1. The Union of a Girl in Pieces and a Vampire

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/1/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

Continue reading →

2. I Discover My First Love in a Trash Heap

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/2/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

When I came to, I had returned to life and was lying in what looked like a garbage dump.
I noticed something strange the moment I stood up.
I could see through both eyes. I had all my fingers, too.
There were no scars on my body, nor any stiffness in my facial muscles.
What was more, my body felt unnaturally light, as though I were no longer myself.
I searched for something I might use as a mirror to inspect what had happened to me, but found nothing nearby.
With no other choice, I left the dump, passed through a place resembling a sewer, climbed a ladder, and emerged outside—
There I found a bleak townscape like the European slums depicted in my history textbooks.
Perhaps because the rain had just stopped, the air was thick with the smell of rotting food.
I climbed out through a manhole-like opening, instinctively found the sunlight beating down from above “unpleasant,” and retreated into the shade.
When I looked into a puddle there, I saw my reflection for the first time.
Though filthy, I had finely textured white skin like silk, red eyes, and sharp canine teeth.
My hair was still black, my face had not changed, and I was even wearing the same school uniform. And yet—had I always been this beautiful? The thought welled up inside me.
That would have been utterly impossible if I were still myself.
It seemed the change had reached not only my appearance, but my mind as well.

“I am…”

—Chigusa Hinata.
I clearly remembered that name, along with every memory of my life underfoot.
But my body was something else entirely.
In short, my conversation with the girl who called herself a vampire had not been a dream. It had truly happened.
She and I had become one, and in doing so, we had survived.
As a half-vampire.

So that was why I had instinctively avoided the sun. Satisfied with that explanation but still curious, I stepped out of the shade and into the sunlight once more.
It felt as though my skin were slowly scorching.
And yet there was not enough pain or injury to declare that “vampires are vulnerable to sunlight.”
Was that because I was half human, or were true vampires simply not as vulnerable to sunlight as the stories claimed?

“More importantly… where am I?” Continue reading →

3. The Girls’ Fatal Union

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/3/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

Dinner consisted of scraps scavenged from the town’s rubbish bins and misshapen vegetables of uncertain origin bought at the black market.
Perhaps because I had gone along to forage for food, Ellis laughed and said, “We found more than usual today.”
The moment we returned to her room, she happily began eating.
Strangely, I was not hungry, so I declined the meal and watched Ellis contentedly stuff her cheeks with vegetables.
Presently, she stopped eating and looked at me.
There was something oddly endearing about the gesture. When I smiled without thinking, Ellis’s cheeks reddened slightly, and she promptly resumed her meal.

“You look very happy when you eat.”
“Living like this every day, eating’s about the only pleasure I’ve got.”
“Life in the Discard District must be difficult.”

Light and shadow. Glory and decline.
The city of Groll, not far from the Discard District, was extraordinarily prosperous by comparison.
That said, its technology appeared to lag considerably behind that of modern Japan, so I suppose it would still be considered developing.
Its inhabitants could enjoy such abundance precisely because they turned their eyes from anything inconvenient and drove it into a forgotten corner.
But those things would continue to swell until the day came when they could no longer look away.
I sensed instinctively that this castle of accumulated refuse—the Discard District—was the shape that reckoning had taken.

“Still, are you sure you don’t want anything to eat, Chigusa? It helps me out, but still.”
“I do not mind. I never ate much to begin with. Missing a single meal does not trouble me.”
“And you’re that strong, too. Where in the world do you get the energy?”

I wondered the same thing, though I could feel something welling up from the very depths of my body.
Presumably, that was the force sustaining me now that I was half vampire.
But I did not know what it truly was.

“Ch-Chigusa, what’s gotten into you all of a sudden?” Continue reading →

5. Falling

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/5/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

 

After meeting up with Lyle, bringing our number to three, we continued along the fence until we stopped at a certain spot.
Here and only here, a hole had been opened in the fence.
I see. At last, I understood what they intended to do.
Going directly into the city to search would surely be more efficient than scavenging for scraps at the dump.
This fence had most likely been built to prevent the people of the Discard District from doing exactly that.

“Your name was Chigusa, right?”

Just before we crawled through the hole, Lyle spoke to me.

“You’re not from the Discard District, so you’ll be fine, but anyone can tell Ellis is from there just by looking at her clothes. If the guards find us, you run. No matter what. Got it?”
“Even if I could defeat them?”
“Don’t get too full of yourself. I don’t care how strong you are—you’re not beating an armed soldier.”

I did not feel that I would lose, but for now, I decided to nod obediently.
It would only be troublesome if he became suspicious of me.
And Ellis, please try not to glare at Lyle so much.
If he discovered the nature of our relationship, searching for food would become the least of our concerns.

Our conversation over, we got down on all fours, crawled through the hole, and emerged inside the city.
It was a back alley in every sense of the word. Perhaps there was a restaurant nearby, because several bags of rubbish had been left there.
Lyle immediately reached for one, undid the knot, and began rummaging through its contents.
There were even some nearly untouched vegetables inside, which could well constitute a feast for people like them.
While Lyle immersed himself in scavenging, Ellis brought her lips close to my ear and whispered.

“Let’s go over there.”

Unable to content herself until the two of us were alone, Ellis took my hand and silently led me away.
Lyle did not notice. He truly did seem to be obtuse through and through.
Having successfully slipped away, we turned a corner and proceeded deeper into the maze of alleys—until we reached a deserted spot.
Ellis appeared to have forgotten even her own hunger. She pressed herself against me like a female cat in heat.
When I playfully stroked beneath her chin, she obligingly mewed, “Mrrrow,” like a pet fawning on her master.
I continued, and before long her mewing turned to moans, her smile grew flushed with desire, and our gazes intertwined. Just as the mood was developing quite nicely—
An unpleasant intruder arrived to spoil it, much as I had expected.

“Well, what do we have here? The maggots from the Discard District have crawled in again.” Continue reading →

6. Today as Ever, the Light Shines Only to Be Defiled

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/4/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

That night, the rain fell with the force of a storm.
At times like these, being alone in this dim church left me feeling strangely lonely.
The childish thought would suddenly come to me—if only someone would visit—yet those were always the times when no one came.
Naturally. There was a downpour outside.
In my room, illuminated by a magical lamp, I turned the pages of my book, now and then casting an uneasy glance at the rain striking the window.
Rustle, rustle.
It was an oft-read novel about an aristocratic boy and girl who abandoned their stations to elope—a book existing solely as entertainment, of the sort no woman of the cloth ought to read.
Then again, I had never been an officially recognized nun in the first place.
I was merely a woman who had let herself into an abandoned church and taken it upon herself to call herself a nun.
It was hardly something to concern myself with now.

“Has the rainy season begun, I wonder?”

Now and then, a murmur escaped my lips to ward off the loneliness.
The temperature had risen of late, and I could feel summer drawing closer.
The height of summer, with its punishing sunlight, would soon be upon us—but before that came the rainy season, when rain like today’s drenched the ground day after day.
It was a depressing prospect.
The damp made food quick to mold and laundry slow to dry.
Above all, foul weather had a way of clouding people’s hearts as well.
I would no doubt receive more requests for counsel.
There was little sense in fretting now over a future that might never come to pass, but this pattern had held true without fail ever since I arrived at the church.
Experience could, at times, prove more reliable than any theory.

“I do hope it will be clear tomorrow …” Continue reading →

7. A Shadow Falls

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/7/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

After breakfast, we lingered at the table for a while, relaxing over cups of tea.
There was something I wished to ask them, and when the moment seemed right, I did so.

“Why did the two of you flee the Discard District?”
“I don’t know if you heard about it, Nunnally, but a soldier’s body was found in the city a little while ago, remember?”
“Yes. If I recall correctly, I heard that someone from the Discard District was found dead alongside him.”
“That was someone I knew. We got caught up in the whole mess, and when it looked like they were going to kill us, we ran.”

Hearing Ellis speak so casually of nearly being killed brought home to me once again that my understanding of the Discard District had not been mistaken.
Yet the blame also lay with the nobles who had sealed its people away and abandoned them without providing anyone to keep order, as well as with ordinary citizens like us. I could hardly despise them for what they had become.

“If you hadn’t taken us in, Nunnally, we might be dead by now. Seriously, thank you.”
“There is no need to thank me. I merely did my duty as a woman of the cloth.”

The way I said it with the face of a virtuous woman made me sick.
I had abandoned someone from the Discard District once before. Why could I not acknowledge my own wrongdoing? Why did I insist on carrying on this charade of being a good person?
When, to begin with—I was not even a true member of the clergy.

“Sister?”

I had become lost in my thoughts when Ellis’s voice, calling out to Chigusa, brought me back to reality.
I realized that Chigusa, who should have been sitting across from me, had vanished.
Before I could look to see where she had gone, she wrapped her arms around me from behind once more.
Her body felt cool against mine, yet beneath that coolness was the unmistakable pulse of life. It was a curious sensation.
Still holding me, she laid one palm over my hand.
Perhaps she had seen my expression and assumed that I was feeling dejected.
If so, she must simply have meant to comfort me, but I could not keep from remembering the events of the previous night.
Ellis’s moans spilling from their room—and Chigusa had been in there with her.

“Honestly, Sister, you really do love cuddling people.”
“You always smile when I do this, Ellis, so I thought it might make Nunnally smile as well. She looked so sad.”
“Did I truly look that way?”
“Yes. You were looking down so forlornly.”
“I…see. In that case, um, th-thank you. But I…”
“Are you unused to this sort of thing?” Continue reading →

8. Harboring Defilement

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/8/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

The next morning, the two women who appeared before me made no effort whatsoever to conceal the scent of lovemaking.
The red marks on their necks, their sweat-dampened skin, their dewy eyes—had they embraced the moment they woke, or had they not slept at all since the night before?

“Good morning, Nunnally.”

Chigusa was merely smiling and offering an ordinary greeting. Was I reading too much into it when I found her expression so alluring?
Even her red eyes seemed to seethe with the flames of desire.
Ashamed of the improper fantasies I had entertained the night before, I could not look her in the face and answered with my head bowed.

“G-Good morning …”

At the sight of me, Chigusa gave a soft laugh, sensuously touched an index finger to her lips, and smiled.
Then she walked over, spread her arms as she had the night before, and embraced me—and something soft and faintly moist brushed my cheek.
Surely that had not been … her lips?

“A morning greeting. Did it not please you?”

Seeing how bewildered and embarrassed I was, she whispered like a teasing little devil.

“No … It is not that.”

I could hardly admit that it had delighted me. Yet my heart was pounding so hard that there could be no concealing it.
Pressed this close together, surely Chigusa could feel both the heat of my body and the frantic beat of my heart through our clothes.

“Oh, Sister, you’re so unfair, keeping all the fun to yourself. I want to say good morning to Nunnally too, you know?”
“I do not recall taking anything from you. You may greet her as well, Ellis. You do not mind, do you, Nunnally?”

Before I could answer, Ellis wrapped herself around my arm and pressed her soft body against it through our clothes.
I became acutely conscious of the swell of her breast entwined with my arm.
Why should this make me feel such things when we were both women?
And yet, when I imagined Chigusa’s hands caressing the bare skin beneath those clothes the night before, it was impossible not to think about it.

“Morning, Nunnally.” Continue reading →

9. Do Not Look Inside the Moth Trap

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/9/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

The moment in which a person feels greatest happiness is not when they help someone, nor when someone expresses gratitude to them.
It is when they violate a taboo that they attain the summit of happiness.

Chigusa opened the door, and at last I stepped into the room.
Last night and the night before, I had only been permitted to listen from outside—to hear their voices as a bystander stranded upon an outer rim beyond all reach.
Now I was standing at their source.
That alone brought me such joy that I trembled, and yet I was about to become one of the participants as well.

“Haaaaah …”

I drew a long, deep breath, filling my chest with the sweet, tart fragrance that permeated the room.
It was a honeyed, elusive perfume in which the scents of Chigusa and Ellis mingled.
If merely breathing had this effect upon me, what would become of me if I buried my face in the bed?
I stopped in the middle of the room and stared fixedly at it. Chigusa, who had linked her arm through mine, whispered in my ear.

“Does the bed interest you that much?”
“Yes … When I think that I am about to take the stage there …”
“You look ready to lose your mind. Nunnally, you’re such a pervert.”
“But an honest Nunnally is much more endearing than one who forces herself to hold back.”
“Mm-hm. I think I like you better this way too.”
“Thank you.”

It was rather strange to thank them for such a thing, but I was too delighted not to.
There was nothing in this world I cherished more than praise from these two.
Yet now that I had actually entered the room, I found myself at a loss. I possessed no experience in such matters.
When I looked anxiously toward Chigusa, she spoke in a beguiling voice.

“To begin with, you may do whatever you please.” Continue reading →

10. No Humans Needed on the Bridal Aisle

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/10/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

After turning Nunnally into a vampire, Ellis and I decided to make ourselves at home in the church.
As Sisters, of course.
Nunnally appeared to have earned even more trust from the townspeople than I had imagined. On the strength of her introduction alone, no one questioned our presence.
Our red eyes and white skin were taken as mere peculiarities—which suggested that monsters known as vampires were not particularly well known in this world.
Then again, the only people who had even noticed Nunnally’s eyes changing color were the children who often came to play at the church. Perhaps the people of this town simply paid little attention to others’ appearances in the first place.

“Mmh … hah, shlurp … mrrh … slp … ”
“Does it taste good, Ellis?”
“Yesh … mmh, nnh … lick … delishush … ”

I sat on the bedroom bed with Ellis kneeling before me, sucking on my finger.
Her slick, lukewarm tongue coiled like a tentacle around the index finger I had slipped into her mouth, coating it in saliva.
This had not been my idea. Ellis had asked me to do it.
She must have been terribly envious of what I had done with Nunnally the other day, because she waited until we were alone and then begged me for a turn.
However—

“Shlurp … nnah, slrr … Shishter … ahh … ” Continue reading →

11. To Love You, I Would Let Both My Legs Rot Away

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/11/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

If I am going to enthrall someone anyway, I want to enjoy the process.
If I abandoned even that needless bit of pride, making someone mine would not be terribly difficult.
Now that I have begun to understand a vampire’s powers and how to wield the “shadows,” even breaking into a building is easy.
I can melt into the darkness and hide myself from every eye. With a trick like that at their disposal, perhaps it is only natural that vampires are called the rulers of the night.

I used that power to slip into the estate of a noble family called the Lindforgs, who lived in the northern part of the city.
The person I had come for was the family’s eldest daughter, Ainerinne Lindforg.
Apparently those close to her called her “Ai”—though she had only one or two people close enough to do so.
She was the very model of a haughty aristocrat. The moment she saw a commoner—or even a noble of the slightest lower rank—she looked down on them without a second thought.
Combined with her blonde hair, worn in twin tails of cascading ringlets, her personality was so overdrawn that I could almost mistake her for a character from a manga.

But even she looked adorable once she was asleep.
Her loosened blonde hair reminded me of Nunnally. Perhaps once Ainerinne became a vampire, she too would grow a little more demure.
With that hope in mind, I took the sleeping woman’s hand.
Thump, thump, thump.
The instant our bare skin touched, my power began to flow into Ainerinne.
She would fall in love with me as if in a dream.
When she awoke, I would no longer be there.
And yet, before she knew it, love for a stranger whose face she had never seen would have taken root in her heart.
You might call it a kind of bomb.
An exceedingly troublesome bomb that would burst the moment she saw me, flooding her with emotion.

“Ainerinne … no, Ai. I wonder what sweetly desperate side of yourself you’ll show me.” Continue reading →

12. And So, With Nowhere Left to Run, She Falls in Love

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/12/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

It was two days after I had turned Ainerinne into a Demi-Vamp.
I waited for Rellie in the chapel, where the setting sun streamed through the windows and dyed everything the color of twilight.
I had no recollection of arranging to meet her.
But I was certain.
Now that Ai—and her prospective mother-in-law, persuaded by Ai—had given their blessing to the marriage, Rellie would hurry straight to the church to share her joy with me.
I looked up at the statue of the goddess and smiled.
What could she be feeling as she gazed upon this church filled with inhuman creatures?
Did the fact that everything was proceeding so perfectly mean the goddess was blessing us?
Or was she lamenting her own powerlessness to do anything at all?
Not that I had the slightest intention of offering her a prayer.
It is not that I doubt the existence of gods, you understand.
But if the gods truly saved humans, then it would make no sense for me not to have been saved long ago.
Thus, I place no faith in them.
The happiness I possess now is the work of my own power. The goddess’s blessing has not the slightest thing to do with it.
So please, watch as best you can while I kill another human being—and make her happy.

“Chigusa!”

The doors flew open with a bang, and Rellie’s voice rang through the chapel.
I rose from the pew and opened my arms to welcome her as she ran toward me, sweat beading on her brow.
Rellie no longer rejected my physical affection.
She raced straight into my embrace.

“I did it! I really did it!”
“You succeeded in persuading Dick’s mother, then.”
“Mm-hm! His sister, who’s always been against it, came around to our side, and with Dick speaking up too, his mother finally said yes! It’s all thanks to you, Chigusa!”
“Not at all. Your feelings for each other simply got through to them.”
“Maybe, but to me, it’s all thanks to you!”

