The Value of Poison
‘…Why can he rush out there so quickly?’
The white-haired girl walked along slowly, deep in thought.
Amid the commotion of everyone pouring out of the noisy park to call for a priest, to summon the guard, to do anything at all, only she remained quiet.
Tap, tap. On the way to the park, one scene kept replaying in Cream’s mind.
The sight of her teacher sprinting out the moment he heard the scream that a monster had appeared.
The sight of the man leaving without even looking back.
‘…Well, I suppose that’s because he’s a priest.’
He’d probably go on teaching all that doctrine about sacrifice and duty, following the example of that illustrious holy man.
With skills like his, a monster would be easy enough to handle. He would settle the situation in an instant and be treated like a hero by the crowd.
How nice for him.
Being chosen.
Chosen by God, able to save people with divine arts. Able to receive praise and love from everyone because of it.
‘…It’s honestly ridiculous.’
A talent the world needed? The ideal talent for dealing with Impurities?
Cream snorted at the words Endy had used earlier.
“Talent” was a word for that man, or for other priests like him. It had nothing to do with her.
Cream had poisonous blood and a bloodsucking urge, and because of that, she was the sort of creature other people had every right to condemn and loathe.
She knew it well herself. She knew all too well how incompatible her body was with purification.
If you threw a pebble at the sun, would it ever reach it?
Light and darkness, fire and water, heaven and earth—they were that far apart, that utterly opposed.
And yet he wanted her to be his partner in a purification request?
It was absurd, unthinkable, utterly beneath her, and completely unsuited to her.
Like asking light to mingle with darkness, or fire to plunge into water, or heaven to go wrestle with earth. A ridiculous invitation.
‘How am I supposed to do that?’
She couldn’t begin to understand what he intended.
Was he planning to use the request as a pretext and purify her instead? No, that would be far too much trouble.
Was he trying to reform a witch somehow? Then it was just a farce so absurd it didn’t even deserve laughter.
What on earth was he expecting?
‘I’m just an evil witch.’
Just a dirty witch with poison running through her veins.
—The people who cling to you will be one of two kinds. Fools bewitched by your pretty face, or swindlers after what they can wring out of you.
A child abandoned even by blood, worth nothing to anyone.
—So don’t be fooled. The people who gather around a sinner like you will only ever be like that. You can’t be happy.
“…”
She stopped.
As Cream stepped into the park, she froze in place.
Then, as old memories came crashing over her like a wave, she simply closed her eyes, covered her ears, and curled in on herself.
Her eyelashes trembled.
Her hands trembled too as she tried to block her ears, and she dropped the doll and the books in the process, but she didn’t have the presence of mind to pick them up.
Voices kept echoing in her ears.
In the very same voice that had once told her she was the most precious thing in the world, now spoke a tone so cold it seemed to carve at the girl’s flesh.
—You’ll be alone for the rest of your life.
Stop.
—Alone, forever.
I know, so stop.
—Alone.
Please, stop—
“—Young lady!”
Flash.
Her eyes flew open on their own.
A man’s voice slammed against her eardrums and jolted her back to her senses. The hallucination scattered in an instant.
She wasn’t used to being called young lady, but she heard it every day, so she knew exactly who he was calling for.
Cream stared blankly in that direction.
“This way!”
In the center of the park stood Cream’s teacher, with the monster multiplying around him.
It looked as though the creature had firmly taken root in the fountain and was feeding itself on the water spraying up from within. A horrible gurgling sound rose endlessly as foul energy kept seeping out of it.
If she released divine power there, it would be like pouring water into a broken jar.
They would have to remove the fountain itself, or, if that was impossible, find the route from the Underground Waterway to the fountain and purify it there.
Now that she had finished assessing the situation, Cream’s face twisted.
He must know all of that too, and yet he still kept fending off the monster and signaling to her. She couldn’t understand it at all.
“Young lady!”
What exactly was he expecting her to do?
Why was he looking at her with such unshakable faith?
“There’s a saying that poison can be treated with poison. That’s why I believe you are the talent this world needs.”
What on earth did he expect from poison?
“The world is a wide place, so I’d like you to experience many things with me and discover your own value.”
Was that really the sort of thing a priest should say to a witch?
The questions circled endlessly in the little girl’s head, and none of them had an answer.
But he didn’t give her time to think. Endy lowered the output of his light.
It was as if he were conserving his strength for one tremendous blow to come.
But with the output lowered, the monster only grew bolder, as if it might devour him at any moment. The faint light hidden beneath the black tar-like body was fading away.
A single beam of light sinking beneath filth.
Like a jewel dropped into a sewer.
“Why are you…”
The girl asked the man.
Her voice was too small to reach him, and she hadn’t truly meant to ask aloud, but the question slipped out all the same.
For an instant, from the shape of the man’s mouth as he stood there half-submerged in danger, she thought she could see the answer.
I can do it.
“…”
What, really, was the value of this world?
It mocked the weak, persecuted the sick, never guided the lost, and only treated them cruelly.
She had seen it in alleys. She had seen it in her dreams.
The abandoned girl thought not only that she herself had no value, but that this land had none either.
Wasn’t the world already swarming with Impurities and monsters, as if to prove her right?
What was the point of looking for value in this hellish place? What use could anything possibly have?
“…”
And yet the reason the girl rose from where she stood now,
the reason she reached out to take a needle from the doll,
the reason she hid her body beneath her cloak and pricked her wrist,
the reason she was about to throw a needle soaked in blood,
was simply because…
‘I don’t know…’
She just didn’t want to see that man die.
‘Why?’
