Looking at the red eyes emitting a faint glow in the darkness, Ruslan realized he was seeing the boy’s bare face for the first time—a face he hadn’t seen once in a year and a half.
The mask of the polite and kind noble boy had been stripped away.
What remained was a vampire, humanity’s worst natural enemy with whom they had been killing each other and spilling blood for hundreds of years.
“……Why should I be friends with you?”
Sarka’s voice was light. That voice tinged with faint laughter, like someone who had heard a terrible joke, was clearly steeped in mockery, arrogance, and threat.
Ruslan clenched his fists. That kind boy who had so easily permitted friendship when they faced each other as human to human, however, transformed into an arrogant and threatening beast the moment his identity was revealed.
His throat, drenched in cold sweat, churned and convulsed. Though his body trembled from instinctive fear, Ruslan felt something thicker and hotter than fear rising up, pushing through his throat like lava.
The oath he had chewed his lips and swallowed tears over in nightmares night after night, crushing it dozens, hundreds, thousands of times—Ruslan slowly spat it out.
That determination that had now become close to brainwashing or obsession.
“Because then I will…… protect you in any situation.”
Despite that firmness, clear hollow laughter burst from Sarka’s lips.
Sarka tilted his head while looking at Ruslan with narrowed eyes, like someone watching a very funny play.
“……You? Me?”
That tone was clear mockery.
Sarka was looking at Ruslan with a gaze that was beyond absurd, almost pitiful. Like a beast looking down at a tiny chick it was about to trample to death.
The moment Ruslan thought red light rippled in Sarka’s eyes, he felt his body fly through the air like a scarecrow caught in a gust of wind.
CRASH!
Ruslan, slammed into the bookshelf with tremendous force, couldn’t even scream and rolled down to the floor.
When the thick hardcover books that fell with Ruslan struck his back and waist with heavy force, a breathless groan burst from Ruslan’s lips.
Ruslan, who had curled up and held his head to reduce the impact even a little from the cascading books, barely raised his head only after the books had finished rolling here and there and completely stopped.
Ruslan, who unconsciously looked toward Sarka, swallowed empty air.
Every object in his field of vision was floating in the air.
Tables and chairs, thick leather-bound ancient books and very old scroll texts, even the globe and metal type models that had been displayed on the central table.
All the objects were slowly rotating in the air, drawing a wide arc like a massive celestial body, with their sharp edges aimed at Ruslan.
Only the chair and table where Sarka sat at the central axis of the celestial body, and the single book placed on it, were permitted to remain in place.
Because of the orbit of objects drawing diagonal circles behind Sarka’s back, Sarka looked like someone wearing a massive crown.
If Sarka, the ruler of that celestial body, so much as moved a finger, it seemed all the planets would rush toward Ruslan. And crush the human who had presumptuously spouted that he would protect him without knowing his place.
Ruslan struggled to control his body trembling with instinctive fear and looked straight up at Sarka.
While smoothly maintaining the rotation of the terrifying celestial body as if handling light toys, Sarka was observing Ruslan with an interested gaze.
That gaze was like a mischievous child watching a goat dragged to the slaughterhouse. Waiting with anticipation for when the goat, realizing it was going to die, would scream and try to run away.
Looking up at those red eyes without a grain of goodwill, Ruslan slowly spat out the sentence he had determined in his heart for 8 years until it bruised.
“Whatever you do to me……”
Ruslan’s eyes grew dimly moist.
Ruslan looked at Sarka’s cruel red eyes and thought of Kanya’s eyes. He thought of the bloody tears of that old vampire who had struggled to the end to save Ruslan’s life.
In the sensation of his heart rotting away, mixed with longing, regret, despair, and anguish, Ruslan whispered as if crushing each word.
“……I’m on your side.”
Sarka raised one eyebrow, then burst into hollow laughter again.
Sarka’s expression now seemed to find pathetic a beast driven mad by the fear of death. It seemed he thought Ruslan, frightened, was spouting anything.
But Sarka’s expression no longer entered Ruslan’s vision. Ruslan was still looking into Sarka’s red eyes, recalling the red eyes in his memory. Those bright red eyeballs rolling on the floor covered in blood.
Feeling those eyes that once paralyzed his entire body with fear and confusion and made him shudder gradually overlap with the original warm and cheerful gray eyes, Ruslan declared as if sobbing.
“……Because…… we’re friends.”
At that anguished voice, Sarka let out a shallow breath as if this was really too much.
Sarka, who shook his head as if he’d seen everything, muttered with an exasperated expression.
“……I was watching to see how far you’d go, but you climb up without knowing your place to the very end.”
Sarka, who let out a short breath, stood up from his seat. The table where he had been sitting smoothly floated into the air, then joined the celestial body smoothly as if being absorbed. Sarka, who stepped away from the central axis of the celestial body, slowly walked forward.
