Chapter 5

When Friedrich finally arrived at Belsenburg, he was no longer bold before me as he had once been. Whatever he had heard from Josef, who had passed away the preceding year, he maintained a strained, forced courtesy, his eyes clouded with equal parts terror and disdain.

“To commend your long years of service, Sir, I wish to provide whatever you require to begin your new life.”

At those words, I recited my list without hesitation. Friedrich was flustered for a moment, fell silent for another, and soon nodded with an oddly relieved expression.

Two healthy horses, bags to pack clothing and essentials, and Michael.

That was all. Friedrich seemed deeply puzzled that I did not ask for even a single gold coin for travel expenses, but to me, it was far more puzzling that they assumed I possessed no money.

When even humans who died before living out a single century amassed wealth, how could they imagine that I, having lived for centuries, would be more destitute than they?

“…It is a strange feeling.”

On the day we departed Belsenburg, those were the first words Michael spoke.

“I now belong not to House Eisenhardt, but to Master.”

Those were his second words. It was around the time we were passing through the heart of the Black Forest, Michael seated awkwardly in his saddle, his eyes fixed on the reins held in my hand.

“Since I am your only packed ration, consume me sparingly. …And take care not to lose me, as well.”

Perhaps secretly elated, he casually tossed out such a joke in a tone that was half nagging, half pout.

I remember smiling silently as we walked through the low mist hanging over the quiet woods. Clip, clop. Clip, clop. Never had the sound of horse hooves echoing through a dank forest, where even birdsong was scarce, sounded so sweet.

Leaving behind the estate where we had been confined for so long, we wandered through small, peaceful villages. Blending into the bustling, noisy lives of commoners, we spent our days at a leisurely pace.

As the sun dipped low, we shared drinks together at taverns, and in corner rooms of worn-down inns, I took long delight in Michael’s face as he struggled to stifle his cries.

We tethered our horses along quiet forest trails between towns to watch the sunset at length, and after reaching larger cities, I even sampled unfamiliar foreign foods, following Michael as he tugged my hand toward strange, enticing aromas.

“I no longer hold any title, and you are not my property. Cast aside the title of ‘Master.’”

Though I had told him this countless times since we first stepped out of the Black Forest, Michael could not bring himself to drop the address for quite some time. Shaking off a habit ingrained in his speech over so many years was evidently no easy feat.

“L-Lord… Adrian…”

Just when I thought he had finally discarded ‘Master,’ what came next was ‘Lord Adrian.’ Even that was an address he only managed atop the sheets, when he stripped away every defense and clung to me.

For a time, we were at peace. We were happy, and we were joyful.

To ensure I never left another scar on him, I remained at his side with every nerve on alert at every moment, and as if understanding my heart completely, he felt most at ease by my side. He was settled, and he was secure.

Yet what had settled was merely our bond and his heart; reality was not so kind.

“No, no!”

“Shh… shh. It is all right, it is only a dream.”

His nightmares grew clearer by the day, and the fracture that lay in a place I had not known expanded ever wider.

“Ugh…”

“Michael?”

When did it begin?

“If you are unwell, let us head back.”

“No, it is nothing. I think I simply overate a little earlier.”

Exactly when did it begin?

“No. Stay indoors today.”

“This is just… my throat is a little dry, that is all.”

“Do not be stubborn. You have a fever.”

“…It is not that I have a fever, Lord Adrian; your hands are simply cold.”

“Stop being obstinate and lie down at once.”

“Unfair… when you made a promise…”

What had been battering against him? Was it the nightmares? Was it the sight of me within those nightmares?

Not even knowing back then that a fracture existed in his soul, I had no way of knowing what kept pounding against it, trying to shatter him.

Though we halted our wanderings and settled down the moment I sensed something amiss; though I summoned physicians dozens of times and procured every renowned medicine from far and wide to nourish him, his body found no stability. Though I filled a home built for him with only things meant for his comfort, his body found not an ounce of ease.

From a certain point onward, anxiety seized me. Having him by my side had undoubtedly made me happy and fulfilled, yet driven by an inexplicable restlessness, my heart grew desolate.

