“…You’ve got the wrong person.”
The method I adopted to avoid confronting the past I wanted to forget in front of the orphanage was incredibly simple.
Ignoring it boldly and dodging. After leaving an unambiguous notification, I turned around without waiting for a response and straightened my collar.
“Amy?”
I picked up my pace. I could run if I wanted to, but my joints were still aching, so I settled for a brisk walk.
“Wait—”
The sound of hurried footsteps clattering and losing balance echoed before someone fell with a thud.
A deep sigh escaped me. I stopped in my tracks and turned back toward Amy, lifting the hem of my clothing that had been pulled up to my nose. It was half an impulsive action.
“…Is that really you, Aria?”
I calmly watched the elderly woman struggle to get up on her own. She was indeed an ordinary old lady with no particular strength evident.
And that made it even stranger.
Although my senses, including my sense of smell, were still pretty dull, it wasn’t bad enough that I couldn’t even gauge the abilities of an ordinary human who had likely never wielded a sword in her life.
Then how did Amy recognize me?
Flustered and frustrated, I had rushed out without thinking, but rumors that the resurrected queen was wandering around aimlessly, staring at the ground, wouldn’t have helped the morale of the army.
Knowing this, I had disguised myself, yet to have my identity seen through by an ordinary old woman was hard to describe in feelings.
As Amy approached me again after standing up, I took a step back.
Five steps. Maintaining that exact distance, Amy stopped in her tracks with a somewhat sad expression.
“Human, how did you recognize me?”
“…Your presence reminded me of that girl, so I called out without thinking, and then you turned to me… I was hoping it would be you.”
Her presence? Just for that reason?
I was caught off guard. So, it was a half-shot guess, and I ended up confirming it by reacting.
“Why don’t you come inside for a bit?”
“…I’m a vampire, don’t you know?”
I hadn’t planned on continuing the conversation, but I found it so ridiculous that I ended up answering, biting my lip slightly.
What’s with that nonchalant attitude? If she had known I was a vampire from the start, she wouldn’t have accepted me like this, but now she pretends to be open-minded?
Suddenly, a rush of anger surged within me.
I’m not going to be deceived anymore. No matter what you say—
“…It must have been tough for you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I couldn’t do anything.”
…Ha, look at that.
Hypocritical apologies make me nauseous. The Luminous Kingdom is ruined now, and living means facing a bleak path, so this is how it is.
The tricks of humans are always the same. They trample without hesitation when it’s advantageous, but when they find themselves in trouble, they finally cry out for conscience and morality, seeking mercy as if it were their rightful entitlement.
“Who are you to—!”
But I couldn’t express my anger completely.
Because now, that useless old woman seeking forgiveness was covering her mouth with one hand while secretly wiping her tears with the other.
“…Why are you crying?”
“That kind girl has struggled until now, and it’s so sad that I couldn’t recognize it when it was needed, and I can only apologize now—”
“Enough. I get it. I’ll stop by for a bit, so just stop crying.”
She was still sobbing, but was on the verge of bursting into wails, and I nodded, wanting her to calm down.
I found myself devoid of strength to even get annoyed.
…I usually wasn’t so swayed by emotions. Was it because the absence of the three vampires felt so immense? Ever since I woke up, I kept acting impulsively.
I quickly looked around and sighed.
Well, I suppose it’s better than drawing attention by making an old lady cry outside.
*
The interior of the orphanage was almost exactly as I remembered it. Only the somewhat creaky floorboards and signs of wear and tear here and there were different.
“Where are the kids?”
I asked as I walked down the empty hallway toward the director’s office.
I had sensed there was no one around when I entered. If there had been children, I would have fled right there regardless of whether the director cried or not.
“They’ve already evacuated. I had some things to pack here, so I was the only one coming and going, and just happened to see Aria.”
So, if I had been just a bit late or early, I might not have run into this person at all. Timing was just unfortunate.
“Speaking of which, you said Aria has become a queen. I should be grateful for that, then. Thanks to that, the children survived. Thank you, thank you.”
