Ex8-3. Welcome to a Wonderful World Full of Love

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/69/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

In other words, I was a substitute for Mother in Father’s eyes.
And for Mother I was the accursed existence that had brought her relationship with Father to an end.
A child shunned by the parents who gave birth to her cannot fail to warp.
I do not intend to push all the responsibility onto them, but that they were involved in some portion of it is not something that can be denied.

“Even so, you’re the one at fault. You killed Ryotaro. You tore me and Ryotaro apart. If only you had never been born, this would never have happened!”

Bound at the limbs on the bed, she flung that at me with a face full of malice.
Even so she denied it, and refused me, Mother.
Words like sludge settled on a riverbed, ugly enough that the former me would have had her heart broken by them.
But I, who had obtained backing that called to mind a boys’ manga—love and strength and courage and companions—could only hear it as bluster.
A show of strength, to cover the agitation of being told of Father’s death and having her lips taken by her daughter.

“…What. What are you laughing at…”
“No. Only that a mother who once looked so large now looks very small.”

Rather than that I have grown, I should say I have been transformed.
An existence that was a threat is now, before me, only one frail woman.
Thinking so, I suddenly found her dearer than before.
In a human body I would have been captive only to hatred; as a Demi-Vamp I can love even a parent like this.
Wanting Mother to understand that wonder as well, I stroked her throat with a fingertip as I spoke.

“With only a little pressure of a nail, I could kill you, Mother.”
“—”

Slide a finger under the thin skin, pierce the flesh, snip an artery.
That is all the simple motion I would need to take Mother’s life.

“But I will not. I have been reborn, and I have become far kinder than I was. Kind enough to cherish even a parent who is trash like you.”
“Re…born?”
“Yes. I became a vampire.”

So saying, I lifted the corner of my mouth with a forefinger and showed her a sharply pointed fang.
Mother, who had no image of vampires except as imaginary monsters, wore a blank face.

“Are you out of your mind?”
“Whether you accept this fact or not is all the same to me, Mother. The result will not change. From now on I will use magical power to charm you. You will forget Father and come to love only me.”
“Th-that’s…”

Impossible—every human in this world decides so.
Even seeing the shadows that bind her own limbs, she will not admit the existence of an unrealistic power.
Only when she experiences it in her own person does she recognize it, and by then it is already too late.
Mother will be no exception, I suppose.
Even while we are in contact like this, my magical power is being poured into her, and her heart is being drawn little by little toward me.

“At first it is only a tiny discomfort. Being touched by me like this—do you feel something, Mother?”

When I stroked Mother’s cheek, she glared at me after a slight pause.

“…Only how disgusting it is.”
“Kuskuskus. Yes. Only. Indeed.”

She truly has not noticed, I suppose.
But the slight time lag in her reply itself indicates a change in her mind.
The Mother who rejected me by reflex is already gone.
My soul, if only a few millimeters of the surface, is already beginning to enter the inside of hers.
I will knead it, stir it, and have her gasping before long.

After that I spent several tens of minutes with my hand still on Mother’s cheek, looking at her from close range.
In the warmth at my fingertips and palm, and in the feel of skin roughened by irregular living, I felt not the slightest nostalgia.
I seem to recall hearing that children held by their mothers when small all remember their early years in that warmth.
As I thought, stories heard from others about growing up without being given affection are not to be relied on.

She had been glaring at me, but as the wordless time continued the force of her hatred waned little by little and burned lower.
What surfaced next was “anxiety.”
Toward me, whose feelings could not be read at all, Mother’s mask of bluster began to peel, and fear gradually showed on her face.
Does magical power truly exist? Is it overthinking, this sense that Ryotaro’s presence is thinning in her heart?
Such thoughts went round and round in her head; a negative spiral stirred feelings of every color and dyed them black.