“It is all right.”

“No, please…”

“It is only a bad dream. I am right here.”

Thus, slowly, holding him as he crumbled, I too sank beneath the surface.

Once every few weeks, once a week, once every few days. By the time the nightmares tightened their intervals until they finally tormented him every single night, I—dense and foolish beyond measure—only then realized the truth.

“Aaargh! Ah, aahh…!”

The clearer the nightmare became, the more of those memories he reclaimed, and the closer he drew to his death in that past life—

“Please, Michael. It is only a dream.”

—the closer he drew to death in this life as well.

“Do not remember any more…”

Back then, he had been twenty-four. The age when I had shattered his soul into pieces; the age when the first incarnation of him who met me had withered away. He was merely twenty-four.

“It was a name I gave you.”

And the age of Michael, who had finally seen everything of that dream—

“Because it broke my heart to hear you call yourself ‘something’… I searched the archives for a word that suited you.”

The age of Michael, who at long last remembered even the origin of my name—

“To think that only now… do I remember you…”

He was merely twenty-four.

My memories leading up to the day I let Michael go are not clear. In what state of mind, with what expression I bade him farewell, I cannot properly recall. It remains like a reel of film with far too many frames cut away, or like photographs capturing only isolated cross-sections of time.

What little I remember clearly is that the sky was crimson, just like the hour in the nightmare etched into him.

“Do not cry.”

And the final farewell that lingered in my ears as I threatened to collapse along with him.

“It really does not suit you.”

That last face of his, smiling faintly, remains only in part, like the frayed corner of a faded portrait.

“This is not the end.”

It is not that the memory grew dim. It was never properly engraved in the first place. Because my vision was far too blurred to see anything clearly.

“You are… eternal, after all.”

He closed his eyes meekly, like one who had never known lingering regret. What did I say to him then? I do not know. I might have wailed, or perhaps I flew into a rage. Or perhaps, in the end, I could return no words to him at all. I only faintly remember being unable to move, rooted in place as though the ground were crumbling beneath my feet.

Autumn of 1827.

Once again, I let him go.

The world without him once more resembled a monochrome sketch stripped of all color. It was like a small coffin, plastered on the inside with black-and-white drawings, masquerading as a world.

In what state of mind, where, and for how long I wandered, I do not know. The loss and helplessness that I had barely begun to shake after nearly a century clung to my entire being once more, rendering me unable to think or feel anything at all.

To me, the world blurred again; to me, time became meaningless once more.

During that period, I loathed every living thing. And yet, at the same time, I pitied them. Watching those frail, ephemeral creatures stir and move filled me with searing indignation and fury, yet also with profound sorrow.

Why are they so weak? Why are their lives so fleeting? Why—why on earth must they spend their whole lives hounded by time?

Why can I not share my boundless time with them?

That was the exact moment when, for the very first time, I became capable of feeling pity not just for that single man, ‘he,’ but for mortals as a whole.

His parting words—that this was not the end—were both salvation and a curse to me. They were shackles of guilt, and an opportunity for atonement. A curse so tender and cruel, so very like him, that prevented me from putting an end to my existence.

For that reason, all that remained of that period in my memory was wandering in search of a coffin, desperate to undergo even a simulated death in his wake.

At the end of my wanderings, I built a house in a secluded, quiet place. It was a place where the fields rolling beneath the hill rippled like the sea.

Adrian.

The name he gave me carried the meaning of having come from the sea, as well as the meaning of darkness. And so, upon that field that turned into a black sea by night, I set a house as one might moor a ship.

That place was the second coffin I entered after losing him.

Once again, I became a ‘thing,’ sinking to the very bottom of time. Holding my breath, stilling all motion. I remained motionless like the air, which had been there from the beginning and which no one ever noticed, quietly observing the passage of the world.

I remember turning Michael over in my thoughts for a very long time. I drew his smiling face countless times, and longed for him just as deeply. I spent long hours in mourning, cherishingly wiping and caring for each of the possessions he had left behind, one by one.

