“You have arrived, young master.”
In the early evening, Sarka arrived at the Hütivras estate.
The expressions of the servants who greeted him were tense.
Sarka handed over his coat and cane with an expressionless face and asked.
“Father?”
“He is in his study. And, well……”
The butler, who had been answering respectfully, suddenly hesitated. When Sarka turned around, the butler added in a low voice.
“Madam and the second young master will be returning soon.”
Sarka, who had stopped moving, looked straight down at the butler. The butler immediately lowered his eyes.
Looking at the butler with a cold gaze, Sarka said in a low voice.
“I didn’t ask.”
“I apologize.”
The butler bowed his head immediately. Sarka looked down at her with a frowning gaze for a moment, then soon turned his head away.
When Sarka didn’t scold her further, the relieved butler asked carefully.
“What would you like to do about your meal…….”
“Bring it to my room.”
Having finished his brief command, Sarka walked with long strides. The servants who had split to either side bowed their heads.
Sarka climbed the stairs in silence.
“Young Master Sarka has arrived.”
At the careful report, after a moment, an answer came from beyond the study door.
“Come in.”
The servant opened the door and withdrew.
Sarka entered silently. Count Allend was filling out some documents on his desk.
Sarka silently crossed the room and stood before the desk.
“You’re here.”
Allend spoke without raising his head. Sarka stared down at his father in silence.
As the silence lengthened, Allend suddenly raised an eyebrow and stopped his movements.
When his gaze rose, Sarka, as if he had been waiting, finally opened his mouth calmly.
“……I apologize. I was thinking about whether I should bark or if I’m allowed to speak.”
Allend frowned. Meeting his father’s coldening eyes directly, Sarka continued to ask calmly.
“Should I go up to my room now and receive my ration? Or should I wait until you put a collar on me?”
Allend looked at his son silently, then sighed and put down his fountain pen.
A cold voice fell flatly.
“……Your manner of speech hasn’t changed.”
“Who would I have learned it from?”
At the monotone retort, Allend looked up at his son with an expression of utter exasperation.
Sarka silently met that gaze and remained quiet.
Looking at his son for a moment with an expression of suppressing something, Allend reluctantly changed the subject.
“……How is your body?”
“Unfortunately for you, Father, I’m well enough to walk around.”
At the smooth answer, Allend glared at his son and irritably hissed through his teeth.
“Can’t you say even one thing without being sarcastic?”
“…….”
Sarka maintained a knife-sharp silence.
Allend glared at his son with a disagreeable expression, as if he didn’t even want to speak.
Finally, Allend, who had turned his gaze away, exhaled as if trying to calm his emotions.
A stern voice flowed out rigidly.
“……This incident was stopped before completing the ten days due to Sara’s insistence. It was she, not I, who saved your life and who cares about you. I trust that even a Leogrante bloodline blinded by pure blood would have the decency to be grateful to the one who saved their life.”
Sarka blinked.
“How surprising. I thought you only trusted me when you were starving me like a dog.”
“I told you not to be sarcastic.”
“…….”
Sarka fell into knife-sharp silence again.
Allend bit his molars and glared at his son, then eventually picked up his fountain pen irritably.
Allend lowered his gaze back to the documents and commanded briefly.
“Go upstairs.”
“May you have peace.”
Sarka immediately gave his greeting and turned around without hesitation. Allend didn’t look back at his son leaving the room.
Leaving the study, Sarka coldly crossed the corridor. The servants in the places Sarka passed immediately stopped their movements and lowered their eyes, and the servants who were unknowingly about to pass this way sensed the atmosphere and immediately changed their route to the other side.
Everywhere the boy walked, an artificial quietness and tension flowed. When Sarka, who had passed through the corridor without making eye contact with anyone, arrived at the stairs.
“Sarka!”
At the urgent voice, Sarka’s movements stopped. Sarka’s gaze moved briefly.
Confirming the human woman hurrying up from below the stairs, Sarka gritted his teeth and immediately turned his head to the opposite side.
The woman who had climbed the stairs panted for a moment, catching her breath.
The woman with brown hair modestly put up and kind-looking eyes looked at Sarka, not knowing what to do.
