Americano (3)
"Americano's way too bitter."
Orly set her cup down with a slight scrunch of her face. The ice clinked and knocked together.
A sigh heavy with disbelief slipped from Erika's lips.
She couldn't understand it.
Why she was sitting here doing this.
Having a cozy little coffee date with a wanted ranker classified at the highest danger level?
Wasn't she a hunter of the Association? An untouchable ranker. A rising star.
And the very person who, mere days ago, had forced herself on Erika's defenseless body and driven her fangs in seemed to think nothing of it at all.
She'd kept rattling off meaningless chatter — Do you like sweet things? I think I prefer bitter — before her face had suddenly gone serious. Then she'd pulled out a notebook crammed with dense notes, shown Erika a few sketches, and launched into a patient explanation of Erika's own physical condition.
"Does anything hurt? A headache? Heart racing?"
"…No."
"That's a relief."
A relief. Ah, right. How very fortunate.
"I wasn't in my right mind back then, so I didn't give the aftereffects a second thought when I bit you. Looking back, trusting your regeneration stat was the right call."
I see. Important, yes. The aftereffects.
"Think of it like misaligned gears, basically. During the evolution a Damphir goes through, unnecessary nerves get awakened — and the result of that is the act of bloodsucking."
"Damphir?"
"Ah. Half vampire, half human."
Erika gave a rough nod. She figured she ought to show at least a shred of interest, since Orly seemed to be trying so hard to explain.
"What I told you in brief back then extends about this far," Orly said, setting the notebook down. "And now that you've become the subject of my bloodsucking, these are the parts you need to watch out for."
Erika's throat suddenly felt parched. She took a sip of the café mocha in front of her through the straw. Sweet.
She didn't remember asking for whipped cream, yet there it was — which suggested that from the moment she'd walked into the café with this suspicious girl in the oversized coat, her mind had been somewhere else entirely.
An Association hunter walking into a café with a wanted Awakened.
Right. A wanted Awakened. In other words, a bad bitch.
A villain. An actual villain.
Did villains come to cafés and order Americanos?
Her thoughts stalled for a moment. It was a meaningless one.
"Just think of it like being bitten by a venomous snake."
"Excuse me?"
Before she could even process what that was supposed to mean, Orly parted the side of her lips just enough to flash a fang.
"It's a metaphor. In the sense that when the fangs pierce the skin, something enters the bloodstream."
Orly swept a hand through the air and traced a blue outline into existence — a simple model of the place Erika had been bitten that day in the abandoned building, just above the collarbone. Two small, gleaming puncture marks immediately drew the eye.
Erika's mood soured without warning. Was this… having her first time taken?
"Ha."
I've finally lost it.
As if indifferent to whatever was going through Erika's head, the model began to move. Blue mana unspooled from the two fang marks and flowed into the blood vessels.
"Like that, the mana channels in your body take in these blue droplets and carry them to the heart. It's a process still happening inside you right now."
Incomprehensible graphs and charts flickered and shifted.
"Whether it's an amount of mana you can actually handle, though — that I can't tell yet."
"And if I can't handle it?"
"…It'll hurt, I suppose?"
Erika snorted.
"Which is why I'm going to run a variety of tests."
"…Tests?"
Orly's smile turned sly. Ominous.
"I told you before, didn't I? That I'd need you to fight."
The ice clinked.
"You'll be playing along with my hostage act."
A hollow laugh burst out of Erika.
It was so absurd her brain nearly short-circuited.
Here she was, sitting side by side in a café, sipping a café mocha and an Americano, being invited by a criminal to cooperate with her hostage scheme.
Orly tilted her head. It was a face Erika desperately wanted to punch.
"Strange? Still, it's a necessary process. Nothing works better for getting you adapted as fast as possible to the mana that's started accumulating in your body."
She gave a little punch at the air, trying to look cute.
It was not cute in the slightest.
"What if you're out there going whoosh-whoosh-thud-thud with Gates and wanted Awakened, and the aftereffects hit you late? What then?"
"So what you're saying is, you want me to stop you from killing people."
"That's it!"
A faint smile met her gaze.
"You'll have to kill me someday, won't you?"
Those pale blue eyes shone clear and bright. Erika's own reflection was caught in them. The air settled, and the world around them fell rapidly, utterly still.
Erika did not look away.
Yes.
Those eyes.
Curved beads of jade you couldn't see an inch beyond.
At their first meeting, at every meeting after, and even now.
Orly had tossed her the goal of killing her and spent every moment toying with Erika, holding justice itself hostage.
Ask her why, and all she ever offered was that strange line — because you're pretty.
Erika couldn't understand her.
And that was exactly why she wanted to know.