Though I had ultimately failed to mend the cracks within him, I managed, in that way, to barely seal the fissures that had opened within myself.

From then on, for quite a while, I thought only of the cycle we had begun to tread.

About him, who had defied the mortal fate of absolute annihilation after a single death; and about myself, who would receive him again and again, who knew how many times in the future.

Did he come to me, or was I drawn toward him? It was a contemplation born of that single question.

What would happen if he were reborn and never met me for the rest of his life? If, unlike in Belsenburg, I did not linger long in one place but kept constantly on the move, continually traveling and hiding so that he could never find me—would his fate change then?

Even if we were to meet, what would become of him if I never allowed him to feel love? Would he still insist on loving me regardless? Even if I brushed him off, pushed him away, and treated him with cold, curt indifference—would he still end up remembering his nightmares?

Would he inevitably remember everything, inevitably force me to confront my sin, and wither away before he could even bloom, just as before?

I harbored many thoughts. So many that I could never record them all here; enough to fill an entirely separate volume, had I written them down.

Only after passing through that process did I regain some semblance of my senses. After years, or perhaps decades, I turned my footsteps toward humanity once more. I quietly blended back into the world of men, drifting atop the flowing stream of time.

Descending into the village, which had changed considerably in the meantime, the very first thing I did was buy horses. After that, I hired a caretaker for the house, told them where the key was kept, and departed.

“What a pity, truly.”

Why that murmur from a wayfarer passing by the roadside outside the village remains so vivid in my memory, I do not know. It was a remark without clear meaning or reason.

Well, I suppose seeing the smaller horse led by its reins without a rider beside the mount I rode, he had assumed I had lost a companion.

Had I told him then that it was food I had purchased so as not to devour his kind, what expression would that man have worn? Learning to feel pity for their fragility did not mean I had ceased to see them as prey, and so, from time to time, I found myself wondering about such things.

Stepping back into human society, I began by learning the ways of a world that had transformed while I was in my coffin.

When living among them, such knowledge was acquired naturally without issue; yet the human world was such that being detached for a mere few years always produced new things to learn.

To me, this was ever the most tedious and regrettable chore. For learning was not a matter I could tear away simply because it was bothersome. Bound to walk through every era, I was compelled to know every advancement and transformation.

Even as I learned the altered world, it continued to shift endlessly.

Across once-silent plains, iron horses spewing black smoke began to gallop, and upon the night streets where darkness had once felt like a sanctuary after sunset, gas lamps were erected.

People who once hurried to bow and scrape at the slightest difference in dress now cried out for liberty and equality, defying the law and royal palaces; and warfare, once crude yet agonizing, rode on the back of ‘progress,’ growing so swift and brutal that there was no time even to register the agony.

In the cities, ancient alleys cradling memories of the Middle Ages vanished beneath paved boulevards; factories multiplied, and the sky turned black.

An era that championed rigid moralism and God on the surface, while beneath it, an aristocracy indulging in lavish hedonism coexisted with a destitute underclass driving even children into factories. An era where, even as children’s tiny hands were ground to pulp between iron cogs, the sugar in high-society teacups remained endlessly sweet.

The Victorian era was an age of such hypocrisy.

Among the many ages I have witnessed, it was a time of immense upheaval in human society, well worth etching into memory.

I drifted without destination, contemplating the transforming world. I did not cease learning, yet I never went out of my way to mingle with that society either.

I interacted with humans only as necessity dictated, whenever hunger arose. It was an era where hunting with words was far more convenient than hunting with physical force. When even that grew troublesome, I slipped into back-alley opium dens and fed upon whichever sprawled figures caught my eye.

In truth, because the canals in my fangs could secrete a substance akin to opium that dispelled both pain and memory, seizing anyone off the roadside would have made little difference; yet it was, after all, a matter of my personal preference.

It was on a certain day in London, where I had arrived after wandering thus.

At one point, amidst streets where the stench of coal smoke and the scent of perfume tangled in a foul snarl, I came to a halt and stood quietly watching the children leaving work.