With that, she happily nuzzled her cheek against mine.
It was rather endearing—like having a pet dog take a liking to me.
She smelled faintly of sweat, but I liked that too.

“Still … hee hee. Did you truly need to hurry so much that you worked up a sweat?”
“I wanted to tell you the good news as soon as I possibly could. Things never would’ve gone this well without your advice.” Continue reading →

13. The Girls Sink into a Sea of Happiness

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/13/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

I sat alone in the chapel, now completely dark with no light coming in from outside.
The preparations were already complete. All that remained was to wait for the guest of honor.
Then I heard the door open, and the room that should have been pitch-black filled with light.

“Mistress, might you at least turn on a light?”
“Nunnally … Where is Ellis?”
“She is spending time with the others. You said we were free to do as we pleased until Rellie arrived.”

Looking more closely, I saw that Nunnally was flushed and perspiring.
It seemed that she and Ellis had been helping prepare our new companions.

“How was she?”

When I asked, Nunnally answered with a dreamy expression.

“Miri is thirteen, is she not? At first I was understandably cautious, but I have accepted her as one of us.”
“I am glad you can accept her. I expect she will live here at the church with us, so please be kind to her.”
“Of course. But … we have no habits made for children. We shall have to order one.”

Nunnally began arranging the matter in her head, though I wondered whether it was truly necessary.
An oversized habit would do for now, since they frequently changed clothes during their private rituals.

“… Rellie may arrive soon. I shall return to the room.”
“Then, when the time is right …”
“Yes. I am to bring the two of them here.”

Once we had confirmed the plan, Nunnally returned to the rear of the church.
I was alone once more in the now-lit chapel.
I understood that Rellie could not leave immediately after her fiancé’s death.
But she had to be searching desperately for someone to save her.
I had expected her to shake off every restraining hand and force her way to the church. Had I not poured enough power into her?
Judging from everything that had happened before, so much prolonged contact should already have made her ready to surrender body and soul.
Perhaps compatibility differed from person to person.
Even so, she had entrusted herself to me once already. There could be no doubt that she was very close to falling completely.

I passed the time staring down at my feet as they swayed idly.
In a space so quiet that I could hear the insects outside, I closed my eyes and waited patiently for approaching footsteps.
Now and then, faint voices carried from the rooms beyond, which made waiting somewhat difficult.
As I smiled wryly, I finally heard someone outside strike the ground at a run.
It appeared our leading lady had arrived at last.
I rose from the pew, stepped onto the long red carpet across the chapel floor, and waited for Rellie to appear beyond the doors.

“Hah, hah, hah …” Continue reading →

Interlude 1: Träumerei Never Ends — Part One

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/14/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

My world is very small.
All I can do is sit quietly in a dim room like a cage and look outside.
I hardly ever go out, so I have no friends. To me, my big sister Rellie is practically my whole world.
Father and Mother are kind, but their work does not seem to have been going very well lately, and they often argue when Rellie is away.
They never take it out on me, but they visit my room far less than they used to, and on the rare occasions when we talk, they can be terribly cold.
The way they look at me has grown cold too, and that hurts so much.

I take up only the tiniest bit of space, but it seems that even living requires me to have some value.
Then why was I born? I ask the stars that question every night, but no one ever answers.
It is because I do not shine.
People without value do not shine, so the stars surely cannot find me either.

If Rellie were not part of my family, she never would have found me.
It was not because I shone. She merely happened to be near me.
Without a stroke of luck like that, I could not even make someone notice me.
That is why I want to treasure what I have now. I do not want to lose Rellie.

“Rellie, why do you have to go …?”

But Rellie is going to marry Dick.
She will become part of someone else’s family, and all that will remain in this house are Father and Mother, who do not need me, and me, who is nothing but a burden.
I understand. Dick is rich, and once she marries him, things will surely become easier for our family.
In fact—ever since her marriage to Dick was settled, Father and Mother have stopped arguing, and even their eyes have grown warmer when they look at me.
But that only makes it hurt more.
Because whether I like it or not, it has shown me that my value to Father and Mother comes down to money.
Only Rellie has never changed.
As long as I have her, I need nothing else.

“Please don’t go, Rellie. Stay my sister forever—mine and mine alone—” Continue reading →

Interlude 2: Träumerei Never Ends — Part Two

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/15/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

Chigusa sat facing me, an unusually somber expression on her face.

“Everyone must know how starved for love Miri is.”

If they know, then why don’t Father and Mother love me the way they love my sister?

“Is that really true, I wonder …”
“Yes. Even I understood the moment I met you. They understand too, but none of them will answer your need because they lack the courage to bear that responsibility. It is shameful. At the very least, the parents who brought you into this world have a duty to do so.”
“But … it’s my fault I got sick, isn’t it? If I weren’t sick—if I could run around outside like other children—I wouldn’t have caused everyone so much trouble.”
“A family is supposed to embrace all of that along with you … though perhaps expecting so much is unrealistic. My own family was the same.”
“Yours too, Chigusa?”

I had not expected her to say that.
Chigusa held me with so much love that I had assumed she must have grown up surrounded by people who loved her too.

“No one loved me. If anything, they hated me for no reason. The one person who did love me was hurt by those who hated me, and in the end, that person came to hate me as well.”
“That’s awful. You’re so wonderful and kind, Chigusa.”

At my insistence, Chigusa smiled—troubled, but happy—and gently rested her forehead against mine.

“You and I are alike, Miri. Perhaps that is precisely why I was able to find you.”
“Alike …?”

But Chigusa and I were nothing alike.
She was so far beyond my reach that I could not understand why someone like her would take an interest in someone like me.
Still … Chigusa would never lie to me.
Maybe it was true.
If Chigusa had once been like me, then—

“Does that mean I can change too? Can I become someone wonderful like you?”
“You can. Once you are reborn, Miri, you should be able to reclaim your sister as well.”
“But you’re going to eat me, aren’t you?”
“Yes. But what I shall consume is the human called Miri. I am not going to kill you.”
“… What does that mean?” Continue reading →

14. Stopped Clock

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/16/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

No human being is completed alone.
Though innate gifts matter, it is one’s surroundings that ultimately shape one’s character.

First love.
The first betrayal.
A mother who abandoned her.
A father unstable in his emotions.
Classmates brimming with malice.
And me, pretending to be her ally.

Through all those days, the profoundly self-loathing personality called Chigusa Hinata was completed.

“—In other words, I, too, was an accomplice in killing that girl.”

With a self-mocking smile, I said this to the friend who listened earnestly to my story.
Yet she did not open her mouth; she merely listened.
Because the one answering was not her, but Reese: a bipedal black-cat doll that moved by itself atop the table.

“… You take too much upon yourself, Miyako.”

Reese spoke in a girl’s voice.
The one manipulating the doll—my friend—was Leia Hersig.
She was a witch who lived in the royal castle, and the very person responsible for summoning us to this world.
By “this world,” I mean that this is another world.
In this extraordinary world, where magic exists as though it had sprung from manga or anime, we were summoned as “saviors” possessed of powerful magical ability.
I do not understand the theory very well, but apparently people from other worlds can wield tremendous power when they come here.

“But Chigusa really did die before our eyes.”

The girl I had once cherished like a little sister was somehow slammed into the floor and torn apart the very moment she arrived in this other world.
Already confused after being surrounded without warning by glowing magic circles and sent to an unfamiliar world, several students and I were thrown into still greater confusion by the foul-smelling corpse lying close at hand.

“And … I could not even mourn her.”
“That was the kingdom’s failure. I am sorry from the bottom of my heart.”

The body was immediately taken away, and I later heard that it had been discarded at the dumping ground.
I was devastated.
Since coming to this world, we had been treated like heroes.
Anything we asked for was given to us.
In fact, the other students had surrounded themselves with several women in lavish rooms and demanded great quantities of jewels, indulging in every luxury.
… Only the perpetrators enjoyed such happiness, while the victim was thrown away like rubbish.
I could not accept such injustice.

“Even so, does Miyako really need to live so frugally? You should ask for more, and forget the things you dislike.”
“I can’t.”

And besides, how could a room with a canopy bed be called frugal?
The other students’ rooms were apparently still more luxurious, but if I wanted the same, I would be made to live near them whether I liked it or not.
Part of why I chose this room was to put as much distance as possible between them and me.

“If you do not, Miyako will only break.”

Leia said it as though casting me aside.
But her words did not reach my heart.

“That is all right. If no one else will repent for Ms. Hinata’s death, then I should bear every sin.”
“That is exactly what I mean by taking on too much.”

The doll’s soft hand stroked the head I had bowed.
Even as I enjoyed the feeling, I continued reproaching myself: it was wrong that I alone should feel any comfort.

Continue reading →

15. Forgotten Things

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/17/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

As Ms. Hinata held me, my thoughts were in complete disarray.

I had certainly seen her corpse.

When the five students and I were “summoned” into that room with its enormous magic circle, one girl had burst apart beside it—

Her body had been damaged, but it was a sight that still gave me goosebumps to remember. There was no mistaking that face. It had been Ms. Hinata’s.

And yet, why was she alive?

And why was she holding me?

“Ah … Ms. Hinata, is it really you? Weren’t you dead?”

“Please do not go killing me off on your own. As you can see, I am alive.”

Even after I pulled away to make sure, she was still Ms. Hinata.

Yet perhaps what unsettled me was the smile on her face: she had never shown me one since we were reunited at school.

“We needn’t talk while standing. Shall we sit down for the moment?”

“O-okay …”

I needed time to collect myself too.

At Ms. Hinata’s prompting, I sat beside her on a chapel pew.

Was I imagining the small distance she left between us?

Once seated, I took a deep breath and asked her again.

“Ms. Hinata, why are you in a place like this?”

“When I came to, I was in a place that looked like a rubbish dump. I woke up there and wandered through the town, but it was somewhere completely unfamiliar, and I had no one to turn to. The person who helped me was a sister from this church.”

“And you have been here ever since?” Continue reading →

16. The Reckless Battle of a Maiden in Love

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/18/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

When I left the church and returned to the castle, Leia was making herself at home in my room.
I did not remember giving her a spare key, but unlocking a door was doubtless effortless with her magic.
Watching her lie on my bed and idly kick her feet, she looked strangely young.
Judging by her appearance, Leia was probably about Chigusa’s age. Yet now and then she wore an oddly mature expression.
Surely she could not be older than I was. Still, people called her a witch—could I really assume she was the age she looked?

“Hello, Miyako. You’re back. We helped ourselves to your room first.”

The bipedal black-cat doll sitting on the table—Reese—rose to speak to me.
Leia slowly pushed herself upright as well, remaining seated on the bed as she watched me in silence.

“Going by that expression, you got a nice change of pace. My advice was right after all, wasn’t it?”

Reese puffed out its chest smugly.
I could not argue with it… though running into Chigusa had been pure coincidence.

“I’m not sure it was thanks to you, Leia, but it did clear my head. I think I’ll keep taking walks from tomorrow on.”
“I’m glad. Generally, I cannot recommend that a woman walk through the city alone, but I doubt you have anything to worry about, Miyako.”
“It still doesn’t feel real to me, but you’re right. I don’t think I could lose to just anyone anymore.”
“If anything, you must take care not to kill someone by misjudging your strength. By the way, Miyako, where in the city did you go today?”

I had expected it to ask.
But of course I would not tell them about Chigusa.
The kingdom wanted fighting power.
If they learned she was at the church, they might try to bring her to the castle.
And then—she would have to face the students again.
That would be far too cruel to do to her. It was not merely a matter of earning her trust.

“I only took a walk today, but I did pick out a few shops I want to visit after tomorrow.”
“Shops? Food? Clothes? Trinkets?”
“Food, I think.”

Clothes and trinkets interested me too, but I did not yet have the peace of mind to enjoy them.

“Then I recommend the confectioner’s on the main street. Their cream pie is simple, but it’s wonderful! The crust is crisp, it’s filled with fragrant cream, and if you have one fresh from the oven, well…!”
“…Do you want me to bring you some?”

Reese and Leia both shook their heads at once.
Apparently they did want some. I would make sure not to forget tomorrow.

 

◇◇◇ Continue reading →

17. Where There Is Light, There Is Shadow; Where There Is No Light, There Is Only Shadow

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/19/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

Ellis slashed apart the orb of light with her claws.
Unable to maintain its spherical shape, the mass of magical power suffered a spell collapse. It warped, exploded, released a shock wave, and vanished.

“Ghh!”

She shielded her eyes with an arm against the flash that filled her vision and braced her feet against the blast that threatened to fling her away.
Perhaps because she was exposed to the light, her skin prickled as though it were burning, though it was not quite painful.
Once the shock wave had eased somewhat, she sprang sideways to evade another orb that had already closed in from the front, then fixed her eyes on Leia.
It was the human who was casting the magic. Reese, the doll, was no more than a means of communication.
Ellis did wonder why Leia did not speak with her own voice—but she immediately discarded the thought.
There was no need to think about someone who was going to die anyway.

“Haaah!”

Ellis leapt at Leia.
She appeared to mean to take her head in a single swipe of her claws.
Though she saw Ellis coming, Leia did not even try to evade.
Was fear keeping her body from moving—or did she have some other means of defense?
Suspicious, Ellis nevertheless kept enough room in her thoughts to react at once if some spell intercepted her.

“So predictable. I suppose that is all you inhuman things ever are.”

The doll spoke.
Reese raised its cloth fist and stepped in front of Leia.

“You think a stuffed toy can stop me?!”
“I protect Leia. Otherwise, there is no point in my being Reese.”

Reese jumped and caught the claws descending toward Leia.
With a clang, as if metal had struck metal.
It was not ordinary cloth; magic had likely reinforced it.
Ellis retreated from the doll for the moment.
But Reese would not let her get away. The black-cat doll scurried toward Ellis on two legs, leapt, and threw punches in rapid succession at her face, stomach, and legs.

“Give it up. Dodging will not give you a chance!”

Ellis continued to evade Reese’s attacks by the narrowest margins.
But she knew there was no end to this if it continued.
Reese was not her only enemy. Leia had already created another orb of light and was about to send it at her.

“You are in my way!” Continue reading →

18. I Will Keep Calling It a Happy Ending

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/20/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

The next morning, after I woke, I received the news: a soldier’s body had been found outside the castle, and Leia had been discovered collapsed within it.
I had lain awake for a long time last night, lost in thought, and my body still felt heavy. But this was no time to complain.
I hurried to the room where Leia was resting and was relieved to find her looking better than I had expected.

“Thank goodness you’re safe, Leia.”
“Miyako …”

Her complexion was good, and she had no visible injuries.
Yet there was little strength in her expression, and her unsteady eyes watched me anxiously.
More importantly—

“Wait, Leia … you’re talking!?”

At my remark, Leia shyly covered her mouth with the blanket.
This might have been the first time I had ever heard her real voice.
I wondered whether someone had attacked her and destroyed Reese—but the black cat doll was sitting on the room’s table.
What had brought about this change of heart?

“I met Chigusa Hinata …”
“What …? Then was Ms. Hinata the one who attacked you? But why!?”
“Just as I told you yesterday, Miyako … had been affected by a charm. I think that vampire was … Chigusa.”

I had already guessed that Ms. Hinata was a vampire when Leia explained charm to me yesterday.
But that did not explain why she had entered the castle.

“There was another one with her. A vampire named Ellis. I think she was … after your life, Miyako. When I tried to stop her, Chigusa appeared.”
“She came to save her companion?”

Ellis was the girl who had called Ms. Hinata “Sister.”
If she had targeted me, then perhaps it was jealousy.
Ms. Hinata had called her merely a friend, but their closeness had not seemed like friendship alone to me.
Perhaps that was why she had come all the way into the castle to save her.

“Yes … probably. In the end, I was no match for her at all. Chigusa was so strong—nothing like the other vampires. If she had wanted to, she could have done something to you too, Miyako … But you were unharmed, so she did not come only to save Ellis.”

Leia hesitated to say the conclusion aloud.
But I understood well enough.
Chigusa had come to stop Ellis from killing me.

“Chigusa also … asked me to give you a message.”
“A message for me?”

Leia nodded without speaking.
It must have been humiliating for her.
Leia hated vampires deeply.
Vampires had destroyed her hometown, along with her family and closest friend.
Even so, because these were words that had to reach me, she took a long pause, wrestled with herself, and then clearly delivered Ms. Hinata’s message.

“I’m sorry. Thank you for everything, Mya-nee.”

The instant I heard those words, nostalgic feelings flooded my chest like overflowing snowmelt.
Feelings I had forgotten—feelings I had sealed away with my guilt—came rushing back all at once.

