Faith Toward You
The phone rang, and my eyes snapped open on pure reflex. Pain and exhaustion still clung to me, half-faded but very much present, and the sunlight made me screw my eyes shut again at once.
So I'd collapsed into sleep the moment I got back.
I'd been right to make this place with the bed my base of operations, I thought, stretching briefly before checking the time.
"…One in the afternoon, is it."
It felt far too early for a vampire to be awake—and at the same time, somehow, far too late.
There was no point dwelling on it. I set the idle thoughts aside and answered the call from my client, asking what she wanted.
"What is it at this hour?"
"You hadn't contacted me at all, so I figured I'd call—check if you were still alive, and ask you something while I was at it. Seeing as you picked up, looks like you're still breathing just fine."
"I'm a little worn out, but I'm alive. Not 'just fine,' but alive."
"Hmm, I see. Well, if you've got two girls on either side of you, of course your body wouldn't be in one piece~"
I'd been trying to report my condition objectively. On her end, she was tying it to Radiant White and using it to needle me.
"…That's not funny. And I still haven't even contacted that magical girl."
I asked whether she'd called just to make small talk—I didn't care for jokes like that—and she denied it at once.
"You still sounded half-asleep, so I was giving you a second to wake up. You really think I'd call just to chat?"
Listening to Min-a explain herself in that voice of hers—full of mischief and something faintly wicked—I couldn't help thinking she did make small talk every time she called.
I almost said as much, then decided there was no need to poke a sleeping dog and gave her roughly the answer she wanted.
"Fair enough. The progress on the Hemoregia investigation, then. I've made a certain amount of headway, but most of it is probably things you already know, so I hadn't bothered to report it. Still want to hear it?"
"Whether it's something I'd already know, I'll find out once I hear it. Tell me anything. Ah—no need to say things like 'seems to be a vampire,' though."
If the client wanted to hear it, I had no reason to refuse. I told her what I'd managed to piece together on my own.
A poor temperament. Exceptionally sharp insight. Refused to allow even a single attack to land. From that, I estimated that its defense was relatively weak compared to its raw power—and so on.
I mixed objective facts with my own deductions as I laid out the report. She listened in silence, then finally answered.
"Yeah, that's pretty much all stuff I already knew. Now I get why you didn't want to say anything…"
Whether she was deflated or disappointed, I couldn't tell—but her tone made me oddly anxious, and I started making excuses.
"I wanted to observe from a distance, but I couldn't. Even when I tried to learn through combat, the gap in power was so vast that barely holding on was the best I could manage."
Years in the military had taught me that pathetic excuses only made a situation worse—but now that I was the one making them, I finally understood.
Why people ended up saying things like that.
"Hmm? A mere human, and you can trade blows with Mother in that form?"
Min-a, however, was far more interested in the fact that I could fight Hemoregia at all than in my excuses.
Ah. Damn it.
…I'd let anxiety get the better of me and slipped up.
Even thinking it over again left me so stunned I felt a flash of disappointment in myself—but this was no time for that.
Right now, I was on the verge of exposing a secret I didn't want anyone to know.
"Hello? Hey? You there? Something wrong?"
When I went quiet, Min-a seemed to assume something had happened. The playfulness left her voice; she sounded genuinely worried.
But I had no room to answer. I had no idea what to say.
Would Min-a even accept me if she learned I was a monstrosity that slipped between human and monster?
The fear that she would say she couldn't help me if I told the truth kept my mouth shut.
Maybe I could just brush it off—say something vague about having my ways. She still hadn't asked me anything outright. For a moment, hope flickered that I might get away with it again this time.
But then another thought followed: maybe the reason she hadn't pressed me was that she'd been waiting for me to speak first.
In that case, stalling any further could backfire.
From the other end of the line came Min-a's voice again, asking if something really had gone wrong.
Should I tell her? Or lie?
And then one fact rose to the surface.
She had never once doubted me.
She'd asked questions out of curiosity, yes—but she had never questioned my answers, never asked if I was telling the truth.
When I'd said our mutual trust was lacking, she had nearly staked her own life to prove she was a vampire.
That was how much she believed in me.
So even if I tried to brush this off now, she would probably let it go without a fuss.
…But was that really the right thing to do?