<Sara Hütivras.>
His father’s human concubine.
Sarka had turned his head and rigidly stiffened his body as if her presence was invisible to him.
Sara looked at Sarka’s complexion anxiously, then asked carefully.
“……Are you……okay?”
“…….”
Sarka didn’t even pretend to hear. At the blatant disregard, Sara didn’t know what to do and said in a trembling voice.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know Allend would……go that far. As I said in the letter, I talked to him. This won’t happen again. I promise. I’m really……really sorry.”
“…….”
Sarka didn’t answer.
Looking at the boy who was completely ignoring her presence and not knowing what to do, Sara clutched the box she had brought and hesitated.
Looking down at the box wrapped in luxurious wrapping paper as if she didn’t know what to do with it, Sara carefully tried to place it in Sarka’s hand.
“This won’t make up for an apology, but……. This is something you used to……”
However, as soon as Sara’s hand approached, Sarka yanked his hand back as if having a seizure.
At the reaction as if touching a heated blade, Sara’s hand stopped.
Sarka clenched the hand Sara had tried to place something in mid-air, gritting his teeth and not even breathing.
Having barely suppressed something, Sarka soon turned his head sharply and looked down below the stairs.
Behind Sara, Sarka’s eyes met with the nine-year-old boy who had been hiding at the edge of the railing, watching them.
Sarka looked straight down at the small boy and commanded in a stern voice.
“Edmund. Your birth mother seems tired, so come and escort her away.”
Sarka’s half-brother, <Edmund Hütivras>’s face twisted.
Edmund glared at his half-brother who was ignoring his mother with an expression full of hostility.
When Sarka met his younger brother with a fierce gaze, Edmund eventually bit his lip.
Edmund, who had lowered his head, silently climbed the stairs and pulled his mother’s arm, whispering as if spitting out.
“……I told you not to talk to him, Mom.”
The child’s voice was tinged with anger and irritation.
Sara hesitated for a moment, looking at Sarka with a pitiful expression, but Sarka never made eye contact with Sara until the end.
At the stubborn rejection, Sara eventually sighed and turned her head.
While Sara was being led away by her son, Sarka didn’t look that way.
Strength entered the hand gripping the railing, turning it white and rigid.
Until his father’s human wife and that woman’s son disappeared from the corridor, Sarka gritted his teeth and didn’t move an inch.
The emotions boiling from deep below seemed to twist all his insides.
Two years ago.
The confrontation between the father who loathed and hated pure blood ideology and the son who rejected and despised coexistence ideology was fated from the start.
The ideological education that began disguised as discussion and persuasion soon turned into arguments and quarrels, and finally into emotional fights.
Before long, the two father and son realized that they extremely loathed each other.
The most stubborn <Coexistence Faction> and the most extreme <Pureblood Faction>.
When extremes met, like water and oil, it was an impossible combination to mix from the beginning.
At first, Sarka also tried his best.
<Survival> always required paying a high price. That was the rule Sarka had learned in the world he was born into.
In exchange for sparing his life, Sarka tried to abandon everything he had learned his entire life and keep his promise with his father.
Sometimes it felt like stripping away living flesh and reassembling all the bones in his body from the beginning, but even so, he thought it was proper to obey the family that granted him his <surname>.
However, Allend had no intention of trusting his son from the start.
Perhaps he had thought about trying. Just as Sarka had.
But both father and son only came to realize they were attempting the impossible.
The fear that Camilla’s son might deceive him like Camilla paralyzed Allend’s reason.
Every time he saw those same green eyes as the girl who had approached with a vulnerable appearance seeking trust, Allend returned to a spine-chilling nightmare.
He endlessly suspected and guarded against his son who bore a name meaning deception.
Whenever Sarka unconsciously uttered even the slightest behavior or words containing pure blood ideology, Allend fiercely cornered his son. He criticized and interrogated his son’s every action, and cruelly punished him under the pretext of discipline.
For a while, Sarka also tried to improve his relationship with his father by bowing and enduring such a father with obedience.
He believed it was poison he had no choice but to swallow in order to make amends for his mother’s karma.
Enduring humiliation and swallowing shame, Sarka pledged obedience and begged to be accepted as blood kin.
