Deceive the Light
Incheon was a wonderful place for stargazing.
Unlike the world as it used to be, there was no fine dust drifting over from China, and with the entire city reduced to rubble, there was no light pollution either.
The Milky Way, countless star clusters, and stars that shone brilliantly—or faintly—without belonging to any cluster at all.
The stars I liked were the ones that shone even when distant and faint, and the occasional comet.
Like now, leaving a pure white tail as it streaked across the night sky…
…Did comets stop mid-flight? Wait. Why was it getting closer.
Hold on. Time out. What the hell was that. I flinched back in alarm, and then a shining presence that might well appear in Incheon floated up in my mind.
Oh, no way. Radiant White?
"At last I've found you! Min-a, don't even think about brushing this off with lies like last time! Today I'm going to uncover the truth! That aside—well done, Sky!"
Yep. And tucked under her arm was the light-blue-haired girl who'd always seemed uncharacteristically timid for a magical girl.
Setting aside why White was carting a magical girl around like a piece of luggage, so her magical girl name was Sky.
Judging by the way she just hauled her around under one arm, there had to be some use for her…
"Hey, I get how you're feeling right now, but… isn't carting a person around like an object a bit much?"
Between this and her previous attempt at trespassing, I was starting to have slight doubts about Radiant White's moral compass.
But Radiant White pointed at me as if none of that mattered right now and demanded boldly,
"Why did you deceive me back then?! And what is your relationship with Hemoregia? Come on. Answer me! If you don't answer…"
"If I don't?"
What, you going to shoot me? You're a magical girl. Threatening me when you don't even know what I am?
When I put on that defiant look, Radiant White made a blank "Uh" sound, as if she hadn't expected me to go that far.
…She'd really just charged in without thinking things through. I felt proud of how artfully I'd needled her, and yet a strange guilt crept in too.
It felt like I was giving her false hope.
I never taught her to act like that…
Even the Shining White inside me seemed at a loss for words at the sight of her, reacting with pure disbelief.
One thing had become clear from this.
Shining White was not mere memories or information—she was a distinct personality living inside my head.
Since we didn't share thoughts and I could only glimpse fragmentary sentences or memories, it seemed we were simply sharing a body and nothing more.
Learning something new was nice, but it didn't make the Radiant White in front of me disappear, so now I had to work her over properly.
The good news was that this time I was prepared, and the other side had no plan whatsoever.
"Well, I'm kidding. There's no real need to hide things from you anymore. So, what should I answer first? My relationship with Mother? Or the reason I hid the blood-drinking?"
So I decided to come on strong from the start.
She seemed a little cowed by the unexpected turn, so I would just keep swinging her around at my pace.
"………What?"
Even I had to admit those were explosive pieces of information. Radiant White stared at me blankly for a full four seconds before she could even manage to speak.
"Since you're not answering… I'll start with why I lied. Because I was afraid you'd blow my head off."
"W-what on earth are you talking about? Why would I blow your head…?"
Radiant White was stumbling, as if she couldn't process the sudden flood of information in time.
"Well, you're a magical girl and I'm a vampire. If a vampire is sucking someone's blood, are you just going to go, 'Oh, the vampire must have been hungry!' and let it slide?"
When I said that so confidently with my arms crossed, she seemed oddly to concede the point with a muttered "That's not… but still…"
"Wait. Wait a second. Before that—how am I supposed to believe whether what you're saying is true?"
But she said that as if she thought letting me keep talking would end up like last time, trying to buy time and regain her footing.
…Hmm.
If she'd come during the day, I could have let myself get scorched by the sun the way I had for Su-hyeok.
At night, there wasn't really any way to prove I was a vampire.
I had fangs, sure, but they weren't that dramatically obvious either.
"…Do you have any proof that I'm lying?"
"Last time, you lied to my face with the most shameless expression imaginable. And if you're a vampire, how exactly did you survive under the sun?"
I tried pushing through with pure brazenness, but she shut me down so easily it left me speechless.
…This wasn't a flow I'd prepared for.
"My blood is on the thin side. For a short while, I can walk around under the sun just fine."
I tried the line I'd prepared, but Radiant White's face was full of distrust—she clearly wasn't buying any of it.
"Sempai… I don't care who that woman is…… but she's not an ordinary person."
On top of that, Sky, who'd been hanging limp, suddenly opened her mouth, and the situation slid further into unpredictable territory.