“…What for?”
“For helping the residents of Randell evacuate. I’ve heard that besides Randell, other places were trying to escape to the empire via Belag, but it caused chaos since the empire wouldn’t let them pass.”
Very Greysia Empire-like.
For this side, Bertica Duchy was always supplying food to the Luminous Kingdom, so it wasn’t a significant issue, but the Greysia Empire, which was self-sufficient, must have felt overwhelmed.
The truth is, it’s not that we were helping for the humans’ sake. There’s no reason to feed the Luminous Kingdom’s humans even temporarily just because there was a bit of surplus food.
Just leaving the humans of the Luminous Kingdom near Luminous means they could be taken over by them at any moment and turn into holy magic bombs, and it’s not like just killing them all makes sense either since every one of them is food for the vampires.
It wouldn’t make sense to completely uproot a field just because one root of a sick crop came up.
Seeing how only the humans of Lusheer ended up that way, it means Luminous can only manipulate the nearby humans.
I don’t know what will happen 11 days from now, but for now, it seems logical to gather the humans of the Luminous Kingdom a bit further back for observation and hold off on making a decision until I wake up.
That was what was concluded in the meeting while I was incapacitated.
“That debt of gratitude should go to Plona. I wasn’t the one who decided it.”
“Plona? Is Plona here too?”
Oh no, is this something he didn’t know?
Since they had been active in the open, I assumed rumors would have spread, but thinking again, to the general populace, it might just be that a vampire had come from the knights, so they wouldn’t exactly know who it was.
“Ah… I’m sorry. I talk too much as I get older. There’s no need to feel obligated to respond.”
“…I suddenly chased after and quit being a knight to join her. Now, she’s my subordinate.”
I had kept quiet for a moment to think, but Amy was watching my reaction subtly and shaking her hand, so I answered since it wasn’t something I needed to hide.
Once again, I didn’t like it. How she kept checking my reaction, how she kept apologizing to me.
“I see. Plona is also a vampire…”
“Are you shocked?”
“It’d be a lie to say I wasn’t surprised… but thinking back to how that girl suffered after Aria disappeared, if it’s the happiness she chose for herself, then it’s okay.”
Creeeak—
The door to the director’s office opened with a noisy sound.
Once I settled into a chair, my eyes caught a frame placed on the bookshelf across from me.
Suddenly, I felt breathless.
“…What’s that?”
Inside the frame was a painting.
It seemed the painting had been done some time ago, as it was slightly faded, depicting a woman with pure white hair and bright yellow eyes, smiling brightly.
It wasn’t a well-drawn picture. Upon closer inspection, the line thickness was uneven, and various parts poked out irregularly.
Since it was an orphanage, could it have been drawn by a child? If so, I could say that the child was quite good at it.
But what mattered now wasn’t the skill of the person who painted the picture.
“Didn’t she draw it well? It was drawn by Sophia two years ago.”
“…Is that, by any chance, me?”
I asked reluctantly, unable to take my eyes off the painting.
It wasn’t a good picture. However, despite that, it was at a level where you could recognize who the person in the drawing was, and that drawn figure was none other than me from four years ago.
“Sophia admired Aria a lot. Even after it happened… Sophia cried a lot. Then she started painting. At first, she was more inexperienced, but this one is quite good, isn’t it?”
Sophia. The shy girl who rarely spoke.
I remembered how, despite being very reserved, she particularly followed me closely.
Whenever the boys played pranks, she would hide behind me, and when she was bored, she would often follow me around, gripping the hem of my skirt with her little finger.
“She said she wanted to be a painter after leaving the orphanage.”
Like a parent watching the growth of a child, Amy smiled gently as she opened the drawer at the bottom of the desk.
There were a bunch of paintings inside. They seemed to have been collected from past to present, and the more I flipped through them, the more apparent her skill had improved.
And about half of those many drawings depicted me.
Me, who had been deprived of my rights as a human and treated like a monster, and who had been chased out from here.
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