Episode 7
I woke to the warmth of the sun on my face.
“Ugh.”
My stomach lurched. The flood of information my heightened senses were taking in was too much to sort through at once, and the world spun hard enough to make me dizzy.
When I braced a hand on the ground and managed to push my upper body up, a curtain of pale, gleaming hair slipped into my blurred vision.
Ping.
The world tilted again. The vertigo sharpened so suddenly that I clamped a hand to my head.
“Why am I, huh?”
Why did my voice sound like that?
I froze, startled by how much thinner it was than usual.
“My hand...?”
It wasn’t just my voice. The hand I’d pressed to my head had shrunk too.
It was a tiny, plump hand, the sort a ten-year-old brat might have.
“Ah, fuck.”
A very bad guess occurred to me.
When I staggered upright, the world was lower than before. The hair brushing against my calves was downright irritating.
Looking down, I saw a small, pale body. And, on top of that, I was naked.
I frowned and looked around.
The place was a ruin, as though a meteor had come crashing down here. I stood at the center of the crater.
“My house...”
My old home. My precious house had vanished without a trace.
“Goreuk...”
I was still staring blankly at the wreckage, completely unable to make sense of what had happened, when I heard a familiar voice and turned my head.
“Bobra?”
“Kruk. You are awake, my lord.”
Why were you here? More importantly, what the hell happened to you?
I ran over on my shortened legs and reached my familiar, who was lying there half-dead.
Up close, the damage looked even worse. Every piece of the armor he had been so proud of was shattered, and his greatsword lay split in two beside him.
His right arm was gone too, nowhere to be seen.
As I stared in disbelief, his one remaining yellow eye turned toward me.
“My lord.”
“What the hell happened?”
“My lord went berserk.”
“What?”
“So Gobra killed you once.”
“.....”
The explanation was so absurdly short that I flinched.
Berserk. Death.
An unfamiliar familiar. A body made young again.
The keywords that flashed through my head slowly dragged buried memories back to the surface.
“My lord, take this.”
The familiar raised his one remaining left hand and held it out.
His thick, dark-green arm trembled.
What lay in his open palm was a single photograph, crumpled and wrinkled.
“Ah.”
A stupid sound slipped out before I could stop it.
With a blank stare, I took it carefully and smoothed the creases flat.
My mother and father, blurred by the years, and my past self, all smiling together in a happy little family photo, were there.
“Goreuk. Sorry, my lord. That was all I could save.”
My familiar apologized.
At that moment, tears spilled down my face.
My expression twisted, and something from deep in my chest surged up all at once.
I hugged the precious family photo to my chest and shook my head from side to side.
“No. Thank you. You did well.”
“Goreuk. I merely did what had to be done. Don’t make it disgusting.”
Honestly, he really did have no idea how to be nice.
I laughed weakly as I looked down at the familiar, who had already shut his eyes.
“My lord.”
“What.”
“Are you all right now?”
“...Yeah. I think so.”
My chest still ached.
But for now, I could bear it. I could keep it off my face.
So what. Nothing had really changed.
Like I had buried it decades ago, I could just tuck it away quietly in some corner of my heart.
I’d always done that. It wasn’t that hard.
“Huh.”
I chose hope as I pleased and despair as I pleased, too.
What a miserable sight.
I really was a pathetic bastard, then and now.
“...I see. That’s a relief.”
The familiar’s face settled into ease.
“Gobra needs to rest. Don’t summon me for a while.”
“Okay. I won’t.”
“Goreuk. I’m still not used to my lord being so obedient.”
“What was that, punk?”
“You’re giving me the creeps, so send me back already.”
That bastard always knew how to make his words sting.
Still, I let it pass this time.
He really had gone through a lot looking at the state I was in.
“You worked hard.”
I reached out my smaller hand.
A red summoning circle bloomed around the familiar’s prone body.
I was sending him back.
For a while, he’d be down in the Abyss repairing his ruined body.
“My lord.”
“What.”
“There are two left now.”
“.....”
“Don’t die. Don’t let them kill you either. Gobra still has many things he wants to do.”
