Do Not Touch the Cat (4)
- KWA-AAAANG—!!!
The church doors burst apart, scattering a haze of pale dust that billowed outward into the thick, settled darkness.
"Hah... hah..."
The man fled headlong into the dark forest without a shred of hesitation, and I followed right on his heels, stepping into the trees as I tracked his every movement with fierce intensity.
Only his ragged, desperate breathing rang in my ears—but with every step I took, the sound of the trembling earth and the rustle of leaves seemed to strike my senses with an almost unnatural sharpness.
"Stay away—!! Stay away—!!"
A Spoken Word that landed on deaf ears. A meaningless cry.
Perhaps it was because he'd fled in such a blind panic. His once-immaculate suit had, at some point, been shredded to rags by protruding branches, torn beyond recognition.
And yet the man never once stopped running.
Even as his foot slipped out from under him, even as thorn bushes raked his arms bloody, he forced both legs to keep carrying him forward.
Even when his breath climbed all the way to his throat and it felt like he could run no farther.
Some primal terror whispered that the moment he stopped, everything would end—and it seemed to be driving his mind to the very edge of a cliff.
"Why... why would a mere vampire—!!!"
The closer the footsteps sounded behind him, the louder his near-screams grew.
No one was listening, and even the beasts of the forest merely watched from the sidelines—a truly bleak state of affairs.
- Thud!
At last, a single red thorn punched clean through the man's left shoulder as easily as it might pierce tofu.
The unbearable pain tore a demonic scream from his throat as he frantically called for help from anyone nearby—but alas, not a single soul poked their head out.
- Trudge, trudge...
How much time had passed like that?
The man's legs, which had run on endlessly, slowly began to falter and stop.
"...So the game of tag is over, is it?"
"......"
Red thorns bristled from the man's back like the spines of a hedgehog. He let out a hollow, defeated laugh, as though he had finally resigned himself to everything, and slowly tilted his head back toward the darkened sky.
"I don't understand... how could a mere vampire overpower me, one of the demonkin, like this?"
"Do you really need to know?"
"My Spoken Word... my Spoken Word never worked on you from the very start, did it...?"
Even to his question, asked in a voice that trembled strangely close to tears, I gave no answer.
I wondered what good it would do at this point—and besides, even if he knew the truth, it wouldn't help him in the slightest.
"Honestly, this is a first... I took part in the vampire hunts myself, you see, but in all my life I have never once seen a vampire wield such a peculiar blood magic..."
"......"
"Just who—or what—are you?"
When his question came yet again, I once more kept my silence and slowly raised the tip of the spear I held.
"With power like that... with the ability to toy with demonkin like playthings...! Why on earth would you play at being a nun, wasting your days looking after a pack of bratty little children?!!"
The instant his tearful tirade ended, I calmly drove one of the red thorns made from my own blood straight through one of the man's legs.
"Don't you dare speak carelessly about them. Those children are never, ever bratty."
"Ghk... ugh... You should at least know that you, too, are nothing more than a wretched demonkin..."
"Oh? Didn't you say earlier that I was a lowly species not fit to lick the boots of the demonkin?"
"H-haha... anyone with the power to slaughter others counts as demonkin... the roots of demonkind aren't that deep, you know..."
"Truly, a rootless lot."
"That rootless lot, gathered together, is exactly what the demonkin are..."
Too weak even to pull the red thorns from his body, the man simply stared blankly at the dark sky, letting out hollow, empty laughs one after another.
The thick, viscous blood seeping from him into the earth painted a rather gruesome scene—but even so, the man calmly continued speaking.
"Now that I think of it, I never did tell you my name... forgive the late introduction. I am—"
- SHLUCK!
I drove the sharply raised tip of my spear straight through the man's throat.
I wasn't the least bit curious about his name.
"Why would I need to hear the name of a heinous criminal who tried to kill my children?"
"Kah... khk... ghh..."
Clutching feebly at the spear buried in his neck, the man shuddered in mounting agony.
"Atone for your sins, even in death."
- Trudge
After running through the dense forest for so long, I was an absolute wreck.
Not only was mud smeared across my clothes everywhere, but the blood the man had sprayed added to the mess, leaving me looking worse than ever.
I had somehow dealt with the demonkin who'd barged into the church—but even so, there were still quite a few problems left to untangle.
"Levinia!"
One of them was explaining myself to the children, who knew nothing.
Up until now I had simply let things flow as they would, but it felt like time to start properly untangling the situation and steering things in the direction I wanted.
Of course, the fact that I was a vampire was something I would take to my grave without ever telling them.
"Were you all good and quiet while I was away?"
"......"
Unlike when the demonkin had first attacked, the children were now huddled together in a comparatively calm cluster.
The tender-hearted Ellie and Iris had pushed their emotions to the extreme, their faces flushed nearly crimson—but even so, they managed to hold back their tears and showed a certain steadfastness in their own way.
