“Sure.”
“But about a century ago, I suddenly lost the ability to track her. Yesterday, I learned that this was because your ancestor sank her to the bottom of the sea.”
“You couldn’t track her down there?”
“It seems my master did not anticipate her being sent there.”
Well, no, probably not.
“I lost my target and had no means of receiving new orders, so I temporarily froze my existing order. Then I wandered the world to see for myself if the vampire was truly dead,” Silver Slayer said as if it was nothing special.
“But you couldn’t sense her anymore, right?”
“There was always the possibility that she’d learned some method of cloaking herself. Since I hadn’t defeated her myself, it was impossible for me to say whether or not she was dead. But I had no idea where to go.”
That’s right. Weren’t vampires supposed to turn to ash when they died? That would mean that even if she really was dead, there would be no record of it and not even a body to prove it. I had no idea how she thought she’d figure out if someone like that was dead or alive... It would be like trying to find a particular grain of sand in a vast desert.
“I walked a long, long time... Then one day I smelled something sweet.”
“Something sweet?”
“It was the smell of a certain flower. I’d smelled it before in my battles with the vampire. Thinking back, it was probably the scent of perfume.” Silver Slayer closed her eyes for a few seconds, as if remembering the smell. “When I realized it wasn’t coming from the vampire, I went to leave... But then I found myself watching the flower and the bees that were gathering its pollen for several minutes.”
“That’s...”
Was she sure she didn’t like flowers?
“I still don’t know why. But after that, I do sometimes stare at the flowers and insects I see along the roadside. Just like this...”
She went back to looking at the flower growing in the asphalt. It had a single green stalk with tiny white blossoms all up and down it. I’d seen it somewhere in Japan before... What was its name again?
“That’s right. You were looking out at my yard too, weren’t you? Were you looking at the flowers?” I asked.
I was pretty sure the flowers in the yard were carnations. My mom used to take care of them, but now that was Harissa’s job.
“When I’m doing this, it’s like something... something is inside me.” Silver Slayer put her hand up to her chest, as if searching for what that something might be.
Huh...
It had been a hundred years since my ancestor sealed Rosalind away at the bottom of the sea. Even if her body was made of silver, Silver Slayer was capable of feeling the wind or smelling the flowers, and she had the power to think for herself. If she’d gone a whole century without finding the vampire she was made to kill, and if she’d spent that whole time wandering the world, surely it wasn’t all that weird that she’d started to develop emotions of her own. Even if she was a homunculus, not a human... No, perhaps it was especially because of that.
“Hey...”
“What is it?”
I paused for a second, considering my words.
“Why did you try to kill Rosalind without a second thought?”
“Because that is my job.”
“Yeah, you told me. But Silver Slayer... don’t you want to know what that ‘something’ inside you is?”
She looked up at me wordlessly.
“Will you tell me what it is, then?” she finally asked.
“I can guess, but I can’t give you all the details.”
“Unclear. Why is that?”
“Because that ‘something’ is your feelings.”
She fell silent for a moment at my answer.
“As I said before, I am not equipped with emotions.”
“You look at flowers and you feel something. You see insects and you think something. That ‘something’ is what we call emotion.”
“...”
“But even if humans see the same flowers or the same insects, everybody feels something different when they do. Some people get sentimental. Some people think they’re pretty. Some people may even think they’re funny. So I don’t know what it is exactly that you felt, but I know that you felt something.”
“Humans...” she whispered as if lost in thought. Then her silver eyes turned towards me once more. “If... I propose a hypothesis. If I were human, would I know what it is that I feel?”
“You don’t have to be human. I think you’re already starting to experience emotion. If you keep living in this world, keep feeling more of it... Someday you might understand for yourself.”
So please don’t throw your life away.
That’s what I thought to myself. I then watched the white flower with her until Chelsea came back with drinks.
▽
There were no ferries from the port to the island where we were headed, so Chelsea hired a local to take us there and bring us back. There was a single abandoned cottage on the island, or so she’d been told, so we’d be spending the night there.
I stood at the prow of the boat, idly watching the sun dip below the horizon. Part of me was thinking that I was lucky to have this experience. It was like something out of a movie. But mostly my mind was somewhere else.
“Whatcha doin’?”
“...Chelsea?”
Chelsea walked up to me, her boots clopping loudly against the deck, and her hand on her hat to keep the sea wind from blowing it away. It was a hat like you’d see in a foreign country, complete with a feather decoration. Her coat was in a similar style, and it made her look like some kind of modern pirate.
She stood next to me and grinned.
“Oh, I was just inside and happened to see a glum little boy out here all by his lonesome. So I came out to tease you.”
“...I’m not trying to look cool or anything.”
“That’s right. You didn’t look very cool at all, honestly.”
I almost fell right off the boat. I mean, yeah, I know I’m not a Hollywood star or anything...
“So what’s bugging you so badly?” she asked.
“...Do I really look like something’s bugging me?”
