Fish for a Cat (2)
"S-Sister...?"
I blanked out for a moment at the completely unexpected situation, my mind turning to a jumbled mess. But what threw me into confusion more than the fact that children stood just beyond the door was this: I was instinctively reacting to the blood they had shed.
They were the first people I'd met since coming to this world, so it wasn't as if I felt no gladness at the sight of them. But I had never once, in all this time, truly thought of myself as a genuine vampire — and so the sight of myself responding to those children's blood felt impossibly strange. Because of it, I couldn't shake the dread that was slowly creeping over a corner of my heart.
"E-Eisen... let's go somewhere else... something's wrong with this place..."
"Why all of a sudden? Finding a church in the middle of the forest is nothing short of a stroke of luck."
"The whole place looks half-ruined... and the Sister's been looking at us with this strange look in her eyes..."
While I stood there lost in a daze, the children's hushed voices quietly seeped into my ears. Only then did my addled mind begin to stir, and my blurred gaze slowly started to find its focus again.
"A-Ahaha... sorry about that. I didn't expect children to come calling at this hour, so I was caught off guard for a moment."
"You are the Sister of this church, aren't you...?"
"Of course. Though I'm the only one who lives here."
The one small mercy in all of this was that my impulse wasn't nearly as bad as I'd feared. Even now my eyes kept flicking sideways to the blood the children had spilled, but nothing beyond that boiled up inside me.
"Something's still wrong about this, no matter how I think about it... A church standing in the middle of a forest like this, and the whole atmosphere gives me the creeps..."
Of the three children, it was the silver-haired girl who seemed most intensely on her guard against me. Her insight was nothing to sneeze at.
"Ellie, I told you already. The forest is extremely dangerous in the middle of the night."
"B-But still... she calls herself a Sister, but her skin is pale as death... and above all, that's not what Sisters wear..."
"...W-Well, that's..."
The boy's mouth slowly clamped shut. Perhaps suspicion of me had finally caught up with him too, because he stole a sidelong glance my way, his eyes caught somewhere between helplessness and doubt.
"......"
Amid the steadily thickening atmosphere, beads of lukewarm sweat began to trickle down my neck. The girl was right about one thing — I was neither the Sister of this church nor even human, but a vampire. Even so, I was hardly such a dangerous creature as to warrant this much vigilance. Granted, I had my own share of suspicions about children showing up at my church in the dead of night — but seeing how wretched they looked, with stories that clearly ran deep, I felt pity and worry far more than anything else.
"I don't know what you've been through, but why don't you come inside for now?"
Even while being doubted out of nowhere, I spoke with considerable composure. The three children exchanged quick glances, seemingly conferring among themselves for a moment — then the boy stepped up in front of me and bowed his head low.
"Th-Thank you... thank you for showing us mercy..."
"Amen—."
Even with his head bowed before me, the boy's body was trembling faintly. His suspicion of me still lingered, it seemed — but he appeared to have judged that a single night's shelter in this church beat wandering a deadly forest with nowhere to go.
— Thump.
It wasn't as though I had sought them out; they had come to me of their own accord, so being met with suspicion like this was absurd in more ways than one. Still, considering they were children who knew nothing of the world, and everything they'd been through, it was a reaction I could more or less understand. So rather than taking it ill, I decided to welcome them warmly with a gentle smile and show them generous understanding. Above all, I could never bring myself to send young children back into a dangerous forest in the dead of night.
"Ahem."
To manage that, I first had to play the nun myself and dispel their doubts, so I casually picked up the old Bible — a book I had never once given the time of day.
"It must have been the Goddess's guidance that brought us to meet like this, don't you think?"
And so, building my performance on the words Goddess and Messiah emblazoned across the Bible's cover, I launched into my own improvised act. For a faithless heathen like me to suddenly play a devout nun felt utterly absurd — but circumstances being what they were, I had no other choice.
"Shall we begin with introductions?"
The brown-haired boy who had first spoken to me was named Eisen. He was ten years old.
The silver-haired girl who kept suspecting me was Ellie. Eight years old.
And the black-haired girl who had maintained perfect silence the entire time was Iris. Also eight.
In short, the reason these children had dragged themselves to my church looking so wretched was nothing other than a monster attack. A horde of monsters had descended without a shred of warning, and in the blink of an eye the entire village had been razed to ruins. The grown villagers put up what resistance they could, but a small country hamlet was simply no match for a monster assault. Amid that chaos, the children alone had barely escaped with their lives — and by chance, they had stumbled upon this church. It was a desperate story.