Because, of course, she didn’t want to see him fall to some other corruption besides herself.
She really hated it.
That perverted man annoyed her to no end, but she couldn’t just let him die here.
A high-ranking priest like that couldn’t possibly be brought down by a mere monster. If he was going to die, it should at least be at the hands of someone worthy of the name witch.
And it wasn’t time for that yet.
So the girl made up her mind.
‘Will the needle even reach that far?’
It was a large needle, the sort used to sew blankets, but it looked unlikely to fly that distance. Cream was smaller than most children her age, with thin arms and legs. She was quick and agile, but not especially strong.
Even now, the monster was swelling its filthy body and preparing to engulf her teacher.
‘It has to reach.’
That was all she asked.
She wanted this needle to reach the fountain, wanted to throw it hard enough to get there.
As if responding to that wish, her blood began to boil.
The dark red liquid coursing through her small body answered its lovely master in a soft, sliding murmur.
It loathed all living things and sought to corrode the world, and yet it seemed to whisper that it would never harm its own master.
Cream Holybell has acquired the Physical Enhancement trait.
Somehow, she had the vague certainty that she could do it. Cream took a stance.
She drew in a breath, planted both feet on the ground, pulled the hand holding the needle back, then twisted her waist and hurled it forward.
It was a motion so balanced it didn’t seem like something a child could manage.
Whoosh—
The mass of corruption flew in a straight line, leaving behind a thin, acrid trail.
The man caught on to the chain of events and smiled faintly at her.
Flash—!
The moment he leapt away from the fountain where the monster was emerging, he increased the light he was releasing from his entire body.
The instant the needle entered that vast range—
—BOOM!!
Holy light and unholy blood collided in an explosion. Shards of monster flesh, stones from the shattered fountain, everything flew apart and scattered through the air.
Light spread, and smoke spread with it. Leaves on the trees in the park shook wildly and whipped through the air on the wind. Dust-laden gusts scraped harshly over her skin and stung.
Cream had been keeping her eyes shut against the light from a distance, but now she opened them to narrow slits and checked the situation. The blast was larger than she had expected, and the force of it made her break out in a cold sweat.
What if he got caught up in it?
No, he wouldn’t have been caught up in it, right?
Flash—!
The moment that worry rose in her mind, another burst of light erupted from within the smoke. To finish off every last fragment of the monster, and the root that had nested itself inside the ruined fountain.
At last, a figure emerged from the smoke.
A priest wearing the mask of a home tutor.
Endy, having finished everything, walked out while tugging down the hood that had been scorched by the explosion. He staggered once and clutched his head, but at least he seemed all right.
“…”
“Young lady… are you unharmed?”
“As you can see.”
In the distance, the guard was entering the park. There were even reckless onlookers who had come running because the explosion had made them curious.
But for now, there was only the two of them here, as if time itself had stopped.
“…You broke the fountain.”
“What a shame.”
“People are coming.”
“I deliberately increased the output so that not even a trace of the needle would remain.”
“…Hah.”
Cream laughed.
The whole situation was absurd, and yet for some reason it also put her at ease, so laughter simply spilled out of her.
She wasn’t trying to put on a show, so it came out unadorned—a clear laugh unshackled from her mother’s curse.
Blood was thicker than water.
And yet if one had been abandoned by the very blood that tied them to another, what meaning could there be in that saying?
Where did blood go when it lost its starting point?
The girl who had been cast aside by her own kin didn’t know. She only kept walking, using the curse that being had left behind as her signpost.
If she kept walking this path, perhaps at the destination she might look back at her after all. Perhaps she could be forgiven.
That was why she had come to this mansion.
A stopover on the way to her destination. And at the same time, the place where everything would end.
She had been holding her breath there, waiting for the right moment, when she met a strange man.
A very strange man who, for some reason, could do anything in the face of a wicked, rotten girl like her.
“Haha… Teacher, you’re really unbelievable for a priest… If it had been anyone else, I would’ve been fooled.”
“As I keep telling you, I’m just an ordinary—”
“Fine, Teacher. Once.”
“Pardon?”
“Just once. I’ll go on a request with you.”
Cream gathered the books that had fallen to the ground into her arms and pulled her hood low.
Then she stared quietly at the cover of the fairy tale book about a saint and a witch.
“I haven’t changed my mind. It’s not that I’ve been moved by you or anything like that either. I’m absolutely not going to change what I think.”
Then she met Endy’s eyes with a face full of childish mischief.
That teacher had clearly said earlier, “If today’s events made you feel grateful, let’s do a purification request together.”
It was true that she was grateful for the snack and the books today. Even someone as wicked as she was knew how to repay a kindness.
“I’m just proving something. That there’s no way I could have any value… and that, in the end, Teacher, you’re just a liar.”
“…Young lady.”
“So I’ll go with you.”
Using poison to fight poison was a meaningless phrase.
Poison was still poison, after all.
The girl swallowed her bitterness and gave a crooked smile before walking ahead.
The sensation of blood still boiling inside her was vivid, and the moment of throwing the needle and the explosion that followed kept repeating in her mind like a dream, making her hands tremble.
She didn’t hate this thrill.
She wanted to ask if he felt like this every time he drove away corruption, but if she got surrounded by people, things would only become complicated, so there was no more time for talk.
So she decided to run away from here in silence.
Her teacher would follow behind her, and they would be together for a while, so there would come a day when she could ask him.
.
.
.
——
Emotion: +3
Stress: -10%
——
“Young lady. You’re too slow. At this rate, they’ll catch us.”
“H-hey! Let go of me!”
——
Emotion: -1
——