A Sickening Blood-Red
A blood-red so vivid it makes me want to vomit.
Fear is a privilege of existence — the last remaining defense mechanism.
Every emotion has its own cause. Anger exists because something provoked the temper. Sorrow exists because something wounded the heart.
And joy exists because there is something to recall, something worth remembering.
So then, naturally, fear must have—
"You're trembling, Zeo?"
Because I am afraid.
It was true that my breathing had grown a little rough. That meant two emotions had blended together. The first, needless to say, was fear.
This was the enemy's home ground — the inside of a crocodile's gaping maw, where any resistance I offered would, self-evidently, be crushed by sheer weight of numbers.
And the woman before me was meticulous to a pathological degree, the sort who plans everything down to the last detail. There was no way she'd leave that fact out of her calculations. A scheme beyond anything I could imagine was surely in motion, and that thought drove the fear in deeper.
And yet the tremor running through me was not entirely fear.
A second torrent coexisted with that churning fear — a second emotion with power enough to match it blow for blow.
"I'm a little — no, very — angry."
Rage.
The fury that she had hurt Robin was what made my body shake.
When those two emotions fused into one, I found I could hold myself steady with a composure that surprised even me.
Not, say, the grinding of teeth against teeth.
"That's certainly how you look. Would you like some tea?"
"Not right now, thank you."
"Very well. If you get thirsty, just say the word."
Lize straightened her posture. How to put it — she showed no trace of an intent to provoke me further. It was abundantly clear that she had summoned me because she genuinely wanted to 'talk'.
"I have a great many things I'd like to ask. Would that be all right?"
"What a coincidence, I have a great many things I'd like to ask too. Shall we take turns, one at a time?"
It would be generous to call it a compromise reached between us; the truth was simply that I had no other option.
She held the hilt of the sword, after all, and I was the one who had thrust my neck into the jaws of a beast.
My brain, crushed beneath two contradictory emotions — anger and fear — was already turning over, laboring to derive the best possible answer for dealing with this situation.
Which is why, ahead of any other words, this one came to mind first.
"Was it truly you — the one who did that to Robin?"
"Yes. I ordered it."
My fist clenched on its own. I couldn't help it. I should have hoped she might at least pretend to deliberate — but when she answered that instantly—
My emotions had no choice but to lurch all the way to one side in a single instant.
"Then it's my turn. Knowing the danger, why did you come here alone?"
"...Because I was confident you wouldn't harm me."
Unlike her, I let a small silence settle first. Call it confidence at its kindest — but tip even a little off balance and it becomes recklessness, the kind that costs a man his head.
Right now I was no different from a tightrope walker crossing a taut wire, all alone, with no net below.
"Pfft — haha. Good. That's the correct answer."
She was smiling as she said it, but I had no intention of taking everything Lize said at face value. I would need to keep my guard sharper than this.
Only recently I'd been fooled by her verbal trick — claiming she never technically lied — and failed to grasp what she truly was.
"Then why did you hurt Robin?"
"There were two reasons. One was to lure you here."
That much I'd more or less worked out already. She'd explained only moments ago that she'd manufactured a motive to draw me to this place.
"And the other was because I wanted to run a test."
"...A test?"
"That's right, a test. Exactly what it sounds like. I was simply curious what degree of skill that woman actually possessed."
This one I hadn't known. For a moment I pressed a hand to my forehead against the rising headache, while Lize's explanation continued.
"She wasn't bad. If she'd fallen below standard, I intended to discard her, but honestly speaking, she exceeded what I expected. I was quite satisfied."
"...You did that to Robin over a reason as petty as that?"
"...Oh? Is that another question?"
The look on her face said she genuinely didn't understand. I didn't need to hear her answer to feel, deep in my bones, that her motive really had been nothing more than that.
Almost without meaning to, I drew a step away from her.
"There was a justification, mind you. One of my subordinates got her head taken off by that woman."
