After the vampire trial ended and the hunters left the village, Ruslan was half out of his mind.
Once the villagers escaped from the shock, they gradually began accepting reality and whispered that the divine revelation claiming vampires were extinct had been a lie.
The priest dug through commentaries and records from the Grand Temple to explain that the revelation from 200 years ago had come down while “Imperial priests” gathered to pray for “the Empire’s peace,” and therefore the “exterminated vampires” meant “vampires of the Empire.”
He said that if believers in Frükan also diligently served the true god, when the time came, a divine revelation would come down informing them that “vampires have been exterminated.”
However, no one paid attention to the priest’s words anymore.
They were busy gathering every Sunday to whisper about how eccentric Kanya had been, how creepy the things she occasionally did were.
The sheriff’s fall from his horse while drunk three years ago, the vigilante captain’s old goat dying of disease—everything had somehow become Kanya’s fault.
Her ability to mysteriously cure any illness, her kind personality toward children—these were now the chilling deceptions of a vampire.
Eventually, there were even people clamoring that the great famine from 20 years ago and the crops getting diseased were all the schemes of a wicked vampire.
The children quickly learned the adults’ attitudes.
Kanya was now a cunning demon, a hideous witch hag. All the bad things that happened in the village were Kanya’s fault, and Kanya was a creepy man-eating monster who set her eyes ablaze wanting to devour young children.
No one tried to approach within a 1-meter radius of Ruslan. The area where Ruslan sat emptied of children who slipped away as if there were filthy germs or a foul smell.
Viktor wouldn’t even stay in the same room as Ruslan. When their eyes accidentally met across the road, he trembled all over, then whipped around and ran back in the direction he’d come from.
Viktor’s mouth still bore vivid scars, and Viktor’s parents wore the exact same expression whenever they saw Ruslan—that they’d like to tear him apart just the same.
The female student who always smiled shyly when she made eye contact with Ruslan one day burst into tears in front of all the classmates, saying Ruslan was staring at her, and ran out of the classroom never to return.
The next day, the female student’s mother came with a face white with rage, slapped Ruslan across the face, and screamed that if he looked at her daughter one more time, she’d tell the priest.
The priest seemed exhausted just from bringing the completely dazed Ruslan back to the temple on the day Kanya was burned.
After that day, donations to the temple completely dried up, and funding for the temple orphanage was cut in half.
Instead of diligently attending Sunday mass as before, residents went around seeking all sorts of superstitious rumors and spells.
People gathered at the tavern and clamored that Imperial priests were all liars, and the divine revelation was something the Imperial Emperor made up on his own to drive out the troublesome hunters and strengthen national power.
Men with menacing eyes stared at the priest, insisting they should tear down the temple and rebuild an Old Church shrine.
The priest seemed to think that if he offended the residents wrongly, in the worst case he could even lose his own life.
He might be able to consider his own martyrdom as one who had resolved to dedicate his life to missionary work, but the moment the priest died or left this village, all the orphans in the temple orphanage filled by the great famine would starve to death.
The priest compromised.
He humored the villagers’ moods and turned a blind eye to superstitions about vampires.
The priest repeatedly urged Ruslan not to get on the villagers’ bad side, at least until a new shelter for the temple orphans was decided.
That “no matter what happens, I can no longer take your side anymore, so you must conduct yourself well on your own.”
That meant he must not make eye contact with anyone, must not harden his expression no matter what anyone said to him, must not show any sign of displeasure, let alone resistance, even to the violence of children who shoved his shoulders, spat on him, kicked him, and threw stones at him.
Everyone despised Ruslan. They spat, calling him vampire spawn, bloodsucker’s child. They ground their teeth saying that because of his grandmother, Viktor got a scar that would remain on his face for life, and the villagers had to offer a large sum to the hunters as a gratitude payment.
When the cremation ceremony ended, the young hunter with tattoos on both cheeks had looked around at the villagers with a triumphant expression, grinning and saying that after so long, wouldn’t it be alright to receive “just compensation.”
The older hunter told the hunters to lower their aimed gun muzzles in a dignified tone and said “just put in what you’re willing to give,” but no one was bold enough to hand pocket change to people who had just gouged out an old woman’s eyes and burned her alive.
Everyone put their small savings, gold rings, and silver tableware into the hat the hunters held out with haggard expressions.
Though no one said it, for a poor rural village, it was a major blow.
And that turned into hatred toward the boy that Kanya, that wicked vampire, that nasty monster, had cherished.
The priest tolerated the village men who yelled at Ruslan and found fault, the orphanage children who constantly stole Ruslan’s bread, and the women who made the sign of the cross and rubbed salt on their foreheads according to superstition whenever they saw Ruslan.