So it really was sensory-type magic.
"See? Even she says I'm not human. I don't know who she is, but…"
Whatever the case, I was about to use Sky's words to play the hand I'd been given for all it was worth.
"Not so much thin as… thick, mixed in an enormous amount… or not… wait, is that right…? One…? Two…? Ugh, so tired… five min—"
…
……
"Sky… oh no. She must have hit her limit. Maybe I should have at least given her some water…?"
My palms were damp. I just wiggled my toes uselessly and stayed silent.
I couldn't be sure how much Sky had actually seen.
I could only watch as Radiant White muttered about taking her back to the lodging and handling the rest alone from here.
"Anyway… I understand that you're not human. Fine. I'll believe the vampire part."
Only after hearing that could I finally relax.
I didn't believe in any gods, but I thanked whatever deity floated through my mind and slowly, convincingly, told her every lie I'd prepared.
A thin-blooded vampire. My mother-daughter relationship with Hemoregia. The circumstances… I left out everything related to Su-hyeok and spilled the rest.
"…So you're a vampire who came all the way here from Romania with some purpose."
"That's right."
"The monster Hemoregia that appeared recently is actually affiliated with an organization called Rabbit's Foot, and that monster is your mother."
"Regrettably… it's true."
"And the reason you lied in Romania was that low-class excuse you cooked up because you were afraid you'd die if anyone saw you drinking blood."
"When it's about staying alive, what wouldn't a person do?"
Even Radiant White, who'd been suspicious of me, seemed to find it somewhat convincing now and loosened her distrust a little.
But that didn't mean she fully believed me.
"Alright, fine, let's say that's true. So what were you doing here?"
She still seemed to have plenty of questions left.
"I came to see Mother, who should be in this place. Thinking that maybe, even now, I could reach out and turn her heart around."
Even without much preparation, this was a situation where I could just keep stacking lies on lies, which was easier than building a foundation from scratch.
"Your mother, is it. I see. If it's something like that… well, maybe… if the blood connection is real…"
Easy, yes—but in absolute terms it was still hard. Perhaps because she'd been fooled once already, she simply couldn't let go of her suspicion.
"…There's no way to prove that, so let's move on."
Having been deceived by a lie once already, her hurdles seemed enormously high now.
This… really wasn't easy. I'd known meeting her later would be exhausting, but now that it was happening, I felt like I was going to die of fatigue.
Yesterday I'd poked at White, so today I'd come out intending to mess with Su-hyeok. What the hell was this twist of fate.
"So are you Korean? What even is that name of yours."
"I'd say I'm Romanian? I was reborn as a vampire there. And almost all of my memories from before have disappeared."
"Hmmmm…"
I'd lied so convincingly she really ought to have bought it by now, but she was being awfully stingy for someone who'd been fooled once already.
We went back and forth a few more times, and eventually Radiant White seemed to be tiring as well, and brought out something resembling a final question.
"Well, it probably doesn't matter much. What I'm most curious about is this. Did your mother ever take an interest in magical girls… or anything like that?"
Knowing the circumstances, all I could hear was her asking whether Hemoregia had any connection to Shining White.
She really was desperate. Desperate enough to cling to the words of a woman she couldn't trust, not even knowing if they were lies or truth.
"Hmm… I did hear her muttering something about magical girls this and that, but I wasn't really paying attention, so I don't remember well?"
"But she did talk about it… is that right?"
"Yeah."
"I knew it… I knew there was some connection…"
Radiant White muttered that for a moment in a way that gave me chills, then pointed at me again.
"Don't expect me to believe you. I won't get taken in the way I did last time!"
"Ah. Is that so."
Figuring she was about to come on strong again, I tried to squeeze out some nonexistent bravado.
"But if what you said is true, and if you do meet your mother… please contact me at this number. I would be grateful."
But Radiant White suddenly dropped into an incredibly humble posture and even bowed her head.
It was a look I'd never expected from someone who always presented herself so boldly, so I was genuinely flustered.
"Uh…? Uh, yeah. Got it…"
I added her contact in a daze, and she left me with a final plea, gathered up Sky, and took off into the sky again.
"Please, I'm counting on you. Really, please…"
The way she kept speaking to me even as she left made me feel a little uncomfortable.
…
I should go torment Su-hyeok.