Light (4)
When I opened my eyes, the beeping electronic clock was the first thing I saw.
The blinking numbers marking the time pointed to ten in the morning.
I clutched my head for a moment and traced back through yesterday's memories. I'd collected the night's blood, met that girl — and then collapsed in the alley outside the house.
…Ah. Come to think of it, I never even got her name.
"Have you awakened? How fares your body — your body?"
At the familiar voice I blinked a few times and turned my gaze. A small, adorable red spirit was fretting about, scattering the air around her.
The word body set my brain working again.
Stabbing the knife into my heart hadn't been because the pain had gone beyond control, or because something else had gone wrong with me.
I'd meant to faint first and cut my consciousness short before the illness flared up.
Even for my own sake, I shouldn't have treated my body so roughly — and yet, somehow. Yeah. I'd just wanted to try it.
Was "did it in a fit of temper" the right way to put it?
Even as my body felt ready to break apart and my breath dried up in my throat, the memory of those eyes — forcing out every word she could, intent on killing me — had cut across my mind.
I wanted to try it too. I wanted to be like that too.
I wanted to change this sickly, wasted daily life.
I stopped thinking for a moment and twisted a strand of hair around my finger. I pushed myself up on the sofa and fussed with the blanket. It was soft and warm.
"Thanks, Bloody. You carried me all the way here."
"Answer the question I asked of you."
"I'm fine… I'm okay."
I really do owe you so much. Is it all right for me to keep leaning on you like this?
"Think not such things. Had you not saved me in the days of the Spirit Realm purge, I would not be here now."
"When did you gather enough power to transfer my whole body?"
"Heh heh. Subspace is truly a fine place. Merely by sleeping quietly, one can draw in magic stones."
The distance from where I'd collapsed to the house wasn't much… but the magic ratio in my body must have been considerable.
"……"
Lying on the sofa, I looked past the shelf set beside it. The magic herbs were gone. They were a kind of herb that served as a painkiller, with a trace of magical component in them — careless use could lead to addiction — but because I could control blood, the addictive elements riding the bloodstream never quite did their job. That was rather convenient for me.
Drugs, cigarettes, and magic herbs.
Yeah. Maybe I should just sleep for a bit first.
Whatever else was true, having strong power in my hands right now was helpful in more ways than one.
No — not merely helpful. It was enough to become my everything.
In this age of Gates appearing and awakeners running wild, when the boundary between life and death had crumbled, there was nothing that couldn't be settled with violence and force.
Even during the nearly year I'd spent in hiding, I'd used that power to raid shops and stock up on food and water.
"Mm! Delicious."
I set a few pieces of bread and other food out on the table, and we went on with the meal in the quiet atmosphere, the yellow lamp casting its warm light over us.
Bloody was cutting the bread — large relative to a spirit's body — into small pieces with magic and eating it one bite at a time, and she let out a little cry of delight.
"Looks like you like it."
The cutter knife… it was glowing faintly, so it must have held magic. Well, Bloody had no hands to speak of, but the concentration of magic she carried inside her was dense enough that she never seemed inconvenienced in daily life.
"W-what… why do you stare so?"
"Why?"
"Ah, 'tis nothing… nothing at all…"
So spirits knew embarrassment too. She'd spilled bread crumbs messily all over the table, after all.
"But didn't you say the meals humans eat aren't a spirit's staple food?"
"Ahem… They are not a staple. Beyond the nutrients required to maintain the form of the body, they are merely something obtained on the side."
"And in your case, that nutrient is blood."
"Indeed. Being a spirit rooted in vampire nobility, it cannot be helped. Other spirits would require different nutrients, but well — I benefit well from you."
Listening to her soft, measured words, I slowly studied Bloody's body. Sure enough, perhaps from taking in a great deal of that nutrient of late, the red of her squishy-looking form seemed a little brighter.
"You must eat as well. Why have you been sitting still all this while?"
"I'm not really hungry."
"You must not say such things. Breakfast is the start of the day. It cares for the body's health, grants emotional stability, and…"
"Ah, I know. I know."
The truth was, even if I hadn't wanted to eat, I'd meant to force it down anyway.
It was a little strange to only now resolve to do something after months of merely thinking I ought to change myself.
Yeah. Still.
Every ordinary moment spent sitting at this table was precious to me. Eating breakfast like anyone else, talking like anyone else, and feeling that I myself was alive.
Unlike the times I lost my reason leaning on pleasure, spending quiet, peaceful hours mattered.
Even if I couldn't follow a fairy-tale ending all at once, I could still follow a few scenes from one, couldn't I?