Fearing that among those gaunt, exhausted faces, there might be the blue eyes I knew. Fearing that the lost fragment of my soul might once again be reduced to so wretched and destitute a state.

Ah, how anxious and fretful I truly was.

“Child.”

“…Me, sir?”

“Yes, you. Come here a moment.”

“…Why?”

“You are bleeding.”

In that manner, without even realizing it, I seeped back into human society.

Buying food for a ragged child who happened to catch my eye, tending to festering hands that had been wounded yet left without proper care. Truly, without my knowing.

It was an utterly contradictory deed. Yet it was also an inevitable one.

For by that time, humans had already become both prey and objects of pity to me.

Unable to decide whether to be humanity’s natural predator or their kin, I simply walked the world, occasionally feeling pathetic whenever the thought crossed my mind. I boarded ships, and I rode trains.

Wandering round and round in that fashion, I reached a small village in the north and lived there for a few months. An epidemic broke out, and fragile lives were once again swept away into hollow nothingness, helplessly and without end.

Seized once more by emptiness, I sought out a coffin and entered it out of sheer habit.

Without dreaming in the slightest that he would come searching for me all the way to my coffin.

Michael, Émile. The second and third iterations of him. I shall close my memories of them here.

If it were up to my heart alone, I would write down every facet of them preserved in my mind and every moment I shared with them, but doing so would easily pile up dozens of notebooks.

Now, it seems the time has come to write of the first him, the origin of this entire tale—the first human being I ever loved.

The time when I met the first him, when I loved a human for the very first time, and when I left the first scar upon his soul.

In the year of our Lord 1727. The season was summer.

At the time, I was in the Balkan Peninsula. It was where I had greeted the eighteenth century after wandering aimlessly as I always did, and I recall lingering on aimlessly while the war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire unfolded around me.

Once that round of war ended, I did not leave simply because it was over, remaining entirely apart from the human world for about ten years. Truly like a beast. Idly roaming the forest, watching the clouds, and preying upon animals.

By the time I attempted to re-enter human society, Eastern Europe had unfortunately become quite a troublesome region for me.

It was an era when rumors erupting from Serbia shook the whole of Europe—the period when the so-called ‘Vampir Panic’ spread explosively.

The one returned from the dead; the demon that feeds on blood; the monster of the night.

Vampir. That was what they called it back then. Though in modern times, the English term vampire is far more widely known.

That the dead and buried would dig themselves out of their graves at night to drink the blood of the living; that they feared sunlight and the crucifix; that having no soul, they cast no reflection in mirrors; that they could only be killed by driving a stake through their heart.

All manner of wild rumors spread as though they were fact; religion intervened, and trials were conducted. Graves were dug up day in and day out to drive stakes through corpses; outsiders were not merely shunned, but treated with overt hostility; and smaller, more remote villages exhibited attitudes all the more extreme and insular.

It was a place where attracting notice would prove exceedingly troublesome, making me want to leave; yet to avoid drawing attention, remaining put was actually the better choice.

Only now do I write this down, but perhaps the origin of those rumors was none other than myself.

It was around 1724. Having gone without human blood for far too long, my vitality had hit rock bottom. The easiest method was to feed on human blood, but when my strength had deteriorated beyond even that capability, I had to resort to a troublesome and dangerous measure.

That was ‘sleep.’

At the time, I fell asleep in an abandoned hut I found deep within the forest, under the hasty presumption that humans would never frequent such a place.

Yet when I awoke, my surroundings were pitch-black and suffocatingly confined. Whatever idle human had ventured all the way out there I did not know, but having fallen asleep, I awoke buried beneath the earth.

Though a sigh broke from me spontaneously, it was not entirely absurd. In the first place, going to sleep was an act taken on the premise that ‘I would never be discovered by anyone,’ so being discovered made this a natural outcome.

To me, sleep is a state of suspended animation forcibly entered for the purpose of recovery.

A process of submerging consciousness deep within and restricting vital functions to the absolute minimum, resetting the physical body.

