On the fourth day, Sarka began to run a fever.
Breakfast time. The moment Ruslan, who had followed Baigarten up to the room, opened the door, he felt something was wrong.
From the bedroom side, violent coughing sounds kept bursting out without cease. They had continued for so long that they were beginning to crack and tear.
Baigarten’s expression stiffened. He quickly crossed the living room and opened the bedroom door.
Because of the IV, the bed curtains were slightly open, and through the gap, Sarka’s profile could be seen, drenched in cold sweat and panting. A tube was inserted in his nose, which was swollen red from the fever.
The moment the door opened, Sarka turned his head sideways. It seemed he was trying not to show his face. The coughing sound was forcibly swallowed through clenched teeth.
However, he couldn’t hide his body jolting from the suppressed coughing. When he tried to block it, the coughing became even rougher, making his chest and shoulders jump as if convulsing.
“……Wait outside.”
Baigarten gave Ruslan a low command and closed the bedroom door.
Ruslan stood frozen in the living room, listening to the painful coughing sounds that kept bursting out from inside the bedroom.
Sarka seemed to be trying desperately to hold back the coughing somehow, but it only turned into a strange groan.
After a moment, Baigarten came out of the room and closed the door. He turned Ruslan around with a stern expression and grimaced.
“The fever is severe. I’m going to bring the principal, so you go straight to class. Watch what you say.”
Ruslan looked at Sarka’s room where coughing was bursting out with a helpless face.
Baigarten sent Ruslan out with a stern gaze. Ruslan took steps that could hardly bear to leave.
During class, Ruslan felt his hand taking notes kept trembling.
Sarka’s condition became increasingly serious.
By evening, Sarka no longer had the strength left to turn his head even when the door opened.
He just lay there like a corpse, desperately trying to breathe.
From Sarka’s throat now came something like a flute sound, and scratch marks from his fingernails were drawn over it, unable to bear the pain. Sarka’s breathing was now becoming closer to ‘hik-hik’ or ‘kuk-kuk’ rather than ‘heok-heok.’
Baigarten said that after consulting with the principal, if Sarka’s airway didn’t recover by tomorrow, they planned to use something called a ventilator on Sarka.
At the explanation that it was a vampire invention that pushed a tube into the airway to inject air all the way to the lungs, Ruslan asked dumbly.
“They push a tube… into the airway? ……Doesn’t it hurt?”
To Ruslan, who recalled how agonizing it was when he accidentally swallowed water wrong, Baigarten explained with a complicated expression.
“……It’s better than dying.”
Ruslan turned deathly pale. Baigarten added dryly.
“The airway keeps swelling from the fever. If we leave it as is, he might die.”
Ruslan, who had been gaping, asked in a trembling voice.
“Just, just…… if you remove the controller…… then it would……”
“……This is <corporal punishment> directly decided by Sarka’s father. We don’t have the authority to stop it without the Count’s consent. That ventilator was originally sent directly by Sarka’s father too.”
Baigarten had a complicated expression.
His face was now filled with clear skepticism, doubt, regret, and self-reproach.
The tube inserted in Sarka’s nose and the tube they were going to push into his airway tomorrow both outwardly had the appearance of medical equipment treating a patient, but the purpose of those tools was not treatment.
They were only devices to help Sarka taste pain more vividly for a longer time.
Ruslan shook his head violently. Ruslan’s voice, clenching his teeth, became rough.
“This isn’t <corporal punishment>. This…… is <torture>.”
“……I think so too. That’s why I called the Count yesterday, to try not to let it come this far if possible.”
Baigarten answered in a dry voice.
In Baigarten’s tone speaking about the Count, instead of the trust or respect felt before, something like strange suspicion was embedded.
Ruslan felt fear now, recalling Sarka’s face turning deathly pale from pain. Ruslan asked in a trembling voice.
“Why is the Count doing this much? His own son…… is he really trying to kill him……”
“……I don’t think he intends to kill him.”
Baigarten answered quietly, but soon added hazily.
“……He intends to inflict pain until he thinks he might die.”
“Why, why……”
When Ruslan asked in a trembling voice, Baigarten grimaced.
“……If Sarka doesn’t change, now…… there’s no choice but to suppress him by force.”
“What?”
Ruslan’s eyes widened as he froze.
Baigarten looked at the air with a troubled face, his eyes lost in thought.
He was silent for a long while, then slowly opened his mouth. A low voice leaked out hazily.
“For two and a half years, the Count has been watching Sarka and…… must have realized that Sarka absolutely cannot give up his mother and the ideology she taught.
That no matter what he does, his son won’t change……”
Ruslan looked at Baigarten helplessly.
That Sarka wouldn’t change—even Ruslan could tell that now. Ruslan was now accepting that no method could change that glacier-like boy. However……
Baigarten spoke in a low tone.
“But if Sarka can’t give up his mother’s ideology…… he can’t be accepted into the <Coexistence Faction> family.
Either kill Sarka, or…… crush him by force and make him submit through fear…… that’s the only way, he must have thought.”
Ruslan’s gaze wavered.
Baigarten’s eyes were dark and heavy.
Baigarten slowly turned his head to look at Ruslan. Looking at the trembling dark blue eyes, Baigarten explained in a dry tone.
“Even though we made a treaty…… we know too, Ruslan.
That vampires are stronger than humans, and are beasts that could threaten us at any time if they changed their minds.”
“……!”
Ruslan’s eyes widened as his body stiffened.
In Baigarten’s voice was the peculiar calmness and dryness of someone acknowledging reality.
He narrowed his eyes and looked at the air, speaking slowly.
“We try to join hands with vampires who chose coexistence, to become friends. We try to help each other and respect each other as equals. This school has taught and trained young children in that.