Still more time passed.
Mother was frightened, her complexion a little drained of color.
I treated such a her with affection: I set cheek against cheek, and dropped kisses that were only a touch, again and again.
At first Mother had frowned at every kiss, but whether she had grown used to it or had come to find it not entirely unwelcome, the feelings that rose were no longer only ones of disgust.
As that sort of closeness was repeated, the color returned to Mother’s cheeks.
Further, passing skin-color, they even took on a faint pink—
In the palm against her skin I could feel, faintly but clearly, the rise in temperature and the blood beginning to circulate more actively.

“I love you, Mother. I love you very much.”

Had the words I uttered after so long soaked into Mother’s heart.
Faced with affection thrown at her directly, she looked away.
She was shy.
At her daughter’s confession of love, she neither admonished nor recoiled, but was ashamed.

“I want to be closer to you still. Mother—may I kiss you?”
“You’ve been doing it plenty already…”
“I want you to say ‘all right,’ Mother. Is that too selfish?”

At the wheedling of a cute daughter, Mother could not help breaking into a smile, and she gave a wry look as if to say, it cannot be helped—then the next instant her eyes went wide, as if she had remembered something.
Nine times out of ten, it was Father.
A close thing. If she had said the kiss was all right just now, I might have made her captive as we were.

“Chigusa. You’re serious. You’re seriously… trying to take Ryotaro from inside me?”
“I said so, didn’t I. My beloved Mother.”

Mother glared at me as I touched her hair, as if we had returned to the starting line.
But it goes without saying that those eyes no longer held the force they had at first.
She can no longer hate me completely.
Just as I could not obtain complete happiness because of my classmates and my parents, any hatred is attended by a sweet affection.
In a half-finished state, that can only feel like an unpleasant presence.
To save Mother from such a situation as well, I must complete the charm.

“You monster. I knew I shouldn’t have given birth to you.”
“Even so, the one who opened herself to a man she did not know, conceived me on a whim, and dropped me into this rotten world is you, Mother.”
“I never meant to make a child! I didn’t want to give birth either!”

I will end up repeating similar words, but opening yourself like that and then being so irresponsible.
To have practiced contraception so poorly and then say you never meant to make a child—even Father, who loved you blindly, would not be convinced by such an excuse.

“I did not want to be born either.”

Immediately after saying it, the memories of that painful time when I was human returned, and I bit my lower lip.
I had truly wanted to disappear.

“Well. That, too, is a story of the past now.”

But now I think I must live no matter what happens.
For Ellis and Mya-nee as well, and for the many other dear companions who love me.

“I don’t care what Chigusa thinks. I won’t have someone like you, who tore me and Ryotaro apart, steal what’s precious to me!”

I gave a bitter smile at a line that treated me as the villain, and reached for her cheek again.
At a glance the present Mother wears an expression as if she has a strong resolve, but such a thing is useless.

Through our clothes I set us close enough that our heartbeats tangled.
I hooked a leg as well; at the ticklishness of skin against skin, Mother’s throat moved.
She had perhaps decided she would not let a sweet voice out; her mouth remained a straight line.
Toward that mouth, which showed no sign of opening, I kissed two or three times, greeted it with a light touch as if to say, later, and began to kiss her ear.
When I traced the edge, Mother’s body trembled faintly and her temperature rose.
The response was not bad.
I continued the affection at her ear while throwing at her such straightforward fondness as “I love you” and “I love you very much.”
Mother’s flushed face, though the decline of skin appropriate to her years was visible, was nonetheless candidly lovely enough that I could think her “cute.”
Frankly, I wanted to hold her soon, and make her feel good without restraint.

“Hoo… hoo…”

Mother, too, seemed unable not to feel my affection, and was breathing hard through her nose.
I judged that the ear would yield no further response.
I descended the outline of her face, kissed her throat, and then loosened the neck of her clothes enough to kiss collarbone and the hollow there.
The softness against my lips was pleasant; I could not help lingering, and left a mark.

“—”

Fufufu. It seems you are having trouble holding your voice.

“U, uu… nn, ku…”

When I kissed her collarbone she squeezed her eyes still more tightly shut.
As if that would let her endure it.

