Prove It
Today, as always, I was sprawled on the sofa fiddling with my phone and digging up whatever I could find on Shining White when Na-rae let out a long sigh and spoke up.
“Min-a? I don’t really mean to meddle, but… isn’t rolling around doing absolutely nothing for an entire week a little much?”
I set the phone aside just enough to stare at her and clenched a fist, but whatever fear that used to inspire had clearly worn off; she didn’t so much as flinch.
“You never actually hit me anyway. Look, even if you ran into the Zodiacs, you’re still a person. Shouldn’t you at least go outside once in a while? You make me buy the meals, you make me buy the snacks—what am I, your personal maid?!”
Apparently dumping every single daily chore on her had finally gotten under her skin.
“Not a maid. You’re stuck with me for life, so if we’re being precise you’re closer to a servant or a slave.”
“Could you lose just once?!”
She was screeching like she desperately needed a win for once. At this rate the neighbors upstairs or next door would—
Oh. Right. We owned this building and the three floors above and below it. Nobody else lived here. Go ahead and yell your heart out if it makes you feel better.
Still, I wasn’t about to let her win.
“Absolutely not. Me, lose to someone weaker than me? What kind of nonsense is that? Even if the world turned upside down it would never happen, so keep dreaming. And for the record, I’m not just loafing around. I’m researching.”
She could have asked what that business with Su-hyeok had been about, but that hadn’t been me letting him win—I’d simply gone easy on him, so it didn’t count. Besides, I’d accomplished the goal of handing the kid over, which meant I’d won anyway.
“Research my ass. I saw you sitting there grinning like an idiot…!”
“A person can watch a few stupid cat videos when their head starts hurting from work. What’s the big deal?”
In reality I’d been hopping IPs and lighting fires on community boards.
It was fun, okay? Starting Galde Cups with magical girls. Who’s stronger, who’s better wife material—drop a spark like that and the whole place loses its mind. Watching the mods who were supposed to keep order get swept up and start abusing their powers was half the entertainment.
Na-rae looked like she had more to say, then apparently decided any further talking would give her a stress ulcer. She shut her mouth and asked instead whether I’d actually found anything.
“You stared at that phone for a whole week. You must have learned something, right?”
Hmm.
Not really.
It wasn’t that I hadn’t done real research. Like I’d told Na-rae, I’d taken breaks here and there, but I’d also dug seriously and carefully. Shining White’s past exploits, articles about the monsters she’d defeated, even combat footage of her that I had no idea how anyone had managed to film.
I’d watched every last scrap. Not a single memory stirred.
All I felt was pure admiration—damn, she really was that good—and a growing curiosity about why someone so flawless would ever have joined hands with the Zodiacs.
What could she possibly have been missing? Someone of her caliber could have handled just about anything with her own power without needing to lean on monster strength.
The questions only multiplied. Actual answers? Zero.
But admitting that out loud would have bruised my pride, so I bluffed that I’d turned up something, even if the haul was small.
“Like what?”
She just had to ask. “Know your place when you’re weak”—where did she get the nerve to keep pushing?
“My Principle, for instance.”
“What? You remembered your Principle?”
Even Na-rae looked startled and asked if I was serious.
“Not quite. I figured out I don’t need to know it. After all, I’ve been living just fine without deliberately protecting any Principle so far. So I’m going to keep living exactly like this.”
It probably sounded like the irresponsible shrug of someone who simply didn’t want to poke the bear…
But I meant every word of it, in my own way.
For a special-grade monster, a Principle is—if you want to sound fancy—one’s raison d’être. The reason for existing. Put more harshly, it’s a yoke locked around the skull.
It’s not something you can explain simply, but if I had to try… it was a restriction you placed on yourself, and at the same time the path you had to walk even if it cost you everything.
Wielding starlight required will, and the sheer volume of starlight a special-grade monster possessed demanded an enormous amount of it. So you forged a purpose heavier than life itself in order to temper that will.
And once a Principle was set, it really did become more important than life. If you ever broke it and your will wavered for even a second, that vast starlight would run wild and turn you into a true beast.
Becoming a beast was as good as death for a monster. One-way trip. And once you turned, you spread nothing but destruction and death everywhere you went. For my own sake and the world’s, staying exactly as I was right now was the better option.
Whatever my Principle was, I’d clearly been keeping it without knowing. Better to leave well enough alone than go poking around, screw up, and become a beast.
Na-rae looked thoroughly exhausted by my answer, muttered that she was going back to what she’d been doing, and turned her eyes to her laptop.
How dare a subordinate try to one-up her superior? Next time she got cocky I’d crush her with pure logic.
I snickered to myself, then glanced at the clock and bounced up from the sofa.
About time for the rendezvous with him… been a while since I breathed some outside air.
“…You’re a little late.”
When I reached Maeng-kong’s Errand Center—little more than a sign hanging on for dear life—Su-hyeok was waiting as if he’d known exactly when I’d arrive.
“Ran into some trash on the way. Took a minute to deal with them.”