What surprised me most of all, though, was Eisen.
Not only were there no traces of tears at all, but of the three of them, he wore the calmest expression as he looked me dead in the eye.
"You can stop hiding it now. You're not an ordinary nun... are you, Levinia?"
"No. As you've seen, I can use magic, and I'm quite capable in a fight, too."
"...Can I ask why?"
On the walk back to the church, I had given it quite a lot of thought.
Since I hadn't hidden my fight against the demonkin, Eisen's question was not something I could dodge—and I absolutely had to answer it convincingly.
And so what I came up with was this—
"The truth is, I used to be an adventurer. My skills weren't very good, so I retired rather quickly."
I would weave a past of my own, based on the game that had raised Levinia.
This world had quite a lot in common with the game.
So it wasn't hard at all for me to fabricate a history as an adventurer, and I was able to give the children a well-reasoned, plausible explanation.
"Ah... that does explain why something always seemed off about you."
Just as I'd expected, the moment the children heard my invented past, they nodded along, wearing expressions of pure understanding.
I never dreamed the memories of raising her from Level 1 all the way to my current 87 would be put to such convenient use.
"So that oddly-shaped spear was magic too, then?"
"Yes, that's right. It's a special magic only I can use."
"That's how you beat the demonkin before so easily...! Now everything's finally starting to make sense!"
He didn't say it outright, but apparently my story back then—that I'd somehow managed things thanks to Lady Paelia's blessing—hadn't been a very convincing explanation for Eisen.
Well, even I thought it was a sloppy, half-baked excuse.
Perfectly understandable.
"But why were you working as a nun here, then? With skill like that, there'd be no reason to retire, let alone become a nun..."
"I'm sorry, Eisen. I'll tell you that part slowly, another time. For now, would it be all right if I went to have a word with Priscilla?"
Perhaps because I'd been through something fairly similar not so long ago, convincing the children went smoothly once again.
After all, they had never suspected me in the first place—it was just a natural question anyone would have asked in that situation.
Which was probably why it resolved all the more easily.
"......"
"Might I have a brief word with you?"
My last problem to solve.
Offering Priscilla a convincing explanation—when I couldn't even guess how much of my conversation with the man she had heard.
With her gaze fixed elsewhere, Priscilla gave only a small nod, and I led her slowly around to the back of the church.
"First, let me thank you for looking after the children so they could feel safe while I was gone."
"...Oh no. I only did what anyone would."
"Honestly, no one would have blamed you if you'd fled the moment it started."
"I was far too worried about the children to do that..."
"Really, you have such a warm heart."
A fairly formal exchange was passing back and forth, but amid it all, a strange, subtle air spread between Priscilla and me, making things increasingly awkward.
In moments like these, rather than beating around the bush, it might actually be better to state things directly and get it over with.
"So—how much of that did you hear?"
At my blunt question, Priscilla flinched violently, her eyelids fluttering in a flurry of confusion.
"Y-yes...?"
"I know you came to halfway through. It's a little rich coming from the very person who knocked you out, but I simply couldn't let it go unasked."
"...From the part about you being a vampire, onward..."
She'd been awake nearly from the beginning—Priscilla had spent quite a long stretch of time pretending to be unconscious.
She'd come to far faster than I expected.
"Th-that's strange...? I thought I hit you fairly hard..."
"I can't speak for anything else, but my body happens to be rather sturdy... that's probably why..."
"Is that so...?"
"Yes. The reason I made it here safely is thanks to my sturdy body, after all..."
In that instant, a tiny question mark floated gently up above my head.
"What's that supposed to mean, all of a sudden?"
At my casually tossed question, Priscilla's tear ducts, for some reason, exploded like a bomb.
"I swear I won't tell a soul...!! I'll live as quiet as a dead mouse in the village... so please, just spare my life... just spare my life, please...!!"
And so the relationship between Priscilla and me reset right back to square one, returning to the exact scene from our first meeting and leaving me increasingly bewildered.
No matter how many times I insisted I had no such intentions, it seemed the words weren't reaching Priscilla's ears at all—already a complete and utter disaster.
"What even IS a vampire...? I'm only seventeen...!! I don't know anything about ancient stories like that—!!"
By now Priscilla was clinging to my sleeve outright, wailing and carrying on.
At this rate, it seemed the conversation would make no progress even by dawn, so I had no choice but to smack Priscilla hard across the cheek.
- SMACK!
"Ah?"
"Calm down, Priscilla. This really isn't something to carry on like this over."
"I-it isn't...?"
"A vampire, you see. That is to say—"
My mind was whirring so fast I could practically hear the gears grinding through every clever scheme.
Before long, I put on my gentlest smile and spoke as soothingly as I could, to set Priscilla's heart at ease.
"It's just a mosquito."