Episode 71: Triche (1)
After riding in the carriage for some time, the sun began to set.
When we had left Violet’s territory, the ominous red sky had cleared up somewhat, bringing an unexplainable sense of comfort.
But that bright sky started to darken.
Ilya, who had been excitedly looking out of the carriage, suddenly started to pet the back of her hand repeatedly.
“It doesn’t hurt, but… something must be wrong, right…”
I thought I could faintly hear Ilya murmuring to herself in a small voice.
“What’s wrong?”
【Could it be… did we take the wrong path?… Please, tell me that’s not the case… I can barely last another two days like this…】
Chaewon, noticing Ilya’s mumbling, pretended to bite her right thumb.
“Yikes! N-noting, really!”
Ilya hurriedly hid her left hand behind her back.
【Huh? What’s up with her?】
Chaewon suspiciously eyed Ilya, who was quickly concealing her hand.
“Noting, huh? Let me see. What’s going on?”
I reached out to pull Ilya’s left hand towards me.
“I-I told you, it’s really nothing?!”
Ilya, flustered by my actions, squished her left hand against her butt.
‘If she does that, I can’t check… I can’t just lift Ilya in this cramped carriage…’
【D-Don’t give up! You need to check anything suspicious, right? We’re in a Gate, after all! Don’t let your guard down just because the atmosphere feels different!】
On this point, Chaewon was 100 times more right.
Creatures within the Gate were always enemies to the Hunter.
There might be exceptions, but… it felt crucial to check Ilya’s hand in front of me.
“Ilya, show me.”
“N-no way!”
“I’ll let you drink my blood, so show me.”
“What are you saying! Your blood has always been mine!”
“No… why is my blood yours?”
“Well… aren’t we, like, engaged?”
【Ugh, if that white-haired crazy girl were here, there’d be a real disaster…】
Chaewon looked at Ilya as if she were a bug.
In reality, Chaewon was already treating Ilya like a mosquito.
“… Didn’t you say you’d assassinate your father to avoid marriage?”
“I can’t accept sacrificing an innocent person!… Absolutely? Absolutely, I don’t want to get married to you, so I’m not making excuses…”
“R-really?”
Ilya seemed relieved after I briefly supported her point.
“Hmph.”
I don’t know what she felt reassured about here.
Ilya began to wiggle slightly, gradually removing her left hand from beneath her.
Pretending to be uninterested, I looked outside the window while subtly glancing at Ilya’s left hand.
Ilya, perhaps unaware, started to stroke the back of her left hand again.
【Aha, now’s my chance!】
‘I’ll know even without asking!’
I seized the opportunity and immediately snatched Ilya’s left hand.
– Snap!
“Ah! What are you doing?!”
I grabbed Ilya’s slender left wrist tightly.
“A-are you going against me right now?”
Ilya was taken aback by the situation and spoke awkwardly.
“Let go quickly!”
“What are you talking about? I need to check. Let’s see… what are you hiding?”
“It really h-hurts, so can you please let go…?”
Ignoring her pleas, I examined the back of her hand that she had been touching and scratching repeatedly.
There was something red in the center of Ilya’s hand.
“Did it swell up?”
I said that while looking at her face.
Her expression was already inflamed with anger.
Using her right hand, which wasn’t caught, Ilya lightly swatted my hand away from her left hand.
“See, I told you… it’s nothing.”
【Hmm… is it really nothing?】
“… Didn’t you have nothing like this before getting on the carriage?”
“H-how would you know that? Are you a pervert? Are you truly a pervert?”
【Is that true? I never thought of it that way.】
‘What about you?’
【Ah~ I might be able to accept you being a pervert… but if it’s too much, that could be a problem?】
“I-it’s not that… you see? Back when you grabbed my neck to drink my blood before we got on the carriage… I just remembered something I saw then.”
Realizing the situation was turning unfavorable for me, I hastily tried to explain.
“Were you really seeing that?”
“Yeah, that’s right. You don’t need to worry; I have no interest whatsoever in your body.”
“… It’s fine to explain, but did you really need to add that last part?”
Ilya, for some reason, turned her gaze outside, looking uncomfortable.
【Hehe… I really dealt a solid blow to the mosquito girl, huh?】
‘No… what is your problem now?’
【Oh, it’s just my feeling~】
“Anyway, so what happened?”
“I’m weaker than other Vampires, so I can’t endure sunlight for even a minute. But… didn’t I reach outside the carriage to show you the World Tree earlier?”
