Don't Touch the Cat (2)
"I'm sorry. All the clothes I have are what I'm wearing right now, or nightclothes."
"...Th-that's fine..."
It was early evening, the sun just beginning to fade into dusk.
Priscilla, our uninvited guest, had somehow made her way inside the church and now sat there meekly, like a bashful young girl.
Barely an hour ago she'd been clad in quite the gleaming suit of armor.
But she'd committed an unfortunate faux pas at the worst possible timing, so she had no choice but to borrow my nightclothes, and we'd agreed she would stay at the church until the armor she'd washed had dried.
"Priscilla of the Shield Guild, was it?"
"Yes... that's right..."
Despite the disastrous first impression, once we actually talked, Priscilla turned out not to be nearly as dangerous a person as I'd feared.
She was nothing more than the bottom rung of the ladder at the Shield Guild, and the reason she'd come here in the first place was the arbitrary treatment she'd suffered at the hands of her superiors.
"Pee-pants."
"Ahem— Iris. We don't say things like that."
"But a full-grown adult wetting her pants is embarrassing, isn't it?"
"That's true, but it wasn't on purpose. You have to think about how she feels."
"...I've never done that, not once."
Ever since the incident, Iris had been stuck to my side like glue, refusing to leave me for even a moment.
She'd been experiencing the most peaceful of moments when it happened, so setting aside the fright, she must have been terribly unsettled—
"See, Levy? I told you she was suspicious."
"......"
"Something felt off from the moment I first saw her. And on top of that, she went and had an accident in her pants?"
"Stop teasing me..."
Priscilla's face, already flushed red, grew hotter and hotter by the moment, until at last tears began to well up in her eyes, her expression crumpling into a weepy grimace.
She seemed to be doing her best to hide her embarrassing state.
But even that tiny effort only served to fire the children up further, making the situation all the more pitiful.
"...Ellie is sleeping in her room right now, isn't she?"
"Yep. I saw her sleeping in there before we came down."
"Then Eisen, please take Iris back to the room for now."
"Why? Can't we stay here?"
"I have things to discuss with this lady. And I'm worried about Ellie being alone."
"...Well, if that's how it is, I guess I can't argue."
With Eisen and Iris lingering inside the church, I doubted we'd be able to have a proper conversation, so I sent the two of them back to their room first.
Prying Iris away from my side did take a little while.
But thanks to Eisen, I managed to sort things out far more easily than I'd expected.
And so only Priscilla and I remained in the silent church.
The situation was awkward in every possible way.
Even so, this moment was absolutely necessary if I wanted to get a firmer grasp on our current circumstances.
"So then, what exactly did you want to know about this place?"
"I-I just... planned to find out what the sound coming from here was, and head straight back..."
"From what I can see, you'd already decided I was a monster from the very start."
"Honestly, a nun living an ordinary life in the middle of a forest like this, raising children, in a place that isn't even a village... such a thing doesn't exist..."
"And do you still believe I'm a monster?"
"...I don't know. Looking at your appearance, it seems like you might be. But looking at your behavior, you're clearly not..."
From what I'd gathered earlier.
Even in Erdelin, the village where Priscilla lived, there apparently wasn't any reliable information about this church yet.
The request slip she'd been hiding in her clothes contained nothing but a simple instruction to identify the source of the sound coming from here.
There wasn't a single line about me or the children.
In one sense, that was a mercy. Looked at another way, it might mean we were in a slightly dangerous position.
Because for a vampire like me, someone beginning to take an interest in this place was the worst possible development.
"I'd like to tell you to lose interest in this church, but given what this place is, I suppose that's not so easily done."
"A-are you really the nun of this place...?"
"As you can see."
"Then why in the world is your skin so white..."
"It's because I don't get much sun. There's no other reason."
I gave Priscilla's question a shamelessly glib answer.
The children might buy it, but Priscilla was already a grown woman—an absurd excuse like that would never work on her.
Still, considering my circumstances, there was simply no other answer I could give, so I had no choice but to slap several layers of steel over my face and play the shameless part to the hilt.
"...I'm sorry?"
Priscilla's expression shifted into open bewilderment.
"If I were truly a monster, the children inside would have been dead long ago. There would be no reason to go to all the trouble of caring for them."
"I-I mean, that's true, but..."
"Especially you—you barged in here uninvited. I'd have had no reason to spare you, no reason to show you any mercy, would I?"
"......"
"Which is precisely why I could behave this way—because I'm human. Really, what monster in the world goes around impersonating a nun?"
A monster in a nun's habit, taking in children with nowhere else to go and painstakingly caring for them despite having no obligation to do so.
Every word described me, and yet I didn't so much as blink as I continued, calm and matter-of-fact.
Saying such things about myself with my own mouth was both ridiculous and, in a way, funny.
But for my children and me to live peacefully here, it was unavoidable.
Only by doing this could I chip away even a little at Priscilla's suspicion.
"Then... may I ask just one more thing...?"
"If it'll clear your doubts, ask away."
"That... that aura you gave off earlier, when our eyes met... that enormous, strange power..."
"That was just you being so frightened you saw things. An ordinary nun like me has no reason to emit some preposterous aura like that."