“Chigusa said it was goodbye. So … Miyako, you do not have to see her again.” Continue reading →

19. Let Us Drizzle Honey over Unripe Fruit

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/21/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

By its nature, a church receives visitors of every age and gender.
That had not changed even now that Demi-Vamps had taken it over. People continued to arrive, knowing nothing.
Lilina Lengland.
This innocent girl, far younger than I was and still of school age, was one of them.
In her case, however, she had only recently begun coming to the church.
For reasons I did not understand, she had grown remarkably attached to me and seemed to visit solely to see me.
She was a tremendously energetic child who begged, “Play with me, play with me!” whenever she came. I did not mind, so we often played together.
I would sit her on my lap while we read, chase her until she caught me in a hug, or hold her hand—all perfectly innocent.

“Big Sister, let’s play!”

And so, as on every other day, Lilina came to the church.
I welcomed her with a smile from the bottom of my heart.

 

◇◇◇ Continue reading →

20. Happy Family Plan

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/22/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

The following day, during another abusive encounter, the Mark appeared on a concealed part of Lilina’s body.
I deliberately pretended not to notice it and prolonged her conditioning for another three days, amused by the conflict between her remaining judgment and the supernatural influence imposed upon her.

On the third morning, a school holiday, Lilina came to the church as usual and threw herself into my arms.

“That means I can spend the whole day with you, Lilina.”

No one else had arrived. Taking advantage of our isolation, I prompted her to repeat the secret behavior I had taught her.
What followed is omitted. It was another calculated act of abuse intended to erase her boundaries and equate obedience with love.

When it ended, Lilina was disoriented but still desperate for my approval.
Her response showed how completely the charm and my conditioning had undermined her ability to recognize wrongdoing.

“Lilina loves you too. Hee-hee.”

The innocence that remained only strengthened my resolve to overwrite her humanity completely.
I had delayed long enough. It was time to transform her.

“Shall we go to my room?”
“Yes! Stay close to me all day, Big Sister!”

I took her eagerly offered hand and led her to the bedroom.

 

◇◇◇

Continue reading →

21. Let Us Fall in Love as Though Returning to the Womb

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/23/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

The Lenglands were the very picture of an ideal family.

Lilina’s father, Merrick Lengland, always devoted his days off to his wife and child, and routinely helped with the housework as well.
He kept the city safe as a soldier, and because he was employed by the kingdom, his pay was respectable.
Indeed, he was prosperous enough to build a home in the royal capital—where land prices continued to rise—at the age of thirty-two.

Lilina’s mother, Liza Lengland, was twenty-eight, four years younger than Merrick.
She was currently eight months pregnant.
Like Lilina, she wore her blond hair cut to her shoulders. She was a kindhearted woman who offered the same warm smile to everyone she met.
She kept the household in good order, and her cooking had improved greatly since her marriage. By now, Merrick looked forward to coming home every day.

Lilina loved both of her parents dearly.

At least, she had until the day she was changed into something inhuman.

After Chigusa saw her off, Lilina left the church and made her unsteady way home. Her body still carried the aftereffects of what had happened there.
In truth, she wanted to remain at the church—or even spend the rest of her life there, receiving Chigusa’s attention.
But she still had a task to complete.

Her mother was waiting at home, and Lilina loved her just as much as she loved her new companions.

“Mama should come over to this side too…”

She had to drag her in.

It was what Lilina wanted, and it was also Chigusa’s instruction.
There was therefore no reason not to see it through.
Her steps quickening, Lilina hurried home.

 

◇◇◇

Continue reading →

22. Blood and Flesh Make the Best Birthday Gift

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/24/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

Even after her father, Merrick, came home, Lilina showed no desire to leave Liza’s side.

She clung to her mother from behind as Liza stood in the kitchen, wearing a dreamlike expression.

“What’s gotten into you, Lilina? You’ve been awfully attached to Mama since yesterday.”

Knowing nothing, Merrick smiled as he spoke to his daughter. Lilina, however, no longer had the slightest interest in her father and gave no sign of answering.

Sensing the awkwardness, Liza tried to smooth things over with her husband.

“She says she had a frightening dream.”

“A dream, huh? Come to think of it, I haven’t had one in ages.”

“That just means you’re sleeping soundly. It’s a good thing.”

“Ha ha, perhaps so. A soldier’s body is his livelihood. I’m no use to anyone if I can’t sleep properly.”

Merrick drank his evening liquor and picked at the food served with it. He did not notice how his wife had changed since his return. Nor did he notice her trembling as she stood in the kitchen.

Out of his sight, Lilina was covertly exploiting the Mark on Liza’s swollen belly. It was the heart with demonic wings—the proof that Liza’s body had finished preparing to abandon its humanity.

Liza struggled to conceal the Mark’s overwhelming supernatural effect from her husband. Even a glance would have shown that something was wrong, but the pleasantly tipsy Merrick noticed nothing.

Even if he had, it was already too late. Lilina had long since ceased to be human, and Liza was completely in her thrall.

“Mama, who do you love more—Papa or Lilina?”

Lilina whispered so Merrick could not hear. Liza answered at once.

“Lilina. Of course it’s Lilina.”

“Who makes you happier—Papa or Lilina?”

“Compared with you, he doesn’t even—”

“Then we don’t need Papa anymore.”

“No … we don’t. As long as I have you, Lilina, I don’t need him.”

Lilina nodded in satisfaction, certain that her mother now belonged entirely to her.

Just then, Merrick abruptly stood. Liza stiffened at the thought of him seeing her expression, while Lilina looked almost as though she would not mind being discovered. If that happened, so be it. Merrick might have honed himself as a soldier, but Lilina was a Demi-Vamp and could kill him with ease.

“Off to the toilet …”

Instead, he left the room without so much as looking at them.

“Hee hee. Good thing he didn’t notice, Mama.”

“Lilina …”

The moment Merrick was gone, the strength left Liza’s body. She paused her cooking, gently removed Lilina’s arms from around her, and turned to face her.

“My, Mama. The instant Papa leaves, you can’t wait any longer.”

Laughing, Lilina accepted her mother’s corrupted affection. In the kitchen, the two crossed another forbidden boundary until Merrick was about to return. Liza understood how grotesquely the charm had distorted their family, yet she surrendered to it all the same. Continue reading →

23. Hatred and Love Are Equivalent

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/25/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

“Hmm …”
“What is it, Chii-chan?”

I lay with my head on Mya-nee’s lap, resting my index finger against my chin as I thought.
We were relaxing on a sofa in one of the rooms at the back of the church.
The matter before my internal council was simple: our growing number of companions had made the church rather cramped.

“I was thinking that it may be time for us to consider moving.”
“We have gained a lot of people. We’re all usually crowded together anyway, so it hasn’t been a problem yet.”
“… Speaking of which, you spent last night with Ellis, did you not? How was it?”
“How was it …? I can only say it was wonderful. Nunnally, Rellie, Miri, Ai, and Chelsea—everyone made me feel welcome.”
“I am glad to hear it.”

I exhaled in relief.
It seemed Mya-nee had completely adapted to life here as a Demi-Vamp.
… But enough of that digression.

“Returning to the matter of moving—”
“Oh, right. What should we do? Borrow Ai’s manor?”
“About that. Our family will only continue to grow, so I wondered whether we might as well seize somewhere truly grand.”
“Truly grand …?”

Mya-nee tilted her head. I looked her directly in the eyes and smiled fearlessly.

“The royal castle. If we mean to change the country—and the world—then taking over its greatest symbol would be the quickest way.”
“Do you mean to deal with the students who were transported here with us at the same time?”
“I do want to determine what should be done about them. More importantly—some seeds have already been sown.”

I closed my eyes.
The image that came to mind was the girl who had faced me on the night Ellis acted so recklessly.
That pitiable girl could speak to other people only through a doll named after her closest friend.
Come to think of it, Lina—the name behind that black-cat doll—sounded rather like Lilina. Yet Lilina’s heart was far stronger.
Leia’s heart was a fragile castle built on sand, ready to collapse at the slightest disturbance.
Even tonight, she was surely recalling what happened and suffering between the supernatural compulsion I had left in her and her bitter remorse.

Continue reading →

24. Believing We Will Meet Again Someday, I Will Keep Calling Your Name

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/26/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

Can human desire truly be so ugly?
Even though the world I came from had shown me that ugliness in vivid detail—and forced me to experience it firsthand—I could not help but frown when Ai told me what she had learned.

“An establishment beneath the city holds an event known as a slave auction. It is exactly what the name suggests: nobles bid as little as they can for slaves abducted from various places. A thoroughly vile form of entertainment.”

As a member of House Lindforg—and therefore a noble herself—Ai had apparently received invitations of that kind many times.

“I declined every invitation. Such things are not to my taste.”

For that reason, she had never attended one herself.
According to Ai, however, nobles who kept slaves were hardly uncommon. Like the people of the Discard District, slaves had no recognized rights and were subjected to appalling treatment.
Most of those put up for sale were very young girls. Boys were reportedly offered on occasion as well, depending on the buyers being catered to.
That distinction was beside the point. Once I had learned that human beings were being bought and sold, leaving matters alone would have been intolerable.
And so, on the night of the event, I dressed in a suitably aristocratic gown borrowed from Ai and made my way to the establishment.
The sun had long since set. It was dark outside—a most pleasant night.

 

Continue reading →

25. When I Learned the Truth, I…

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/27/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

Holding Reese in my arms, I walked through the castle.
I had been chronically short of sleep of late.
Even after waking, my mind showed no sign of clearing. I had set out for a walk in the hope that a change of pace might help, but—

“Man, even I’m finally getting bored. Guess it doesn’t matter how many girls you have—sooner or later, you get tired of them.”
“That’s because you overdo it all day long, Saiji.”
“You’re hardly any different, Taka. What about you, Oya? Starting to get bored yet?”
“…Not particularly.”
“Oh, right. Your situation was unusual, wasn’t it? Maybe I’ll go get myself someone new. If Ms. Mikage were here, I’d have gone after her.”
“…What about Sakuna?”
“I got tired of her ages ago. I’d rather choose one of the girls here.”
“Can’t argue with Saiji there.”

They passed me with coarse, braying laughter.
They were some of the six people I had summoned—or seven, if Chigusa was included.
The especially vulgar man who appeared to be their leader, with not a trace of intelligence in his expression, was Saiji Kataoka.
The slimmer but equally vulgar man perpetually at his side was Taka Kagan.
And the pale man who alone affected an air of cool detachment, though he was little different from the others, was Oya Chizaki.
Those were the only three men who had been summoned.
The two others still in the castle were girls named Sakuna Akizora and Toka Sato.
Sakuna had apparently once been in a relationship with Saiji. Perhaps it was a case of like attracting like, for her manner and conduct somewhat resembled his.
Toka was part of Sakuna’s entourage.
She was plain and quiet, which seemed to be precisely why Sakuna valued having her nearby as someone who made Sakuna herself stand out.
Toka, for her part, was comfortable in that position.
…Disgusting.
The humans I had summoned certainly possessed powerful magic, but—with the exception of Miyako—they were so base that I could hardly bear to breathe the same air.
Chigusa was no different.
She had sold her soul to a vampire, and she must surely be plotting to bring about another tragedy like the one that befell my village. Continue reading →

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Come to think of it…”

I looked at her and suddenly noticed an alarming fact.

“The sun… doesn’t bother you?”

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

“I am a Demi-Vamp, after all.”

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

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

Could something like that even be called a vampire? Continue reading →

27. The Inhuman Being Called Human

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/29/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

Nothing is more unwelcome than kindness forced upon you.
Even if you try to explain that it is wrong, the other person will never stop believing that they are right.
That is why I cannot deny that what I am about to do is nothing more than selfishness.

There are two choices.
One is to accept Chigusa’s offer, turn Lina into a Demi-Vamp, and restore her body.
The other is to kill Lina with my own hands and let her life end as a human.

I have no way of knowing which one Lina wants.
Whichever I choose, it will surely be an act of selfishness.
Even the standard by which I make that choice will be nothing more than my own values.

Which is right: humanity or vampirism?
I came to Count Fenburg’s estate to find out.
He was the man who led the troops that rescued me from my ruined village. Immediately afterward, he retired from active service, and his son inherited the territory.
Apparently, he had always been close to the king. Now he lives quietly in retirement on the outskirts of the royal capital.
For a while after I first came to the capital, he acted as my guardian and looked after me.
That is why I affectionately call him “Uncle.”

Given our relationship, the guards let me into the estate without trying to stop me.
A maid immediately showed me into a drawing room.
I settled into a plush chair and sipped tea as I waited. A few minutes later, Uncle appeared.

“This is unusual. Leia, coming here without so much as a message.” Continue reading →

28. Engagement

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/30/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

“Welcome back, Leia.”

When I returned to the church, Chigusa greeted me in the chapel as if she had been waiting.
It had been a very long time since anyone had welcomed me home.
But I could not bring myself to answer, “I’m back,” so I passed her in silence.
The fact that I tensed up at the thought of offending her only made me feel small.

“Still haven’t found your answer?”

I paused before replying over my shoulder.

“ … I think I have.”
“But you still haven’t fully come to terms with it.”
“When someone suddenly tells you to stop being human … you can’t just say, ‘All right,’ and accept it. What was it like for you, Chigusa?”
“In my case, I had no time to hesitate over the choice. As you know, I did not regain consciousness until a vampire gave me life. Besides—”
“Besides?”
“I knew human ugliness better than most, and I had already lost faith in humanity. Even if my body had been whole, I doubt I would have struggled with the decision as you have.”

It was easy to guess that something had happened to her in the world she came from.
Given what her classmates were like, their school could hardly have been a decent place.
And people did not change merely because they came to another world.
They became corrupt, trampled others without remorse, and lived only to satisfy their own desires.
When their interests collided, they readily killed their own kind and betrayed their companions.
Vampires probably avoided that because their interests never conflicted.
They all faced in the same direction.
I did not know whether that deserved to be called love, but Chigusa and the others apparently called it that.

“But if you came back, then at least you’ve made your choice concerning Lina, haven’t you?”
“Yes …”

Which meant my own choice had effectively been made as well.
I had no intention of making Lina abandon her humanity while irresponsibly refusing to do the same.
I would remain with her to the end.
Even if I became inhuman.

“Um … I don’t know whether this is possible, but may I ask one thing?”
“Go ahead.”
“If someone has to drink my blood, I want it to be Lina … after she stops being human.”
“That is fine, though I will need to establish direct contact with Lina to transfer the power.”

My cheek twitched at the humorless joke.
Did she truly have to say that now?

“Please don’t be angry. I’m not teasing you; physical contact is necessary to transfer the power.”
“ … Does it have to be a kiss?”
“Not necessarily.”

“Then a kiss … is fine.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll make sure to leave her first kiss for you.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”

Chigusa giggled and headed deeper into the chapel.
Surprised that I could speak with her almost normally, I followed.

Continue reading →

29. A Warm-Up, or an Hors d’Oeuvre

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/31/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

Saiji Kataoka was bored.
He had been summoned to another world as a human with powerful magic, and in exchange for serving the kingdom he was permitted every imaginable luxury. He had always chased girls, and so—

“In that case, I wanna try having one of those harems.”

—he had said as much to the king, half in jest.
To his astonishment, several women of extraordinary beauty were provided the very next day, and they devoted themselves entirely to him.
But even beautiful companions grew tiresome once the novelty wore off.
He had tried including women who were not to his taste as well, but even that failed to relieve his boredom.
Surrounded on his bed by women left slack and vacant, Saiji stared into space and sighed.

“… Wish something exciting would happen.”

His boredom had only deepened because the person he found most stimulating had disappeared.
Her name was Miyako Mikage.
She was Saiji’s homeroom teacher—and, in his mind, merely a convenient instrument for satisfying his desires.
She had suited him well, and she had been a favorite toy, but a few days ago she had vanished from the castle without warning.
Even before that, despite being their homeroom teacher, she had refused to see any of her students at all.

“Maybe I oughta ask that old man to go bring her back.”

The “old man” was the king.
To Saiji, even the king was nothing more than a fat brute in human form.
Of course, the king and the summoned humans were using one another. Saiji suspected the king mocked them in turn as pigs drowning in their own appetites.
All the more reason to exploit him for everything he was worth—that was Saiji’s view.

“Well, I guess these’ll do to kill the boredom till then.”

Saiji picked up a pill from the shelf beside the bed, pulled a woman close, and forced it into her mouth.
Her eyes gradually went blank. Sweat broke out across her body, and she began to convulse.
Saiji grinned at the sight and shoved her roughly onto the bed.

 

Continue reading →

30. Painting Over Inhumanity—in Other Words, Soup

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/32/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

At a loss for how to spend his time, Saiji left the room at the far end of that floor and walked toward the barracks, intending to go to the dining hall.
Even outside mealtimes, one could at least get juice.
He could have ordered someone to bring the finest drinks to his room, but just then he wanted to be alone and take things slowly.

“Fuaaah…”

Saiji stretched his arms as far as they would go and yawned with his mouth wide open.
Perhaps because about two hours had passed since lunch, a pleasant drowsiness wrapped around him.
He might as well take a nap in the dining hall.
That plush bed in his own room somehow put him on edge, and the pillow was a little too high besides; it made it hard to breathe.
They were supposedly using the finest goods this world had to offer—and that, no doubt, was exactly why a commoner found them suffocating.