Even while awake, my breathing resembled that of a plant far more than an animal, such that a sharp-eyed human would quickly notice an incongruity; thus, fallen into slumber, my appearance in human eyes would undoubtedly have been that of an unmistakable corpse.

Awakening abruptly beneath the dirt thanks to the misplaced good deed of some unknown human, I naturally dug through the soil and emerged onto the surface. Poking my head out, I found myself in a graveyard at the edge of the forest. Fortunately, it was night, and there was no one around.

Quietly slipping away from that place, I sought prey to replenish the energy consumed in restoring my body to its fixed, peak physical state.

Heading toward the village, I entered the nearest house and bit into the neck of the sleeping homeowner. Since that did not satisfy my hunger, I fed on the house next door as well. Was it two people, or three? In any case, I fed only enough to keep them from dying, stole a few sets of clothes, and returned to the forest.

In short, that was likely the inception of the rumor.

A corpse had vanished from its grave overnight; villagers were left with bite marks and bloodstains yet remembered nothing; and scattered upon the floors of those houses was the very same earth from the unearthed grave.

From then on, the strange tale spread and became distorted, leading me to think that perhaps, without even realizing it, I had unleashed a terror that previously existed only in folklore into reality.

Well, even if that were so, it was not something that could be undone. And even if I wondered, there was no way of knowing for sure now.

At any rate, burdened by the fact that the rumor had escalated past the level of a ghost story and established itself as a societal terror, I slipped away from Serbia in early summer under cover of the lush forest canopy.

Crossing the Danube River, I arrived at a land rife with dense mist and the howling of wolves. A territory known at the time as the Principality of Wallachia, though called Romania in the present day.

I pushed deep into the interior through the woods. I moved in search of an isolated settlement where, even if someone were to notice me, rumors would struggle to spread.

The place I reached was a village called Luncani.

A small hamlet of barely a hundred and some people, situated not far from a tributary of the Danube. It occupied a location where seasonal flooding enriched the soil, but in exchange, the fog clinging to one’s ankles could never be shaken off.

That village, long since vanished from the earth, was where this entire cycle began.

Having merely pinpointed the village’s location, I sought out high ground overlooking it. Ascending a nearby mountain ridge and taking up position, I spent several days quietly observing the movements of Luncani.

What sort of people lived there and how they went about their days; along which routes they traveled, and who was close with whom. I believe I watched them for about a week.

If it were up to my heart alone, I would have preferred to hide in the forest for a few more years, turning a blind eye to the commotion of human society; but the hysteria of the time did not even permit that.

Rumors claimed the monster could not move during the day and must be hiding in dense woods or caves, leading them to unleash hounds in search parties; nobles dispatched private militias on sweeping hunts; and with bounties placed on its head, the forest had ceased to be a sanctuary.

Even if it meant enduring a temporary stir, I had to blend in among humans. The times demanded it.

To repeat myself once more, it was a truly vexing period for me. Because of that cursed rumor, outsiders were unconditionally shunned; yet to be excluded from their near-panicked terror, one had to burrow directly into the very collective that practiced that exclusion.

On the seventh day, I entered the village.

It was the hour when dusk was fading and darkness had just begun to settle. The moment when those tilling the fields and children racing through the streets had all retreated indoors.

The few villagers still outside froze in their tracks the moment I passed the village entrance, their vigilance flaring up sharply, yet I paid them no heed. I simply walked without haste, wearing the countenance of a traveler exhausted from long wandering in the woods.

With a faint limp in one leg, bound in torn fabric like a bandage prepared in advance, I ignored the tenacious gazes clutching sickles and crucifixes, watching me as though resolved never to let me out of their sight for a single second.

Walking in silence, I headed toward an antique wooden building situated deep within the village.

The church.

Judging that this was the only place capable of washing away their anxiety toward me, I had deemed it the first stop I must make upon entering the village.

Sure enough, the moment I crossed the forecourt overseen by the crucifix atop the black spire, I could feel relief settling into the many eyes glaring at me. A few young men who had crept after me brandishing farm implements openly let out sighs.

