It was around dawn when Ruslan escaped the forest.
Just as Baigarten had said, it was clear that Sarka had no intention of killing Ruslan or seriously injuring him.
But instead, it was also clear he intended to make him scared to death, seriously exhausted, and miserably distressed.
Sarka cleverly drove various wild beasts to make Ruslan’s spine tingle and his legs tremble, yet never allowed Ruslan to escape.
It wasn’t that he blocked the retreat. Rather, it was closer to the opposite.
As if giving Ruslan a choice, the beasts left an escape route open and only charged from one direction. So that if he turned around and ran away right now, he could quickly get away.
However, beyond where the beasts bared their teeth with gleaming eyes, there was always a white bird perched.
Close enough to be visible to Ruslan even in the darkness. Obediently holding the paper airplane as if within reach at any moment.
The choice was clearly split in two, but to Ruslan it was a scene like a single-log bridge.
All night long, falling, being chased, and dragged around, Ruslan thought he was like someone clinging to a single-log bridge with both arms and legs.
A person desperately trying not to fall from here, not to let go of even his only hope, knowing he couldn’t cross it anyway.
Around dawn.
Ruslan realized he had somehow escaped the forest.
The beasts no longer chased him. Before his eyes, the dormitory building receiving faint dawn light was shining in grayish-blue.
The white bird began flying toward the dormitory building.
Ruslan instinctively felt the time limit was running out.
The sun lazily tried to rise from beyond the horizon, wriggling as it pushed up the navy blue sky and pulled down the sky blue.
The white bird landed on the 2nd floor terrace railing, then busily groomed its weary wings for a moment. The paper airplane hung on the terrace railing, swaying in the morning breeze.
Ruslan anxiously looked up at the bird, then instead of going around to the entrance, grabbed the 1st floor terrace railing and began climbing up the wall. His heart grew urgent.
Though all his limbs were exhausted enough to go limp, he still had strength left. Ruslan climbed up onto the 2nd floor terrace and urgently reached his hand toward the airplane.
The white bird flew up with a flutter and moved to the 3rd floor terrace.
Ruslan swallowed.
Without even time to look down, Ruslan grabbed the 3rd floor terrace railing again.
The wall gradually changed from the grayish-blue of dawn to pale yellow. Soon the sun would rise.
While Ruslan climbed up, the bird leisurely waited, tilting its head back and forth, then as expected flew up with a flutter just before his fingertips could barely touch the airplane.
Ruslan swallowed. The airplane hanging on the 4th floor railing fluttered in the wind, flipping this way and that.
……If my foot slips around here, it won’t end with just an injury.
But like someone who didn’t know how to bow his head, Ruslan didn’t look down, stubbornly looking only upward and reached his hand toward the 4th floor terrace again.
His quickened breath was now so fast his chest felt tight. His heart pounded heavily and all his body’s muscles throbbed.
The white bird leisurely groomed its feathers and lightly perched on the railing, enjoying the morning sunlight. Other birds that had sensed the morning’s scent had also diligently awakened and began chirping here and there.
The white bird grooming its feathers seemed momentarily distracted by birds flying nearby. Quietly looking up at the birds flying in flocks forming semicircles, the bird tilted its head. It seemed to hesitate whether to join the flock or stay here a bit longer.
Feeling his increasingly fast heartbeat, Ruslan held his breath and crawled along the railing. The bird was still quietly watching the flock of birds circling the sky.
Ruslan reached out his hand. His square fingernail tip touched the airplane’s wing. Tap, the airplane shook.
That’s when it happened.
The bird finally spread its wings and flew powerfully toward the flock.
Flutter! Whoooosh……
Ruslan looked up at the bird with a surprised face, then hastily turned his head again.
The bird hadn’t taken the airplane with it. The paper airplane, pushed slightly by the wing beats, was just abandoned between the railings, swaying weakly in the wind.
His heart began pounding violently. Ruslan grabbed the railing and pushed his body up powerfully, drawing one span closer.
Finally, it was the moment when the white wing would be perfectly caught between his fingers.
Torokok,
Though no wind was blowing, the airplane rolled smoothly by itself, then smoothly slipped inside through the open terrace window.
When Ruslan turned around frozen, Sarka was leaning askew by the half-open terrace window, holding the airplane at his fingertip and blankly looking at Ruslan.
“…….”
“…….”
Silence flowed. Ruslan was still clinging to the railing like a caterpillar sprawled out, unable even to withdraw the hand he had desperately reached out.
Looking quietly at Ruslan in his miserably desperate pose, Sarka opened his mouth languidly with an expression of pitying a stupid creature.
“……Why are you fixated on something obviously impossible?”
The slow voice was still indifferent, containing even overt patheticness and boredom.
In torn and dirtied pajamas, scratched and bruised all over looking like a rag, Ruslan panted and answered.
“……Because I’m desperate?”