“Yup. You look like a young teenager about to ask a girl out on his first date.” She grinned again as she put her elbows on the railing and leaned over it. “Well, I heard about you and Hibiki, so I can guess what it is that’s bothering you. I was just thinking that if you needed to talk to somebody, I’m here for you.”
“You like helping other people, huh?” I whispered in surprise.
She poked my forehead and said, “I’ve got a little brother, you see. I try to look out for little boys like you.”
“I see. You’re a big sister, huh?”
“That’s right!”
She laughed a little, and I sighed and relaxed some.
“I think I’m getting somewhere with Silver Slayer, but I don’t know how to save Rosalind,” I confessed.
“Rosalind’s that vampire girl, right?”
I nodded, but Chelsea frowned.
“You’re a weird kid.”
“Why?”
“Normal people wouldn’t worry about someone who attacked them like that, you know?”
“Didn’t you just say you thought you knew what I was worried about?”
“I was thinking you were worried about the homunculus,” she clarified. “And wait, Rosalind was after you, right? What did you do to piss off a vampire? Did you stuff some garlic in her coffin as a prank or something?”
“Nah. This is just a guess, but I think Rosalind was close to my ancestor. But then my ancestor had to fight her to protect a ‘heroine,’ and in the end, he had to seal her away...”
“Hmm... A tragic love story, huh?”
“Huh? A love story?”
“What? You mean it’s not?”
I wasn’t sure how to handle this unexpected question.
“No, from what Rosalind said, she was trying to suck the blood of this ‘heroine,’ and my ancestor was just trying to protect her...”
“Oh, I see. You don’t really know much about this kind of stuff, do you?” Chelsea nodded, satisfied with her knowledge of the situation. “You might think that a vampire just sucks somebody’s blood for food, but that’s not always how it works.”
I tried my hardest to remember what I could about vampires from manga and books.
“Um... They turn the people whose blood they suck into vampires too, right?”
“That’s right. Blood is a symbol of life. And sucking someone’s blood means stealing their life from them. But a powerful vampire like Rosalind doesn’t just steal somebody’s life. She can control it, too.”
“Control it?”
“Yup. Like a puppet. It would take a while to go into the specifics, and I don’t know how much it really matters... But I guess I can just give you the short version. Since their life is under the vampire’s control, the person whose blood has been sucked can’t do anything. They become the perfect slave.”
“But isn’t that the same as the charm spell?”
“Close, but not quite. The charm spell affects a person’s mind, but controlling someone through their blood means having control of their life itself. It doesn’t matter how strong they are mentally.”
The way she was able to recite all this stuff from memory made me think that Chelsea might’ve been from a family of mages or something.
She continued, “Some lesser vampires aren’t strong enough to survive without stealing life force from other people. Those ones are definitely just sucking blood for food. But someone as powerful as Rosalind doesn’t need to do that to stay alive, so she only sucks someone’s blood when she wants to create a servant. The thing is, though... Rosalind doesn’t seem like the type who goes around creating a bunch of servants, does she?”
“Yeah, that’s true.”
Rosalind had spent at least five days in my town. If she wanted to create servants to tend to her needs, she could’ve done that easily by now. But the only people in that mansion other than her were Iris, Satsuki, Harissa, and Lea. Each of them had only been brainwashed with the charm spell, and that was even after I’d found out who she really was.
“Which means that there must have been some reason she was going after this ‘heroine,’ right? And so what’s important in this situation is the relationship between the three of them,” Chelsea explained.
“The three of them?” I asked.
“Your ancestor, Rosalind, and the heroine.” Chelsea held up her hand and raised a finger for each person she mentioned, three in total. “Your ancestor was close to Rosalind. Rosalind tried to suck the heroine’s blood to turn her into a vampire, but your ancestor protected the heroine. That’s a love triangle, isn’t it?”
She drew a triangle in the air for emphasis.
“A... A love triangle?”
“Yup. That’s why I called it a tragic love story. One involving both the human and the inhuman.”
“But if she could suck blood or use charm magic to control people, why didn’t Rosalind use those powers on my ancestor?”
“Hmm... I can’t say for sure. But people fall in love for different reasons. Someone’s looks, their heart, their money, or any number of other things... Maybe Rosalind fell in love with a part of him that she couldn’t get with her charm magic.”
“His heart...”
What Chelsea said—even if most of it was just a guess—explained a lot of the things I’d been wondering about. Rosalind felt betrayed. The person she’d been in love with took her down in order to protect someone else. That was why she hated him enough to go after his descendant. “I’m going to suck your blood and turn you into a vampire. I’m going to take everything away from you. Even your humanity.” That’s what Rosalind had said to me. And now I knew why.
The only thing left to figure out was how to save her. I could give myself over to her and let her have her revenge... No, that wasn’t a good idea. If I did that, everyone else would kick my butt.
And that aside, there was something else bugging me. If Rosalind wanted to turn me into a vampire, she’d had plenty of chances to do it. When she caught me at the mansion. Our date. When we were eating lunch on the school roof. Even before then, she could’ve used her vampire powers to ambush me any time she wanted.