Well, they were likely thinking something along the lines of, If he were a vampir, he would have burned to death the instant he crossed that gate.

Whether the source of the rumor was truly me or not I did not know, but if it had been, then it was quite a pity for them.

Feigning exhaustion, I mounted the stairs and knocked upon the door. Straining my ears, I caught the faint presence of someone inside. Watching the line of light bleeding through the door crack, I waited for the footsteps to approach.

When the footsteps drew within three paces, I began to breathe. I mimicked the respiration of a frail, wounded, and weary human being. It was the final step in dispelling the vigilance of those watching me from the street.

The wooden door, blackened with age, creaked open. I slowly raised my head. In the opening stood a man dressed in black robes with a thick, bushy beard. The instant our eyes met, the scent of beeswax and frankincense lingering within the sanctuary poured forth from behind him.

The priest neither panicked into crossing himself nor thrust a crucifix at me out of the blue upon seeing an unfamiliar face. Instead, he took in my dirt-stained clothes and the ankle wrapped in torn cloth. It was a slow, deliberate gaze.

“Who might you be, and from whence have you come?”

Only then did he ask. His low voice held a gentle dignity matching his appearance.

“I am a copyist from Vienna. While traveling without fixed destination to collect ecclesiastical records from various regions, I fled the wicked rumors in Serbia and found myself lost in the fog.”

Casting my eyes downward with an air of mortification and dejection, I continued softly with a sigh:

“To my immense shame, in my frantic wandering through the forest in fear of the dark, I lost my luggage containing all the precious records I had gathered, and injured my leg so that I can proceed no further.”

With the thought that I would gladly retreat if he saw through me, I mimicked the demeanor of a worn and despairing human. I made my breath tremble faintly, revealing through the tremor in my fingertips the hollow loss of one who had been stripped of something dearer than life itself.

“And so, knowing well how sensitive these times are, I have presumed upon your hospitality. Might you… permit me a place to lay my head, if only for a single night?”

“Dear me…”

I had wondered, yet he was merely human after all. The priest’s guardedness, which he gave no outward sign of but which could never be hidden from me, melted away like snow.

“A copyist—a man of such learning traveling these treacherous roads. A scholar’s curiosity is indeed something that knows no halt, even in the face of peril. Please, come inside. The Lord shall protect you from the wicked rumors and the darkness that pursued you.”

Hearing his heart, which had been unable to conceal its tension, swiftly settle into a calm rhythm, I lifted my downcast eyes once more, pretending to be deeply relieved.

“The mists of Luncani do not clear in a day or two, so please rest comfortably until your body and mind are at ease.”

As the priest, holding a candlestick and standing as though barring the doorway, stepped aside to open the way, I felt the tenacious and blatant stares boring into my back scatter in an instant.

At that time, I thought to myself how utterly simple humans were.

The priest who took me in was also merely a human unable to see through my disguise, yet what did they trust in him to accept me so easily? Did they truly believe in God? In a world where I—a being who ought not to exist if God were real—existed in the flesh?

I found it laughable.

I exploited such tendencies because I understood them, yet to the me of that era, it was incomprehensible.

Looking back, I should have known then. What faith meant to humans—or rather, what ‘aberration’ meant to a collective of mortals who all believed in the exact same thing with absolute certainty.

That night, I stayed in the priest’s home, accessible through a narrow hallway beyond the chapel door.

At the hour when all locked their doors and hid inside their homes for fear of the night when blood-drinking demons awoke, I sat composed inside an Eastern Orthodox rectory, treated to hot water for washing and fresh clothes to change into.

Shown to a small guest room overlooked directly by an eight-pointed cross, I thanked the priest and his wife, who assured me it would protect my night from ominous rumors, and ostentatiously clasped my hands in prayer before it for them to see.

How could I not have found it laughable?

I truly found humanity absurd. At that time, I was indeed a creature incapable of harboring any sentiment toward humans other than regarding them as easy prey.

