A Reunion of Blood
There was movement beyond the full-length glass.
It was hidden behind the curtain, so I could not see it clearly, but I knew at once.
It was Silvia.
Startled, I almost opened the window and went straight in, then hesitated.
If I opened this window, I would finally get to see Silvia.
The woman who had never left my mind, even in my final moments.
Thump-thump.
I reached for the window from outside, then changed my mind.
It would be rude to walk into a lady’s room without knocking.
Besides, this wasn’t even the door. If I suddenly opened the window and went in, I would frighten her.
Knowing Silvia, she might well throw magic at me first and ask questions later.
I couldn’t help it.
A laugh slipped out at the thought of how she would react.
It felt like it had been a very long time since I last laughed.
Tap, tap, tap.
Instead of opening the window and going in, I knocked gently so as not to startle Silvia.
Three knocks.
Beyond the curtain, I could see Silvia’s shadow jolt in alarm at the sound.
Tap, tap.
I barely held back a laugh out loud and knocked twice more.
At the second set of knocks, Silvia slowly approached the window.
Hoo.
I was wearing plain black clothes to conceal myself, but I checked my outfit anyway.
I straightened my clothes and took a step back so she wouldn’t be startled if I opened the window and stood too close.
Step, step.
Silvia’s footsteps inside the room came closer and closer.
And with every step she took, my heart pounded harder.
By then, thoughts about how I would explain myself, how I would prove that I was Evan, had already vanished somewhere far away.
All that occupied my mind was the fierce desire to see her face.
Then the window opened.
“Who...?”
“Ah.”
The curtain was drawn back. The window opened softly, without a sound.
And there she stood.
Silvia Bernice.
The woman who had once been my fiancée, the woman I loved.
Long platinum-blonde hair, falling in soft waves.
Eyes widened in surprise at the sight of me.
She was still beautiful.
Thump-thump.
My heart was pounding so hard I worried she might hear it.
Even when I had been Erche, my heart had never beaten this violently.
“...”
“...And you are?”
I had expected it, but Silvia did not recognize me at once.
Part of that was surely because I wore a mask, but even if I took it off, she probably still would not know me.
My hair color, my face, my build, even my voice had all changed.
“...I came to see you first. Before I go to His Majesty the Emperor.”
“...?”
The words came out before I could stop them.
There should have been hundreds of more impressive things I could have said at our reunion.
Why, of all things, had this been the first line to come to mind?
Even to my own ears, it sounded utterly devoid of charm.
Tilting her head in confusion, Silvia frowned as if she did not understand.
I had expected exactly that reaction.
“I promised I’d always come to see you first whenever I came back.”
“...Ah.”
Thump-thump-thump.
My heart had been beating absurdly fast for some time now, as though it might burst at any second.
Feeling that pounding through my entire body, I raised a hand to my mask.
Even if I took it off, Silvia would not recognize me, but it was instinctive, almost a gut feeling.
No matter how complicated the problem, seeing Silvia would untangle it.
So even if I did not know what to say, once I met her, something would surely work out.
It had been the right judgment.
As soon as I spoke to Silvia, my body seemed to know what to do next and moved on its own.
I took off the mask and faced Silvia directly.
And then after that.
Thump-thump-thump-thump.
Huh...?
Something was wrong.
The right hand I had been lifting toward the mask suddenly felt unbearably heavy, as though it no longer belonged to me.
My heart was pounding so hard I wondered if anything could possibly beat faster.
Thump-thump-thump-thump.
Next came the dulling of sensation in my right arm, then my vision blurred, and my head swam.
“W-what? Hey?”
What had clearly been far below me, the floor of the balcony, was now suddenly very close.
The ground had not risen at all.
My eyes had simply come closer to it.
W-why is this happening?
Thump-thump-thump-thump.
Only my fast-beating heart grew more and more vivid in my senses.
I did not even realize I had lost strength in my legs and collapsed to the ground.
