Unwelcome Reinforcements
Before I could even begin to guess why my mouth had moved on its own, the vampires erupted into every reaction imaginable.
Ilie, as if she had known this would happen all along, lit up with open rapture and breathed, “Mother…!” The blonde vampire in extravagant clothes standing opposite her simply hung her mouth open and muttered, “Mother…?”
Even the unimpressive vampires further down the ranks split between awe and disbelief. So there were factions after all.
Ilie’s faction, and the flashy bloodsucker’s.
…Not that any of that mattered right now.
What mattered far more was that my mouth had moved of its own free will — driven by the vampire elder’s will.
“Shut up! You are not my children! I’ve never had children like you! I am Hemoregia — not some mother of yours! What did you do to my body? Talk!”
I still hadn’t fully grasped the situation, but I had no intention of letting them run wild with their little misunderstanding. I denied any connection between us on the spot.
Those things were not my children. I had never wanted children like that. Clearly Ilie — or whatever her name was — had done something to my body and forced the words out of me.
There was no other explanation for my mouth moving on its own.
“Mother…? Please answer us. What exactly is going on?”
“It was Mother for certain… wasn’t it? What is this? I can’t sense Mother’s presence now… What is going on?”
Faction or no faction, every vampire present was clearly thrown into confusion.
But the person most desperate to know what the hell was happening was me.
“I’m the one who wants answers! What even are you people?! What is this?! Speak! If you don’t spit out everything—”
In my frustration, in my irritation, I reached to draw a blood lance and threaten them — and that was the instant it happened.
The sensation vanished from my fingertips, and instead of a lance, letters written in blood rose into the air.
The script looked vaguely like an alphabet, yet was strangely different, and every word defied interpretation. I couldn’t make out a single thing it was saying.
The vampires, however, clearly could. They stared at those letters as if their lives depended on it.
“…Understood. From this moment on, I will do everything in my power to assist you, Mother.”
“Honestly, the old body might have been better… Ugh, I don’t know. Anyway, fine. We’ll figure something out…”
…Did that thing just interfere with my blood manipulation?
My anger and confusion had long since crossed over into fear.
Hadn’t it called me a warden? Didn’t that mean I was supposed to control whether these personalities came out or not?
What the hell was happening to me?
“…What did you do to my body.”
I muttered it low, speaking not to the vampires outside but to the one inside me.
When I talked to White, I had to speak out loud — so if I wanted to get through to this one, that was the only way.
Us, child. Speak of “us.” You carry on as though this body is yours alone. Glad as you may be to have received a life you never could have had, one must still observe the proper courtesies.
The moment it answered, I felt something different from when I spoke with Shining White… a thought boring straight into my skull.
“Shut up. You’re already dead.”
I didn’t care about any deep hidden circumstances. The sheer terror that it might take my body for itself kept anything civil from leaving my mouth.
Do not be afraid. I am not your enemy. Something closer to a comrade, I should think.
Even under the full weight of my hostility, the vampire went on with perfect calm — as if it truly had nothing to fear. As if it meant to soothe me, insisting it was no enemy.
But here’s the thing. I’d been in enough flame wars to know.
The ones who act all buddy-buddy are always scarier — and more impossible to reason with — than the ones who are openly furious.
An angry person is at least listening to you. The ones who smile and go full we are the world on you? Those ones never hear a word.
“Shut up. Don’t come out. Don’t do anything.”
I snarled it with everything I had, and the vampire said it would leave things there for now — that I could call if I ever wanted it — and vanished again.
The instant it was gone, sensation returned to my fingertips, and the blood letters it had written reconstituted themselves into a lance.
I couldn’t just drop it, so I held on — but I didn’t have the strength left to swing it.
…
……God, I just want to sleep.
Shining White. The vampires. What the hell even was this, all in a single night?
How did it get like this?
I crushed down the urge to just flop onto the ground — dignity, image, none of it mattered — and turned to the vampires still staring at me like I was a monkey at the zoo.
“…What exactly are you people doing.”
“Awaiting orders. Our Parent asked us to look after you.”
I’d assumed it had handed out some secret directive. Turns out it was just a plain take care of her.
…That didn’t mean I was going to start thinking fondly of the vampire elder. But maybe I didn’t need to treat it as an absolute enemy either.
At least, by its own words, it was going to help me for a while.
I’d squeeze them for everything they were worth, then dump them when I was done.
Thinking any further than that was exhausting. That would do.
“Orders… Right. Orders. Get out of my sight this instant. And until I come looking for you again, I don’t want to see so much as a hair of you. Don’t do anything that draws attention. Stay quiet as the dead.”
Get lost. And stay lost.
“…As you command.”
The moment I gave the order in terms that left no room for misunderstanding, the vampires scattered like roaches and vanished in the blink of an eye.
Once they were gone, I was the only one left in the ruins.
“…Haa.”
Giving up even on fixing my tangled hair, I trudged toward the lodging.
I don’t care. I’m going home. Whether Su-hyeok saw any of this or not, no matter what happened — I’m going home.
Right now, all I wanted was sleep.
"The number you have dialed cannot be reached. After the tone, you will be connected to voicemail. Call charges will apply…"
Had something happened?
She always answered — deep night or early morning, it never mattered — and yet now the call wouldn’t go through. It was hard not to worry.
Normally she picked up the second the phone rang. Why was there no response today of all days?
Was it because of what happened yesterday? It was possible. Hemoregia had appeared in Seoul and turned the city upside down, after all. The odds were high enough.
I didn’t think she would have gotten caught up in it herself — but maybe the whole thing had shaken her badly.
When she’d commissioned the investigation into Hemoregia, she’d spoken as if she’d already given up. Even so, she still hadn’t seemed to have decided how she was supposed to face it.
Maybe she’d been hit hard by the thought that her mother had finally gone past the point of no return.
I wouldn’t know the exact state of things until I got her on the phone.
There wasn’t much I could do either way, and the only other person I might have reached out to — Radiant White — was apparently swamped. So I had no choice but to call her again.
Please pick up.
That was all I could hope for.
"Hello…"
Even accounting for how thin a voice could sound over a call, she was clearly exhausted.
So she really was deeply shaken.
I didn’t know quite what to say, so I started with comfort.
“The Hemoregia business… isn’t your fault. So you don’t need to take it so hard.”
I had no idea what she was actually thinking.
Whether she was blaming herself, or whether it was resignation — the sense that what was bound to happen had finally happened.
I didn’t know.
So I simply assumed she was feeling what I would have felt in her place, and spoke accordingly.
Min-a said nothing for a long time after that.
I wondered if I’d stepped on a landmine. Family history was almost always too tangled for an outsider to meddle in.
I had a brief, sharp moment of regret — that my words might have only set her nerves on edge.
But the answer that came back from Min-a was nothing like what I’d expected.
"…Right? I didn’t do anything wrong, did I? I— I haven’t done anything wrong, right?"
She wasn’t angry at what I’d said. She kept asking, over and over, as if she needed me to confirm it — that she really hadn’t done anything wrong.
The sudden reaction left me unsure how to handle her. But I could tell clearly enough what she needed right now, so I kept telling her it wasn’t her fault.
Without ever understanding why she was reacting this way.