But instead, she went through all the trouble of using her charm magic to brainwash my friends and get close to me. She’d said it was to find out what I really cared about, but that was still a roundabout way of going about it. Thinking back on it, it seemed like she was trying to hide her real plans. Did Rosalind have some goal other that revenge? It felt like that might be the key I needed to bring her story to a happy ending... Not that I knew what it was yet.
“Hmm...”
“You’re at the age where you have a lot on your mind, huh, Rekka?” Chelsea laughed. “All right, then. I’ll show you a magic trick to cheer you up.”
“A magic trick?”
“That’s right. Close your eyes, would you?”
“Okay...?” I didn’t know what was going on, but decided to do as she asked.
“Tree spirits, place this boy within your hollows...” Chelsea mumbled under her breath. “Okay, you can open your eyes now.”
“Okay... Uwah!”
There was a skirt! Right in front of my face!
I took a step back in surprise and heard laughter from above.
“Oh wow, you’re so cute!” Chelsea, who had suddenly grown to twice her height, patted me on the head.
“Is this your magic trick? This definitely has to be magic! How else could you just suddenly get taller?!”
“Yup, it’s magic. You got that part right. But I didn’t get taller. You got shorter.”
“What?!”
I examined my body, and sure enough, my limbs and torso had gotten smaller. My clothes were the same size as before, so both my pants and shirt were falling off.
“H-How do I go back?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll change you back now. Here.”
She made a finger gun with one hand, pointed it at my forehead, and said, “Bang.” In an instant, I was back to my normal size.
“Wow, that scared me... What was that? A spell to turn somebody into a kid?”
“Nope. It just takes a meter or so off their height.”
That’s.... I didn’t even know what to say...
“That’s kind of useless.”
“Yup. But it’s the only magic I can use.” Chelsea folded her hands behind her head and looked up at the sky. “Because of that, my family of famous mages treated me very coldly. Neither my brother nor I had much talent. On top of that, he was really sick... We figured there was no point in staying in a family like that, so we both ran away from home. And now we travel the world.”
She was talking about it casually, but I knew that two kids running away from home and living on their own wasn’t as easy as she made it sound.
“It wasn’t really hard on you guys?” I asked.
“I guess it was. But it was also a lot of fun. I figured that even if we didn’t have magic, we could still be happy as long as we had money... And, well, one thing led to another and I ended up becoming a treasure hunter. It was a pretty short-sighted choice, if you ask me.” Chelsea laughed and laughed, but the sound of her laughter grew dry as she shook her head. “I guess this is what I get for living without a care for the future. And for dragging my sick little brother all over the world. I didn’t realize that he was forcing himself to smile through the pain, and eventually he got worse...”
I watched as Chelsea sighed. I got the feeling that she was really holding all of this against herself.
“The doctors told me that no matter how much money I paid them, it wouldn’t help. And now that magic and money won’t work, I’m relying on a miracle from the Demon’s Pot. I’ve gone flitting from one thing to another.
.. and now I’m totally out of options. Sometimes I hate myself for being like this.” She was quiet for a minute, and then she smiled as if she wanted to hide how she was really feeling. “But don’t think too much of it. When I heard about your and Hibiki’s family bloodlines, I thought to myself, ‘Wow, things have really gotten that bad for me, huh?’ It’s just got me a little nervous, so thanks for hearing me out. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
People with our lineage got caught up in stories that were heading for a bad ending. In other words, without our help—meaning that if Chelsea tried to solve this on her own—her story would be beyond saving no matter what she did. To someone like her, that must have felt like having her own helplessness shoved in her face.
“Wait!” I shouted.
Without even thinking, I grabbed her hand before she could go back to her cabin. She turned around and her blue eyes met mine.
“What?”
“Um...”
Why had she come out here in the first place? To listen to my problems and watch the sun set? Of course not. You couldn’t even see the ship’s prow from the cabins. She’d come out here looking for me. Wasn’t she really the one who wanted someone to listen to her problems?
“I don’t think you were just flitting from one thing to another.”
“What?”
“You were in a tough spot. You were trying your hardest to figure out what would make both of you happy. You struggled and struggled, and this is how it turned out, right?”
When you hit a wall, the only wrong move is to stop. When she learned she didn’t have any talent for magic. When she learned that she couldn’t buy her brother’s health back. She’d never given up before. She never stopped. She struggled, but she always moved forward.
“Even when you were going from one thing to another, you were never wasting your time. If anybody ever laughs at the way you live, I’ll kick their ass.”
“...I think I’ve heard that line somewhere before.”
“W-Well, sorry! I just don’t have a very good vocabulary.”
“There’s nothing to apologize for.” Chelsea giggled, then grabbed me and held me tight. “What matters is whether you mean it or not. And I can tell that you really do mean it.”
I Saved Too Many Girls and Caused the Apocalypse: Volume 4 Page 10