Probably fallout from the slaughter I’d carried out about a week ago; the rats and foxes that had been crushed under the tigers were loose now. Feeble little things strutting around like they owned the place.
“Is that so. I’ll have to pay more attention to cleaning up the area.”
His reaction was… interesting.
Was that just now concern for me? The thought of teasing him about it made the corners of my mouth and eyes curl on their own.
I could never resist a good tease.
“Hmm~? Was that you worrying about me just now~? Back when we first met you looked ready to kill me. Hmm? Hmm-hmm~?”
I shoved my face right into his with an expression dripping pure mischief. Su-hyeok looked away and insisted that wasn’t it.
“If the client has trouble getting here, how am I supposed to take commissions?”
So unhonest. He’d been worried and we both knew it.
Still, even that excuse earned a passing grade. If he’d claimed he’d said it just to score high on some family test, I would have been deeply disappointed.
“Is that so~? All right, I’ll believe you. Anyway, enough of that. So how did the commission go?”
Pushing the teasing any further risked actual resentment, so I steered us back to business.
“About the commission. I’m sorry, but I wasn’t able to kill the underlings the way you wanted.”
Fair enough. At the level of Rabbit’s Foot, even the grunts were pretty strong; failing to kill them wasn’t strange.
Honestly I hadn’t expected him to succeed anyway. If I was being frank, I’d given him the job so he’d get thoroughly wrecked trying to play tough with enhanced fighters while armed with nothing but a gun.
Failure was only natural—
“Instead, I found the location of their branch. That’s more useful than a handful of small fry, wouldn’t you say?”
…Hold on.
“What? The branch location? How?!”
It felt like a massive chunk of the story had been skipped, so I demanded a full explanation of what had actually happened in between. Su-hyeok laid it out.
Apparently the thug crew I’d wiped out had been told the branch location directly by Rabbit’s Foot. A mysterious monster had shown up midway and slaughtered all but one of them, which had made things difficult, but because that monster had deliberately left the boy alive, Su-hyeok had managed to learn it. He’d then gone to the branch and tried to kill the low-level members as requested, only to find even those grunts were too strong, forcing him to retreat.
…Wow. He’d actually fought. I’d had zero expectations. This was a genuine surprise.
Then Su-hyeok brought up the monster he’d encountered along the way.
“I couldn’t identify the monster I met, but… I suspect it belonged to Rabbit’s Foot. Maybe they sent it as cleanup because those guys hadn’t cooperated. Ah, and that monster looked strangely like you. Does that ring any bells?”
I almost laughed at his spectacular near-miss—then my body locked up on its own.
…I looked like that?
I’d assumed my monster form and human form were completely different.
I never saw my reflection when I was in monster form, so I’d had no idea. Na-rae had never mentioned anything either, so I’d figured they looked nothing alike. If I’d known, I would have taken a damn selfie in monster form just to check!
Cold sweat beaded under my skin while I stalled for an answer, scrambling to cobble together an excuse.
What do I say? “Just a coincidence” would sound weird, but a clumsy lie and he’d catch it. What do I do, what do I do…
After thrashing my poor brain as hard as I could, I finally squeezed out something that sounded halfway plausible.
“…How much did it look like me?”
“Hair and eye color… and a few physical traits, nothing more. It had horns, wings, and a tail you don’t. Still, there were enough similarities that pure chance felt like a stretch.”
Su-hyeok spoke in a tone that could have been suspicion or simple factual reporting; I couldn’t tell which.
…Somehow every time we meet the pile of lies just keeps growing. With that thought, I delivered the excuse I’d just invented.
“Ahaha. Our dear mother. I kept wondering what she was planning with those people… so it came to this after all.”
I murmured it with a bitter little smile. Su-hyeok echoed, “Mother?”
“Yeah. I told you when we met, didn’t I? Rabbit’s Foot had been causing trouble in our front yard. The story was a little complicated. Would it make sense if I said… we were actually the cause?”
And with that I poured out an entire family history that had never existed.
My “mother,” whose standing in the family had collapsed after some incident, had brought in outside forces to get revenge on the house—that kind of story.
“The last time I saw her she was walking off with them. Looks like she finally crossed a line that shouldn’t be crossed.”
Su-hyeok watched me quietly for a moment, then opened his mouth.
“…If something like that was going on, why didn’t you tell me?”
…At least the story had landed. A different problem had just appeared, though.
“Because I was worried you’d decide my family was a total mess. I wanted to leave a good first impression. I didn’t have a choice.”
“You were the one who said we might become family and demanded I show proper manners.”
Having my own words thrown straight back at me felt indescribably awful, but I genuinely had nothing to say, so I just kept my mouth shut.
“…It seems we still lack mutual trust. Which is why I’d like to make a proposal.”
“And what would that be?”
I asked with a flicker of unease. I had absolutely no idea what he was about to say.
“…Proof. Proof that I can trust you. Specifically, I want proof that you’re a vampire.”
He wanted me to prove I was a vampire.