“Yeah, you did.”
“At that moment, sunlight hit the back of my hand… I pulled it back immediately upon hearing Triche’s words, but in that brief moment, my hand swelled up…”
“… Is that all—”
“It’s not just…! Isn’t it embarrassing that a Vampire can swell up in just a second? A normal Vampire would take at least ten seconds for their skin to swell!”
“Okay, okay, I get it, so calm down… Besides this, I genuinely wanted to ask you something.”
“Th-this time it’s definitely going to be a normal question, right?”
“… The last one was normal too.”
I rubbed my aching head and asked while looking outside.
“Is the sky red where all Vampires live, like in your territory?”
“Ah… about that, I’m pretty sure only Violet’s territory has a red sky. My dad is the highest-ranking person among Vampires, so most of the few old Vampires are in Violet’s territory. Don’t ask me why the sky is red; I don’t know either.”
– Rumble.
While listening to Ilya’s explanation, suddenly, the carriage door opened.
I immediately checked outside the window.
The carriage had already stopped, and the slightly red sunset had completely vanished, leaving utter darkness.
“I apologize for interrupting your enjoyable conversation, but we’ll be preparing to camp now.”
Triche opened the carriage door, gesturing for us to get out.
Though I found much of her behavior difficult to comprehend for a servant, we quietly got off the carriage without making a fuss over Triche’s words.
“Alright, we’ll get ready.”
The crackling sound of the campfire rising felt like the music of nature.
The warm light and beautiful flames captivated the surroundings.
The image of the blazing campfire seemed like a work of art bestowed by nature.
Having already finished dinner, Ilya rubbed her sleepy eyes and entered the makeshift tent made from tarps, with an umbrella, and fell asleep.
While other Vampires were active now, Ilya appeared not to be.
Like a recluse whose day and night had switched.
To humans, she might look like a proper child who wakes up in the morning and sleeps at night, but to them, she must seem like someone who sleeps in the morning and wakes up at night.
In any case, she appeared to have been raised in a precious environment, and yet surprisingly, she didn’t seem picky about her sleeping place, which felt new to me.
Chaewon, whining while missing the fluffy bed at Violet’s mansion, hugged Ilya and fell asleep.
Of course, unaware of this fact, Ilya would be shivering in the cold and swimming through her dreams.
Triche and I decided to take turns keeping watch, and I volunteered to go first.
Right, I decided to go first…
“…”
“…”
Triche and I sat side by side on the log chairs set up near the campfire.
“… I said I’d keep watch first, didn’t I?”
“I understand.”
“… Then how about you go inside and catch some sleep? You’re the only one who can drive the carriage, so it’d be bad if you fell asleep while driving, right?”
“Just because you’re keeping watch doesn’t mean I have to go in and sleep, right? Don’t worry about it. It’s ‘job-related fatigue’…”
“What? Job-related fatigue? What… is a servant supposed to stay up all night while being a maid?”
“… Well, of course, it’s natural since I work under a nocturnal race, right? Do you not even have that basic level of intelligence?”
“That can’t be true. You’re hiding something, aren’t you?”
Triche suddenly stiffened.
“How did you know that?”
“Eh? I just poked at you jokingly, and it was true? What are you doing? It doesn’t seem like you fit the role of a servant…”
“Y-you… to play with me like this…”
Triche briefly fell into thought.
“… I am…”
“Ah, if you don’t want to say it, that’s fine. The longer you drag it out, the less I want to hear it.”
“… Is that so? Thanks.”
Triche tucked her light purple hair behind her ear.
Perhaps because of the dawn feeling, she looked quite attractive to me.
“But, why are you doing this servant job right now?”
Triche gazed into the campfire for a moment.
Under the light emanating from the campfire, it illuminated Triche’s face like a spotlight.
A mysterious atmosphere surrounded her, and the fire’s glow made her skin shine with a captivating hue.
At a glance, she looked like she was spaced out by that light, but her body had no openings.
Surely, she couldn’t be an ordinary maid.
“Heh… Do you want to know the reason?”
“What… it probably isn’t anything grand.”
“That depends on how you think about it.”
Triche picked up a fallen branch from the ground.
And tossed it into the campfire confidently.
“We dirty our hands to cleanse the world.”
Triche said something profound.
‘No… I’m sure I’ve heard that somewhere…’
“That’s all.”
She continued speaking while looking at me.
“I hope you remember this, even if it turns you into an enemy, that is.”
