Bitter Aftertaste
The dessert left my whole body feeling sticky and gross. Had I been sweating? My skin was slick and clammy. My foggy mind slowly began to clear. When I forced my heavy eyelids open, the sound of rain hammered against my ears. The room was pitch black.
“…Night?”
Had it really become night already? I lifted my head in a hurry and looked out the window. It was truly dark. Scattered lights flickered here and there, signaling that someone was on patrol. The rain pattered against the windowpane. I listened to that sound and retraced my memories.
“Eryk helped me.”
Once again, I had ended up relying on Eryk. The blanket currently covering me must have been placed there by him as well. Thanks to that, even though I was drenched in sweat, my body hadn’t grown cold.
“…….”
His unnecessary thoughtfulness was almost irritating. He was a man I simply couldn’t pin down. How long had it been since I last received such small acts of care? I didn’t know. I couldn’t remember.
My mother had passed away from a chronic illness when I was young. After that, my father, already in poor health, had looked after me until he died just three months before I became an adult. And when I was reborn, I still received no care. I enlisted in the military just like that. On the battlefield, my position had been far too high to expect anyone to look after me.
That was how five years had passed. During those five years, I had believed my mind had grown stronger than anyone else’s. In truth, it had been unbearably fragile. No matter how hard I armored the outside, the inside had shattered completely. The slightest touch would break it apart like chocolate.
If only I had realized that truth just a little sooner. If I had, maybe I could have leaned on the people around me a bit more.
“…I wanted to live… That’s why… that’s why I couldn’t see anything……”
I couldn’t see anything at all. Who was beside me. Who could support me. Of course, everyone around me harbored deep resentment toward vampires. I had been terrified of what they would say or how they would look at me if they learned I was one. That fear had been so overwhelming that I couldn’t approach anyone.
Like a porcupine bristling with quills, I would step forward when someone approached, but then pull back again, afraid they might get hurt. And now that same person was sobbing over a single small act of care.
“Why… why are you doing this to me?”
He must have realized long ago that I was the very vampire he hated so much. Even knowing I belonged to the same race as the enemies who had killed his family, why was he still looking after me? I wanted to ask him that. But the question was swallowed by my sobs and refused to come out.
Sadness always ate away at me. Emotions were utterly useless. And yet, and yet I could never abandon them. No human, no living being could completely cast off emotion. If that were possible, the world would have neither conflict nor harmony.
Knowing that all too well, I poured out endless tears. Perhaps toward all those who had left me, the ones I might have reached out to. Toward Bermann, whose final words I would never know.
“I’m sorry… I’m sorry……”
“…You’re noisy.”
“…!!”
While I was crying like that, a man’s voice reached me. He wore an irritated expression, as if he had just woken up. No wonder my side had felt a little heavy.
…Was he resting his arm on me?
“You’re awake, Major Valentine.”
“……”
“How do you feel?”
Eryk spoke with a perfectly blank, emotionless face. It was the same mask I wore on the battlefield in front of my subordinates, the one I used to desperately hide my feelings.
“…Lieutenant Colonel.”
“Is the PTSD very painful?”
“……”
“They say wounds from the battlefield only grow worse once you leave it.”
As he spoke, Eryk put a cigarette between his lips and lit it.
“May I turn on a light in the room?”
“…A candle would be fine.”
When I answered, he used his lighter to ignite the candle. The flickering flame made Eryk’s face waver in the light.
“Are you all right?”
“…Yes, I am.”
“That’s a relief.”
Eryk gave a faint smile as he said that. I had no idea what that smile meant, and it sent chills down my spine.
“You haven’t eaten anything, have you?”
Even as he suggested I drink his blood for efficiency, Eryk held out a cookie to me.
This is…
It was one of the cookies the Empress often brought to tea parties—the ones she baked herself.
Did he receive them when he went for an audience?
“Eat.”
“…I don’t have an appetite right now.”
“It’s an order. Eat it while I’m watching.”
“……”
“Hurry.”
His words were commanding, yet his tone and expression held no force at all. It was a casual suggestion delivered with a blank face. I glanced at him, then picked up one of the chocolate chip cookies.
“Thank you.”
“This time you didn’t say thanks in casual speech.”
Eryk turned his head with a laugh that might have been mockery and exhaled cigarette smoke. I was startled by his behavior.
