throwing me away, I don’t need to.”
“Me?”
“Yeah. Then we can be together forever, and it won’t feel strange that we’re both women, and we can even have a child, you and I!”
“Is that true?”
“The tradeoff is that men start looking like garbage, but that’s fine, right!”
“Garbage . . . ah, is that why the victims were all men?”
“That’s right. We don’t need them, do we?”

Kyoko was smiling wryly.
Had I said something odd?
I liked only Kyoko, so men had been unnecessary from the start, and whether they lived or died did not matter. I thought that was ordinary.

“ . . . So that’s what it means to quit being human. Well, I’m the type who doesn’t care about the rest as long as I have you, so I suppose that’s all right.”

Kyoko was muttering something in a small voice.
I did not understand it well, so I tilted my head.
Then her hand came down lightly on my head.

“If it’s a path you chose because you thought of me, I’ll accept anything.”
“Does that mean I can drink your blood?”
“So long as it doesn’t end with you drinking and me dying.”
“That will absolutely not happen! And it doesn’t hurt. It feels really good!”
“Feeling good while you’re being bitten is frightening in its own way . . .”

I could more or less understand how she felt.
I had been the same at first.
I had been afraid, my whole body stiff, but once the fangs went through the skin, heat flooded me, my vision flickered, and it felt good enough that a sound came out before I could stop it.
Kyoko would understand too, when the time came.

“So, what first? If you were going to drink right away . . . you wouldn’t have needed to wait two days.”
“I have to pour my power into you, so we might have to stay in contact for about a day.”
“I see. In other words, we just have to cling to each other all day. Then let’s go to the bedroom at once.”
“Yeah!”

Kyoko was quick to understand. That helped.
And so, as we had when we were still human lovers, we went toward the bedroom with our arms linked.
It was nothing like the development I had expected, but as long as Kyoko was with me, anything was fine.

“Come to think of it, what happens to university and work if you become a vampire? Well, in my case, two days of unexcused absence already looks bad.”
“You took off?”
“I was too worried about you to think of anything else. I brought it on myself, though.”
“Nfufu. I see. You were worried about me.”

It was probably not a laughing matter, but I was glad.
She had thrown aside important work to worry about me.
Talking, we went into the bedroom and sat side by side on the bed.

“You’d like to graduate from university, wouldn’t you? You studied so hard to get into a national school because you had some dream.”
“If it’s a dream, it’ll come true, so I don’t mind.”
“Is that so?”
“My dream was to go into the same industry as you, and if I was lucky, the same company.”

Hearing that, she stopped moving for an instant, then sighed and hung her head.
But there was a smile mixed into the expression.

“Don’t tell me that’s why you chose the same department I was in?”
“That’s it.”
“How did you keep quiet all this time?”
“If I said it, I thought you’d decide I’d changed my path because of you and feel guilty.”
“Ugh, that’s true . . . if it hadn’t come to a situation like this, the guilt might have crushed me.”

Looking at her smile now, though, she did not seem to be writhing under a sense of sin.
The entanglements of the human world that bound us were fading, steadily.
That alone made quitting being human worth it.

“Well, I don’t think we need to worry about work or university. Vampire power will take care of it, I bet.”
“Like magic.”
“They said it is magic, itself. So time, money, sex—all of it can be arranged however we like. You only have to think about me now, Kyoko.”

It was a story to take with a grain of salt.
Without seeing the real thing, I would not have believed it either.

“It’s hard to believe all at once, but if you say so, I suppose it’s true. Well, I don’t care about the logic. If I can be with you, I’ll follow you anywhere, hell or heaven.”

Saying so, Kyoko put her hand to my cheek.
Her face came closer.
I narrowed my eyes on reflex.

“So—take me to that side however you like, Ruka.”

Kyoko, wearing a fearless smile, was cool after all.
I had seen any number of beautiful women who had been changed into vampires and called companions, but wherever I went, first place belonged only to Kyoko.
Our lips met.
With that as the signal, the rite that vowed our forever began.

 

◆◆◆

 

Chigusa and Ellis were watching the two of them in secret from the roof of the building across the way.
The pair stood close, shoulders touching.
When Kyoko pushed Ruka down and the affair began, Ellis opened her mouth.

“Sister, doesn’t this feel kind of off?”
“In what way?”
“It’s not the development I expected. From what I heard beforehand, I thought that Kyoko woman would refuse Ruka with everything she had, and then we’d get a flow where Ruka pinned her by force . . .”

What Ellis saw was Ruka fallen on the bed, her expression melting as Kyoko stroked her chin.

“She’s a cat in two senses!”
“If she herself looks happy, isn’t that enough?”
“Hmm, but a Demi-Vamp being the one a human takes . . .”
“It isn’t only a matter of whose body is stronger. And unlike the great majority, these two were already lovers, so they must have had fixed roles.”

Becoming a Demi-Vamp did not mean becoming someone else.
You remained the self you had been as a human, and changed only enough to live a happier life.
Precisely because it did not rewrite everything, Chigusa thought, there was value in spreading it.

“Well. Any further rubbernecking would be in poor taste.”
“It really does feel like a world of just the two of them. If we got in the way we’d get kicked by a horse.”

They had the strength to kick even that horse, but that was not the point.

“Yes. So let us go to the next one soon.”
“Huh? You already have a next? What kind of person?”
“I have a lead on the one who spread the rumor that the culprit is a vampire.”
“Ah, that wasn’t just a wild guess?”
“They seem to have been quite sure. A rather troublesome opponent. Even using shadows, identifying a post routed through overseas is difficult.”
“The net, you mean? I don’t really get that stuff.”

Talking, they moved to the middle of the roof.
Then shadows wrapped the two of them, and the next instant they were gone.
In order to make the people of the world happy, they continued their work in the dark today as well.
And at the same time, they went on building a mountain of corpses beyond counting.