“Ryo…taro…”

She went on calling the name of a father long dead, and was so pitiable, so ugly, that it stirred my wish to protect her.
I lifted my face from her chest, smiled with satisfaction at the red trace I had left, and this time took her right hand.
Of course I released the binding—and yet even when I kissed her forefinger, Mother showed no sign of putting force into her arm.
Apparently the option of “resisting by force” had dropped clean out of her head.

I took my time over her fingers, and Mother, startled, could not help opening her mouth.
I did not miss the sound that slipped out.

“Mother. That voice just now… let me hear more of it.”

Mother shook her head desperately in refusal.
Surely inside her head she was chanting like a prayer, over and over, Ryotaro, Ryotaro, Ryotaro.
But that she was desperate was also proof she was being driven into a corner.

“Mother. I love you. Let us love each other, you and I.”
“No, no, I don’t want to! Nn, ku, ah… haah, Ryotaro… help me, Ryotaro… nnah!”

In the first place I was only kissing her hand.
What made her try so hard.
That she should come apart from only that means, in other words, that she desires me that much, does it not.

“Your hand is all wet with me, Mother.”
“It’s dirty…”
“Then it will have to be cleaned with your mouth.”

I moved Mother’s saliva-damp hand to her own mouth.
Seeing it gleam, she ought originally to have felt disgust, even if it was her daughter’s.
What reared its head, however, was something entirely other than what I had imagined.
In her eyes now, what was on my hand must have looked like nectar.
The proof: see, the look with which she regards her own hand has gone slack, and she is steadily losing her sanity.
When it had come close enough to her mouth, Mother of her own will brought her lips near and put out her tongue.
I watched that, holding myself, my mouth crooked.
And at last Mother’s sense of taste—touched what clung to that hand of mine.

“Ah… aah…”

From Mother’s opened mouth a sound of wonder overflowed.
I would have liked to ask at once how it tasted, but first I wanted her to savor thoroughly what had come from my body.
Whether my wish reached her, she began more boldly to lick her own hand.

Each time, she was intoxicated, her body grew hot, and the glances she sent my way, now and then, looked like temptation; I could not endure it any longer.
I brought my face close, and through her fingers our mouths met.
Contact of that kind, for the first time since I was born.

Mother tangled with me of her own will, and I was at the peak of happiness.
I had fallen from her womb, after all; the lightning-like pleasure that ran over my whole body then may have been the body’s joy at being able to return to the place it ought to return to.
This had been the proper form. We ought to have done this much sooner.
Mother and I resonated through a fierce connection, and surely thought so at the same time.
Parent and child, even if they have been apart and on bad terms and hated each other, ought to love each other.
Realizing that, lamenting the unhappiness of the life until now, and vowing to walk the life from now on together.
As parent and child, like lovers, more like a married couple than a married couple.
Before I knew it Mother’s hand had vanished from between us and gone around my back.
Drawn in, we kissed deeply, confirming our love.
A fervent joining, as if to claim that from the beginning there had been no room for a filthy life named Ryotaro to enter.

The supreme pleasure, physical and spiritual, of Mother seeking my mouth, my tongue, myself.
Once I knew this I could not let it go.
In the instant our lips parted a little, Mother called “Chigusa” with, probably, more love than she had ever felt for me in her life until now, and for the first time thinking only of me.
I called in the same way, at last properly as a daughter—no, more than properly—loving Mother: “Mother.”
Yes, yes, yes. This is good.
Atonement by death is what males who can do nothing else and have no other value ought to do; a mother—a woman—must atone by loving each other, sharing happiness, and canceling unhappiness.
And I think this:
Surely this is a “How do you do, Mother.”
The tears flowing from being so moved are because my soul is crying that I have at last been born into this world.

“Anh… ha… Chigusa. I’m… sorry. To such a cute daughter, I did so many awful things, said so many awful things.”
“If you will love me, I will forgive it all. By the way, Mother. Father… do you still love him?”