At that desperate answer, Sarka let out a light breath. Looking straight into Ruslan’s navy blue eyes with a gaze full of irritation and contempt, Sarka corrected coldly.
“<Because you’re stupid>, you mean.”
Thud, the terrace door closed. Click, the lock turned, and swoosh, the curtain was drawn.
Looking at the door closed neatly like a shop that had ended business, Ruslan bit his lip hard enough to swell.
“……This is cowardly.”
Ruslan declared while panting.
After climbing down the terrace again to the 1st floor, going around the building through the entrance, then climbing the stairs again up to the 4th floor, Ruslan was so exhausted he couldn’t even stand straight.
Panting while bracing his knees and bending his waist, Ruslan bit his lip, straightened his upper body, and glared straight at Sarka.
Sarka was languidly leaning against the sofa, receiving the morning sunlight seeping in from the terrace.
Perhaps he had opened the terrace glass window again as soon as Ruslan went down—several birds that had flown in through it were pecking at cookie crumbs Sarka had scattered on the table.
Next to those birds, glaring at the paper airplane neatly placed on the table, Ruslan gritted his teeth and accused in a voice steeped in anger.
“It’s not fair! You never intended to let me pick that up from the beginning!!”
Baigarten’s warning not to get uppity was circling in his head, but Ruslan felt his chest boiling.
His breath quickened and his shoulders heaved up fiercely. The sorrow and misery that had built up from deep inside while rolling through the forest all night rose to the tip of his throat.
It felt like trying to pour water into a glass bottle with a sealed opening. A stupid person pouring out precious water carried a thousand miles, knowing not a single drop would go inside.
Sarka didn’t even turn toward Ruslan as if his interest had now cooled.
Gently tickling under the beak of the bird that climbed onto the back of his hand, Sarka answered indifferently.
“……I never said it was a fair game. For that, I should have died long ago and been reborn as a human commoner.”
It was a cold and cruel voice.
Ruslan bit his lip firmly. His chest seemed to tremble. Emotions he had suppressed and endured while being trampled and ignored by Bruce’s gang tried to push up his throat, trembling as if tearing through a thin membrane.
……I shouldn’t do this.
I won’t hate that boy.
I can still……endure more.
While Ruslan struggled to suppress his roughening breath with clenched fists, Sarka elegantly extended his hand to send the white bird flying.
The birds that had finished eating fluttered up following the white bird. Watching the birds fly away, Sarka blinked languidly in the pouring morning sunlight.
The still glowing white face and green eyes sparkling like emeralds with the sunlight seeping through made the boy’s appearance like a picture, but Ruslan could no longer feel any admiration.
Emotions that had swirled in his chest all night were churning below like boiling water. Ruslan was afraid he might recognize the names of those emotions.
Finally when the birds disappeared to the other side of the sky, Sarka slowly turned his head then.
As if watching a miserable dog that had now realized its position, Sarka blankly looked at Ruslan trembling finely for a while.
Perhaps thinking he had gained sufficient lesson now, Sarka opened his mouth softly.
“……You and I are different from birth.”
Looking straight into the navy blue eyes full of anger, Sarka explained calmly as if teaching a very easy problem.
“In my homeland, when a child is born, they grade the bloodline level according to the level of supernatural powers they can use.
In 10 stages: Perfect Pureblood, Semi-Perfect Pureblood. Pureblood, Semi-Pureblood, Half-Pureblood. Mixed-blood, Semi-Mixed-blood, Half-Mixed-blood. Tainted-blood, Human-blood.
Below that, there’s a stage that shouldn’t exist. ‘No-blood’. A child who didn’t inherit vampire blood, with no abilities.
That’s <humans>.”
Sarka continued the explanation calmly in a clear voice.
“Just as vampires are occasionally born among ordinary humans, ordinary humans are occasionally born among vampires too.
It doesn’t happen often in unions between Purebloods, but among Tainted-bloods or Human-bloods whose blood has become muddied from mixing with humans for a long time, they’re occasionally born. Perfect <humans>.”
Ruslan swallowed dryly.
Sarka’s voice was still soft. Like a trainer teaching an uneducated poor dog step by step from the beginning, Sarka explained calmly in a voice that even felt kind.
“Several centuries ago, human slaves were permitted in our clan. When a child with absolutely no supernatural powers was occasionally born to low-bloodline parents, the parents registered the child as No-blood grade, that is, as human. Though slave status, at least they could live.
But after making a peace treaty with humans, the human government prohibited vampires from keeping human slaves. They were wary that we might continue extracting blood from human slaves to build our strength, eventually breaking the peace treaty and attacking them again.
……After that, when a No-blood who didn’t inherit vampire blood is born, in my homeland the parents directly kill that baby. They erase the record itself. As if they were never even born.
Because to vampires, a human who isn’t a slave can’t even exist.”