To deceive someone who trusted me that completely—was that something a person should do?
I might have become half a monster, but I had no intention of giving up being human.
Lying to someone who trusted me utterly… that wasn't what a person did.
Self-loathing settled over me.
How had I fallen so far that I was ready to string along someone who had held out a hand and offered to help?
"Hey?! Are you actually okay?! Wait—hang on, I'm coming right n—"
"There's no need. I was only… organizing my thoughts for a moment."
"What the hell—seriously! I thought something had happened!"
Even now, she was worried about me.
And I had been about to deceive a woman like that.
"…If something had happened, I wouldn't have gone quiet. Earlier—you asked how I could trade blows with that monster. Before I answer, may I ask you just one thing?"
Even in this moment, I was still trying to buy myself insurance. The thought of how pathetic that was nearly made me laugh.
"…What is it?"
"You… your house. Can you accept me no matter what I am?"
"Uh… probably?"
Probably.
…That was enough.
"Then I'll continue. It's because I'm a monster."
"Huh? Wait—what did you just say?"
"If you didn't catch it, I'll say it again. It's because I'm a monster. You heard me correctly."
At that, it was her turn to fall silent, asking for a moment to think.
That brief silence felt like an eternity.
Longer even than the time I'd spent trapped in pitch darkness after dying, waiting to return to reality.
"This… is something we should talk about face-to-face. It's a little heavy for a phone call. I want to meet tomorrow—right away. Is that okay?"
"If that's what you want. Then we'll save the rest of the conversation for when we meet."
"Alright… see you then."
With that, Min-a hung up.
…I should stop thinking about this now. The bullet had already left the chamber.
What I needed now was insurance—for the off chance that everything went wrong.
In the dark, I took out the note the magical girl had given me when she still shone with light, and dialed the number written on it.
She picked up in less than a second.
"Hello?! Who is this?! If it's not urgent, could you call back a little later? I'm a bit busy right n—"
"It's me. I'll hand over information on Hemoregia. Not for free—as a trade. We'll decide what we exchange when we meet. I'll be waiting at the place we met before. Come alone."
I laid down several conditions, but the magical girl didn't question them. She said she would do as I asked, though she'd need time to drop her companion off at a nearby base first, and asked me to wait.
…I knew full well it wasn't a pretty thing to do. But it was a choice made to stay alive.
If, by some chance, everything else failed—this was the only line I had left.
For now… maybe I should start by getting some weapons out of her.
Originally, I'd only meant to mess with Su-hyeok a little—deliberately latching onto something he'd said. I never expected him to confess he was a monster over one little jab like that.
In the original story, he'd revealed it to Radiant White somewhere around the mid-to-late stretch. More accurately, it had been revealed for him.
Well, Radiant White had started to suspect it on her own at some point… but hearing it from his own mouth was something else entirely.
Not that it really mattered.
I just hadn't expected to earn that kind of trust this soon after meeting him—enough for him to say he was a monster to my face. That was what threw me.
That, and the fact that it was inconvenient.
…This was completely off-script.
If I dropped him now just because he'd admitted to being a monster, I'd have nothing. I had to pile more lies on top of it somehow.
Which meant the things I'd been planning for later would probably have to move up the schedule a bit.
…Could a monster be turned into a vampire?
The reverse was one thing, but I had no way of knowing about this—and when he eventually asked me to make him one of my kind, I was going to be in a real bind.
I'd already gone on about family and all that. Not turning him into kin after that would look even weirder.
"Hey, Na-rae. Do you happen to know if a monster can become a vampire?"
"…Min-a-nim, you treat me like some kind of encyclopedia, but there's a ton of things I don't know either, you know? If you're that curious, why not try it yourself? Instead of harassing magical girls all the time."
"Harassing? I'm just playing a little tag."
"What kind of tag has the people running away attacking the one who's it? Even nonsense has limits."
Hah. I really needed to tighten her discipline one of these days.
Still, she was handling so much for me now that being too harsh with her felt wrong, too.
In that case… I'd just have to take Na-rae's advice and run a few experiments on some monsters.
Swearing to myself that I'd crush Na-rae's pride one day, I studied the map of the Rabbit branch Su-hyeok had told me about.
It was about time I started stepping on the monsters anyway.