As she spoke, she drew a finger across her own throat in a scissoring motion. The image surfaced of her — the woman who could end a life without the slightest hesitation — and for a moment my face twisted before I could stop it.
"I see. Well, I suppose that's possible. These days I can accept anything as given. This place was always like that."
The breath I'd been holding escaped in a slow plume. It was a kind of cooling mechanism, a way to keep the ratio between anger and fear exactly balanced.
I returned my head to its place and looked at her again.
Those crimson pupils — more than I could possibly bear to hold — dragged unbidden from me a single word: dissonance.
"So why is it that you've taken such an interest in me?"
Irrelevant or not, at last I threw the question out.
Conversely, the answer did not come at once. Wordless, she curled the corners of her mouth upward into a beaming smile — so bright that an eerie feeling followed in its wake.
No — more than eerie, it brought to mind a small child who has just spotted a favorite treat laid out in front of him.
As if she had waited all day, all along, for this one question, she moved her lips with the happiest smile she'd worn yet.
"I want to leave something behind."
"...What?"
"Honestly, I've reached enlightenment. This is a life I could accept and let go of even if it ended tomorrow. No — more than that, I've actually tried to die a few times already."
As she said it, she drew a finger lightly across her throat again.
The fact that she still wore that same unblemished smile as she did it rang like a false note, and it turned my stomach.
"And then, purely by chance, I found something quite alien. In this filthy, filthy, filthy space — someone desperately trying to stay clean, all by herself."
I had heard this before. From the one person I trusted like no other — the very reason I'd come to this place.
Hearing the same words from two different mouths made me want to laugh, just slightly. A little puff of air slipped out between my lips.
So that's what I am, at my core. It slipped from me unbidden, at the reality I had no choice but to admit.
"In a world where living dirty, mean, and shabby is the baseline, being white gets you nothing. You take the hard road on purpose, when no one's making you—"
But even admitting it changed nothing about reality.
Reality was this woman, who at some point had risen from her desk and closed the distance to right in front of me. Reality was now.
Lize's hand came to rest on my shoulder. A sly gleam settled into her eyes, a smile curved at the edge of her mouth.
Her breath drew near — unhurried, lingering — then burrowed in close, light as a whisper against my ear.
"Mm? The way you keep twisting and winding around, taking every detour... that, more than anything... is what fascinates me."
At that, I froze, utterly still, unable to move.
"Is that... all?"
"I wasn't finished."
With that, Lize turned my body toward her. The eyes I met once more were red, and red, and red again — so red it made me want to vomit.
Dizzying, and so it bred unease; suffocating, and so it bred disgust; bitter, and so it bred discomfort.
And like heat shimmer, and because it was frightening, and because I wanted to run—
We call all of this fear.
"Interest — yes, that's true. Right now I hold an extraordinary curiosity about you. But there's one thing more, and it's the most important of all."
As if she meant to swallow even that whole, her hand came to rest against my chest like rot spreading through a root.
"I want to carve a single stigma into that being who aches so desperately to be white."
Those words came at me like a brand upon my own skin, a mark burned into me — and I could not, simply could not, hold up under them.
The scales that had hung level tipped all at once to one side — the opposite side from before, and this weight was beyond all comparison.
"That's it. Like the urge to be the first to set foot in a field of untouched, brand-new snow."
When you drive the wedge in like that, what am I supposed to—
Hoo... ha. Somehow, I struggled to find my balance. I blinked my eyes open and shut, and thought of her — lying there, hurt, because of me.
People are imperfect, and that's exactly what makes them human.
When I thought of her — the person I treasured more than anything in this world—
"...All right. Then I'll ask my final question."
And so our conversation reached its final page. Since I'd called it my last, even Lize seemed unable to hide her interest, leaning her ear in close.
"What do you intend to do now?"
"What do you mean?"
"You succeeded in making yourself heard — at the cost of hurting everything around the person you're interested in. So what comes next?"