Yeah. Yeah.
I finished the meal quietly and cleaned the table with Bloody. Once the cleaning was done, Bloody seemed a little tired; she stuck a straw into a tiny juice and slurped away at it.
Blood? Was it blood? I didn't know.
"So then — have you plans for today?"
"Hmm."
Certainly.
Security had grown tighter of late.
I'd felt it from the moment I left the house and wandered around yesterday.
The Association couldn't have that many people to spare, and yet this area alone was especially heavy…
Seeing that they'd even sent high-rank awakeners after me — yeah. It was almost certainly because of me.
Everyone I'd dealt with yesterday should be seriously hurt, and that girl most of all.
By now the Association might already be in an uproar.
I had no idea what measures they would take.
They were short-handed as it was, and looking at the larger picture, the capital region was the real emergency.
There, Gates and criminals running wild wasn't anything new.
Relations with the Spirit Realm and other countries, and with the top-rankers who weren't affiliated with the Association.
And diplomacy.
My known actions so far amounted, at most, to committing murder once every few days.
Unless it rose to the level of terrorism, it was the sort of thing they could divert an investigation away from.
If it wasn't that.
If — really if — they had already decided I was the girl Orly the boy had become, and were running a full-scale investigation…
A second clash with the Association might be unavoidable.
And if that were truly the case — if again, again like the memories of that day, a situation came where I had to take countless people hostage and commit an act of terror…
What was I supposed to do?
No. Would there even be room for thoughts like that to continue? I'd clearly fail to think straight and run wild again.
"I need a cure."
That said, I couldn't simply stay like this. I wanted to live a life completely different from the one I'd had before.
While I was achieving those five goals the blue-edged book had shown me, I had to do at least everything I was capable of.
Live an ordinary life. Think positively. Become a little more human.
"I had no mind to force an answer. How about taking in some air?"
"Sure."
I stepped out onto the house balcony and faced the open view.
The feeling of my chest opening up was good.
I turned my thoughts back around.
First goal: the blood of a high-rank awakener.
Synchronization rate: seventy percent.
Yesterday, chasing that blood, I'd recklessly opened my wings and leapt skyward — but before long I'd run into a hard problem.
There was no way a high-rank awakener was simply going to appear in front of me and say, Please eat me up.
Yesterday I'd been lucky enough to catch one who'd fallen into Bloody's surveillance net, but ordinarily they didn't even show their faces.
To solve it, I'd have to go somewhere other than a residential neighborhood — somewhere denser, where stronger beings mixed together.
Yeah. For example…
The criminal groups that gathered and hid their tracks throughout the capital region.
That said, I couldn't head that way right now either.
The transfer range of the magic circle had its limits, and besides, this place was on the outskirts of Gyeonggi Province.
The Association Headquarters stationed in the Seoul area was a concern as well, and even if I went, I'd still have to identify the criminal groups.
Obviously, there was a limit to what one person could learn about criminal groups alone.
The easiest path would be to get the Association's help, open an investigation together, and find out where the groups were.
Even then — if I said I'd go in alone and take care of them real quick, would they believe me?
How long had they been opposing me? They might well think I'd join hands with the wanted awakeners there and turn on them instead.
"Urgh…"
It would be so much simpler if I just took someone hostage.
To the point of saying I'd kill them if they didn't do as I said.
"What thoughts occupy you so?"
"A way to negotiate with the Association…?"
Was negotiation already impossible after I'd wrecked their hunters?
But the Association President was a rational human being. Even now, if I said I would stop any large-scale activity and quietly collect blood and nothing more, they might accept it without a fuss.
"What of that girl? From the looks of her, she seemed one of the Association."
At Bloody's words, the girl's face rose in my mind again.
If only her limbs had been intact, she had looked ready to drive a blade into me on the spot.
"I'll chase you to the ends of the earth… without fail… yeah."
Given how terribly she hated me, cooperation was absolutely out of the… No. The idea of an Association hunter helping me willingly didn't make sense in the first place.
I wouldn't deny I felt a slight interest, though.
"Still, if I were going to try it — half wreck her, knock her out, take her to the Association and threaten them with her life… No. Even so, if she hates me that much, maybe killing her would be cleaner."
Anyway, I'd run into her again soon enough. I could think about it then.
That didn't mean I had nothing to do until then.
I dropped the cigarette I'd been smoking in stiff, awkward puffs and crushed it under my foot. I glanced sideways at the shelf inside the house.
For now, I needed to get magic herbs first.
Show my face a little and check their reactions.
I needed to confirm how my identity was being framed.