On the fifth day, Sarka began vomiting again.
He gagged each time food was pushed in through the tube inserted in his nose, and finally vomited it up so that gastric acid flowed down his nose and mouth.
All the blood vessels around his eyes had burst, so the whites were no longer white enough to be called whites—they were entirely red. His fever was blazing and Sarka kept losing consciousness then barely recovering, over and over. His breathing sounds grew increasingly thin.
He could no longer wake even when Baigarten called, and even when he did wake, he couldn’t meet his gaze.
Focus loosened in his green pupils, and his limbs began to waste away. Greenish bruises formed on the arm with the needle stuck in it, then turned blackish.
Anyone could see Sarka was gradually dying.
Watching that sight, Ruslan felt like he was slowly killing Sarka by pressing down on his throat with his own hands.
Pressing down and frightening that beautiful boy until he submitted, while whispering in the struggling boy’s ear.
Submit to me and I’ll let you live.
It was terrible.
Ruslan was disgusted with himself.
Like Sarka, Ruslan couldn’t swallow food either.
He felt like scooping out his entire insides.
Eventually, when breathing couldn’t be recovered even into the afternoon, a tube was pushed into Sarka’s airway.
Ruslan didn’t see it, but Baigarten’s explanation upon returning with an utterly exhausted face was miserable.
He said that while the headmaster forcibly pushed the tube into Sarka’s swollen airway, Baigarten had to hold down Sarka’s limbs as he writhed in pain.
Ruslan looked down at the nail marks Sarka had left on the backs of Baigarten’s hands. They seemed like traces of clutching unconsciously from unbearable pain rather than resistance.
Following Ruslan’s gaze to look down at his own hands, Baigarten’s eyes darkened.
“……His eyes rolled back. Blood vessels all over his body burst……and bruised……. He lost consciousness in the middle……so I thought it was rather fortunate.”
Baigarten, who muttered gloomily, seemed to find that scene hard to forget.
Ruslan asked while trembling.
“Today is the fifth day and if it’s this bad……won’t he really die if five more days pass? The 14 days of possible survival is just an average. There could be……vampires who can’t endure that much.”
Baigarten spoke with a dark face.
“We also started thinking that might be possible, so we told the Count. The Count said he would stop the discipline immediately if only Sarka admitted his wrongdoing.
……Both the headmaster and I tried to persuade Sarka to do so, but……”
Baigarten’s voice sank hazily.
Ruslan sat in a daze, then asked tearfully.
“Why is Sarka……enduring to this extent……. Sarka also……accepted the condition to become <Coexistence Faction>, didn’t he?
Sarka also……didn’t want to die. Because he wanted to live, he fled to his father’s family that he considered <human dogs>, and tried to abandon his mother’s ideology and become Coexistence Faction……”
“……He must have tried.”
Baigarten answered in a dry voice.
He lowered his gaze with a complicated expression and spoke quietly.
“Even at this school, Sarka tried for a year and a half. Anyway, he acted like a model student pretending to adapt among humans as his father ordered, and even while scratching at my insides, he didn’t cross the line.
Because Sarka must have wanted to live too……. He tried his best to at least outwardly pretend to obey his father’s orders, pretend to <coexist> with humans.
Until he lost his reason……because of my younger brother.”
Ruslan exhaled a choked breath.
Baigarten’s face was complex. He seemed to have difficulty organizing his thoughts with self-blame, anger, doubt, and skepticism all mixed together.
As if spitting out a suddenly emerging fact, Baigarten muttered.
“When Sarka’s mother passed away like that……. Sarka was fourteen years old.”
Ruslan stopped breathing and looked at Baigarten.
He looked into space with a face submerged in doubt and spoke slowly.
“When a fourteen-year-old child loses his mother like that……. No matter how much his mother did things deserving criticism, could he understand it?
Could he abandon everything his mother taught him……and become <friends> with the race that killed his mother?”
Ruslan’s eyes shook. His breath completely blocked, and his entire body seemed to harden like a stone.
Hazy pain arose on Baigarten’s face. He contorted his eyes and muttered quietly.
“Alberich……is fourteen years old this year.”
Ruslan involuntarily swallowed.
Baigarten looked into space with a dark face and asked in a turbid voice.
“If I died now and it was revealed I was a traitor of the wicked Empire……. Would that child hate me and deny everything I taught him?”
“……”
Ruslan opened his mouth without a breath sound but couldn’t answer.
The face of the bright boy who had looked up at his brother with sparkling eyes flickered before his eyes.
Baigarten contorted his face and faintly shook his head.
“……I don’t think……that child could do that.”
“……”
Ruslan felt his chest completely filling up.
Baigarten exhaled a faint breath with a dark expression.
He looked into space and spoke quietly.
“I think this is……not a problem of <ideology>. It’s a problem of <emotion>.