“‘Dilson’s Stew,’ huh… Come to think of it, the counter said something about that yesterday. What’s a Dilson, anyway? The name sounds kinda like a cow.”

The signboard in front of the dining hall listed another unfamiliar ingredient again today.
Yesterday’s meat had been good, so today’s would probably taste decent enough too.
Still, two days in a row at the dining hall was starting to feel stale; he might as well head over to the castle and get himself a lavish meal instead—he was thinking as much when he stepped inside and heard two familiar male voices.
He looked toward the speakers and found Taka and Oya there.
Saiji poured a yellow citrus juice from the neighboring pitcher into a waiting cup and carried it over to them.

“Yo. You guys bored too?”
“Oh, Saiji.”
“Nothing else to do… We were just killing time.”
“Then I’ll join you.”

So saying, Saiji sat down beside Taka.
As Oya had said, the conversation was idle—the sort of pointless talk typical of high-school boys, if one were being honest.
But even that kind of time now felt as distant as something he longed for.
No matter how much they could obtain, no matter that they had acquired so-called magic, they would never see their families again, and they would never follow the paths they had hoped for.
Whenever his thoughts turned negative, the fact would suddenly return to him, and a nameless sadness would well up.

“Hey… Think we’re ever gonna get to go home?”

Taka, who was usually so cheerful, spoke with a rare cloud over his face.

“… They’re not planning to send us back. At the very least, this country’s king is counting us as military assets.”
“They were gonna invade other countries or something, right?”

Taka frowned at Oya’s words.
Saiji thought:
Do whatever you want.
From the standpoint of someone who had been dragged into this and stripped of his future, it was utterly unreasonable.

“I just can’t picture it, y’know? Sure, they give us magic lessons now and then, but are we actually that strong?”
“If the king’s relying on us, then me, Taka, and Oya must all be outrageously powerful by this world’s standards.”
“… Talent worth dragging all the way from another world, huh.”

They simply did not yet know how to use it; they harbored a considerable amount of magical power.
In fact Chigusa, having become a half-vampire and absorbed that knowledge, had learned how to wield shadow magic and was already approaching a strength beyond that of any mage in the world.
Miyako and Leia, who had likewise ceased to be human, possessed power on a level with hers.
Of course, there was no way these three would know any of that—

“Well, whatever the circumstances, we’ll do what we want. We don’t owe anyone obedience.”
“Yeah. No matter where Saiji goes, all he does is chase women.”
“Even that’s gotten old. Ahh, isn’t there a decent woman lying around somewhere?”
“… So that’s where it ends up.”
“You never know. Someone out of the ordinary might suit you better. What about Chigusa?”
“She’s dead.” Continue reading →

31. A Migratory Fish Swimming Through Dreams—in Other Words, Poisson

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/33/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

Late on the night the room had suddenly appeared next door, Saiji woke in the small hours.
He ought to have been exhausted, yet he could not get to sleep. The knowledge that the room lay just beyond the wall was probably to blame.

“What the hell is an ‘ihai,’ anyway…? And I never did make it to Ms. Mikage’s room.”

Saiji pressed a palm to his forehead and shook his head from side to side, trying to rouse his still-muddled mind.
Sakuna had been just as bad. She had gone out of her way to come to him for advice, only to leave hand in hand with Toka the moment the other girl appeared.
In the end, Sakuna must have had those inclinations all along and merely been confused because she had recognized her own feelings for the first time.

“… Girls together. Disgusting. God, what a turnoff.”

Once his eyes were fully open, he found it difficult to fall asleep a second time.
Saiji sat up, intending to drink some water and change his mood.

Scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch—

Then he heard a strange sound.
It was as though something were scraping at the wall.

“Maybe there’s a bug in here…”

Running a hand through his disheveled hair, Saiji poured water from the waiting thermos into a glass and drained it at once.
It was not especially hot, but sleep inevitably left a person dehydrated.
As he felt the water spread through his body, he exhaled. “Whew.”

Scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch…

All the while, the strange sound continued without pause.
It was quiet in itself, but its endless repetition soon became irritating.

“If that’s some mating call, go do it somewhere else. Damn it.”

As if taking out his mounting frustration, Saiji punched the wall in the direction of the sound.
At that moment, he realized something.
What lay beyond this wall—was that not the room with the ihai?

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Saiji’s expression stiffened.
The only word ihai brought to mind was a single Japanese one: a mortuary tablet.
Of course, this was another world, and there was no reason the same word should exist here. But once the association had occurred to him, he could not erase the image.
Sakuna had behaved as though the room had always been next door. An auditory hallucination would have been one thing, but there was no possible way he could be mistaken about that.
His room had unquestionably been the last one at the end of the hall.
There had never been another room beside it.
That being so, Saiji’s suspicion that neither the neighboring room nor the object called an ihai was anything normal was almost certainly correct.

Scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch—scratch… scratch, scratch—

The rhythm changed from time to time, and the sound went on as though a living person were carving at the wall.
Saiji swallowed, cold sweat beading on his brow as he glared at it.
Should he go?
No. It could still be nothing more than an insect. There was no need to force himself to learn the truth.
Fear outweighed everything else, enough to make him despise himself as a coward.
Or perhaps it would be more accurate to call the feeling a survival instinct.
Yes. That had to be it.
Repeating that to himself, he crawled back into bed.
He pulled the covers over his face, trying to shut out as much of the sound as possible.
The scratching continued until dawn, as though it were calling to Saiji.

◇◇◇ Continue reading →

32. You Are the Hero of the Story—Truly, the Viande

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/34/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

“Uwaaaaaaagh!”

Saiji bolted upright and screamed the instant he awoke.

“Hah… hah… hah…”

His shoulders heaved with every ragged breath. Forgetting even to blink, he stared wildly around him.
This was—his room, and his body lay on the bed.
He had been certain he was dead.
He had felt the pain, and he had unmistakably felt his body growing cold.
Yet his arms and legs were attached.
So was his head, of course.

“Was it… a dream?”

It had been so real he wanted to call that idea ridiculous.
But since he was lying here in his own room, there seemed to be no other explanation.
If so, which parts had been real, and when had he fallen into the dream?
Saiji clutched his head.
He had no idea. He could not even begin to guess where reality ended and the dream began.
He wanted it all to have been an illusion.
But the moment Saiji formed that wish, he heard that sound from the wall behind him.

Scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch—

His entire body went rigid, gripped by tension as fierce as a hand closing around his heart.
He forgot not only to blink but even to breathe. He hunched forward with a hand pressed to his chest.
Tears threatened to spill from his eyes.
What in the world was this?
Who was doing it, and for what? Why did he have to be caught up in it?
Nothing came to mind.
Nothing at all. Saiji had never once thought of himself as a sinner.

Scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch—

The unnatural sound continued as though rebuking him.
It would go on until Saiji’s repentance was accepted.
Or until he went mad.

“Screw this… You piece of shit!”

Saiji flung the sheet aside, climbed out of bed, and strode from the room.
He was heading, of course, for the room that held the ihai.
If the cause of the sound was in there, he intended to beat it senseless and send it flying.
Even if his fists proved useless, Saiji could wield a little magic.
He would simply blast it away.
For some reason, the door was unlocked. Saiji opened it and stepped into a vast room that was, otherwise, nothing at all.

“…!”

He had assumed no one would be there.
Instead they stood stock-still, as if waiting for him.
Four men.
Their heads were bowed, and the room was dark, so he could not see their faces clearly. Judging by their appearance, however, they were probably soldiers who worked at the castle.

“Wel… come.”

The soldier on the far right spoke in a rasp and pointed in a particular direction.

“To the… ihai.”

The soldier beside him continued.

“Together… everyone… the whole time.” Continue reading →

33. Dessert After All, to Cleanse the Palate of Bitter Memories

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/35/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

A dim prison beneath the castle.
Saiji was in a cell divided off by iron bars, furnished with nothing but a moldy bed and a toilet.

“I’m not wrong. I’m not wrong. I’m not wrong. I’m not wrong.”

His eyes were wide, his cheeks were gaunt, and he had not slept at all since the previous night. He only repeated the same words.
By any measure, he had gone mad.
Even so, Saiji remained utterly convinced that he was right. He believed just as firmly that the knights under the king’s direct command—the ones who had locked him in this cell—had already been brainwashed by “them.”
That was why he refused the meals they brought him.
He was certain they contained human flesh.

“I’m not wrong. I’m not wrong. I’m not wrong. I’m not wrong.”

When the knights questioned him about why he had put poison in the food, he would not even tell them his reason.
He did nothing but repeat the same phrase, making communication all but impossible.
The only evidence left behind was the poison he had used and the small vial that had held it.
No one had ever heard of a poison capable of dissolving a body after only a small dose. An unknown poison naturally cast suspicion first upon Leia, a researcher, but she had a perfect alibi.
In other words, they still knew nothing.
The knights would probably never reach the truth.
They lacked the ability—and, more importantly, they would probably run out of time.

As Saiji sat with his knees drawn to his chest, he heard footsteps approaching.
There was more than one person, unlike the knights who delivered his meals.
But it made no difference to him who had come. He continued his chant like a prayer.
The visitors stopped in front of his cell and addressed him.

“It has been a while, Mr. Kazeoka.”

Only one of the summoned people would call him by that surname.
Yet the voice belonged neither to the surviving Sakuna nor to Toka, much less Miyako.
Wondering who else it could be, Saiji raised his head slightly and caught sight of them at the edge of his vision.
Sakuna, Toka, and … someone he did not know.
No—that face was familiar, and when he thought carefully, so was the voice.
But if she were the girl Saiji remembered, some condition should have kept her facial muscles constantly twitching. Her voice should have been hoarser. Above all, she should never have worn such a confident expression.
Then who was this? What was this person standing before him and looking down upon him? Continue reading →

Interlude 3: An Unremarkable, Beloved Everyday, for Example Café Boutiful

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/36/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

Ever since I obtained this body, I have scarcely had to worry about being oppressed by anyone, or about facing a difficulty I could not overcome.
My beloved companions have increased in number as well, and the plan is proceeding smoothly.
I am happy. I am fortunate.
And yet that very fortune has given rise to a new sort of worry.

“Hmph … I never thought I’d end up fighting Nunnally in earnest in a place like this.”
“I am quite surprised myself, Ellis. But since we have each staked something precious, I can hardly withdraw.”
“I feel the same way … Now get ready, Nunnally!”
“I am ready whenever you are!”

The two of them had abruptly begun fighting right in front of me. I watched from a luxurious, plush chair prepared as the best seat in the house, wearing a troubled expression.
Good grief. How on earth had it come to this?

Continue reading →

34. The Strongest and Worst of Humans

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/37/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

“After that, if we can just… do something about the eight knights, the country would be as good as finished, wouldn’t it?”

Leia had told me as much a little while ago.

“The only knight stationed at the castle, the one who guards the royal family—her name is Lily Clearlights.”
“She was the knight who defeated Camilla, as I recall.”
“Yes. And she’s the captain of the knighthood, too. But that person… I think she’s probably weaker than I am. If it were you, Mistress, I believe you could beat her easily.”

In other words, the reasoning seemed to be that if Lily, the captain, was only that strong, the other knights ought to be no trouble either.
And so I issued the following order to the king, whose brain I had already toyed with until he was a puppet.

“Gather every knight at the castle.”

Rotten-brained or not, he was still a king. At that single word, the knights scattered across the kingdom assembled at the castle all at once.
Even so, there was one who arrived late.
He was the man riding in the carriage running ahead of me: Saints Judgment, who called himself “the human most beloved by God in all the world.”
The name was so blatant I suspected an alias, but it was apparently his real one.
His family had been deeply devout for generations, I was told.
There is no such thing as God in this world, however, so I decided to dispose of him promptly and turn him into a puppet as well.

I moved from the shadow of grass to the shadow of trees, closing the distance to the carriage.
At last I slipped into the shadow directly beneath it.
From there, Saints’ voice reached me.
When I shifted a little, I could see inside the carriage as well.
Saints had the look of a somewhat slender, thoroughly ordinary priest.

“By the by, coachman.”
“Y-yes?”
“Do you… believe in God?”
“God, sir? Well, I believe well enough.”
“I see, I see. How fine. You are truly fine. Lately, I am sorry to say, the number of rude people who do not believe in God has increased. A lamentable thing. Truly lamentable.”

Paying no mind to the coachman’s bewilderment, he launched into a sermon of a conversation.
He was rather like a troublesome passenger pestering a taxi driver.

“However! If you are a righteous man who has faith in God, then I, beloved of God, have a duty to act in His stead. In short, I must save you.”
“Uh… right…”
“Listen well, young man. Stop the carriage at once. Then get down, and—let me see—run until you are somewhere beyond the horizon.”
“Huh? W-why?”
“Do not talk back! I am telling you to run!”

The young coachman startled at the force of that voice.

“Eek!? I understand!” Continue reading →

35. Eight Knights and a Lonely Princess

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/38/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

Inside the royal castle, in a stone room ordinarily used for the soldiers’ briefings, the knighthood that was the kingdom’s pride stood assembled in full.
It was rare for them, usually scattered across the land, to gather in one place like this.
Was war about to break out at last, or had the other side already made the first move?
Convinced that an emergency of one kind or another must be underway, they had rushed back to the royal capital—and yet—

“Haaah? You don’t even know the reason!?”

Ashera Foshanza spat it out without bothering to hide her irritation.
She had blood-red hair tied back, eyes of the same blood-red, and from the legend that any battlefield she entered became a sea of blood, she was called the Crimson Battle Fiend.
Whether the rumors were true or not, the strength with which she swung an enormous axe as tall as she was was certainly beyond the human.

“Don’t screw with me. I ain’t got time to waste. Bring out the king. The king!”
“Do calm yourself, Ashera. Lily is at a loss, is she not?”

Lalilalai Avota rebuked Ashera in a gentle voice.
Unlike Ashera, from whom roughness seeped even from her appearance, Lalilalai’s silver hair, ample figure, and mild expression suggested a tranquil person.
Her generosity was such that she was called the Madonna of the Kingdom, and the soldiers adored her in more than one sense.

“Well, well, Lalilalai, still as big-hearted as ever. That’s our Madonna of the Kingdom for you—the sex-mother herself.”
“Madonna is far too grand a title. I merely wrap as many people as I can in love, so that they may be happy.”
“That’s a roundabout way of saying you’ll spread your legs for anyone, you whore.”
“Oh my, I do not sell my body. I am always happy to do it free of charge, you know?”
“That makes it even worse!”

Ashera glared; Lalilalai’s smile did not falter.
Whenever the two of them met, it was always like this.
Watching them, Lily, captain of the knighthood, clutched her head and heaved a long sigh.
I ought to stop them here—so she thought, and yet her voice would not come.
Even if someone like Lily spoke up, these two would not stop.
While she dithered over it, another member opened her mouth first.

“Gahahaha! Ashera’s still as savage as ever! Don’t waste it in here—come keep me company later!”
“Tch… Don’t stick your oar in, David.”
“You ought to be thanking him for stopping you. You two will never see eye to eye, and an endless quarrel would be a nuisance.”
“You stay out of it too, Madis. I get it, all right?”

The two men belonging to the knighthood—David, distinguished by a huge frame some two meters tall, and Madis, who wore a white coat and glasses and looked every bit the intellectual—each cut in.
Told off by the familiar David and the cool-headed Madis, even Ashera, wild horse that she was, had no choice but to fall silent.
Watching the exchange, Narkil, who had been looking on from the side, gave a wry smile. Continue reading →

36. Into the Depths of the Story

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/39/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

After the meeting, Ashera did a light bout of combat training with David at the training grounds.
It had gone a long way toward relieving her stress—but on her way to the showers to wash off the sweat, she came face to face with the last person she wanted to meet.

“Geh…”
“Oh my, what a coincidence, Ashera. Were you training with David?”
“None of your business. Leave me alone.”
“Is it so strange to take an interest in the movements of one’s fellow members of the knighthood?”

Fellow members or not, they had never once acted as a group.
To begin with, opportunities for the members to be clustered in the same place like this were so rare it was doubtful they had even happened once.

“By the way, Ashera, I am in a terrible bind.”
“Good for you. Stay in a bind forever.”

Ashera had no intention of listening to anyone’s troubles; she fluttered a hand and tried to leave.
But Lalilalai, at her own pace, put a question to her.

“There is not a man to be seen anywhere in this castle. At this rate I cannot fulfill my duties as a holy woman.”
“Then Madis or Narkil would do, wouldn’t they? Or why don’t you seduce the king and drag him out yourself?”
“I did try, but no matter how provocatively, how sensually I spoke to him, there was no response. I had been confident I could arouse sexual excitement in any man, so I have been a little depressed.”

So she actually tried, Ashera retorted inwardly.
But perhaps that, too, was very like Lalilalai.
She did not choose to whom she offered her body.
Ally or enemy, noble or vagrant—if she was wanted, she gladly let herself be taken.
“That is my own form of love,” she would say, without once doubting her ethics.