My voice had finally found its equilibrium. For the first time, Lize let out a small hum of thought.
It was, to be sure, genuine deliberation — but not the kind that worries over finding an answer. It was more like... the level of an adult patiently refining knowledge a child couldn't possibly parse, just enough to make it comprehensible. Precisely that.
"It's simple. It's news you'll be glad to hear."
Even that didn't take her long at all. The gap between her and me came home to me with brutal clarity.
"From this moment on — I'm going to help you."
"...What did you say?"
But the news that reached my ears was so staggering it reduced everything before it to nothing.
"You said it terrifies you. That this place, where murder is treated as ordinary, is too frightening... that it doesn't sit right with you."
"......"
"That you wanted to leave this place — to break free of the group you're bound to against your will and return to where you originally belonged. You said it with those weary eyes of yours."
Every word of it had come from my own mouth, that much was certain.
How being bound to a group I never chose, doing work I never wanted, made my blood boil — how I wanted to go back.
I had never named the subject, but a woman who knew everything from the start would have understood exactly what I meant.
What I needed was simply a place to return to.
"I'll get you that. All of it."
She extended her hand. An elegant hand, without a single wound or blemish — graceful, undeniably so, and yet it seemed that if I took it, something would happen that could never be undone.
"That's the look on your face. The one thinking, if I take that hand, something irreversible will happen."
"...There's no wariness quite like that owed to kindness with no reason behind it."
"Hearing that from the mouth of someone who offers unconditional goodwill and help more freely than anyone... how very strange."
Twice in a row, now — twice she had driven a blade straight into the most tender place I had. It sank in anew: this was not an opponent I could ever beat with words.
"And it isn't without reason, you know. I intend, quite certainly, to collect a price from you."
"...A price, you say."
"Very well, we'll stop here for today. We can talk about the rest later. If we go any further, you really might just shatter on the spot."
How infuriating it was, the way she deferred every unfavorable detail to some later hour — and knowing it was all calculated only made it worse.
But as I kept reminding myself: the hilt of the sword was in Lize's hand, every choice belonged to her. The only answer left to me was to accept.
"You're free to go consult with someone else, if you like. We can always meet again, after all — whenever we please."
She didn't forget to take out the dark red guiding orbs and explain them, either.
Without a word, I tucked the two orbs into my breast. She drew back a step or two, and then she said:
"Now — hold out your hand."
Too imperious to be a request, yet a shade too gentle to be an order — that was her voice.
With my head already inside the beast's mouth, I had no room to refuse. Quietly, I opened my palm and extended it.
A faintly cool touch arrived. The object was a pen — likewise bearing her name upon it. One glance told me it was expensive, the sort of fine thing it clearly was.
"My dream is to carve my name into an existence."
"...A dream?"
"That's right. My dream. Not some empty hope or idle thought with little chance of ever coming true — an ideal. A hope I intend to realize."
What on earth was she saying? The ground tilted once more toward fear — but my hand was already in her grasp.
Her face, and my hand beneath it. A single line drew itself across my skin in one soft, unbroken stroke. It was, without question, a smile — and yet there was nothing tender about it at all.
"Only the result is left behind. Whatever happens in the process doesn't matter to me in the slightest. Even if what burns away is a life — I—"
And then she veiled her pupils. The red was nowhere to be seen, and yet Lize Valles herself became the color red, deeper than before. The color of blood.
There was an irony in it too — that a being positioned so high the blade could never reach her, that would never shed a single drop of blood, could carry within her a color more bloodlike than anyone alive.
Absurd. And yet in the next instant the feeling transmuted into something else entirely. The scales tipped.
"My purpose is to leave my name behind — in someone. And so—"
And with that, she gripped my hand hard — tight, final. She smiled, slow and curved. I could not smile back.
Seeing that, she smiled wider. I froze harder. She smiled wider, and wider, and wider, and wider—
"I'll be counting on you from now on, Zeo."
It was red.