…He’s not blowing the smoke at me?
He usually did. And there was no sign that the cookie he gave me had been tampered with.
“……”
“What is it?”
“…It’s nothing.”
Something felt off. This was strange. Why… why did I feel so comfortable? Was it because being next to Eryk made my PTSD grow so quiet? What was the reason?
Thinking that, I put the cookie in my mouth.
“…!!”
“What is it?”
When my eyes suddenly widened, Eryk reached out in alarm. The sudden sweetness had simply startled my brain, but because of his movement I mistakenly thought he was going to hit me and instinctively flinched.
“Ah……”
“……”
“I-I’m sorry. It was just for a moment. It was so delicious that I was surprised. Please don’t mind it.”
After saying that, I chewed the cookie. It was delicious—nothing like what I had tasted on the front lines. At the same time, anger surged inside me. Even while we suffered on the front lines, the nobles were enjoying things like this. The longer the war dragged on, the fewer supplies we received. So this was why. No matter how many times I realized it, the feeling never stopped being disgusting.
“……”
“Why did you stop eating? Is your blood lacking?”
As he spoke, Eryk undid one button on his shirt. I shook my head at him.
“I really… have no appetite. Could you withdraw the order?”
“Still, you need to eat if you want to get healthy.”
“……”
“Hurry.”
Eryk’s concern gradually began to feel like irritation. Since when had he worried about me like this?
“…Since when have you worried about me like this?”
“……”
“Even if I’m not feeling well, I can still overpower someone of your rank, Lieutenant Colonel.”
When I said that, Eryk’s face twisted and he stepped back.
Yes. That expression suits you best.
The look of someone who couldn’t suppress his disgust while looking at me. That was what suited him best……
…?
Why? My chest began to throb with a dull ache. My heart, facing that expression, trembled for some reason.
“……”
This was strange. It was all strange.
“…I withdraw the order.”
Eryk reluctantly canceled the command to eat. But I was too confused to offer any thanks.
“Please. Eat for me.”
“…Pardon?”
“You must survive until the war ends.”
“……”
“If you die before then, I will never forgive you.”
Eryk’s face twisted as he finally revealed his true feelings.
“I have to wring you out as much as possible in that hellish place. I need to make you suffer, don’t I? Today I saw the great Valentine rolling on the ground with my own two eyes.”
He twisted his face again and raised his voice. I knew that was his true intention, yet my chest hurt unbearably.
“……”
“So eat.”
“…Yes. Understood.”
My aching chest. A bitter feeling rose all the way to my throat, but it was easily crushed by a single one of the Empress’s cookies. It was sad. It hurt. It was agonizing. The actions I had thought were care had actually been meant to kill me. Yet I felt no sense of betrayal. Only the thought, Of course. If it’s you, then of course it would be like that.
“…Disgusting.”
Eryk spat the word and left. I stayed there and finished every last piece of the remaining dessert. The dessert was incredibly sweet, yet for some reason it only tasted bitter to me. All that remained for me was pain. The pain of knowing that no one, no one at all, pitied me enough to truly care for me. The truth that there was no one who would look at me with warm eyes pierced deep into my heart.
“…I should just sleep.”
Even though I wasn’t sleepy, I lay down on the bed and closed my eyes. For a long time, a very long time, I shed tears beneath the blanket. That day, I fell asleep from sheer exhaustion.
“…Disgusting.”
Eryk muttered the words to himself. It was what he said to the vampire before him after committing unforgivable acts toward her all this time. After relentlessly tormenting Valentine—who was a completely different person from those he was supposed to take revenge on—he could no longer earn even her trust. That was the word he spat at himself.
“In the end… I couldn’t even hear her say thank you properly.”
Instead of the stiff, emotionless “Thank you,” he had wanted to hear her say “Thanks.” He had wanted to hear genuine gratitude spoken out of real joy and thankfulness, not words forced out while she drowned in pain.
“……”
Why had he chosen irritation instead of saying he was sorry? Of course, in that situation, getting angry had seemed like the only way she would accept it and eat. That was why Eryk had held back. From outside Valentine’s firmly closed quarters, her sobbing cries could be heard.
“…Valentine.”
Eryk sat with his back against her door and struck his own chest hard, the chest that foolishly kept pounding with excitement. Even so, his heart, soaked in fluttering emotion, refused to stop.