Actually, in vampire society, <Pureblood Faction> and <Coexistence Faction> are similar concepts to human politics dividing into left and right wings. Though they’re opposing ideologies, they don’t deny the necessity of the opposite side.
In the end, it’s just a difference in chosen methods—both ideologies aren’t different in that they wish for vampires’ ‘survival and prosperity.'”
Ruslan stared blankly at Baigarten.
Baigarten, who had always held back words in front of Ruslan and tried to disclose only minimal information, now seemed to feel some kind of doubt more strongly than responsibility for maintaining secrecy.
He explained quietly in a tone like speaking to himself.
“Sarka’s father was famous in vampire society as ‘the most stubborn Coexistence Faction.’ Sarka’s mother was notorious among humans as ‘the most extreme Pureblood Faction.’
But……not all vampires insist on only one party like those two.
Just as humans support different parties according to economic and social situations, many vampires move fluidly between Coexistence Faction and Pureblood Faction according to political situations or family interests.
Sometimes they marry each other, and sometimes they shift to ideologies opposite to their birth family.
Sarka also……must have tried to do that. Even if it meant abandoning his birth family’s ideology and defecting……he tried to survive.”
“……”
Baigarten’s voice lowered further. He continued with eyes like swallowing bitter medicine.
“It’s just that denying his mother’s teachings……must have been too painful.
He absolutely cannot submit……to a father who completely denies and criticizes the ideology of his mother who died in his place.
Because to accept his father’s ideology, the screams of his mother who died at <human> hands……won’t be forgotten.”
“……”
Ruslan felt his chest sinking down to the deepest depths.
Baigarten exhaled a faint breath and contorted his brow. He muttered in a devastated voice.
“……I know what kind of person Sarka’s mother was.
That person was truly……a cunning and violent villain.
Honestly, from our human standpoint, she was one of the most vicious <Pureblood Faction> members, to the point where her elimination was fortunate.
She cunningly deceived Sarka’s father, who was a rare <Perfect Pureblood>, in order to bear a <Perfect Pureblood> bloodline son……and put him in terrible danger.
To Sarka’s father, she’s a woman no different from an enemy. But……”
Baigarten looked back at Ruslan with hazy eyes. He whispered in a hollow voice.
“What on earth would any of that matter to Sarka?
When she was blood kin he wanted to save even if it meant tearing his body and hacking apart his mind……”
“……”
Ruslan felt like his body was gradually submerging into the ocean depths, his entire body crushed by tremendous water pressure.
Baigarten lowered his gaze. His face was full of old resignation and fatigue.
Looking at the beast dying in the cage, the keeper whispered as if acknowledging facts he’d known from the beginning.
“From the start……we all attempted something impossible. All of us.”
That night, lying in the scholarship students’ dormitory, Ruslan just stared blankly at the ceiling.
All sorts of thoughts tangled together, confusing his mind. But now one thing seemed clear.
Sarka……wasn’t refusing to give up his ideology.
He couldn’t give it up.
Because……he loved his mother.
Ruslan felt like a huge hole had opened in his chest down to a bottomless pit. Ruslan knew Sarka could never give up.
Because……Ruslan had been the same.
When Kanya died. When everyone cursed Kanya and pointed fingers calling her an evil vampire, a wicked demon hag. Ruslan knew what he had been like.
Ruslan hated all the villagers.
He hated the hunters, and every night in dreams he tore apart the faces of hunters covered in tattoos. He wanted to kill the children who cursed Kanya. He wanted to crush all the men gathered in taverns gossiping about Kanya. He wanted to burn the ladies who made the sign of the cross every time they passed the pyre where Kanya died.
He sincerely wished all those humans would die. He wished they would suffer burning alive like Kanya did, and that even their corpses would be insulted.
Because……Kanya was Ruslan’s family.
Ruslan felt his hands trembling violently. Ruslan knew what he had wanted when he frantically gathered vampire books in the rural village of Frükan.
Ruslan had wanted to justify that hatred. He wanted to say that a world where vampires and humans must kill each other wasn’t right. He wanted to give reasons to that crazy murderous desire and anger he felt. He raged saying that somehow he should have saved Kanya, that the world that arbitrarily eliminated her without even giving her a chance was wrong, that his anger wasn’t wrong.
But in truth, the reasons didn’t matter at all. Equal intelligent life forms or whatever—such things actually didn’t matter. Ruslan would have been enraged at Kanya’s death even if Kanya had been the wicked demon the villagers spoke of.
Because Ruslan loved Kanya.
Ruslan gritted his teeth and cried while lying on the scholarship student bed. He trembled all over like returning to eight years old and sobbed while stifling his voice. His chest felt like it was burning.
Ruslan now understood what Sarka’s green pupils had been as they burned while glaring at Alberich.
They were Ruslan’s eyes.
Eight years ago, when the most precious person in the world burned away before his eyes.
His own eyes that had lost their soul.
