Seeds of Suspicion
The moment Radiant White—Baek Ju-a—returned to Korea, she threw herself into finding the woman she had met in Romania.
She made the rounds of Seoul’s major hospitals, politely asking critically ill patients who looked crushed by medical bills whether they had family in that situation, and even bent her magical-girl authority a little to pull guardian lists for the worst cases.
She exhausted every legitimate avenue available to her. No woman named Seong Min-a was drowning in hospital debt.
Every patient answered that they had never even heard the name, and the name itself never appeared on a single guardian roster.
Most people would have given up. Radiant White did not.
Part of it was her personal creed—she never spoke a promise she would not keep—but the deeper reason was that Mina’s face kept needling at something inside her.
White did not believe Mina was her sister.
The ages simply refused to line up; that was the first strike. The place she had been found was absurdly out of place; that was the second. And she had not recognized White at all; that was the third.
Even if some tragedy had stolen her sister’s memories and forced her into another life, White refused to believe her sister could ever have fallen so far.
Still… she looked like her sister. And that was enough. White wanted to help. That was the honest truth.
If she was not living in the light, then perhaps she was living in the shadows. Radiant White’s suspicion drifted, almost of its own accord, toward the darker corners of society.
Common sense insisted that a disease the light could not cure would never be cured in the dark either.
But among the monsters there were many whose powers laughed at common sense.
Perhaps she had entrusted a family’s treatment to one of them. White only suspected it. Or she had simply been taken in by a con artist.
Whatever the truth, she could not help until she found Mina first. So White called Pegasus and said she needed to dig up some information.
The moment it activated, a sulky little foal avatar filled the screen, already winding up for a lecture.
“But I’m not planning anything bad, am I? And if Mina’s being used by a monster or a scammer, then she’s in danger. Saving people is a magical girl’s job, right? Come on, please?”
“…Unnie always said a hero sometimes has to move boldly!”
Pegasus looked thoroughly done with her excuses and kept the text rolling.
“Ehehe…”
Even White had to admit Pegasus was making perfect sense, so she just gave an awkward little laugh and tried to laugh the whole thing off.
Under the weight of that serious lecture, White found herself on her knees without meaning to, staring at the phone screen.
“…This is the first and last time I’ll ever ask you to look for someone who isn’t Unnie. Please. Lend me your strength, Pegasus.”
“Th-that’s a little much!”
White hesitated for a second, then decided there would never be another search like this anyway and promised without further protest.
White set the phone aside and caught up on her overdue online classes. Even after she finished every last lecture, Pegasus was still silent. That struck her as strange.
It shouldn’t have taken this long. White asked if it had found anything at all.
“Absolutely… nothing?”
Ju-a wasn’t the only one rattled. Pegasus, who almost never lost its cool, was clearly flustered and now openly suspicious of Mina.
“So she was lying to me back then?”
Instead of the hollow disappointment of wasted effort, a single word settled into Ju-a’s mind and refused to leave: why.
Why had she lied? Had the face she showed that day even been real? And before any of that—who exactly was she?
Right then Pegasus, still sifting through data, pulled up a random CCTV clip and threw it onto the screen.
It was black-and-white, and the hairstyle was different enough that she couldn’t be certain, but the figure caught for only a second looked unmistakably like Mina to White’s eyes.
“Pegasus, where was this taken?”
“Incheon…?”
It was a place no ordinary person would ever choose to live.
No matter how broke you were, as long as you still valued your life you would never stay near a place like that.
Suspicion toward Mina began to coil and thicken inside Ju-a’s heart.
About a week had passed since I linked up with Su-hyeok.
Roughly another week and a half remained before the main story was supposed to kick off.
So I had nothing to do. I just loafed around the room, rolling from one side of the bed to the other.
“…Achoo! Sniff—ah, damn. Did I actually catch a cold? Why do I feel so damn chilly today?”
“If you’re cold, just turn on the heat. Why do you keep making a fuss about being cold…?”
