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.

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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.

Continue reading →

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.

Continue reading →

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 →