"But I felt it, clearly... that if I'd taken even one wrong step in that moment, my head would have left my body in an instant..."
Honestly, I had nothing to say.
Simply denying it outright was impossible—the display had been far too menacing, and I truly had been radiating killing intent.
If it had been night instead of day in that moment, I might have shown her something far worse.
"......"
At this point I'd moved beyond confusion and into a throbbing headache.
How on earth was I supposed to steer this situation toward a graceful resolution?
No matter how I turned it over, no suitable approach came to mind.
"Well then, what should I even—"
The very instant I gave up thinking and muttered those words in a spirit of utter resignation.
A knock rang out, crisp and clear, from beyond the firmly closed church doors.
"...?"
Priscilla and I turned our heads in unison, fixing our gazes on the church's entrance.
"You said you came here alone?"
"I did come alone... could it be the children?"
"...It can't be. They're not the type to act without permission."
The moment I confirmed that the knocker was not Priscilla's companion.
I slowly narrowed my eyes, a faint crease forming between my brows.
Somehow, beyond that tightly shut door, I sensed an odd presence.
"Priscilla."
"Y-yes...?"
"Get behind me."
No sooner had the words left my mouth than the closed doors began to swing slowly open, hinges creaking with an unpleasant sound.
Through the opening doors, an unfamiliar figure gradually revealed itself.
"Pardon the intrusion."
The thing's true identity was a man I had never seen before in my life.
A deep, measured voice.
An impressive height.
A neatly pressed suit.
And small, round glasses that caught the light and sparkled almost aggressively.
She flinched for a moment, a look of panic crossing her face.
But then, seemingly grasping the gravity of the situation at once, she immediately straightened up the sword she'd propped against the wooden bench.
"Wh-who are you...?!"
Priscilla spoke carefully, every inch of her wound taut with tension.
The man, however, lightly ignored the sword pointed at him and met my eyes with perfect ease, the corner of his mouth curving up in a strange smile.
"I apologize for calling on you so suddenly, at this late hour."
"......"
"I would much have preferred to visit during the daylight hours, but there was something slightly... unsatisfying about doing so, you see."
A strange smell, sharp enough to prick at my nose.
A foul stench I felt certain I'd caught somewhere before.
A nameless sense of dread came surging up violently at my back.
"Would you kindly release your illegal occupation of this forest? Vampire."
Troublesome situations always arrive without warning, and always all at once.
Of all times, a demonkin had to show up now—
"A v-vampire...?"
"Don't be fooled, Priscilla. The man before you is a demonkin."
At my flat, matter-of-fact words, Priscilla's expression grew even more bewildered.
"Wh-what... why would a demonkin be all the way out here in this remote forest..."
"Ah, dear... now this is a difficult position to be in. To think a demonkin would call a human like me a demonkin of all things."
In that instant, my brows knitted together fiercely.
What on earth was his game?
Not content with announcing himself as human out of nowhere, he had smoothly turned around and accused quiet old me of being a demonkin.
At his crafty remark, Priscilla jolted violently and began looking at me with sudden suspicion.
"What exactly do you think you're doing?"
"I could ask you the same. What on earth are you doing here?"
The light glinting off his round glasses obscured his eyes perfectly, making it impossible to read what expression he was wearing as he looked at me.
Even so, I could faintly sense his emotions through that glib, unceasing tongue.
"I don't know who you are or where you're from, but I'd advise you to step away from that demonkin at once."
"The nun is... a demonkin...?"
"Deceiving humans is a demonkin's specialty. Surely even someone as lacking in skill as you knows that much."
"......"
"Furthermore, that demonkin has trespassed into this forest and occupied it, while hunting and driving out the creatures who lived here in peace."
His cunning tongue rattled on without pause.
It felt as though he intended to use the unknowing Priscilla to dispose of me.
"I truly am sorry to arrive unannounced and open with such talk. Even so, I sincerely regret the thought of your life being lost."
"I'm... sorry?"
"Because if things go on this way, you will without question be brutally murdered by that demonkin."
Priscilla's body began to tremble harder than before.
In a state of confusion this profound, whatever I said would clearly never reach her ears.
"Besides, where in the world is there a human with skin that color?"
To think he would drag me down into the pit in one stroke using such an infuriating, maddening method.
He really was a demonkin, wasn't he—
"If you understand, then I suggest you turn that sword you're pointing around. The enemy you should be aiming at is not me, but—"
A light chop to the back of her neck with the edge of my hand, and Priscilla's body went limp, collapsing bonelessly to the floor.
I knew roughly how skilled she was, so keeping her awake would do nothing but make her an obstacle.
For that reason, before things grew any more troublesome, I needed to knock her out and settle the situation.
"You really do complicate things. Did you think that would shake me?"
At the sight of Priscilla sprawled on the floor, the man looked momentarily at a loss for words.
But I paid it no mind whatsoever, continuing calmly with an expression of perfect serenity.
"As you can see, I have absolutely no confidence in my ability to win a war of words. If you're going to insist, I'd much rather you move your body than your mouth."
And with those words, I promptly sliced open my own palm and conjured the same crude, jagged spear as before.