“If there’s nobody around, that’s fine, isn’t it? It’s a rare holiday. Rest your body, literally.”
“Oh my, you are concerned for my body. How happy I am to hear you say such a thing, Ashera. I cannot help but… ahh, my body is growing hot.”
“… You really don’t pick your partners. What are you, a rabbit in heat?”
“How charming. A rabbit.”
“Yeah, sure. Below a rabbit, if you mean you’ve got no charm. Even they don’t go around casually aborting kids.”
“Casually? Did you just say I abort them casually, Ashera!”

A shadow fell across the smile that had not broken once until now.
The subject of abortion was a land mine for her.
Ashera, for her part, grinned at the sight—in other words, she had understood it was taboo and brought it up on purpose.
Lalilalai closed the distance by a step and set her hand on the hem of her coat.
Then, as if to show Ashera her skin, she rolled it up and bared herself.

“My eldest son, Edge; my second son, Lugrade; my third son, Alphaus—”

One by one, she pointed to the tattoos of fetuses carved into her torso.

“My eldest daughter, Muse; my fourth son, Sein; my second daughter, Norn; my third daughter, Room; my fourth daughter, Kiria; my fifth son, Jess; and my sixth son, Bardon!” Continue reading →

37. Not Madness, but Ignorance

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/40/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

Camilla Dilideed.
It was the first time Chigusa had heard the full name, but if it was someone connected to the captain of the knighthood, and the name was Camilla, it could hardly be unrelated to that vampire Camilla.
Inwardly shaken that Camilla’s name had come up in such an unexpected place, Chigusa listened to the rest.

“The Dilideed house is a noble family, not especially wealthy, but they keep a villa in the royal capital. Camilla was a handful from childhood, and she used to sneak into our estate in secret.”
“What were the guards doing?”
“Exactly. Well, perhaps they saw that she and I were close and looked the other way.”

Whether that counted as being considerate was a dubious question.

“And so, after those secret meetings, once Camilla and I began attending school in the capital, we were finally able to associate openly. She was good with a sword as well, and we often clashed as rivals.”
“To go up against you, Captain—that’s considerable skill.”
“Well, at school we were among the top, at least. Camilla may have thought that if she surpassed me, who already had the captaincy lined up, she could enter the knighthood.”
“… Perhaps so that you could be together?”
“Who knows. Neither of us was honest, so I don’t know what she was thinking when she tried to join. But she was certainly fixated on strength.”

Hearing that, Chigusa thought.
Perhaps Camilla, too, had been a being granted a vampire’s power, as she herself had.
She did not know the finer circumstances, but Camilla had probably been unable to surpass Lily.
And so she had not been able to join the knighthood.
Still wishing somehow to catch up, she had—offered herself to the inhuman.

“What is that Camilla doing now?”

Chigusa knew the answer, but she asked anyway.
There was a chance, however slight, that it was a case of mistaken identity.
Lily answered at once.

“She’s dead. I cut her down.”

The reply she had expected.
In other words—the Camilla Dilideed she spoke of was, after all, almost certainly the very person who had made Chigusa a Demi-Vamp.

“It’s about time… If you wouldn’t mind, would you listen again sometime?”
“If someone like me will do.”
“Thank you. That’s a help.”

So saying, Lily left the mess hall at a quick pace.
Watching her back, Chigusa felt, strangely, a little forlorn.
Perhaps Camilla’s feelings inside her were appealing for something.

Continue reading →

38. I Cannot Do It as Well as You

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/41/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

“Oh? Chii-chan, what are you doing in a place like this?”

Miyako had come to the dining hall to wet her throat, and found Chigusa sitting alone, sunk in thought.
Chigusa was supposed to be handling Lily, the captain of the knights. How was that going?
Lately Miyako had been glued to Ashera and they had hardly spoken—so she took the neighboring seat and leaned in.

“Mya-nee?”
“You looked bored out of your mind. What’s wrong? Something happen with Lily?”
“… Something of that sort, yes. I did tell you that the vampire who changed me into this body was named Camilla.”
“Yeah, I heard.”

Chigusa spoke with a grave face.

“Apparently that Camilla was a friend of Lily’s.”

Miyako cocked her head.

“Huh? But wasn’t Camilla the one who tried to lay hands on a princess named Sara and got cut down by the knight captain?”
“That much seems to be true, but there appears to be more beneath it … No matter how many times we speak, Lily only blurs that part and will not make it clear.”

And so today, too, Chigusa had been waiting in the dining hall, hoping Lily would come.
The one who actually arrived, unexpectedly, was Miyako.

“Come to think of it—the first place they dumped Chii-chan’s body was a trash heap, right?”
“Yes. That is where I met Camilla.”
“I’ve thought this for a while. Even for people who came from another world, isn’t that sloppy? Same goes for Camilla. They were careless enough to throw her out in a place like that, and that’s how the Chii-chan we have now got born.”

Chigusa had wondered the same thing for some time.
To the people of this world they were outsiders; their lives were worth little. If one thought of it that way, it was not unnatural.
Camilla, however, was different.
She was a vampire with high regenerative power, and she had been Lily’s friend.

“One possibility that comes to mind is that someone ordered it.”
“Is there even anyone who could do that? Still, that does seem like the likeliest one.”
“Mm …”

Thinking did not produce an answer.
At that time, the castle had held any number of people who could give orders to soldiers.
Unlike now, when almost no one remained properly alive, there was no way to narrow it down.
In the end, it seemed they would have to draw it out of Lily.
And yet something snagged strangely in Chigusa’s memory.
Camilla’s traces had not all vanished.
The memory of that time—it was certainly still there, somewhere in Chigusa’s mind.

Continue reading →

39. Ten Tenths of Righteousness Is Sophistry

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/42/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

Lalilalai was conscious of herself as a holy woman.
She believed it because she possessed a deeper love than anyone, and because she could, in fact, love even a person she had just met, without conditions.
And her love was, as a rule, not refused.
That was because Lalilalai had a body men found ideal, and because she housed in her heart a maternity that could make even a woman go weak—and yet
for some reason, it had never gone well with Ashera alone.
Why did Ashera not merely reject her love, but deny it entirely?
Until now their strengths had been matched, so Lalilalai had been able to believe in her own love.
This time, however, she had lost.

“Are you saying my love was wrong?”

She had been turning that over ever since the quarrel the other day.
It ought to have been right. Why, then, had the Ashera who denied it been able to win?
However long she thought, only one conclusion presented itself.

“It is because you do not know love. Poor Ashera.”

Lalilalai murmured it.
—That’s exactly why I can’t stand the likes of you.
She could almost hear Ashera’s complaint.

“If we held one another even once we would understand, and yet … if only you would entrust your body to me for a single night …”

So saying, she took her cup in both hands and sipped her tea.
Drinking this herbal tea was said to warm the body through and through.
Keeping one’s temperature a little high was, apparently, one of the secrets of pleasing a man.
That said, the partner she currently had in mind was a woman.

“Lalilalai. You in?”

Speak of someone and they appear, or so the saying went.
Just as she had been thinking of Ashera, Ashera’s voice came from beyond the door.
Lalilalai could not help feeling it was fate.

“I am here. I shall open it at once.”

She answered, hurried to the door, opened it, and received her with a full smile.
She had expected Ashera to be scowling, and so she had made her own smile a little more extravagant than usual, thinking that at least she herself should.
Contrary to expectation, the woman who appeared wore a mild expression. Her temper did not seem bad.

“Sorry. Showing up all of a sudden.”

That first utterance gave Lalilalai a violent sense of wrongness.
If her memory was correct, this was the first time Ashera had ever directed an apology at her.
A smile, too.
Something quite good must have happened.
As Ashera was now, it might even be possible to convey Lalilalai’s love.
She had begun to hold that hope.

“Please do not trouble yourself. If anything, I am simply glad you came.”
“That’s a relief.”
“I shall brew tea at once, so please sit and wait.”

Lalilalai spoke as she turned toward the pot.
Ashera came up behind her, opened both arms—and held her, gently.

“… Ashera?”
“Forget the tea. There’s something I want to ask of you today.”
“And what would that be?”
“Up to now, you and I have done nothing but fight. I’m sure that’s because the ‘love’ each of us had in mind never lined up.”

By that point, Lalilalai already understood what Ashera wanted.
So her body began to prepare to receive her.
Heat rose through her; her skin took on a faint flush and grew damp.

“If we understand each other, I think we can be real companions.”
“Ashera … I have been waiting for those words all this time.”

They tilted their heads and let their mouths meet.
Before long their tongues twined, and they began to make nasal sounds.
When Ashera’s hand then crawled over her through her clothes, Lalilalai rolled her hips as if dancing.

“Ah, haa … just as I imagined. You are terribly passionate.”
“What were you imagining me doing, exactly.”
“That much is decided. Shall I tell you why I did not leave my room after that battle?”
“You don’t have to. This room’s full of your scent.”
“… Shall I air it?”
“What’s with the meekness. It’s not a bad smell. Just smelling it makes me want your body more and more.”
“Kyah!?”

Ashera scooped Lalilalai up in her arms. Continue reading →

40. Today Is Garbage Day

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/43/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

To be honest, Lily had not wanted to look at the other knights’ faces, and she had not wanted to report on the king who would not come out, who had made no progress at all.
But several days had passed since the first meeting, and she could hardly remain silent forever; so she had steeled herself.
Thus seven knights gathered before a captain suffering from a stomachache—and yet—

“… Why don’t we just start and not worry about it?”
“No, but still.”
“I think we ought to ignore it as well. Though it is obvious that nothing has progressed, so dissolving the meeting as it stands would also be fine.”

The knights’ gazes were all turned on Ashera and Lalilalai.
That the two of them got on like cats and dogs was common knowledge among them.
Only a few days ago they had had a spectacular fight and made a magnificent mess of things.

“Even so, this sudden about-face is more than even I can hide my confusion over. Oi, you two, are you listening?”

Even when Narkil addressed them, there was no reply.
Ashera and Lalilalai had their arms linked, looking only at each other, building a world of two.
… Or so it seemed; they had, after all, been able to hear. Ashera looked toward Narkil and spoke.

“Have you been talking about me and Lara this whole time?”
“What else would I be talking about! What is that distance … or rather, that way of calling her!”
“Lara is Lara. This kid asked me to call her that.”
“I still have the memory of Mother calling me so. Therefore I wanted Mama to call me that as well.”
“… Mama?”
“Yes! Mama Ashera!”

Lalilalai’s smile was as pure as a child’s.
Faced with an expression that unsoiled, Narkil swayed and crumpled.

“You all right, Narkil.”
“Madis, give me one of your medicines … something terribly strong, the sort that lets one flee reality.”
“It isn’t that I don’t have such a thing, but you would never return to reality.”
“I don’t care! That Lalilalai is calling Ashera ‘Mama’! It is a nightmare, it must be a nightmare! Or rather, Saints, David—are you two not far too calm!?”

Shown a scene he could not accept, yet having grasped that abuse was wasted on a world of two, Narkil turned the point of his anger elsewhere.
Saints and David, however, only answered with a careless “Haha.”
Meanwhile the atmosphere between the two who were looking at each other continued to rise.

“Mama, I cannot bear it any longer.”
“You sure? Everyone’s watching.”
“I do not mind. Whoever may be looking, whatever they may say, only Mama’s words reach my ears.”
“Lara …” Continue reading →

41. A Feeling That Does Not Die Even in Death

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/44/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

Kishiri excelled at covert work.
She had been raised for that purpose from the first. Had her employers not been carelessly destroyed, she would still be killing people in places the sun never reached.
They had received their punishment at the hands of the soldiers Lily led, and Kishiri had been left alone.
The one who had not passed sentence on her, but had asked instead, “Will you fight for the country with us?”, had been Lily, and no one else.
Lily was hopelessly kind. She strained herself until watching her made one uneasy. She was surely not, by nature, the sort of vessel that ought to become captain of the knights.
And so Kishiri had thought:
I want to stay at this person’s side. I want to support her from the shadows.

—I have to tell Lily. Now.

Having witnessed Narkil’s death, she moved at once.
She had already found it suspicious.
The replacement soldiers, all of them women. The plainly abnormal closeness of Ashera and Lalilalai. The strange atmosphere that hung over the castle.
But she had not yet obtained the material for certainty.
That was why she had said she would go to Lily’s room and still had not done it.
Now that she had seen the truth with her own eyes, there was no time left to hesitate.

Her small, thin body raced through the castle without a sound.
At a speed ordinary people could scarcely even catch with their eyes, Kishiri had almost—

“What’s the rush?”

At the last moment, she was found by the people she least wanted to meet.
Ashera and Lalilalai. Already, she judged, fallen into the enemy’s hands.
She thought of ignoring them and passing through. She could not.
Her arms and legs were already caught in something that could only be called “shadows”: black, formless, without temperature.

“We were just looking for you, Kishiri.”

Failure.
I should have moved sooner.
Kishiri regretted, sharply, her own lack of resolve.
If the enemy possessed some means of rewriting them, there was only one thing to do here.
Abandon the conceit that she, of all people, could resist.
Bite through her tongue. Kill herself.

“Ngh—?!”

Before she could move, a mass of that same black stuff was forced into her mouth.

“Don’t go wasting your life, Kishiri. We aren’t gonna eat you. We just want to understand each other, that’s all.”
“Quite so. And besides … Kishiri, you must become my ‘Mother.’”

Conversation was already useless.
She had to escape at any cost—but bound hand and foot, every method was already sealed.
Endure. There will be a chance. She made herself believe it.

“All right. Let’s go to my room.”

Still bound by shadows, Kishiri was taken to Ashera’s chambers.
In the end, the crisis unfolding in the castle never reached Lily.

Continue reading →

42. Let My Love Bloom in Your Innermost Depths

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/45/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

Kishiri was brought into Ashera’s room, laid on the bed, and bound hand and foot by something black.
The room’s owner and Lalilalai stretched out on either side of her and spoke into her ears.

“You needn’t be so wary. We only mean to make you feel well.”
“…”

The gag meant to keep her from biting her tongue had already been removed, but for some reason Kishiri’s mouth would not take force.
It was not that she could not speak. She simply could not bite her tongue properly.
They had likely done something to the muscles, or the joints, on the way here.

“I don’t even hate that kind of defiance. Refreshing, isn’t it? Getting to teach Kishiri, who doesn’t know ‘real happiness,’ with my own hands.”

Ashera set a hand on Kishiri’s chest and, with one hand, began undoing the buttons of her outer clothes.
Kishiri’s face did not change.

Lalilalai moved as well. They worked at her from both sides, trying to pour charm in through contact with the skin.

And still Kishiri’s mouth stayed in a hard line, as if she did not even feel the tickle.
Ashera and Lalilalai, touching her directly, noticed the strangeness.
Two of them at once ought to have forced some change in body heat, willing or not. Kishiri showed no such tendency.
At the same time, there was a sensation that the magical power of “charm,” which ought to have been flowing in through the skin, was being struck away.

Ashera thought, abruptly, of the possibility that the girl had been educated from early childhood.
If one were raising a child as a spy, or an assassin, instruction alone would not suffice.
In some cases, one would rebuild the body into a convenient shape.

“You don’t feel anything when you’re touched, do you.”
“…”
“That face says, ‘And what of it?’”
“In other words, an absence of sensation?”
“Something close. But a body that refuses magical power isn’t something you can make easily. There’d have to be a matching price.”

Pleasure, of course—and pain, most likely, as well. Taste, probably, was dead too.
Only after going that far could a human acquire resistance to magic.

“Fine. We change the method.”
“What do you intend?”
“If the outside won’t work, we touch her from the inside.”
“Ah. I see!”

Lalilalai clapped her hands in understanding.
From behind the two of them, a single black tentacle extended.
It had come from their shadows.
It approached Kishiri’s ear slowly, and slipped, with a wet sound, into the canal. Continue reading →

43. Remaining Myself, I Become Someone Other Than Myself

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/46/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

Kishiri found that she had been asleep on the bed.
When she woke, the view beyond the window was already dyed madder-red.
It had been morning only a little while ago—too long for a nap.

“Good morning, Kishiri.”

Lalilalai was lying beside her.
Kishiri’s small body fit neatly in the woman’s arms, wrapped through and through in that warmth.

(I … I went back to my own room. Why is Lalilalai— No … that’s wrong. This is … her room. I—that’s right. After I left Lily, I came here …)
“My. Still half asleep? You insisted, you know. I have been lying here without laying a hand on you.”
“… Sorry. Lalilalai.”
“It’s all right. I was able to watch a very dear sleeping face.”

Apparently the sleeping face had been thoroughly observed.
Together with being called “dear,” it made her unaccountably ashamed; Kishiri buried her face in the woman’s chest.
Then her head was pulled into a tight embrace, and a violent mass of flesh surrounded her face.

“Mmgh …”
“Fufufu. An honest Kishiri is truly lovely. And you, too, are far happier this way, are you not?”
“…?”

She did not understand what Lalilalai was saying.
When Kishiri looked up from the woman’s chest, Lalilalai narrowed her eyes, loosened her arms with a rapt expression, and—
A wet crush.
A sound in the brain.
Kishiri understood, by instinct, that a kiss was being asked for, and brought her face closer.
What followed she registered only as a courtship gesture she knew by theory. There was no sensation. No taste. Lalilalai looked pleased, and that, for Kishiri, was enough.