Ruslan looked at Sarka with a rigidly stiff face for a moment. Sarka was facing Ruslan with a dry gaze.
As if dealing with a foolish dog who couldn’t understand simple facts, Sarka asked slowly in a voice tinged with fatigue.
“In a world where lives whose existence is erased from birth and those that aren’t are predetermined, what meaning does ‘fairness’ have?”
“…….”
Ruslan felt his throat grow hot. Sarka’s gaze held contempt for a stupid dog jumping into a game it could only lose.
When Ruslan fell silent, Sarka let out a light breath. With a fed-up expression frowning, Sarka seemed to have grown tired of mongrel training too.
Looking at the birds flying outside the window with a tired expression, Sarka concluded indifferently.
“It’s a game where you can’t obtain what you want from the beginning.
Humans and vampires were born unable to become <friends> from birth. That’s this game’s rule.”
His green eyes were calm.
Looking straight into those moss-like eyes where no emotion could be felt, Ruslan clenched his fists so hard the flesh of his palms peeled.
Between Ruslan’s lips clenched in fury, a suppressed voice slowly leaked out. As if emotions crushed and accumulated over 8 years were finally slowly rising to the surface.
“……Having existence erased from birth is the same in my homeland too.”
Sarka slowly turned his head to look at Ruslan. As if blankly observing a dog that still had strength left to bark.
Ruslan heaved his shoulders once to suppress his increasingly rough breathing, and slowly pushed out words in a voice that sank damply.
The heavily suppressed voice leaked out slowly, low and hoarse.
“In my homeland Frükan, when a child who inherited vampire blood is born, the parents hurry to kill that child. Because if it’s discovered that vampire blood is mixed in, that family will be exterminated.
As you said, they erase that child’s existence itself. As if they were never even born.”
Ruslan felt emotions that had been boiling in his chest gradually rise through his throat like lava.
Clenching his fists that began trembling, suppressing his quickening breath, Ruslan glared straight into Sarka’s green eyes.
Ruslan’s navy blue eyes flashed with dark blue light. A voice crushed with tangled anger and belief was ground through his teeth and burst out. Like cheese scraps being pushed out through tightly pressed cloth.
“I……think that’s wrong. I think that’s not fair!”
Ruslan felt his gradually growing voice suddenly tremble. Even feeling the sensation of his skin peeling stingingly, Ruslan clenched his fist like clawing.
His breath quickened. Ruslan trembled all over and laboriously whispered word by word.
“People……should be judged by what they <chose>, not by how they <were born>.”
His throat was hot enough for breathing to be painful. His voice was now heavy like a ball made of lead from the weight of emotions suppressed too long.
Ruslan felt Kanya’s face tearing through his chest and filling his entire body tightly. Kanya who was always good. Kanya who didn’t want anyone to be hurt. Kanya who was born with power yet wanted to use that power to protect other people.
The bizarre scream of Kanya losing her tongue as she burned in the fire rang in his ears like tinnitus. Those smells from her grotesquely distorted, blood-covered face burning still seemed to cling under his nose.
His throat narrowed. His chest heaved as if to vomit and below his eyes was hot.
Ruslan gritted his molars hard enough to make a crunching sound, and screamed with all his might as if throwing all his body’s strength into it.
“……No one should die just because they <were born that way>!!”
It was close to a shriek. Rising violently enough to scratch his throat, amazing it didn’t show blood.
Ruslan felt his throat convulsing painfully as if it had vomited a tangible object. His bloodshot eyes quickly dampened and gleamed.
Emotions that had been burning from below were now churning uncontrollably. Emotions suppressed for 8 years seemed about to tear through all his body’s blood vessels, travel through them, and finally burst through his skin to the outside.
Ruslan glared at Sarka’s expressionless face, hissing like a volcano about to explode.
However, Sarka’s face blankly looking at such a Ruslan was chilly and calm like a glacier.
Sarka blinked once.
As if flowing the vast Arctic sea over an active volcano, Sarka declared indifferently.
“……No one will respect your thoughts. Because you don’t have the power to do so.”
“……!!”
At that miserable and harsh coldness, Ruslan felt the emotions raging inside his body all burst at once.
Anger as hot as lava engulfed his entire body. It was insufficient to even explain it as anger.
The sparks that had accumulated in his small body from the moment Kanya burned before his eyes, the moment Ruslan’s daily life shattered and all hope and joy declared they would never return and scattered into pieces, seemed to have now become flames.
Ruslan trembled with rage fierce enough to burn all his bones. He felt his arms, legs, and even chest trembling and his entire body vibrating. It seemed the lid had opened.
Nothing was controlled anymore. Ruslan took a deep breath as if putting wind into that fire, full of spite. The moment Ruslan was about to spew out a cry of insane rage with desperate force,
Snap.
As if a large hand had gripped it tightly, Ruslan’s mouth stuck shut.
“……!!”