All I could feel now was the heartbeat.
It hammered as if threatening to burst apart all by itself.
No. It wasn’t my heart.
This is...?
“D-don’t tell me...?”
Thump-thump-thump-thump.
“Evan...? Is that you?”
Silvia’s voice, trembling as though she were about to burst into tears, receded into the distance.
At the sound of her calling my name, I wanted to embrace her at once.
Thump-thump-thump.
But I could not even answer her desperate voice.
My heart. Within it, the True Blood beating violently.
The reason my heart raced so fiercely was not simply nerves at the thought of seeing Silvia.
The True Blood flowing through my body was yearning with overwhelming intensity.
For Silvia’s blood.
“R-run!”
I forced out the word with the last scraps of my strength.
Run. Away from me. Now.
But my warning did not reach Silvia’s heart.
Instead, she dropped down in front of me, trying to support me because she was worried about me.
Thanks to that, her face, her pale skin, and the blood flowing beneath it all came into even sharper view.
Thump-thump!
Ah.
Even the sharp beat of my heart was growing distant now.
And then.
Whoosh-
My vision turned red.
As when I had first awakened in this body, my sight flooded with crimson.
Beyond that crimson haze, Silvia’s worried expression was clearly visible.
Before I knew it, I had been lifted to my feet with Silvia’s support.
No, no, noooo!
Thwack-
And then my right hand moved.
With the sensation of piercing soft skin.
The chillingly vivid feeling of blood and flesh.
Horrible, and yet sweet at the same time.
STOOOP!!!
Pain and shock were plain on Silvia’s face.
Haaah, ahahahaha!!
The scream in my head twisted as it passed through my throat and came out as laughter.
Silvia’s blood streamed endlessly down my right hand.
It was dreadful.
And at the same time...
Is she... smiling?
Maybe everything up to now had been a dream, and I was really walking through some dim, half-formed illusion.
Only something like that could explain it.
Otherwise there was no reason Silvia would be sending what looked like a smile toward me, this cruel monster who had hurt her.
Toward the changed me.
*
I did not know how the day had passed.
I woke at dawn, was dressed and made up, and was led here and there by my attendants.
I smiled when others smiled. I ate when they ate. I walked when they walked.
And by the time I came to my senses, the sun had already set.
After offering a perfunctory farewell to the maid who escorted me to my room while saying I had endured a great deal, I stepped inside and, as always, felt emptiness rush over me.
Even though Evan had already been gone for several weeks, the emptiness that came with night still found me.
“Haa.”
Silvia let out a short sigh and sat down on the edge of the bed.
She had somehow made it through another day.
Or had she?
Maybe this counts as getting through the day.
She was not certain, but she chose to think so.
What mattered was that the day had gone by quickly.
And if the day was over, she could sleep. If she could sleep, then she had a chance.
A chance to meet Evan, just as in last night’s dream.
Though the next day would likely be even more painful for her.
She was just about to get ready for bed when it happened.
Tap, tap, tap.
Silvia jolted at the knock from the window and turned to look.
A knock at this hour?
And from the window, not the door, at that.
Hm?
The situation was clearly suspicious and strange, yet for some reason she did not feel uneasy.
Instead.
Thump.
Her heart leapt.
Like receiving the letter she had been waiting for.
Or hearing that the imperial court’s personal chef had baked cookies just for her.
Or maybe like Evan had finished training early and come to see her.
Tap, tap.
It was excitement.
With no basis whatsoever, the knocking at the window made Silvia’s heart flutter.
And so she opened it.
“Who...?”
“Ah.”
The curtain was drawn back. The window opened softly, without a sound.
And there stood a man.
The first thing that caught her eye was white hair so pale it seemed almost luminous.
The black clothes he wore made that white hair stand out even more.
White hair, black clothes, a masked man.
Something...
She had never seen him before, neither in the imperial palace nor outside it, and yet Silvia felt a strange sense of familiarity.