Whatever it was Orly had so carefully hidden on the far side of those eyes.
She swore it to herself.
She would dig it out. No matter what.
"All right."
That was her answer.
It hadn't taken more than a few seconds.
This was a pleasant time.
A quiet café. A cozy little table.
Café mocha and Americano.
Sweet and bitter.
I almost felt grateful that she'd listened to me better than I'd expected.
When I'd brought up the bloodsucking, I'd braced myself for curses and abuse — but that hadn't happened either.
At most she just glared at me like that, said she understood, and lit that competitive fire in her eyes.
Well. What choice did she have?
I said I was going to kill people. Could she really stand by and fail to stop me?
Of course not.
Yeah. Absolutely not.
It was barely a conversation — me asking things, her giving short answers — but even this moment made me happy.
Mine was a life that looked toward death, and yet feeling alive was a strangely delicate emotion.
That ticklish, fluffy feeling in a corner of my heart.
Getting this worked up over things other people would call trivial — what did that make me?
Villain. That was always what Erika called me.
Better than garbage or crazy bitch, at least — those cheaper words.
If that was how she saw me, maybe it was better to simply become that.
As someone made of countless tangled things, I still didn't really know.
I just wandered.
After parting with Erika, I strolled the night streets at my leisure.
"Parting" was generous — I'd simply vanished without so much as a goodbye.
Which left me with enough free time to enjoy myself well into the late hours.
"Aaaagh!!"
These were the same presences I'd been sensing ever since the café.
White uniforms. The emblem of two great swords.
I swept my arm and deflected every bullet, then closed the distance and drove my knife into them until the resistance turned nauseating.
Screams rang out. I grabbed the face of the woman who'd just collapsed and hauled it up.
"You must have worked hard getting here. Union Department, yes?"
"You— ngh…!"
I pushed the blade in deeper, and something sprayed from her mouth.
Disgusting.
"I've been waiting for you. Or have you not all arrived yet? I was just testing the waters — did I come out to greet you too early?"
This wasn't the picture I wanted.
"I'd prefer you all came at once and died together. I'd prefer you felt the gap and ran."
As soon as possible. So I could focus on Erika.
I pulled the knife from the woman's abdomen, and another groan tore free. Blood poured out and soaked the ground.
"It seems I've arrived at a rather unfortunate moment."
And what suddenly stained the crimson mire was a vine studded with thorns. The air shuddered. Wind stirred.
I twisted a strand of hair by my temple and turned.
"Is that so? This is the kind of scenery I always run into."
Getting used to something was a race more inhuman than humans themselves.
The robe swayed and produced an eerie tone. Seran let out a hollow laugh.
"Unchanged as ever. A feast of noise and disorder."
"Wow, I actually agree with you there. It's way too loud."
"This is not why you saved the human world, is it?"
So he could make a face like that. A flame held down hard.
"To think all that hatred would turn upon you, Lady Orly — I can only imagine how unjust it must feel."
"I endured, and eventually the light came. I'm just barely starting to lean on it."
Late as it was.
"Guh…! Wh-what the hell is this bastard—! Aaaagh!"
Before the man could finish, a massive spear punched through his back. Seran shook his head and crushed the man's skull underfoot.
"The Spirit Realm is returning to order. And yet here, nothing has changed. Perhaps the rest period was a waste."
"So you cleaned up the small fry?"
Resistance against the new government, or something like that.
"Insects unworthy of the name. The pleasure of sweeping them all away with a single spear was beyond description."
The long, slender spear flashed. That one was actually pretty cool.
After a beat of silence, Seran drew a glass vial from his robes. Crimson orbs clinked inside with a clear, bright sound.
"Giving me those again?"
"But of course. For you, Lady Orly, even this feels insufficient."
Well. Maybe he was just dangling precious orbs to reel me in.
The violence hidden behind those vast eyes — once you'd faced it directly, you almost wanted to applaud.
"Is that so?"
"You are the savior of the human world. Is it not only natural?"
"I don't know about that. If we're being precise, I'm more of a bloodstained savior."
Melting the Spirit Extermination Corps in one go had required the blood of hundreds of people, after all.
"Had you left them be, total annihilation would have been their fate. A few hundred sacrificed to save tens of millions — being hailed as a savior is only right."
You're hardly one to say that, are you?
"Haha. I did my utmost. It never once crossed my mind that the Extermination Corps would entertain the clever idea of invading the human world."
Being the Spirit King and still failing to control thousands of Extermination troops never made sense to begin with, if you asked me.
The spear stood upright and struck the ground. Space warped; a fissure opened.
"I hope we may meet again. These small fry are becoming a nuisance."
The robe whipped violently — and vanished.
Silence.