But…… not all vampires choose coexistence.
It has to be that way. Because we’ve been killing each other for hundreds of years.”
“……”
Ruslan swallowed dryly.
Baigarten lowered his head. His low voice fell downward with the cool weight of reality.
“For vampires who hate humans and try to kill them…… we have no choice but to show that humans have greater power.
<Angel’s Fangs.> ……Without that flower, our coexistence would have been impossible from the start. It’s a weapon that steals vampires’ power and forcibly makes them equal to humans.”
Ruslan’s eyes trembled.
Ruslan suddenly remembered the words he had shouted in anger at Sarka, who calmly said that vampires and humans weren’t equal, that they couldn’t be friends.
To Ruslan who raged that in front of Angel’s Fangs flowers, vampires were no different from humans and became more powerless, Sarka had said this.
[Now you’re threatening me.]
Ruslan felt his heart sink.
Suddenly, he recalled the first conversation he’d had with Sarka in the archives room.
To Ruslan, who wanted to be friends with the surviving vampire, Sarka had asked as if testing him.
[……Can you trust a vampire?
Even if they’re smiling pretending to be your friend today, you never know when they might slash your throat and drink your blood?]
To those words, what did I answer?
[……If I don’t trust them, I’d have to kill them.]
Ruslan felt himself falling into a deep pit.
He knew. Ruslan also knew that fact. That vampires who refused coexistence had to be killed. That vampires who refused to be friends were beasts too dangerous to humans.
If he didn’t want to kill that beast……
[Everyone has moments of weakness. Situations arise that they can’t overcome without someone else’s help.
I think…… we could help each other.]
To those words, Sarka hadn’t answered. He had only asked.
[To become friends with me, are you hoping I’ll fall into danger?]
Ruslan knew that too. The only way Ruslan could become friends with a vampire was to extend his hand saying he’d help a vampire in danger of dying because of human weapons.
In the end, the <friend> Ruslan proposed was……
Nothing but enticing a wolf that wanted to live, saying I’ll protect you from other hunters, so don’t bite me and
become my dog alone……
Ruslan felt a devastating feeling.
The conversations he’d had one day with an irritated Sarka circled in his head.
[<Friends> are only established in equal relationships.]
[Do you think <equality> is determined by the presence or absence of power?]
[Then, what determines it? <A generous and magnanimous heart>?]
A generous and magnanimous heart is what a stronger person shows to someone weaker than themselves.
Ruslan realized he had unconsciously been treating Sarka that way.
[I don’t want to kill you. There’s so much we could do together if you’re alive.]
[I’ll protect you in any situation.]
I…… knew.
That I could kill Sarka.
That if I leaked the secret, his entire clan would be massacred.
That before Angel’s Fangs, he becomes more powerless than me.
So, with a generous and magnanimous heart……
Instead of killing you, I’ll let you live and protect you……
So I demanded you become my <friend>.
It felt like all the blood vessels in his body were melting stickily. Sarka’s voice full of doubt spun round and round in his ears.
[No matter how I think about it, I can’t call something like that <friends>.]
[Is a wolf that didn’t refuse the collar humans put on because it wants to live, a human’s <friend>?]
[In my eyes, it’s just a well-trained <dog>.]
Ruslan felt his whole body collapsing.
Sarka had seen Ruslan clearly from the beginning.
Sarka had even taught Ruslan step by step.
He persistently explained, showed, and gave him chances to understand.
Until Ruslan understood, he waited like waiting for a foolish dog, like waiting for a slow-learning child.
Until that arrogant human admitted his thinking was wrong, without even erasing his memory.
That boy had been saying it all along.
That in a relationship where one side crushes the other with power, something like <equal friends> doesn’t exist.
Ruslan felt choked by his own arrogance. He felt his flesh being cut away by his own stupidity and ignorance.
What seeped out in Sarka’s voice full of wariness as he weakened like a beast with bound limbs was fear.
Sarka, desperately trying not to show weakness, trying not to be caught becoming weak……
Was afraid of Ruslan and Baigarten.
Because he knew he could be trampled.
Because he hadn’t forgotten that these two humans also clearly knew he was an existence that could be trampled.
The history of a species massacred the moment they lost their power.
[In the end, the inferior species fears and hates the superior species, and the superior species only tramples and despises the inferior species.]
“……”
Ruslan couldn’t say anything, like someone whose limbs had been cut off and mouth blocked.
Baigarten explained dryly.
“The reason the <Pureblood Faction> doesn’t break the treaty while hating humans is because humans have <power>.
Therefore, they dream of the day when they’ll weaken human power and strengthen vampire power to revive the ancient vampire empire again.
The <Coexistence Faction>, which refuses further war, has joined hands with humans to keep the peace between the two species and keep the Pureblood Faction in check.
The Pureblood Faction despises the Coexistence Faction as <human dogs>, and the Coexistence Faction loathes the Pureblood Faction as <dangerous elements> trying to break the peace.
But in the end…… the reason factions divided among vampires was also because humans had <power>.”
Baigarten turned to Ruslan and whispered ominously.
“The poison spreading through Sarka’s veins right now. The weapon the true god gave to humans, <Angel’s Fangs>.”
“……”
Ruslan felt his hands trembling. Even though he was breathing, it didn’t feel like air was entering his chest.
Baigarten spoke quietly in a voice that had sunk darkly.
“The Count, who is <Coexistence Faction>, is teaching his son, who is <Pureblood Faction>…… that vampires who refuse coexistence will ultimately be pierced by those fangs and killed. ……Whether he should teach it in such a way, honestly I’m not sure either……”
Baigarten concluded dryly with bitter eyes.
“It is the most certain…… way to make him realize, though.”