When village men tied Ruslan below the mossy mountain and whipped him all night long saying they needed to fix his impudent attitude, when they stubbornly insisted that a wild boar that came down last night ruining the fields was Ruslan’s fault and urged him to be locked in solitary confinement—the priest listened to them.
Just preserving Ruslan’s life from people who insisted that the vampire’s child should have been burned then and there, that it turned out this way because the priest needlessly intervened to save him, that they should kill him even now—even that alone was too much for the priest to handle.
In the end, all Ruslan could do was always crouch in the most secluded spots possible, bow his head, keep his gaze down, and remain silent as if he didn’t exist. Hoping not to be discovered by anyone.
The broken bathroom no one came to, the barn too cold to use much, hiding in the corner of the basement where rats roamed giving off a foul smell—Ruslan immersed himself in books like a madman.
From the origins of vampires to the fall of the vampire empire and the hunters’ long, long war—he gathered and read every book he could get his hands on indiscriminately.
As long as the word vampire appeared, he didn’t discriminate against any book. Whether truth or lies, superstition or sophistry, he didn’t care. Ruslan desperately scraped together information about vampires like a starving person.
Among them, a passage from one book captured Ruslan’s gaze.
<…The places that received suspicion the longest that surviving vampires might be hiding were the highland mountains of southern Frükan and the Miral Mountains of the eastern Empire.
Both regions were rugged mountain terrain and habitats of wild beasts, not easily permitting human conquest.
Especially in the Miral Mountains of the eastern Empire, underground passages and labyrinths designed by ancient vampires remained, causing many difficulties in searching, so they had long been pointed to as vampire habitats by many people.
However, the great hunters finally conquered both regions and confirmed that not a single vampire remained.
Only then did humans accept the extinction of vampires…>
Ruslan read those sentences again and again.
He repeated them every night, memorizing them as if they were scripture, and thought of those passages even while sleeping.
In southern Frükan, a surviving vampire had been hiding.
Then, there might also be one in the eastern Empire.
A living vampire, not yet discovered.
Ruslan thought of that vampire every night. In his dreams, that vampire whose face he couldn’t even know screamed as their eyes were gouged out and struggled as they burned in flames.
Whenever he saw that vampire’s red eyes crying out in Kanya’s voice, Ruslan woke up shuddering.
His whole body trembled violently. Ruslan clenched his teeth, curled up on the dirtiest and most worn-out bed in the orphanage, pulling the blanket over himself so no one could hear.
The sentence he repeated dozens, hundreds, thousands of times dug into Ruslan’s heart like an engraving, squeezing it.
Kanya did nothing wrong.
His whole body trembled violently whenever he recalled that fact. Ruslan chewed his lips, which had scabs from being bitten too often, until he felt no sensation at all, continuously repeating in his head.
Kanya did nothing wrong.
“…I want to go to the Empire.”
In the winter of his eighth year, clutching the brochure for Esteban School’s scholarship program sent to the temple, Ruslan spoke in a hoarse voice.
Even if the village orphans luckily found other shelters or grew old enough to find work, there was no place that would accept Ruslan.
So this was the only way for Ruslan to escape this village.
Thirty scholarship students selected annually through recommendations from New Church missionaries at the Empire’s Esteban School. Getting his name on that list.
Kanya had always sent Ruslan to school without fail. The teachers praised Ruslan for being cleverer than his peers and learning quickly, and his grades were good. He thought it wasn’t an impossible task.
The priest silently looked at Ruslan, then warned in a low voice.
“…It won’t be easy.”
Ruslan immersed himself in studying like a madman. He memorized entire textbooks and about half of the dictionary. The Imperial language dictionary and grammar books became so tattered that pages fell out as loose sheets.
He could count on his hands the days he lay in bed for more than two hours. In the coldest corner of the crumbling old library, with his nose buried in books until all his toes curled up, whenever his back ached, Ruslan kept thinking of Kanya.
Kanya who loved children. The old woman who had lived her whole life unmarried and alone, growing old, afraid that a child inheriting her bloodline might be born, but who cherished all the village children like grandchildren.
The affectionate vampire who couldn’t bear to kill a baby when even the priest said they could no longer accept more orphans and should just bury it with its parents, and raised it like her own child.
The kind vampire who, when the village dog acted vicious toward children, hypnotized the dog to make it like children.
The thoughtful vampire who sent Ruslan to school without fail, saying that when I die of old age, you’ll have to fend for yourself so you need to learn how to properly use your smart head—while other parents pulled children who’d gone to school back home to cut cattle fodder.