As when I first pushed her down on the bed, I asked with both hands cupping Mother’s cheeks.
Then Mother said, with a motherly, gentle smile full of affection:

“Of course not. The one I love is my daughter Chigusa. Only you.”

That was probably the sentence I had been waiting for all my life until now.
If I had heard those words even once before I quit being human, my history—or humanity’s—might have changed.
But it is because it is now that I was able to obtain a happiness I could not have obtained in a human body.
So let us be grateful.
That the first time Mother loved me was today.

“Wasn’t it the human named Ryotaro Hinata that you loved?”

Glad, and getting carried away, I asked Mother further.
Then she laughed, “Fufu,” and said:

“Looking back now, I don’t know why I ever liked a man like that. Even though he isn’t even Chigusa’s parent, you know?”
“Yes… fufufu. That is how it ought to be. I am glad. My beloved Mother really was the finest mother in the world.”
“Being praised so much is embarrassing… Is there something you want?”
“Yes. There is.”

The Mark ought to have risen somewhere on her body.
If I removed her clothes I could confirm it, but I wanted to leave seeing Mother unclothed for later enjoyment.
For after I had taken everything and we had become parent and child in the true sense, and we twined flesh with flesh again.
So, first, let us begin from here.

“Please let me drink your blood. And I want you, Mother, to become a Demi-Vamp the same as I am.”

Mother wore a blank expression for an instant, then seemed to remember something.
She had probably forgotten that I had called myself a “vampire.”
Or she had not believed it in the least.
But in fact she had been charmed, and had cleanly forgotten her feelings for the father she had loved so blindly she could abandon her daughter without guilt, so she had no choice but to believe.

“I don’t really understand, but… if I can become the same as Chigusa, I want that too. What should I do? Is there something I need to prepare?”
“No. Stay as you are. If you would only tilt your neck a little.”
“Like this?”
“Yes. Thank you. The thought that I can finally drink Mother’s blood makes me shiver.”
“Me too… Thinking of my blood going into Chigusa makes my heart race.”

There was no sign of fear at the situation of losing blood.
Is this what is called a mother’s love.
The deep consideration that seemed to wrap me made me feel as if tears would overflow again.
But it is a precious drinking, and to savor the blood well I ought to be in a pleasant mood.
I held the tears down firmly and kissed Mother’s throat.
Mother held my head gently.
Wrapped in a kind warmth as if I had returned to the womb, I broke the skin—and sipped blood that smelled terribly of life.
And yet, thinking it was Mother’s, it tasted sweet.
Each time my throat sounded, I watched Mother’s skin grow white, her wrinkles fade and her youth return, her body grow fleshly, and I felt a delight close to a peak.

 

◆◆◆

 

When I returned to Japan there were several causes for anxiety.
For example, whether some unexpected tool that had not existed in the other world would become our weakness.
For example, whether modern weapons would, after all, be more than magic could match.
There were many other worries I had not even told Ellis and the others—

Before long, the existence of Demi-Vamps came to be recognized throughout Japan.
The appearance of monsters almost indistinguishable from humans in looks threw the country into an uproar.
A state of emergency was declared, other countries were asked for cooperation, even the military came out, and the matter grew larger and larger.
There was no way it could be stopped.
Whether they fired guns in desperation, bombed without permission, or as a last resort launched missiles, if we wound them in shadows and crushed them, it all came to nothing.
Institutions researching methods of distinguishing humans from Demi-Vamps were crushed as a priority, and by using women as spies, internal information leaked without limit.
Eventually humanity gave up resisting, surrendered, concluded an agreement that “if you do not leave the designated zones we will overlook you,” and then killed all the remaining men zone by zone—but that is of no consequence.

More than that.
What was important to me was that I was about to become a mother myself.
…In this case, would it be a father?
No. The very concept of father is disgusting merely by existing; it makes me remember that face.
Mother will do.
And so, though I am not the one who is pregnant, I am a mother.