Even if it meant stripping out all the blood vessels in his body and refilling them, he tried to earn his father’s trust.
At some point, Sarka realized such efforts were useless.
Allend never wanted to trust Sarka from the beginning.
He never wanted to save Sarka from the start.
He had only reluctantly accepted him, unable to resist his human wife’s sympathy and persuasion, and to him, Sarka was not blood kin but a beast threatening his blood kin.
When Sarka realized that his father had no intention of even trusting him, that he was merely projecting his hatred for Camilla and trying to crush him only for control, Sarka began to rage.
Where the desperation for recognition disappeared, hatred took root, and rage developed into contempt.
When Sarka realized that the result of all that obedience would only end in endless suspicion, he finally broke that cycle.
Like bouncing back violently from the recoil of the pressure pushing down, fierce rebellion began.
Sarka firmly refused his father and all of his father’s ideology.
In the ruins where the awkward coexistence ideology he had struggled to forcibly accept was completely swept away, the original ruthless pure blood ideology returned.
When Sarka, who had recovered his arrogant and stubborn attitude, firmly declared he would not abandon his pride as a vampire, their confrontation reached its peak.
After a battle of wills like war, sensing that his son wouldn’t break easily, Allend finally made a cruel decision.
To completely isolate his son, who was full of pride as a vampire, from vampire society.
When Allend decided to send his son to <Esteban School>, the rage Sarka felt was almost close to murderous intent.
The quarrel that broke out between Sarka, who was enraged about how he dared impose such a ‘lowly responsibility’ on a <Complete Pureblood> legitimate son, and Allend was fierce.
Sarka couldn’t remember the context before and after those words very well. Both had lost their reason and were shouting, blaming each other, and at some point, Sarka went mad with rage.
Until then, he had forcibly used respectful language toward the human stepmother according to his father’s orders, but pointing at her, Sarka, in a fit of anger, called her a “<lowly human> who could only give you a <bastard>.”
That was the deciding blow.
The <Coexistence Faction> Hütivras acknowledged the existence of a ‘human concubine’ and referred to children obtained between them as <illegitimate children>.
However, the <Pureblood Faction>, who didn’t even acknowledge the existence of humans unless they were slaves, referred to children obtained with ‘humans’ as <bastards> in all cases.
The moment Sarka referred to his <wife> and <son> with the most <Pureblood Faction>-like designation, Allend’s patience also ended.
The pretense of a father-son relationship that had been faintly maintained between the two shattered to pieces starting with those words.
Before the words even finished, Allend roughly slapped his son’s cheek and shouted with killing intent.
“If you want to insult Sara, get out of my house!”
The dizzying pain and the taste of blood felt inside his cheek.
That was the beginning.
The complete opening of the box of hatred and violence.
Sarka’s fingertips turned cold whenever he thought of that day.
Father knows too. That I die if I’m kicked out of this house.
His aunt still wanted to kill Sarka. Almost everyone associated with Sarka had died or gone missing. If his mother hadn’t taken a cruel death in his place that day and sent him fleeing, Sarka would likely have been one of those missing people too.
<Death> was always before his eyes. Within reach with just one slip.
The screaming sounds his mother made as she died still rang loudly in his ears. The sensation of that moment when his mother entered his mind and seized control of his body, trying to make him strangle himself to death, was still vivid.
Fleeing the pursuing aunt’s servants through underground passages and mountain ranges, dozens of animals following behind died. Among the animals that died fighting for Sarka and the animals Sarka had to kill with his own hands and tear into their raw meat, he couldn’t tell which number was greater. Having no choice but to kill, eat, and discard them, Sarka succeeded in escaping to the Hütivras family with only two remaining.
If he was abandoned by his father here, there was no method left. He would be fated to die helplessly at his aunt’s hands. His aunt’s servants would track down Sarka, kill him cruelly, and tear him apart so that not even a trace would remain.
Not a single bone fragment of mine would remain, just processed as missing.
There was only one way for Sarka to survive.
Kneeling before the feet of the father who hated his mother and pledging betrayal.
Obtaining the name <Hütivras> even by relying on the sympathy sent by his father’s human concubine.