“And you will still say you feel nothing? How very sad.”
“I don’t mind … If Lalilalai feels well, that’s enough.”
“How devoted. Ah, that is why I lament. Why a person as self-sacrificing as you cannot be happy.”

Lalilalai pitied her, and stroked her head.
A wet sound.
Then the viscous noise sounded again in Kishiri’s brain, and she—returned to her right mind.

“—?! Wh-what … why am I here … and just now … that—…”

The feel of Lalilalai remaining in her mouth.
Kishiri covered her mouth with her hand and shook her head again and again.

“I discussed it with Mama. What ought to be done. As you are, charm will not take properly, and to leave the insensibility untreated would be far too pitiful.”
“What … are you going to do?”
“I will rebuild your body to my preference.”

Lalilalai’s mouth hooked up.
That was madness. It was in no sense love.
Kishiri shoved the woman’s body away, and by spring of the body alone leapt from the bed and landed on the floor.

“You cannot run. Not as you are now.” Continue reading →

44. Danger Zone XXX

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

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

◇◇◇ Continue reading →

45. True Happiness and Something Shaped Like Hope

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/48/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

What does it mean to be human?
Kishiri turned the question over whenever her mind cleared, even as Ashera and Lalilalai—who had arrived later—worked her body between their hands. No answer came.
Pride, honor, dignity—none of these belonged to her.
She had been raised from birth to be a tool.
She received orders. She protected other people’s pride. Her own will never entered into it.
Even so, she had refused to become something other than human.
If that refusal did not come from dignity, perhaps it came from instinct: the species trying to keep itself alive.
They say that when a human life is in danger, the wish to bear a child rises of its own accord.
The species refuses.
It is not the wish of the individual.
A life, in the end, is only a journey toward the most complete self-satisfaction one can manage.
If that is so, what meaning is there in being bound to the human species at all?
It had taken a long time—but Kishiri was, at last, beginning to accept that the meaning was none.

Everything was being overwritten by pleasure.
Even the instincts imprinted at birth thinned and faded before something so overwhelming.

Lalilalai’s tongue entered through her mouth and filled her lungs.
Ashera forced her throat open as well, twisting a long tongue down until it occupied her stomach.
In a “sane” state, the act would have been impossible to accept. Repeated often enough, the resistance vanished.
Now she asked for it herself. She wanted them inside her again.
The faintly warm, soft tongues moving through her chest and belly had become, to her, something precious.

So she wished to give something back.
After they had ruined her from within, she pushed Lalilalai down in turn, and when Ashera leaned close she met her mouth.
They scattered saliva, tangled those long tongues, and drove the joined length into Lalilalai’s throat.
They kept that kiss going inside her, sinking it as far as the stomach.
The sensation of her gullet being scraped drew a glad, strangled cry from Lalilalai.
Kishiri and Ashera used the sound like a drug, and answered it with sweet, broken voices of their own.

There was no longer any part of Kishiri they had not claimed.
From her feet to the crown of her head they had mapped her, and the inside of her was no exception.
Shadows sank into flesh and stroked every fiber of muscle with care.
Every opening the body possessed was reached as far as reach would go.
Organs they could not arrive at from without were taken up in their hands after her belly was opened, and tasted directly.
The heart was the worst of it. Each touch sent a pleasure so violent she thought she might die, and her mind went white.
The first time they opened her, she had screamed in terror. She grew used to it soon enough.
Perhaps an ordinary person would not.
She was made to grow used to it.
Because it felt good.
Once a human understands that an act is giving pleasure, vigilance collapses at once.
Heart and body begin to fit themselves to what is no longer human.

It went on like that, again and again.
At last Kishiri told them, of her own will:

“I want it—I want to become … the same as you two. A Demi-Vamp!”

She no longer needed the shadow lurking in her brain.
Goodbye to a cramped world.
Hello to a bottomless swamp.
Humans decide, on their own authority, that the highest thing is to be rewarded after suffering.
That is wrong. It is only an excuse for compromise.
Nothing surpasses a happiness that lasts.
Everyone, in truth, already knew it.

Continue reading →

46. Last Escape

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/49/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

Pitiful, he had said—as if she had not heard it until she was sick of hearing it.
Camilla, too, must have thought of her that way.
Lily thought it of herself.
Pitiful.
However far she chased an ideal, there was no happiness of her own in it.
For the country. For the king. For her parents.
Anyone who looked at a woman who held no wish of her own would think the same.

“Yes. I am pitiful … But I will not turn back now. Not if it means wasting the life I have already spent.”

She mocked herself as she ran toward Sara’s rooms.
Still—not to pass a single soldier on the way was strange, even for this.
If Madis had been right, and the castle had been as good as occupied the moment the soldiers became women, then this emptiness, too, was part of the vampires’ design.

“Come to think of it—Glass, among the soldiers. Ah. No wonder the feeling was familiar.”

What rose in her mind was a beautiful soldier with black hair.
Lily did not know, of course, that Glass—that is, Chigusa—carried the power inherited from Camilla.
So she had decided that the nostalgia she had felt upon meeting Chigusa was simply because they were of the same kind.

She reached Sara’s rooms in no time, and without obstacle.
An emergency. Knocking could wait.
She opened the door roughly. Sara, who had been looking out the window in boredom, turned in surprise.

“Wha—what is the meaning of this, bursting in without even knocking?”

There was no time to explain.
Lily crossed the room in long strides and took Sara’s hand.

“Ask nothing. Follow me.”
“… I—I understand. You will explain the reason presently, will you not?”

Lily nodded without speaking.
She drew Sara away from the window, then drew her sword.
She could not step beyond the human range—but her swordsmanship had reached what people called mastery.
She swung at a speed Sara’s eyes could not follow, and shattered the glass.

“We are going out this way?”

Lily did not answer in words. A nod was enough.
She lifted Sara into her arms and jumped, without hesitation, from the window.

“Hyaaaaaaaaa?!”

They were on the third floor. An ordinary human might well have died of the fall—still more one in armor, however light, and carrying another person besides. Instant death would not have been strange.
Sara’s scream was reasonable.
Lily landed cleanly on both feet.
Then she ran, apparently unhurt.

“Th-that was terrible for my heart …”
“Forgive me, Your Highness. Endure a little longer.”

First they had to leave the castle.
What came after could wait until they reached safety.
Lily cleared the moat, made for the castle town, and chose the emptier streets, aiming for the Discard District.
She ran alleys she would never have used in ordinary times, Sara in her arms.
When Sara judged the moment right, she asked, timidly:

“Why did we have to flee the castle?”

Lily hesitated.
Did she need to tell the girl, here, that her father was dead? The conflict was real.
But concealment would not last.
Better to tell her now, so the wound might begin to close a moment sooner.

“The castle is already occupied by vampires. The knightly order is annihilated, myself excepted. The king, too, is most likely already dead.”
“The knights—?! And Father, dead …”

Sara was surprised, but she did not seem greatly shocked.
The king had never given her a father’s love.
They had been strangers who happened to live in the same building.
However much blood connected them, if no relation had been built, death would draw only this much.

“It cannot have been Camilla?”
“Impossible. I killed her. There is no mistake.”
“… Yes. You did.”

Camilla had been an abomination who had tried to make Sara other than human—and still Sara did not seem to hate her much.
That, more than anything, shook Lily.
Had cutting Camilla down been a mistake after all?

Continue reading →

47. Hijra in the Nightmare

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/50/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

They used a bolt-hole of the Discard District and left the town.
The smell of the corpse-mountain still clung in the back of the nose.
Remembering it was enough to make her want to be sick, but Lily could not afford to show a weak part.
Sara, weaker still, was right beside her.
She was now the last of the royal blood.
Protecting her to the end was the first charge laid on the captain of the knights.
Even if there was no one left to give the order, Lily, who had had that fate pressed on her since childhood, could only obey it blindly.
For the country?
No—to fulfill the reason she existed.

Continue reading →

48. Egoistic Justice

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/51/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

On the road to Gravard, camping out should not have been necessary.
There were towns within walking distance, and a maintained highway connected them.
But Lily, having fled a town under vampire rule, would not approach human settlements after that.
She did not wish, wherever she went, to produce victims on her account.
Whether she went or not, this country was fated to fall under vampire rule, and she understood that—it was a futile struggle, in short. If she did not look, reality would not yet be fixed.

She sat with her knees up, hands upon them, and stared at the wavering flame.
Sparks snapped. The fire lit the dim forest.
Sara leaned against her, her head dipping and lifting in a doze.
At last her eyes, unable to bear the gravity of sleep, closed, and she fell.

“Of course she’s tired. I only hope the dreams, at least, are kind.”

Lily said it, and smiled at the faint breathing.
Sara had only just seen a nightmare of a landscape; she must be exhausted in mind and in body.
Or perhaps it would be better not to dream at all.
To sink into a deep sleep and find, when she noticed, that her eyes were open.
Time that passed while one remained awake from a dream would wear even Lily’s mind down, steadily.
She did not think Sara could endure it.

“Not that I can say I will endure it myself.”

Her senses were keener; it might be harder for Lily.

“Ah, I know. I know. You’re watching even now, aren’t you? From far or near, I don’t know—but from somewhere I can reach, staring, waiting for the moment my heart breaks!”

Her voice carried through the quiet forest.
Of course there was no answer.
Even so, her honed senses were certainly catching some misshapen presence peering in.
She could not sleep.
How could she sleep.
In an unknown land, in an unknown forest, Lily spent a long, long night alone.

Continue reading →

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.

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50. I’m Home, Poor World That Still Does Not Know Love

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/53/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

Which she would choose had been a settled matter from the start.
I set in her hand a sword ornamented with jewels, said to have been passed down in the royal house. She went forward without hesitation and raised it.
The killing intent was aimed at her prince.
Which is to say: it was the princess who had taken up the sword.
The two of them had originally been a most affectionate pair of lovers.

“Why … would you do this …!”
“Because my Mistress’s hands make me far happier than you ever could!”

The princess’s cheeks flushed. She gave a cute little “ei!” and brought the blade down on the prince’s neck.
The prince, his expression remaining comically desperate, shed a great quantity of blood and died.
Clatter—the sword slipped from the princess’s hand, struck the ground, and rang with a dry sound.
Then she turned toward me, wore a full smile she had probably never turned even on her prince, and flung herself against my chest.
How dear she was.
We had met only a few days before, and yet I certainly loved her from the bottom of my heart.
In this embrace, and in the words of love I whispered at her ear, there was not a shred of falsehood.

“Mistress. This is all right, isn’t it. I can finally become yours, can’t I?”
“Yes. Let us go together. To a place humans cannot reach.”
“—Ah … nnaaaaaah!”

I sank my fangs in. I let her fall.
Farewell, mankind. Hello, the inhuman.
I drew up the sweet, melting red of her humanity, and poured into the princess the stuff of a new birth.
As she was taken from, given to, and remade, she was wrapped in a rapture no human could possibly confer; and I, swallowing the blood, tasted a bliss the human body cannot feel.

Who, then, is the one at a loss?
I, who had only ever been oppressed, powerless and incompetent, had at last, by discarding humanity, been able to make someone happy, and to become happy myself.
It is the same for everyone.
In the human world, the instant someone’s love is born, hatred is born somewhere.
Someone’s happiness is someone’s unhappiness; plus and minus zero, and the balance is kept.
What an unequal balance. What an unreasonable world.
Which is to say: strife never ends.
I do not mean to conclude that this affair is humanity’s fault—and yet, as a single fact, one cannot deny that the cause lies with them.
If only, a little more, all of humankind had been able to love other people.

Yes. I understand. The world’s structure will not allow it. Humans are a set of light and shadow, made so that the world will never be free of strife.
And yet, if it had been possible.
If I had been loved by my parents, if I had not been bullied, if I had not jumped from the school roof.
Then Demi-Vamps would never have been born.

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Ex2-1. Where Paradise Lies

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/55/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

It was the last paradise left on the world

After every nation had fallen to the vampires, the few humans who had barely survived wandered in search of some place where they might still live as people.
Those who escaped intact arrived, by chance, at the same destination.

North on the continent, beyond a cave, lay a flatland ringed by mountains.
A settlement had once been there; several dozen people had lived quietly.
The young had gone to the cities. Those who remained had died out. Only rotting wooden ruins were left.
Some came looking for a hiding place, some as if fleeing the rain, some in search of a place to die. All of them arrived.

Rumors of the settlement reached the ears of the surviving humans, and people began to gather there in a body.
Fortunately the land itself was fairly wide, so even with nearly two hundred assembled, they did not quarrel over space.
So long as they sealed the cave, they need not fear discovery by vampires. The people who lived there came, in time, to call that safe place paradise—“Eden.”

Eden was at peace.
Humans whose lives have been threatened respect their own lives, and other people’s, more than those who have never been so exposed.
Everyone showed consideration. Everyone gave kindness.
A true utopia.
Even humans, it seemed, could discard their folly. They would not spend forever at one another’s throats.
There was hope.
Which is to say: there was light.
Where light is born, shadow arises.
The peace did not last long.

The seed of strife was food.
Spring water covered their need to drink, but mountain herbs and the wild animals they could hunt would not feed two hundred.
Hunger roughened their hearts and pared the kindness away.
In the end, humans had never been capable of making a paradise.
At first it was only friends sharing food.
Then the sharing hardened into factions, into a gap between rich and poor; jealousy coiled; the factions began to fight.
Even if the world shrank to a settlement of two hundred, the scale changed and the conduct did not.
The blood-for-blood fighting lasted several days. Eden’s population fell to about a hundred and fifty.

—Then, one day, a single human appeared in the settlement.

He descended as if from the heavens, like a god: Alexander Omicron.
In the age when humans had still been masters of the world, he had made his name as “the greatest magician alive”—a first-rate magical scholar in the true sense.
Having watched the world perish under the vampires, he had come to Eden in search of a place to retire.

“If he is a famous magician, he may know a way to save us.”

The people, weary of fighting, clung to Alexander.
He considered a little, observed his surroundings, and said:

“The ones who joined the fighting were adult men, which means the dead were as well. If the remaining survivors are fifty men, then there are a hundred women. Don’t you think that is too many?”

Among the men, some had apparently resented being the only ones who had to fight.
Many agreed with Alexander.

“We should restore the balance. There is also a way to solve the food problem at the same time. Do as I say.”

Alexander was indeed an excellent magician. Few people knew that, shortly before the human world fell, in the midst of the chaos, his own country had banished him.
Officially, his specialty was the treatment of wounds and disease. That was not true.
—Human experimentation.
In particular, a series of atrocious trials upon young women, which also served to satisfy his own appetites.
That was the field in which Alexander excelled.

He made this proposal:

“We will use fifty of the women as food, and turn the remaining fifty into plants for producing meat efficiently. A few women able to bear proper children will be enough.”

At first everyone opposed it.
But people cannot resist hunger.
Before long, fifty women were chosen from among the survivors and consumed as food.
The remaining fifty were bound; Alexander’s procedures remade their wombs so that, once pregnant, they could immediately deliver enormous lumps of flesh.
Needless to say, the men’s sexual use of those women was included in the production.
Once the men had eaten human flesh, they could no longer see the women as the same kind of creature.
Obedient slaves. Convenient tools. Palatable food.
Appetite, lust, and sleep all satisfied, the men sat at table with Alexander and said, from the bottoms of their hearts,
“So this really was paradise after all.”

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Ex2-2. Tomorrow, Blood Rain Will Fall

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/56/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

Once one person accepted it, the rest followed in an avalanche.
Herd psychology is a terrible thing; even cannibalism can be permitted.
It could not be helped. It tasted far better than gamy wild meat, and it was easy to obtain.
At first the women were consumed simply as food.
Then, perhaps as they gained the leisure to enjoy a meal, they began to torment the women before cooking them.
That escalated, little by little, until they took more pleasure in the women’s suffering and screaming than in the eating itself.

“In the end, humans are only this sort of creature. It becomes embarrassing to live on the same plane.”

Watching the men laugh as they prodded a woman over the fire with wooden spears, Alexander murmured to himself.

A little apart from the feast, he chewed jerky made from wild game and wrote something in a notebook.

“Well—what I am doing is not so different. Animals that treat cannibalism as taboo are the minority, after all.”

Was it even correct, from the standpoint of natural law, to call it a sin?
Flay the skin and roast it, and it was no different from beast-meat.
Add salt and pepper, and it became a finer ingredient than wild game, with less of a smell.
The heart was especially popular for its chew; the other organs had a peculiarity, but they were not bad.
Only the hunted had changed—from wild animals to humans. The rule that the strong slaughter the weak had not changed at all.

“If I still find it ugly, is that proof I am the one bound to the human species? Kuhuhuhu …”

In any case, it did not matter to Alexander.
So long as he obtained “material,” that was enough.

 

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Ex2-3. Answer

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/57/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

Having carried the golems back to the village, I decided that very night to take everyone and crush the settlement.
I did not take everyone because I needed the fighting strength.
I was thinking of afterward.
No matter how many humans milled about, no matter what genius magician they had, I alone would be enough to subdue them.