My familiar, already fading from view, made the request in a steady voice.
I only nodded in silence.
And just before his figure vanished completely, the familiar, who had been wearing a peaceful expression with his eyes closed, suddenly lifted his head.
“Goreuk.”
“Hm?”
“I forgot to pass on a message.”
“What message?”
“The eccentric True Ancestor and His Majesty the Demon King told my lord—”
“Huh? Hey!”
You can’t just leave without finishing the sentence!
What did my master and the Demon King do?
But the familiar had already returned to the Abyss, leaving only a cold empty spot behind.
I stared dumbly at the place where he had been, then scowled.
“Damn it! Seriously!”
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
One full day passed after that.
I recovered quickly.
My reduced body had returned to normal, and Bloodflow Dominance had started responding to my will again.
Wearing clothes made from blood as usual, I sat on the railing of a rooftop and stared absentmindedly at the sky.
White clouds drifted lazily across the clear blue after the rain.
Like those clouds wandering without purpose, my own heart had lost its direction and was filling with a hollow emptiness.
“Peaceful.”
Just that one thing made the trip back to Earth worth it.
I didn’t have to get caught up in a headache-inducing political struggle.
I didn’t have to wear flashy dresses every day and force a smile at balls and parties, either.
But worthwhile or not, I still had no clear goal.
I had one once. Then I lost it.
The family photo tucked away in my inventory came to mind.
What was I supposed to do now, and how was I supposed to keep living?
“...Should I go back?”
The city was the first thing that came to mind.
I’d gone to the trouble of getting in there, only to come straight back out without actually doing anything.
Rather than wasting time here and just digging holes in the ground for no reason, it would probably be better for my mental health to experience the conveniences of Earth’s changed civilization.
“I need to get my condition under control.”
I knew better than anyone that my mental state was absurdly fragile.
When I was like this, the only thing that kept me from sinking into depression was doing something fun, something interesting.
I’d go back to the city, look around, and eat something good while I was at it.
Or maybe I should take this chance to look for a decent-looking human being.
“All right. Let’s go.”
Having made up my mind, I headed for the city with my red cloak fluttering behind me.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
By the time the sun was setting, I had entered the city without any trouble.
Thanks to the ID I’d properly registered, and because I’d pulled my hood up and cast an anti-recognition spell, I passed through without so much as a glance from anyone.
I wandered along the sidewalk, turning in little circles as I went.
I looked at the buildings, which were like something out of a sci-fi movie but somehow carried a strange fantasy flavor too.
Different. Strange. Interesting.
“Hey! Watch it!”
“Keep your eyes open when you walk!”
“Is she crazy? Why’s she walking like that?”
People muttered around me.
I hadn’t actually bumped into anyone, so I felt a little wronged by the reaction.
As a vampire with razor-sharp senses and a body built for violence, I was itching to tell them that even if my gait looked a little strange, there was no way in hell I’d collide with the likes of them.
So I did.
“Fuck off, all of you! Shut the hell up, you bastards!”
The people around me all stared, flabbergasted.
I felt refreshed.
In a much lighter mood, I hummed as I walked on, only for a shadow to suddenly fall over me.
Two sturdy-looking men in uniforms stood in my way.
Something about the clothes looked oddly familiar.
“Miss Cynthia Valentine?”
“What. Who are you?”
“Police.”
The two men were police officers.
“Identification number JW-5543. You’re the owner of a mana bike, correct?”
“We’re issuing you a fine for illegal parking. It looks like you don’t have a personal Device, so please go to the Comprehensive Life Center and pay it in person. You have one week.”
“Take your mana bike now, before it gets towed. If you fail to pay the fine, there may be penalties, so make sure you do.”
“And please refrain from shouting like that again just now.”
They rattled off the whole thing from both sides, then held a Device out toward me.
Beep.
With that sound, the police had apparently finished their business, because they bowed and left.
It all happened so fast that I was left completely dazed.
“Mana bike?”
Come to think of it, I remembered leaving it parked haphazardly in front of the Comprehensive Life Center.