And it took only an instant for that unfamiliar familiarity to turn into a pounding in her chest.
“...I came to see you first. Before I go to His Majesty the Emperor.”
Huh?
Words she had never heard before, yet somehow felt painfully familiar coming from that voice.
The same words she had heard in her dream last night.
“I promised I’d always come to see you first whenever I came back.”
“...Ah.”
Thump-thump.
It felt as if time had stopped.
Could it be that the dream from last night had continued all the way to this moment?
Her mind went blank. Her thoughts came to a halt.
Only one idea held Silvia’s mind in its grip with absolute force.
Evan Erche.
When that mask came off, it would reveal the face of a man smiling brightly.
Even if it was a dream, that was fine.
This was not a scene reconstructed from Silvia’s memories, but something new.
Perhaps he knew that too, because he raised a hand to remove the mask.
And then.
Thud.
“W-wha? Hey?”
The man dropped to his knees and collapsed in place.
Silvia rushed to support him as he suddenly fell, her voice breaking with urgency.
“Don’t tell me...?”
Even if this was a dream, she wanted that name to come from his mouth.
She wanted him to say, Evan Erche.
“Evan...? Is that you?”
Had her desperate plea not reached him?
No answer came from the man.
He was slumped there in pain, staring only at the floor.
An impossible certainty began to rise inside her.
“Evan? You’re Evan, aren’t you. Answer me, please, just answer me.”
Say something. Anything.
Had Silvia’s desperate wish finally reached him?
The man, who had given no response at all, slowly parted his lips, and a voice spilled out through the gap.
“R-run!”
But those were not the words Silvia had been begging for.
They were the exact opposite.
Was he trying to tell her to run?
Then why?
He stopped moving.
After those words, the masked man went still all at once, as if he were a machine that had suddenly shut down.
And then the man, supported by her, rose to his feet.
Clinging to the slightest hope, Silvia looked at him all the more desperately.
There was no way, and yet if this person really was him...
If the impossible had happened...
“Evan...!”
Thwack-
Silvia’s hope was torn apart in an instant.
“...Huh?”
An alien sound she had never heard in her life.
Her clothes soaking through almost at once with a sticky liquid.
And the fierce pain that came a beat later.
“W-wha, ah...”
Silvia’s gaze drifted naturally downward.
It was a sight she could not believe even as she saw it.
Blood gushed out, soaking her clothes and dripping to the floor.
It streamed along the man’s hand, which had pierced straight through her stomach.
Aaah...
“Hah, hahahahaha!!”
The man who had stabbed her was laughing like a madman.
When his hand withdrew from her abdomen, Silvia fell backward weakly.
Strength drained from her entire body, and dizziness swept over her.
Evan...
Through the blurring vision, she looked at the man and called out to him with all her heart.
Even though he wore a mask.
Even though his mind seemed to have gone blank for some reason.
Even though he had offered no answer to her desperate question.
The man before her was Evan.
The time between Evan and her had never been such a trivial thing that it could be erased by a few petty changes like this.
So even now, in this very moment, Silvia believed in Evan.
Surely he had a reason he could not even tell her.
But enduring the pain of a pierced abdomen was a separate matter.
For Silvia, who had never once in her life been seriously wounded, it was impossible to bear agony that even a seasoned soldier would struggle to endure.
I want to see him properly. I want to see him properly.
Thud.
Silvia felt her body sink weakly to the floor and closed her eyes.
If the man before her really was Evan, then he would be shedding bloody tears and cursing himself for causing Silvia’s death.
I have to survive. I have to live and tell Evan I’m okay.
Absolutely.
With that firm resolve, a clear force began to rise from the center of Silvia’s body, more precisely from her heart.
“It’s okay, Evan.”
Silvia’s lips moved, half her focus already gone.
And in the next instant, Evan and Silvia were both wrapped in a brilliant sphere of light.
---