First, the defeat of two new golems posted before the cave.
Their performance seemed the same as the previous four; if I drove shadow through them and stopped the circulation of magical power from within, they ceased readily.

“When it was us, we had such a hard time …”

The woman who had come with us looked somewhat stunned. Well—if one fought them ordinarily, they might well be a difficult opponent.
We entered the cave as we were.
Traps, no doubt: stepping on the ground triggered light magic, and it came at us again and again.
Fortunately the power did not seem very high. I crushed each approaching globe of light in my palm.
My hand burned a little, but that was no problem. It would regenerate at once.

When we came out of the cave, men with wooden spears stood blocking the settlement’s entrance.
The spears gave off a faint light; perhaps they had been enchanted.
That, however, was rather beside the point. It could be dealt with however one liked.
The real problem was that the men had lined women up in front of themselves and were using them as shields.

“Heh, hehehe … How about that? You can’t lay a hand on us, can you?”

Vulgar laughter, a vulgar voice, a vulgar face.
All of them worth less than filth, they said that to us.
Between this and putting women’s skins on golems, they seemed to think of us as animals with a nature that would not harm women.

“Would you happen to be the chief of these Demi-Vamp vermin, the one leading them?”

Beyond the surrounding men, a man standing importantly on a low hill spoke.
I had no obligation to answer.

“Well, I suppose that’s it. In other words, breaking the dolls, and coming through that trap-ridden cave unhurt, were your doing. Impressive. Worthy of praise.”

Perhaps he meant to show composure; he began to clap, pat-pat.
Come to think of it, there had been people like this at school.
People who were not ordinarily that sort of character, and who became high-handed the moment they judged their position higher than the other party’s.
Nostalgic, and from where I stood now, also ridiculous.

“So I have a proposal for a clever girl like you. How about withdrawing? I would rather avoid a waste of lives myself. The men pointing spears at you just now are important labor.”
“…”
“No reply, is it. I had hoped for a clever discussion. A pity … All right. Do it.”

The high-handed man gave some instruction. The spearman in front of us moved—and drove his spear into the leg of the woman he had been using as a shield.

“Aaaaaaah!”

The woman’s anguished cry rang through the night sky.
The suddenness sent a ripple of shock through my companions, Lina included.

“Just as I thought. Just as I thought. For some reason Demi-Vamps love their own sex. I don’t know why, but they apparently cannot keep a poker face when a woman is hurt in front of them.”
“Hostages, then?”
“Hahahah! See? A moment ago you were determined to ignore me, and now you’re speaking of your own accord! Kuhahahaha! Ha … ah, forgive me. I’ll answer the question. The answer is yes. Hostages. If you withdraw here, we won’t kill them.”
“Are they not labor as well?”
“Unfortunately, this settlement hasn’t the surplus to keep idle mouths who are clumsy with their hands and who don’t even stir a man’s desire. That isn’t to say there are no other uses—but this use, just now, was more effective and more efficient.”

In other words: lives that could be lost.
No objection came from the men.
Unanimous, was it. Continue reading →

Ex3. A Tour of Memories

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/58/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

Beyond the gate lay the rooftop of a school I knew by heart.
I had chosen, deliberately, to wear my uniform when I set foot there. I looked out over the town, let the autumn night wind move through me, and put the question to them.

“Do you remember? The time we spent together here.”

Memory rose.
The hours I had passed with them.
The abuse they had thrown.
The pain they had carved in.
Bruises.
Blood.
Laughter.
Eyes looking down.

“By now, of course, it is only a story one laughs at.”

The times they had cursed me for no reason, and kicked me.
The times they had pulled my hair and cut it off, carelessly, with scissors.
The times they had said they would pierce my ears for me, and driven a safety pin through the lobe again and again.
The times they had cut my wrists with a box cutter because I was annoying.
The time they had stripped me by force, had men sexually assault me, and laughed themselves sick watching.
All of it felt as distant as another life.
A story to laugh at. A story so far from the present that one could scarcely believe it had happened.

“Isn’t that so, Toka, Sakuna?”
“Yes, Lady Chigusa!”

It was Sakuna who answered so brightly.
Her speech was a little babyish, a little foolish, but she was an obedient, honest pet, and a good one.

“I am sorry, Lady Chigusa. The two of us then … we were not ourselves …”
“I do not mind. If those two had not existed then, I would not exist as I do now. It is only an argument from results, but I am almost grateful.”

Toka’s thinking ran a little too readily toward the dark, but she had become a quiet, pretty pet.
She was sinking, an anxious look on her face, so I crouched and stroked the underside of her jaw as she stayed on all fours.
She made a sweet, wheedling sound, and narrowed her eyes as if it felt good.

The two who had once looked down on me now wore collars, and crawled like dogs while I held their leashes.
This was not something I had wished for. Toka and Sakuna had proposed it themselves.
It had likely been an offer born of guilt, but they had fallen into it far more deeply than I had imagined—
perhaps, I thought, they had bullied me in the first place because they themselves had wanted to be hurt.
I have no such taste of my own. But if my beloved Toka and Sakuna asked it of me, it could not be helped.

“Shall we go, then? You must both be curious what the school looks like after so long.”

When I pulled the leashes a little hard, they made a choked sound of pain—and their faces were glad.
I will say this: it is not that any pain will do.
The important part is that the pain is given by me.

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Ex4. The Story of How She Came to See What Right Love Is

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/59/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

“Ahhhh, I’m wiped.”
“Good work. Today was rough too, wasn’t it.”
“Yeah. It was rough. Praise me. And then spoil meee …”

Saying so, Ririka crumpled to the floor just inside the front door.
Her hair, dyed a bright brown, fanned across the boards the way hair does in a horror film.
Then she reached, pleading, toward the fiancé she lived with.
Toshiya took that hand with a wry smile and pulled her up.
The time was half past eleven at night.
Four and a half hours had already passed since the esthetic salon where Ririka worked had closed.
She had left the shop a little after eleven. Even allowing for work after closing, it was late.

“If my salary were higher, I wouldn’t have to make you push yourself like this.”
“I started it because I wanted to. It can’t be helped.”

After vocational school, she had been drawn in by a full two-day weekend, two months’ bonus, and the treatment of a regular employee. That had been the beginning of her bad luck.
The commission was high and the base pay was low, so the bonus came to barely a sparrow’s tear, and the two-day weekend had been honored only at first.
Now a schedule hard enough to demand ten days on without a blink was wearing down Ririka’s body and heart.

“All right, Toshiya!”

Ririka, who until then had been a limp heap of exhaustion, suddenly straightened her back, put force into her eyes, and spoke fiercely.

“Hug me!”

In short, she only wanted to be spoiled.
When Toshiya held her gently, she poured complaint after complaint into his chest, as if she would never run out.
Coworkers. The manager. Customers. Impossible quotas, and the company products she had been made to buy because she had failed to meet them.
This is ridiculous, this is ridiculous, she muttered, patting his chest.
Once it had been about once a month. Lately it was about once a week that she dropped into this clinging mode.
That was how much stress had piled up.
Able to do nothing but hold her and rub her back, Toshiya privately lamented how pathetic he was.

When she had been spoiled enough, Ririka sat at the table and fell on the meal Toshiya had prepared.
After eating she soaked in the bath, did her skin care, made ready for tomorrow, and got into bed.
When she woke she went to work again, and when she came home there was a meal—the same loop, day after day, until one had the illusion that the same day was stretching on forever.
Ririka dreamed of going independent someday, and she had wanted to study for that, but if this state of things continued, even that would be out of reach.
Or—perhaps that, too, was the point.
Ambition is not always convenient for the head of the pack.
With a head gone vague from fatigue, Ririka carried millet rice to her mouth and looked at the television.

“That’s unusual. You’re watching the news. Don’t you usually put on that late-night comedy thing?”
“Today’s Thursday. That’s Wednesdays.”
“Ah … was it? Heheh. Not good, not good. On a shift system you completely lose track of the days. Still, it’s unusual for you to watch the news, isn’t it? Did something happen?”
“Another murder in the neighborhood. And this time it’s three people.”
“Ugh. They found some at the school the other day too, right? Same culprit?”
“That was two before this. And there was one before that—two students killed near the park.”
“Wow, it’s increasing … so that’s six? And only men? Some kind of psychopath?”

Lately this town had been noisy, one way or another.
A corpse found at the school with the limbs torn off. A corpse split clean in two by something sharp.
None of it was a crime an ordinary person could have committed.
The police seemed to be investigating on the theory that some special tool had been used, but so far there were no useful witnesses, and no progress.
And now, in the midst of that, a third killing.

“I saw police on my way home too. They’re really throwing people at it, aren’t they?”
“A crime that bold, and they still haven’t found a face or a shape for the culprit. Of course the police are desperate.”
“And if something happens in the middle of that—”
“They’ll get even more desperate.”
“Well, more police means the town gets safer. I’m grateful, I am.”
“… Don’t say that outside, all right?”
“I know. I’ll have you know that at work I pass for serious, reliable Ririka-san.”
“That’s right, you did. When we started going out I thought you were a serious girl.”
“Nfufu. I’m a character actress, that’s what I am.”

For the two of them, the incidents on television were someone else’s affair.
Ririka seemed genuinely glad that the town’s safety would improve, and Toshiya had been wondering, until today, whether he ought to start walking her home—but her pleasure at the increase in police officers read, gently, as a refusal, and he chose not to say it.
That was all.
One flower among the many that colored an ordinary life.
That they themselves might be drawn in was something they had not imagined.

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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.

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Ex6-1. The Exorcist Sister and the Incompetent Little Sister

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/61/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

In a dim room, the clatter of a keyboard went on without pause.
The girl responsible wore a shapeless red padded coat and sat hunched, locked in a staring contest with three monitors in a row.
Her long black hair was a tangle. Thick black-framed glasses sat on her nose. Now and then a little laugh slipped out of her: “Nihihi.”

“When everybody moves just the way I want, yeah, that’s fun. Nih.”

She was still muttering that unsettling aside when a knock sounded at the door.
Almost in the same instant, without waiting for an answer, someone walked in.
The girl, who had been in such a good mood, let out an obvious “Haaah,” and glared at her sister, who was trespassing as usual.

“Sis… how many times do I have to tell you there’s no point knocking if you come in at the same time?”
“Oh, what does it matter? We’re sisters.”
“Ever heard of courtesy even among intimates?”
“Other houses are other houses. Ours is ours. So? How’s it going, Senri?”

The older sister—Shuri—ignored her younger sister Senri Shirogane’s protest as if it were nothing and asked with shameless composure.
She had come to Senri unusually meek, saying she had a favor to ask. Senri had agreed, and this was the result.
Out in the world, Shuri passed for a bright, kind person of character. Senri would have stated, without hesitation, that this was not the case.

“Tyrant, aren’t you. How did our sister even grow up like this.”
“Never mind that—just tell me! Are the vampire rumors actually spreading?”
“They are. I used every board and every social network, wrote copy that would bite depending on the venue, and posted at the right moment! A stunt like that would be impossible without a brain like mine.”

Ordinary methods would never make anyone believe the nonsense that a string of mass murders was the work of vampires.
Not even as rumor or urban legend.
But if you impersonated a crowd and flooded every channel in a short span, a few people would start to believe.
Then you deepened their conviction and turned them into new sources of spread.
By repeating that, Senri had succeeded, on her own, in circulating the vampire rumor.

“Yes, yes, very impressive. And you’ve covered your tracks?”

Shuri, who was hopeless with machines, had no idea what was impressive and let it slide.
Senri, of course, pursed her lips in dissatisfaction.

“Praise me more. It was a lot of work, you know?”
“You’re so capable. There, there.”

As she said it, Shuri ruffled Senri’s hair in a teasing way.
The hand was batted away at once.

“People with no knowledge always look down on advanced technique. Honestly. Anyway, I’m routing it through overseas servers so it won’t lead back. But do we even need to go that far? Even if you’re right and the culprit this time is a vampire, I’ve never heard of a vampire who uses the net.”
“Just in case. So you don’t get pulled into danger, Senri.”
“Sis…”

Senri was moved, in spite of herself, that her sister worried about her.
The feeling did not last.

“If you’re that worried, maybe you just shouldn’t have used me in the first place?”
“…”

The pointed remark silenced Shuri.
She seemed to think for a moment, and then—

“……Fufufu.”

She began to laugh, slowly and on purpose.

“Fufufu. Fufu. Fufufufufu.”

She kept up the theatrical laughter, patted Senri’s back a few times, and walked out of the room.
Apparently she had found nothing to say and was trying to paper it over.

“Fufufufufu…”

The laugh receded down the hall.
Watching her sister’s retreating back, Senri clutched her head and let out a long breath.
Shuri’s high-handed behavior was nothing new. No one understood better than Senri that getting angry was a waste.
There was nothing to do but give up.

“Well, it’s not like I’m not having fun, so whatever.”

She said it, and resumed her staring contest with the displays.
Later, when she started to leave the room for the bathroom, a bottle of juice was waiting outside the door.
Shuri’s idea of thanks, apparently.
“I’m cheap, getting happy over just this,” Senri thought, with a wry smile.

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Ex6-2. Hide-and-Seek Doesn’t Suit Me

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/62/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

At midnight, Shuri came home from meeting the victim, looking thoroughly worn down.
The meeting had apparently been far away.
She unlocked the door in a sluggish way, took the knob, and slipped inside.

“Welcome home, Sis.”

The one who greeted Shuri was her younger sister, Senri.
Seeing her smile with her teeth showing, Shuri very nearly cried, to her own surprise.
That was how heavy the day’s events had been.

“I’m hooome!”
“Whoa!?”

As she said it, Shuri collapsed into a hug against her sister.
Senri, who had little strength, nearly went over, but managed to catch her and hold her ground.
“Geez, you’re hopeless, Sis,” she laughed.
But their mother, who should have gone with her, was not there.

“Huh? Where’s Mom?”
“Nn… she’s gone to report to headquarters. She told me there was nothing more I could do, so I should go home.”

Perhaps embarrassed after all, Shuri pulled away from Senri with her cheeks flushed.
Fatigue still sat heavy on her face.
Seeing her sister like that, Senri asked with worry.

“How was it? The woman, I mean. The victim.”
“…”

There was no answer.
Something had happened, but she seemed not to want Senri to hear it if she could help it.
Shuri took off her shoes and went up into the house still carrying her heavy bag and coat.
When Senri took the luggage of her own accord, Shuri said a small “Thanks.”
That said, Senri was already involved, if only indirectly.
Keeping silent would be against decency—Shuri let out a sigh, then began to speak.

“I’ll say this first: it wasn’t Mom and I who met her. We had a stand-in speak with her, and we listened to the whole conversation.”
“You never know what she’d do. I think that’s better.”
“Yes. Well, it was wasted effort in the end. First the conclusion: the woman was already no longer human.”
“…?”

She said it so matter-of-factly that Senri could not even manage a proper shock.

“Th-then she really had become a vampire? And she showed herself in front of you like it was nothing!?”
“That’s about the size of it. Precisely speaking, she called herself a Demi-Vamp, not a vampire.”
“She called herself…”

Senri could not quite grasp the situation.
An enemy who might as well have been a natural predator, possessing the power of exorcism, was right in front of her—why would a vampire name herself?
They kept talking as they moved to the living room.
Dinner Senri had made was laid out on the table.
Their mother and Shuri had often been out late before, so despite appearances Senri could cook reasonably well.

“She was so shamelessly open about everything that Mom and I were both stunned. I’d heard vampires were weak to light, but she sat in a bright restaurant looking perfectly fine.”
“Maybe that’s because of the ‘Demi’ part?”
“We didn’t ask that far, but probably. She’d become a Demi-Vamp, and that much stronger against light.”
“But half would mean her power is half too, right?”
“I wish it had been…”

Shuri sank deep into a dining chair, let out a long breath, and reached for the TV remote.
A news program came on.
A male reporter with a grave face was gripping a microphone in front of some family restaurant.
The interior was draped in vinyl sheeting, so they could not see inside, but it was clear that an abnormal atmosphere hung over the surroundings.

“That was the place. Where we talked with the victim.”
“Ehh!? But something’s happening there, isn’t it?”
“—Even after the conversation had settled, we couldn’t believe what she’d said. From our eyes she was certainly an unsettling presence, but only in a subtle way. We couldn’t say for certain she wasn’t human.”

Yes: even if she had not named herself, they had the “eyes.” They should have been able to tell at a glance that she was not human.
But perhaps because she was a Demi-Vamp, neither Shuri nor their mother could be sure the woman in front of them was a monster until they saw what came next.

“So she ran out of patience with us for not believing, I suppose. She said it herself. ‘Then I’ll show you my power.’”

Senri swallowed hard.
A tension far stronger than when she had listened to Saya filled the room.

“To tell the truth, I didn’t see anything. Right before it happened, Mom grabbed me on instinct and blocked my view. But I heard the sounds. The women’s screams in the restaurant—and the sound of blood scattering and striking the floor.”
“People… died?”
“Mom said a black whirl appeared all of a sudden and went into every man in the restaurant. Right after that, the heads of the men who had taken in the shadows all burst.”