“Guess I should go get it.”
I didn’t care about the fine, but I sure as hell didn’t want to lose my ride, so I started back toward the Comprehensive Life Center.
It was nearby, so I got there in no time.
“Ah! Hey, wait a second!”
“Huh?”
Just as I was about to climb onto the mana bike, someone came running up from behind, panting hard.
When I looked back, it was the female civil servant who had told me about my parents yesterday.
She came all the way outside the building to wait for me?
Was the charm effect still lingering?
While I waited in confusion, the civil servant stopped in front of me.
“Well, yesterday you looked so upset that I went and checked something separately.”
She cut straight to the point without any setup at all.
Not knowing what she meant, I just stared at her blankly until she held something out to me.
It looked like a kind of document, crammed full of photos and text.
I took it and read it.
If the charm effect was still there, then she’d have done something that would help me one way or another, so I figured I had nothing to lose.
“...Hey.”
“Yes?”
“Is this real?”
“Ah, yes. I checked it several times.”
“Where is this?”
“It isn’t far. If you take the road from here and keep going straight up, you’ll reach...”
I didn’t bother listening to the rest.
I jumped onto the mana bike, started it, and slammed the accelerator all the way down.
Vroooom!
Honnnk!
Hey, you lunatic! Drive like that and you’ll get yourself killed!
I tore through the streets without caring about red lights.
Just as the civil servant had said, my destination gradually came into view.
A fairly large ordinary middle school.
I came to a stop in front of the main gate, threw the mana bike down carelessly, and flew inside the school.
“Whoa! What was that just now?”
“Did something red just flash by?”
Students on their way home jumped and muttered among themselves.
Where is she? Where is she?
I was frantic.
Even after spreading my magic field to its limit, it wasn’t enough, so I ran around searching with my own eyes, one place at a time.
I was looking for the person in the photo on the document I held.
Then I stopped.
Found her!
On the school rooftop.
I kicked off the ground and shot upward.
When I stepped up onto the railing, the whole rooftop spread out before me at a glance.
Students in school uniforms.
Not them.
I rolled my eyes and searched for the face in the photo.
And then, soon enough.
I found a young girl crouched beneath the feet of a cluster of boys and girls.
Between the half-shredded uniform, bruises, and torn underwear, the sight made my vision go white.
“Hey.”
In that instant, blood rushed up into my head.
“What the hell.”
“Who’s that woman?”
“How’d she get up here?”
“Fuck. You didn’t lock the roof properly?”
“Huh? Hey, something’s weird—”
It felt like bugs had crawled into my ears.
Drip, drip.
“B-Blood?!”
“Hey, hey! Don’t tell me that’s a villain...”
So I made them all shut up.
Gurgle. Hrk.
The blood that swept through my field of vision burped wetly as it passed.
What remained on the cleaned rooftop was only the crouching girl.
I walked over slowly, dropped to one knee, and carefully took her by the shoulder to lift her up.
Had she blacked out for a moment?
The girl slowly opened her eyes.
When she met mine, the dark pupils in her shadowed gaze went wide.
One swollen eye had already ruined her young, pretty face.
“Who... are you?”
“You’re Lee Seo-ah, right?”
“Y-yes, I am.”
“...This is going to sound strange if I ask out of nowhere, but can you answer me?”
“Yes?”
“Your father’s name was Lee Jin-woo. Am I right?”
“You know... my dad?”
A look of innocent surprise crossed her face.
And that was all the confirmation I needed.
Lee Jin-woo.
The man who was dead now.
The one my mother had compared me to while smacking me on the back over and over again for years.
My maternal cousin.
This child in front of me...
Was his one and only daughter.
She was my niece.
“Hngh.”
“Huh, sis?”
I pulled the girl into my arms.
Tears streaming down my face soaked her frail shoulders.
“Finally. I finally found you.”
At long last, I had found one.
I gently eased her out of my embrace and met her eyes.
“Hey, kid.”
“Y-yes?”
“Want to live with me?”
This was the meaning of my return.