"W-We have to... get to a bigger town and ask for help..." Ellie said, her voice trembling.
"How far is the village from here?"
Having heard their story to the end, I asked quietly, still cradling the ancient Bible to my chest and keeping my expression composed. It was Eisen, in place of Ellie — who was still shaking with fear — who answered carefully.
"Probably about three hours, if you run."
"Hmm, I see."
I had a rough picture of the situation now. To think that while I'd been idly preparing for a hunt out here, such a monstrous tragedy had been unfolding in a village nearby. It was a shocking tale — and yet, at the same time, something about it nagged at me. For good reason: I was the one best positioned to sense the movements of monsters, so for me to have noticed absolutely nothing until now was deeply strange. Right up until daylight, this forest had been the very picture of peace—
"Those monsters might even come attacking this church..."
"Don't worry. This church is a place protected by the grace of the Goddess."
"Huh?"
"To those who call upon my name, I shall always be with them.
When they fall upon hard times, I shall shield and protect them.
And though their path may lie in darkness, I shall grant them light to carve their way through the dark."
The moment I flung the old Bible open, a cloud of dust billowed out, and I very nearly choked on the spot. Even so, I held my composure to the very end and read the passage written there in a calm, level voice. I had never expected anything like this to be written inside it, but somehow I seemed to have opened to a verse that fit the situation perfectly.
"Amen—."
A strange sense of pride welled up in me, and I closed the thick Bible with confidence. Whereupon the countless dust lurking within came billowing out to engulf my face all over again.
"Cough, cough!!"
"Then... does that mean this church really is under the blessing of Goddess Paelia?!"
"P-Pael... I'm sorry, what?"
"To think a church this tiny was a place dear to Lady Paelia's heart..."
At the unfamiliar name that had popped out of Eisen's mouth out of nowhere, I went blank for a moment, my eyes blinking rapidly. But I was in the middle of playing a devout nun of the Goddess, so flustered though I was, I had to keep the conversation flowing as naturally as I could.
"Th-That's right...! Which means you can rest here without a care in the world—."
"So Goddess Paelia really did guide us here, then...?"
Somewhere along the way, Eisen's face had gone scarlet with joy and gratitude. His voice trembled as if the tears might burst out of him at any moment.
"...Although, I still have one thing I'm curious about."
Just as the mood was ripening into something warm, Iris — silent until that very moment — suddenly raised one hand slightly and spoke up quietly.
"Yes?"
"Sister, why is your skin so white?"
Her opening question didn't merely strike the sore spot — it felt as though she'd reached into the wound and dug it open. It wasn't as though I hadn't anticipated the question, but faced with actually answering it, my lips began to go bone-dry.
"I was born rather pale to begin with, and it's grown even paler from hardly ever seeing the sun."
"...Even so, I think that's too pale."
"I have something of a pathological hatred of sunlight, you see."
At the answer I tossed out so breezily, Iris slowly made a show of her dissatisfaction, plain as day. But perhaps the mood wasn't right to press me further, because she quietly shut her mouth and held her tongue.
"In any case, what you all need to do right now is sleep deeply here, and wake up bright and refreshed tomorrow."
With those words, I set the battered old Bible back in its place.
"Wh-Where are you going...?"
Ellie cautiously caught hold of me just as I was about to walk out of the church. I gave her a gentle smile and answered softly.
"I'm off to make my parish rounds."
A small country village, located not so far from here. The horrific monster attack that had unfolded there. The forest's monsters would never have descended upon that village for no reason — there had to be a cause.
"I'll be back before you know it, so sleep soundly, all of you—."
"S-Sister...?"
— Creak.
The moment I stepped out of the church, I cut a gash across my palm without a moment's hesitation and splattered the blood over the ground all around the building. I didn't know why, but beasts and monsters alike found my blood utterly repulsive — so by scattering it about like this, I could keep them from drawing near, at least to some degree.
"Phew..."
With the blood spread, I slowly took my first step in the direction Eisen had pointed me. Avenging the children would have been reason enough in itself, but what truly gnawed at me was this: what on earth could that village have held, to send the monsters moving in such a swarm?
"So that's why I'd barely seen any monsters around the church lately. They've all gone there, haven't they."