“In this case, what does that make me? Mother? Or grandmother?”

Mother said this, stroking her large belly.
She wore a half-sheer maternity negligee and sat on the edge of the bed.

“Chiaki-san is pretty, so she doesn’t feel like a grandmother.”

Ellis, sitting beside her, her own belly similarly swollen, said this.

“We might as well lump us all together as Chii-chan’s brides. The children who are born will end up bearing Chii-chan’s children anyway.”

Further beside Ellis, Mya-nee, who was also pregnant, said this.

“That’s true too.”
“Even if we decide what to call each other, we’d probably lose track right away.”
“With six people to deal with, I worry whether Chii-chan’s body will hold out.”

It goes without saying that what the three of them were carrying were my children, and there was already less than a month until the births.
When I first introduced Mother, Mya-nee in particular had looked surprised, but now they were thoroughly at ease, the three expectant women getting along well.
When I was not there they seemed to comfort one another, in the name of prenatal care.
If they grew heated among themselves and left me out, I would even find myself jealous.

“Talk of holding the children is still too soon. First we have to think about looking after the babies.”

When I offered that mild complaint to their haste, Mother objected.

“Infancy is when they absorb knowledge fastest, so we need gifted education too, so they grow up as ours in every way, don’t we?”
“There is no need to go out of our way. I am confident I can train them once they are somewhat grown. Besides, they will be our children, so I do not think that is a worry.”
“It’s true Sister has a point…”
“Ahaha. Our heads today are only full of how to feel good, huh. Chii-chan’s and ours.”

Even now, in fact, merely sitting face to face and talking, their bodies had long since gone warm.

“Come to think of it, speaking of after they’re born—we talked about getting Chigusa pregnant next, but did you decide who goes first?”

We had said that, come to think of it.
I do want to try carrying the three of their children, but… even if I am told to choose someone.
Ellis, whom I first loved; Mya-nee, whom I have loved since I was small; Mother, with whom I have at last been joined.
There is no way I can rank them.
I groaned, “Nnn…,” as I worried, and the answer I arrived at in the end was, after all—

“I cannot choose anyone.”

It could be taken as indecision.
But it is a fact that I love the three of them equally, and I also think this:

“So it would be fine if the three of you loved me at the same time, poured into me, and the child born was everyone’s. We are going to have any number from now on, after all.”

Mya-nee said something similar, didn’t she.
Our time is equal to eternity, and if we love one another all the while, enough children ought to be born that we could found a school.
It is not a dream. It is a projection of a future that will be realized.
Because we need not think of falling out someday, or of desire vanishing, or of parting.
Unlike humans.

The clergy continue to give the children salvation and pleasure.
The sisters, now three, enjoy their play day by day while changing positions with one another.
The girl saved by the witch and the Demi-Vamps builds a household better than the ideal, surrounded by children.
The kind mother and her daughters continue their family circle without missing a day.
The classmates who admitted their wrongs and atoned live a fulfilling pet life.
In the other world, and in this Japan, and in the world, a feeling of thinking of people, once built, will never collapse a second time.
It is not a castle on sand. It is not an armchair theory.
The age of dismissing “eternal love” as an ideal, as a fairy tale, is over.
Because this is already not the world of humans.

“Fufu. Yes. Chigusa is right.”
“Then today we can make Sister come apart, yes?”
“Chii-chan complains every time, but she rather likes being done with as we please, doesn’t she.”

Heat entered their expressions, and they all put on alluring smiles.
At the carnal impulse directed at me I felt a shiver down the spine, the “joy of being wanted.”
Then I shed the clothes I wore and bared myself before my lovers—or my mates joined in soul.
Then, like planted carnivores, they all drew me in—and voices filled the room.
Not only us.
Every life permitted to exist in the world has changed into the same shape in the name of salvation, and continues to drown in a bottomless bog like melted sugar.

 

Today, too, the world is filled without exception with happiness—

 

This is the end. Thank you for staying with me to the last.