—And so the tragedy now on the news had taken place.
Eighteen dead, all instant. Their heads had been blown away so thoroughly that identification was difficult, and the smell of blood hung over the area around the scene.
With this, humans would finally notice.
That this whole series of crimes was not the work of human hands.

“Looking back, they had never tried to hide their crimes. The men who were killed sometimes had their limbs torn off, sometimes were stuck on park poles like objects, as if the corpses were being used to play.”
“So there was no need to hide?”
“They have that much confidence in their power, I suppose.”
“…Sis, can you beat something like that?”

At Senri’s question, Shuri silently shook her head. Continue reading →

Ex6-3. The Game Begins

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/63/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

“Yes… yes, please do that. Yes, for now—though I think it’s only a matter of time until we’re found.”

While they waited for the train at the station, Shuri was on the phone the whole time with the main house.
Even Senri beside her could faintly hear a thick male voice.

“I understand, but at present protecting my sister is all I can manage… Dispatch someone here? From the branch family? But are they all right on that side?”

The sight of family bowing and scraping to a superior was not something one wanted to watch.
Still less when the person on the other end was so high-handed.
Her sister was working this hard to protect her—how could they scold her in a situation like this.
They were just sitting somewhere safe looking important anyway, Senri thought venomously, warming her hands on a hot lemon tea she had bought at the station.

“I intend to do everything I can. Yes, what they’ll try next is a complete unknown, so depending on the case even the main house’s location might be—!? I-I’m sorry. That was a thoughtless remark. Yes, I pray for your safety. That’s all.”

At the end Shuri spoke with her head bowed, and hung up.
Then she looked at the screen and let out a long breath.
White vapor drifted through the dim station concourse.

“Good work, Sis.”
“Ahaha… it’s a strange thing, getting tired just from talking. I really can’t stand people who look down on you unconditionally.”
“Nobody likes that. They shouldn’t come after us. The vampires should just go to the main house.”
“If they overheard that it would be a disaster.”
“You think they’re bugging us?”
“They might. Well, I agree with you, Senri.”

They were speaking ill of people who had been spoken of ill enough already, but there were reasons they deserved it.
While thinking it was not very admirable, they spent the ten minutes until the train arrived warming to complaints about the main house.
Perhaps because of that, the fear from when they had left the house had eased, enough that it even felt a little like a trip.
But that was only because they had not actually seen a vampire yet, and it did not feel real.
It was better than wearing themselves down.
They ought to laugh while they still could. In a cornered situation, it was not only the body that was ground away. The heart was no exception.

Continue reading →

Ex6-4. Sister Complex

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/64/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

When Chigusa’s mouth left her, Shuri fell back on the bed, her chest rising and falling hard.
What she had been given was a sensation she had never known in her life, one that could only be called abnormal.
Her heart refused. Her body would not.
That, more than anything, was humiliating. She hid her wet eyes with her arm and clenched her teeth with all her strength.

“Pride is a hindrance, isn’t it. I think that is one of the reasons people cannot be happy. If you would only accept it, it would be easier.”

Sitting on the edge of the bed, Chigusa stroked Shuri’s cheek with a fingertip.

“… I will not become what you want.”

Shuri glared at her.
Her will to fight had not yet gone.
She was still overwhelmingly at a disadvantage. She was thinking of killing Chigusa if a gap opened. Chigusa had allowed for that much.

“You already understand that you cannot win. Where does the strength to keep resisting come from?”
“You wouldn’t know… I have something I have to protect!”
“Ahaha. A line out of a boys’ manga. The world is not so simply divided into good and evil. I already told you why I resorted to force.”

Chigusa pinned her down and, with her shadows, stripped the clothes from her in an instant.
Shuri found herself in lace underthings the vampires had likely prepared. Training had left her abdomen and limbs as tight as an athlete’s.
Chigusa, similarly dressed, looked her over. Shuri grimaced.

“My companions were hurt. What I ought to protect was hurt. Therefore I punish. What about that is evil?”
“A murdering monster wouldn’t understand an explanation.”
“And a vampire-killer would?”

Shuri turned her face away.
Talk would only run parallel. All Chigusa could do, she said, was teach Shuri’s body what a Demi-Vamp was.
Shuri called it wrong—between women, like this.
“You get used to it,” Chigusa whispered. “Used. To. It.”

What followed was not a fight. Chigusa used her shadows and her mouth to force sensation into a body that had only ever been trained to endure pain. Shuri’s pride held; her voice did not. She had never been taught this. Compared with Senri, who lived on the internet, she had neither knowledge nor experience.

When their eyes met at close range, Shuri’s body would not move.
For an instant she thought, unforgivably, that the red eyes were beautiful, and her face burned.
“To drive a girl this dear into a fight for her life. There are some inhuman people in the world.”

The gentleness of the voice undid her caution for a second. That was enough.
Chigusa kissed her. The rest of the night was a lesson in what a human body could be made to feel, and Shuri, still insisting she would not fall, lost consciousness with the Mark moved to her throat.

Continue reading →

Ex6-5. Iconoclasm

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/65/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

Even after the monitor went dark, it took several hours for Shuri to settle.
Her father was dead. “Settle” meant only that she could hold a conversation again.
The whole time, Chigusa stayed beside her and comforted her without a single complaint.

“You… you used to be human, didn’t you…”

It had been so long since anyone had spoken that Chigusa needed a few seconds to realize the words were for her.

“… Yes. That’s right.”
“Why? How can you do something this cruel?”

Chigusa tilted her head. “Hate?”

“One man died. What about that is cruel?”

She did not need to say it at this late date, but she meant it.
A man dying was a smaller matter than kicking a stone at the roadside.

“…!? You—you—!”

Shuri sat up hard from the floor and seized Chigusa by the chest.
Resistance would have been easy. Chigusa did nothing, and took the anger.

“He’s dead! My father! Precious family, bound by blood! And that isn’t cruel!? Don’t screw with me, don’t screw with me, don’t screw with me!”
“I’m sorry. I truly don’t understand.”
“That’s why you’re a monster!”
“Fufu. So I was a monster even before this body. Ah. I see. That’s why—no one would accept me. That reason. That logic.”

For the first time, Shuri felt she was seeing Chigusa’s bare face.
A dry laugh, self-mocking, as if she had given up on everything.
Empty—Shuri understood, without being told, that there had been nothing in that life.

“Shuri. Never mind human or Demi-Vamp… why do you think it’s sad, just because a father died?”
“Are you… serious?”
“Yes. I am. Is a father that valuable? He’s only one man among men. Well—in my case I don’t really understand mothers either.”

There Shuri realized her anger had been spinning in empty air.
The person who had made this mad world had not known a family’s “true love.”

“… Haha… hahaha, ahahaha! I see. That’s it. You were just talking as if you knew, when you didn’t!”

Chigusa suddenly looked pitiable and small.
This was, in short, spite on a grand scale.
What she had never been able to have overflowed in the world; she could not accept that, so she would break it—so Shuri concluded.

“There’s no love in the world you make. Love you can’t feel unless you join bodies isn’t love!”
“What is a child born of her parents’ sex saying?”
“That isn’t the result. They joined because they loved each other. They didn’t love each other because they joined! It’s ridiculous, you talking about a world full of love when you don’t even know that!”
“I see. Perhaps people who were blessed with others can’t understand. But—I don’t think so.”

Chigusa’s calm did not break.
She was not performing. She did not care that Shuri denied her.
She did not deny that loving families existed.
The Lengland house, for example, who had become Demi-Vamps in the other world.
They had loved one another even before they stopped being human, and they had not carried hidden friction like the Shiroganes.
Even so, they were far closer now than they had been then.
Parent and child, and that child’s child: three of them, and they were spreading happiness by bearing still more children.

“There are families who couldn’t love, and families who held distorted affection, and those people will be saved by becoming Demi-Vamps. Like Senri.”
“Senri has not been saved!”
“Well, you can ask her later. And even if there were a family that already loved one another, they can obtain still more happiness by becoming Demi-Vamps.”
“Even if it costs a father?”

Remembering how her beloved father had died, tears rose in Shuri’s eyes.

“Yes. Even subtracting that, it’s a plus. Overwhelmingly.”

Even seeing the tears, Chigusa answered with a smile.

“There’s nothing that surpasses life!”
“I agree. I want to treat everyone’s lives as valuable. That’s why I got angry when my companions were hurt, isn’t it?”
“That’s—”

Shuri started to argue and stopped.
It was probably useless.
If the values themselves never met, more debate was waste.
Monster or human had nothing to do with it. At the root, she and Chigusa thought differently.
The value of life, too.
To Chigusa, men were not recognized as beings that possessed life at all.
Death was not tragedy. Killing was not crime. Of course.
She might even think she had cleansed the world of filth—that it was justice.

“I don’t think we can understand each other with words. But I’ll say this. You’re wrong.”
“You’ll come to think it’s right soon enough.”
“I won’t become like Senri.”
“Is that so. Then why not assert it in front of her? Ellis, Senri, you can come in. We aren’t particularly occupied.”

Chigusa called toward the entrance. The door opened, and one girl appeared.

“Senri…”
“Yoo-hoo, Sis. You doing okay?” Continue reading →

Ex7. Lovers Who Cannibalize Each Other

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/66/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

A few days after the Shirogane sisters had fallen, Ellis and Miyako occupied a room in a certain hotel.

Ellis sat cross-legged on the bed, peering with frank curiosity at the device Chigusa had given her—a thing called a “smartphone.”
Miyako sat in a chair, watching the news on television with an air of boredom.
The story, of course, was the continuing murders.
The scale had grown too large to call them murders any longer, and every station, day after day, ran little else.
Talk had even begun that the police could no longer cope, and that the Self-Defense Forces might be called out.
Not that it would matter who came. The two of them had no intention of stopping.

“Hey, Miyako. There’s something I wanna ask about Sister.”
“Did something happen with Chii-chan?”

Miyako set her mug of green tea on the table and twisted in her chair toward Ellis.
Ellis, apparently tired of fiddling with the phone, tossed it onto the bed.

“She’s off seeing her parents right now, yeah? I grew up in the Discard District, so I barely remember mine and never really brought it up. But I was wondering if Sister had some kind of problem with hers.”

The reason only Ellis and Miyako were there was that Chigusa had gone to reunite with her parents.
At first both of them had said they would come along; she had turned them down, gently.
This was a tangle she had to erase herself, she had said.
Her expression had clouded in a way that was rare for her.
Miyako answered Ellis’s question by leaning back in her chair and letting out a long sigh.

“I didn’t see it firsthand, so I don’t know the details. Chii-chan was abandoned by her mother at eight and raised by her father after that. But that father was mentally unstable, and apparently he used to hit her a lot.”
“Trash. We should kill him.”
“Same opinion. But Chii-chan says she wants to settle it herself, so I think that choice ought to be respected.”

Respecting Chigusa’s will.
Ellis understood that well enough. Even so, she could not forgive the existence of a man who had hurt her beloved Sister.

She spoke with a sulky look.

“Father or not, he’s still a guy, right? The Sister we know now would probably just think, ‘Who cares.’”
“Well, Chii-chan became a vampire by a different path than we did. The way she changed is probably different too.”
“So Sister can kill men without mercy because that’s the kind of person she was to begin with?”
“I don’t think all of it was what Chii-chan wanted. But I do think she was treated badly enough that swearing to wipe them out is more than justified.”

Miyako had witnessed a certain portion of that with her own eyes.
Whenever she remembered it, she remembered as well that she had failed to stop it—that she had, if anything, been complicit—and her chest grew tight.
Seeing her frown, Ellis hurriedly changed the subject.

“S-so, um. How are your parents doing, Miyako?”
“Haven’t seen them in a long time. We kept in touch, at least. I wonder how they are. They must have heard I went missing. I hope they haven’t gotten so depressed they made themselves sick.”
“Then shouldn’t you go see them soon?”
“Mm, but I’d have to kill my dad, and then I’d have to make my mom fall, right? That sounds like more of a hassle than you’d think… Ah, but once I start remembering, I do want to make Mom fall. She’s getting on a bit, but she looks like she’d feel good to hold.”

Imagining herself holding her own mother, Miyako’s cheeks colored faintly.
Guiding the woman who had given birth to her toward the heights of pleasure had, by now, become a proper way of returning the favor.

“I don’t really remember falling anyone that much older than me…”
“It’s pretty good. Their desire’s strong, so they go along with it eagerly. Once you teach the body once, they’ll open up on their own even if the charm hasn’t finished.”
“Huh. Better than someone who’s weirdly hung up on being untouched and fights you the whole time, maybe. I’ll nibble a little next time.”

The Demi-Vamps were steadily expanding their influence even now.
Ellis and Miyako took part in that quiet invasion as a matter of course; making a woman fall simply because they had spotted her on the street was an everyday affair.
Ellis had said “next time,” but the thing would likely be done by tomorrow.
Women’s wariness had increased, though, and it was no longer as easy as it had once been to lure someone into an alley.
Lately they more often used their shadows to unlock a door, forced their way into a house, and poured in magical power by force.
Ellis rather liked the forcefulness, for what it was worth.

“Nn…” Continue reading →

Ex8-2. The Day My Father Died

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/68/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

“Mochizuki-kun. Long time no see.”

In a night park lit only thinly by a few streetlamps, there were two figures, a boy and a girl.
The girl smiled at the large, long-limbed boy who had just arrived—Kosuke Mochizuki—with a familiar expression.
Kosuke, for his part, looked surprised at the sight of her.

“No way… Is that really you, Akizora? The one who went missing?”

Sakuna Akizora.
That was the name of the girl who, several months earlier, had gone missing along with several classmates.
A group disappearance, or perhaps a kidnapping—the news of them had stirred the public, but so few leads emerged that the uproar subsided with the mystery still intact.
The investigation continued, but personnel had been diverted to the recent mass murders, and it was not progressing properly.
By now, only a few occult enthusiasts whispered urban-legend rumors among themselves; aside from close friends and family, most people had lost interest in the case.

“What’s that supposed to mean? I look like someone else? From any angle I’m obviously me.”

Such a girl had suddenly appeared.
A message had arrived on Kosuke’s phone about twenty minutes earlier.
Why a message using Sakuna’s name would reach him, when they had not been particularly close.
His first suspicion was a prank, but if they had his contact, it was probably a summons from a classmate.
Some guy friend had sent it as a joke, no doubt, and he would have to go yell at them—so he had left the house.
That the person herself would be there had never entered his imagination.

“Um… I felt like you were prettier than the last time I saw you.”
“Ahaha. Don’t tell me you’re hitting on me? I can’t say I don’t get it. Being called to a park all of a sudden at night—a healthy guy would get his hopes up.”

He was not hitting on her.
She was certainly the Sakuna he knew, and yet something felt different from before.
Was it winter? Was it night? Or had his own expectations put a correction on the way he looked at her?
With her standing there, hands clasped behind her back, swinging her feet, Kosuke somehow could not speak well for nervousness.

“Well, we weren’t that close to begin with, so being called out of nowhere is awkward, yeah. Anyway, let’s get to the point.”
“A-ah…”
“There’s something I want to show you, Mochizuki-kun. Will you come with me?”
“Got it.”

Kosuke followed as Sakuna led him, walking behind her.
They went deeper into the park, left the path, and entered a grove of mixed trees.
The leaf mold of piled fallen leaves made poor footing; even so Sakuna went lightly, and Kosuke followed, losing his balance now and then.

“Sakuna-chan.”
“Oh, Toka. Weren’t you supposed to wait?”

Along the way through the woods, another girl appeared.
Toka Sato. She, too, was one of the classmates who had vanished with Sakuna.

“Sato as well… Where have you two been all this time.”

Kosuke spoke to Toka, but she gave him only a glance and at once looked away, uninterested.
They had had even less to do with each other than he had with Sakuna, so it was only natural, but the near-ignore still wounded him, alone.

“I got lonely waiting by myself.”
“It wasn’t even that long. Toka, you really are a baby.”
“Yeah… I can’t manage unless Sakuna or Lady Chigusa is nearby. I got changed that way.”

So saying, Toka brought her face close to Sakuna’s.
Sakuna closed her eyes as a matter of course and accepted the kiss.

The two of them did not stop at a greeting. They lingered, as if they had forgotten anyone else was there.

“Ha…? Wh-hey, you two, what are you…”

Kosuke could only stare, dumbfounded, at the girls’ sudden display.
Sakuna and Toka had been close, it was true, but they had not been like that.
Or had they closed the distance while they were missing?
Even so—it was not something to do in front of another person.

Sakuna chided her, and Toka looked downcast.
Even so she did not quite let go of Sakuna.

“Nn… You’re too worked up. After we’re done with business, later. All right?”
“U… Got it.”

Still drooping, Toka moved away from Sakuna.
Sakuna put on a face that was, at least, apologetic, and bowed her head to Kosuke.

“Sorry for making you wait. Come on, let’s go. There’s someone waiting.”
“…Yeah.” Continue reading →

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.” Continue reading →