Promising to deny everything about the mother who died for him.
<Survival> obtained that way.
And his father declared he would mercilessly withdraw his son’s <survival> for a single word insulting that human woman.
A minor is the ‘property’ of the family that granted them their ‘surname’.
The <survival> Sarka was promised in exchange for adding dishonor to his mother’s death, Allend could freely extinguish at will whenever he wanted.
Because Sarka himself had returned his father’s <inheritance rights> and also handed over all rights regarding his own life and death.
This place was no longer the heart of the Pureblood Faction where Sarka was born and raised, the <honorable Leogrante>.
It was the home of the most extreme heretic among the <Coexistence Faction> Hütivras, Count Allend the <dog of humans>.
Allend was a man who had decided to abandon everything in vampire society for his human wife.
Not satisfied with treating his human wife and himself, a Complete Pureblood vampire, as <equal> beings, he threw all of vampire laws, etiquette, and honor into the gutter and chose to live a <human> life himself.
In this house, all rules of vampire society were ignored.
That accepting proof of infidelity legally made Camilla his <spouse>,
That Sarka, Camilla’s son, was his <legitimate son>,
That he was the only <Complete Pureblood> who inherited his father’s bloodline—none of it mattered at all.
To Allend, only that human woman and the half-blood child were <family>, and Sarka was the enemy’s spawn.
One he had no choice but to let into the house and tolerate because of his human wife’s sympathy.
If even now that human woman withdrew her sympathy for Sarka, his father would drive Sarka to death without a moment’s hesitation.
Sarka had no doubt that the man would watch his own son’s death coldly without his gaze even wavering, then have no regrets afterward.
That day, the fourteen-year-old Sarka whose cheek was struck and head turned didn’t recognize for a moment what had happened to him, experiencing violence for the first time in his life.
Hesitating at the unfamiliar pain, when Sarka inadvertently raised his head.
Sarka saw sincere killing intent in his father’s eyes.
When his human wife belatedly ran over and stopped him, only then did Allend, who regained his reason, avoided his son’s eyes and apologized that it was a slip of the tongue.
But both father and son knew that apology wasn’t sincere.
That if his human wife hadn’t stopped him, he hated his own son enough to want to kill him on the spot.
Whenever he recalled that day, Sarka felt his coldly frozen fingertips tremble.
His father was right. In this house, the only one who tried to keep Sarka alive, the only one who cared about Sarka’s well-being, was Sara Hütivras alone.
Only that human woman with whom not a drop of blood was mixed cherished Sarka’s life, while his blood kin father and half-brother regarded him as worse than a dog raised in the house.
In this house, Sarka was an unwelcome guest and a wild beast that might bite its master’s foot at any moment.
His insides boiled.
It was humiliating that his lifeline was held by that human woman alone.
Whenever he saw that woman’s face, Sarka felt his pride being torn to shreds.
Amidst the hatred and killing intent sent by his blood kin, all he could rely on was her ‘sympathy’.
That humiliating position—thinking of it made Sarka not even want to face her directly or exchange words with her.
He was afraid that he might unconsciously act servile, try to read her mood and please her.
If he faced such a self, Sarka would never forgive himself for that day.
Though his pride was already all crumbled, he didn’t want to fall further into the abyss.
When he thought there was nowhere lower to fall, as if mocking such a self, a deeper bottomless pit would open, and unimaginable new humiliations would cover his body like a tidal wave.
Sarka could no longer even gauge where this fall would continue to.
To the me from two years ago who received a top graduation certificate from the Complete Pureblood class, if someone had said that in two years I would be locked up and bred like a dog in a school for humans, would I have believed it?
That I would be bound like a beast to a human’s bed, desperately struggling pathetically while begging for a single breath—could I have even imagined?
Sarka, having barely erased all expression from his face, silently climbed the stairs.
When he entered the room, the servants who had followed began carefully setting up dinner on the table.
Seeing the table being set for one person, Sarka felt his stomach churn and turned his head.
Disgust rose to his chin, and he didn’t even want to look straight at that table.
Sarka’s teeth clenched as he recalled the terrible memory that had made him sick of eating alone.