I wordlessly raised a fist toward Na-rae. She immediately ducked her head and turned meek.
See? Humans only learn humility through violence. Na-rae was living proof. Not a peep out of her now.
“It’s summer. You think I’m crazy enough to turn on the heat? I just feel weirdly creeped out, okay? Don’t know why.”
“…Why are you looking at me? I’m not some all-knowing doctor. You already bled me dry for money—what more do you want?”
“Hey, I told you I’ll pay it all back later. Why are you whining so much?”
“How am I supposed to not whine…! Agh, I should just shut up…”
Na-rae cut herself off like talking to me was giving her a headache, then pulled out the laptop she’d bought at a nearby electronics shop.
She had zero actual work and still pretended to be busy. Whatever. Better she do something than sit around doing nothing, so I left her to it.
I didn’t have anything better either, so I poked around the internet and happened to land on an article about Radiant White.
It was pure trash, the kind of filler that exists only to burn oxygen. Still, it made something click.
“Hey. You still dead-set against pretending to be a bedridden wreck?”
“I already told you—if I get actually beaten into a wreck, fine, but I’m not faking it. I do not want to get mixed up with magical girls!”
Radiant White was definitely going to hunt for me somehow. I still hadn’t decided how I was going to explain myself when she finally tracked me down.
Ideally I would have stuck to the story I gave her—poor woman working herself to the bone to pay for a sick family member—but…
…that ship had already sailed.
Someone as earnest as her would have started looking the second she got back. A slapdash lie like that would never survive her scrutiny.
The one silver lining was that there was almost nothing for her to catch me with.
On paper, I barely existed.
My ID, my passport—everything was just carefully stolen and forged from someone else.
Getting caught on CCTV was unavoidable, but honestly, if she put that much effort into finding me, the polite thing would be to let myself get caught.
More importantly, I did want to talk with her properly someday. That meant clearing up the misunderstanding.
So… how exactly was I supposed to introduce myself? Just say I was a vampire the way I told Su-hyeok?
Yeah, no. The second those words left my mouth a sword would probably come flying with a cheerful “Evil must be purged!”
Her sister—who was also about thirty-three percent me—had been… a handful in more ways than one.
Not exactly crazy, just completely unwilling to compromise. Break before you bend? That kind of personality.
Absolute devotion to justice. Absolute hatred for the wicked.
Radiant White had grown up under that sister, idolizing her, and had inherited a solid chunk of the same temperament.
So the moment I said “vampire,” there was a real chance I would die on the spot.
Then… messenger? Envoy? Something like that? No, considering I was going to get tangled up with Su-hyeok later, it was probably better she knew I was a vampire from the start.
Trying to force my already-poor brain into overdrive made it feel like it was grinding its gears.
When my head hurt, the best medicine was a nice refreshing workout.
Move the body, check what Su-hyeok was up to, and—bonus—drink a little blood while I was at it. I decided to slip back into my original form and go prowling around downtown Incheon for the first time in a while.
“I’m heading out for a bit. I’ll be back around dawn, so don’t lock the door.”
“Yeah, yeah. Do whatever. Just don’t come back with anything weird stuck to your tail this time.”
Why was she getting ruder by the day?
I filed away a mental note to properly reassert the hierarchy later in monster form, then walked under the full moon until I reached the edge of ruined downtown Incheon. In a suitably deserted spot I stripped off my clothes.
There was no way they would survive the transformation.
I carefully memorized the location using the surrounding landmarks, unclasped the choker I had worn for so long, and—feeling just a little theatrical—called out:
“Release transformation!”
Blood immediately poured from my body. My entire form melted into a formless mass.
At least it didn’t hurt.
With that thought, I slowly rose from the pool of my own blood.
I snapped my wings open hard, shook off the blood, and wove new clothes out of the same crimson. Only then did a single realization hit me.
“…My throat… is dry.”
I was thirsty. Extremely, desperately thirsty.