Thud, thud, thud. Stop.
Sarka, who crossed the room with clear shoe heel sounds, stopped squarely in front of Ruslan, who was half-crumpled in the pile of books.
Standing in a neat posture with his hands slightly clasped behind his back as he always did, Sarka tilted his head slightly and looked down at Ruslan.
In a voice tinged with fatigue, Sarka whispered as if admonishing.
“……Vampires and humans cannot be friends.”
That voice was clear, transparent, and cold like an autumn lake.
It was neither fierce nor hot with anger.
Sarka didn’t even feel enough emotion toward Ruslan to be angry with him.
What he felt was only slight irritation toward an insect that was too insignificant.
Sarka looked down at Ruslan with the gaze of looking down at a pitiful child, and slowly explained in a tone that even contained boredom from pointing out a fact that was tiresomely obvious.
“You could deceive each other and pretend to be friends in order to seize each other’s throats at the right moment, but……
In the end, the inferior species fears and hates the superior species, and the superior species tramples and despises the inferior species.”
Ruslan swallowed his dry saliva.
The red eyes of the boy looking down at Ruslan blankly, as if at an annoying mad beast, were indifferent.
Without any malice, just like teaching an obvious fact to a rude dog.
Facing that cold gaze blankly, Ruslan opened his mouth and answered in a turbid voice.
“……I don’t think so.”
His throat burned hotly. Ruslan clenched both fists until they turned white, and spat out through gritted teeth the sentence that had torn his heart to shreds and made him cry out silently for 8 years.
“I think we can…… help each other.”
Ruslan’s eyes, lifted without fear, shone bright blue with conviction. The muscles of his entire body were tensed to the point of trembling finely, and bloodshot veins appeared in the whites of his eyes.
At the conviction similar to blind faith that wouldn’t change even if a blade came to his throat, Sarka looked at Ruslan’s blue eyes with a frown, with the gaze of feeling disgusted by a mad beast.
Thinking it was time to end this meaningless waste of time, Sarka, who exhaled softly, raised his hand. The celestial body that had been slowly rotating stopped silently. Ruslan swallowed his breath.
“……”
Suddenly, a short silence flowed. Ruslan gasped and looked up at Sarka like a condemned prisoner whose guillotine blade that was about to strike down had stopped.
Sarka was like someone who, just before striking down with his palm at a fly sitting on the table, suddenly had a different thought occur to him.
Sarka, who had stopped with his hand raised while lost in thought for a moment, soon reached a conclusion.
“……It might be good to make you realize your thinking is wrong.”
Snap! Sarka’s finger made a light flicking sound.
Chirp chirp chirp…….
Ruslan, who blinked at the faint bird sounds, looked up at the sky in bewilderment.
Clear sky and wind gently brushing past his nape.
Ruslan couldn’t understand why he was suddenly outside.
The moment he realized where he was standing when he unconsciously looked down at his feet with a dazed expression, Ruslan screamed with hair-raising terror and crouched down.
“……Uwaaaaaah!”
Ruslan was horrified at himself, who had been standing blankly at the very center of the round dome on top of the bell tower.
His legs instantly lost strength and he nearly slipped down and fell, but he managed to achieve a stable posture only after crawling on all fours like a four-legged beast and lying flat on the dome.
Far below, the sports field and library buildings looked dizzyingly distant. Students were running on the sports field, the size of fingers.
One wrong step and he would fall down and be smashed to pieces.
Ruslan trembled and tried hard to remember why on earth he was standing here, but whether from fear or not, no matter how hard he tried, his head was only blank.
Ruslan, who had been frightened wondering if there was something like teleportation among vampire superpowers, suddenly realized that his palms were covered in wounds and his clothes had a bunch of dirty things stuck to them.
After unfolding his palms and examining them carefully, and turning his head to closely observe the traces left on the wall surface below the roof, Ruslan soon grasped the situation.
He had climbed up here with his own hands.
Under a vampire’s hypnosis.
Thump.
It felt like his heart was sinking from shock.
Only then, as if suddenly freed from the shock, memories faintly returned.
Ruslan could recall Sarka’s voice giving him commands in the dreamlike hazy vision.
It had been a command so simple it was bland.
‘Climb to the top of the bell tower and stand on the roof.’
As soon as those words fell, Ruslan turned away from Sarka without any doubt and left the building, heading for the bell tower. He climbed the long stairs without complaint, then obediently crawled all the way to the top of the roof, grabbing onto the marble decorations on the wall.
Naturally, without any doubt or hesitation, just like doing something that should naturally be done.
Cold sweat ran down his spine and his stomach turned cold.
Among the superpowers vampires possessed, what humans feared most was psychic abilities. Controlling animals at will, and going further, controlling even humans.
He had never heard or seen stories that vampires who could control humans still remained. That was an ability almost as strong as ancient vampires. Something no one could imagine still survived.