Six hundred years ago, vampires enslaved all humans and cruelly abused them, but Kanya had nothing to do with those vampires.
Kanya was simply born with supernatural powers. And she used those supernatural powers to protect children and heal sick people.
She never hurt anyone. Kanya did nothing wrong.
And the hunters killed Kanya.
Ruslan studied ruthlessly until he got nosebleeds to the point of tedium, calluses formed on his buttocks, and under his fingernails turned completely black with ink and graphite.
In the winter of his fourteenth year, Ruslan finally received the acceptance letter and silently shoved his few possessions into an old bag.
The priest borrowed a cart with difficulty and took Ruslan to the train station. After selling several chickens raised at the temple and even selling off the last remaining silver relics, the priest placed the barely obtained ticket to the Empire in Ruslan’s hands and whispered in a low voice.
“…Never come back.”
Ruslan bowed deeply in greeting.
The train departed. The face of the priest, who had aged astonishingly over seven years, receded beyond the window and disappeared.
Thus Ruslan left Frükan, his cold and barren homeland, forever.
In the massive library of the Empire’s Esteban School, Ruslan gathered books about vampires just as he always had back home.
If he graduated from school with good grades through the scholarship program, he could obtain Imperial citizenship. Then he could freely travel throughout the entire Empire.
So he had to gather as much information as possible while attending school. Ruslan planned to search every inch of the Miral Mountains looking for vampires as soon as he graduated.
I’ll find a vampire by any means necessary.
A living vampire.
And,
And…
Ruslan, who had been circling the rare book storage room, unknowingly sank down at the suffocating feeling.
A year and a half since coming to the Empire.
Not only had he not graduated yet, he hadn’t even finished reading all the books in the library, when suddenly one appeared.
The boy on the fourth floor. Who controlled the dog like Kanya did.
The vampire who saved me.
Ruslan unknowingly clutched his face and burst into tears. The past sixteen years seemed to explode in his chest.
There was one.
There really was one.
They were alive.
Not only was that vampire still surviving, they had even helped Ruslan.
When just breathing made him so painfully grateful he wanted to prostrate and bow down in worship, they discovered Ruslan and protected him.
Without knowing what Ruslan was thinking, why he came to the Empire.
Without knowing how much I wanted to find you.
When I haven’t done anything for you yet.
When I don’t even know your face.
When I don’t know anything—where you were born, how you grew up, how you’re living.
Ruslan walked back to the window, crying continuously. Wiping his eyes roughly with the back of his hand, Ruslan tried desperately to find even one piece of information about that boy.
He was wearing a uniform, so he was a student.
Not an upperclassman. From third year onward, they’d be in class at this time.
Probably not a freshman either. Freshmen don’t have permission to enter the auxiliary library.
Then he was a second year like Ruslan. Sixteen years old. A classmate.
The faces of his classmates jumbled chaotically through his mind, but he couldn’t guess anyone.
In the first place, Ruslan had never even thought about getting close to the students at this school, so he’d never paid attention to anyone. He only remembered Bruce’s gang to the extent that they constantly picked fights with him.
With a dejected expression, Ruslan gripped the window frame and banged his head against the windowsill.
Who on earth is it? He was definitely here.
Here, standing where I’m standing. Gripping this window frame and looking at me.
Into Ruslan’s vision as he thought he wanted to grab someone by the collar and ask who they were, something like a thin thread suddenly entered.
Ruslan unknowingly stopped breathing and stared at it with his mouth tightly shut.
In the corner of the window frame, a single thin strand of hair caught in the groove was shining silver in the sunlight.
Ruslan reached out almost semi-consciously and picked up that thin strand of hair.
It wasn’t old. If it had been yesterday, it would have gotten caught and crumpled in the window frame when the librarians opened and closed the window in the morning. If it were morning, it would have been blown by the wind and fallen outside or inside.
On the fourth floor of the Fifth Auxiliary Library where no one came, the only being who could have dropped a hair on this window frame was that boy.
Ruslan held that strand of hair and stared at it intently like someone who’d discovered a jewel.
It was neither short nor long. An appropriate length that Imperial nobles could always neatly comb back, as they always did.
The softly waving, curling hair was neither golden nor ashen. It was vivid silver hair that gleamed smoothly like premium silver thread.
Ruslan’s lips parted slightly.
A sparkling light seeped into his eyes where tears hadn’t dried.
Among his classmates, Ruslan knew exactly one person with hair like this.
Even Ruslan, who confused the names of students in the same class, remembered this child clearly since freshman year.
Because he was an overwhelmingly beautiful boy, memorable enough to remain in one’s mind the moment you saw him.