It was the following day when I met ‘him.’ Early morning, greeted as I sat in the small guest room tucked into a corner of the rectory adjoining the church, pondering my subsequent moves through the night.

A presence stirred beyond the door. It was neither the footsteps of the priest I had heard the previous night nor those of his wife. Echoing from inside the rectory, it was no outsider either. As no mention of children had been made, I felt a faint curiosity and inclined my ear toward the sound.

The footsteps passed my door and crossed the hallway. Toward the chapel.

After a brief hesitation, I rose and slipped quietly from the room. Why I did so, I cannot say. Well, I do not recall precisely, but to the me of that era, it was likely the sentiment of, Why did they not show him to me last night? An uneasy prickle—wondering if I had yet to strip away the couple’s suspicion entirely.

The ‘single night’ I had uttered upon our first meeting was merely a seed sown to stir the priest’s compassion; in truth, I intended to hold out in Luncani until the terror subsided and crossing borders became as effortless as before.

For if I aroused suspicion in this village and were driven out, the rumor of that expulsion would spread to neighboring villages, making it impossible to gain entry anywhere else.

Posing as human amidst humans was troublesome enough, yet far less troublesome than having my nature as their predator exposed to my easiest prey.

Following the unknown presence down the corridor, I listened once more before the arched doorway connecting to the chapel.

I had wondered if someone was praying at this early hour, but that was not the case. What reached my tuned ears was a soft yawn and a grumbled complaint under someone’s breath:

“I’m not even a priest, so why is it always me…”

A young man’s voice. His voice had already broken, yet a trace of youth still lingered.

A son? An only child? While such thoughts crossed my mind, footsteps stirred from the far end of the corridor. It seemed the priest had begun his morning preparations as well. Thinking I ought to confirm who this was before he arrived, I opened the door.

Though I stepped through with my gaze fixed on the direction of the sound, for some reason, he was quicker to look at me.

He was clad in loose, oversized white garments. Like a saint stepped right out of the gold-leafed icons that lined the chapel walls. Beneath the pale dawn light streaming through the tall windows, he gazed at me steadily with blue eyes that gleamed even paler.

They were peculiar eyes. A gaze so transparent that it struck me as uncanny.

Though it was clearly I who had followed him, it felt as if he had been waiting for me. Even though I had revealed myself by my own will, I felt as though I had been discovered.

A youth appearing in his late teens or very early twenties. He possessed a delicate, pretty face, taking after his mother far more than his father, with an oddly provocative slant to his eyes.

“…Have you come to pray?”

After a brief silence, he was the first to speak. Seeing that he emerged from the door connected to the rectory yet did not ask who I was, it seemed that while he had not been formally introduced, he had heard about me.

I opened my mouth as I closed the door, intending to give a casual excuse, but he was one step faster.

“I am still preparing, so there may be some noise, but please feel free to use the chapel.”

His tone was entirely different from when he was muttering to himself. A courteous, soft manner that immediately marked him as a priest’s son. Yet his gaze remained subtle. At a glance, it seemed wary; from another angle, it sparkled with curiosity.

After a brief pause, I nodded quietly and stepped further inside. Only then did he take his eyes off me and return to his duties.

Naturally, I had no desire to pray. I merely wanted to draw closer to discern the nature of the incongruity—or rather, the strangeness—I had felt.

Treading upon the wooden floorboards between the worn carpet stained with parishioners’ footprints, I advanced and came to a stop a few paces before the iconostasis, whose closed central doors concealed the sanctuary. It was close enough to clearly see the back of the young man polishing candlesticks.

Making the sign of the cross, I observed him. The brightening sunlight fell upon the nape of his neck, bowed as he arranged the censer and the lectern. The fine, pale down visible between the rays of light remains vividly etched in my memory to this day.

From him came a warm, harmless scent, like freshly baked bread. From his scent alone, I could tell he possessed sweet blood.

My appetite stimulated without warning, I felt a faint throb in my gums and slowly turned my gaze toward the icon before me.

The saints encased in lavish gold leaf stared at me with soulless eyes, like taxidermied animals. As though observing—or perhaps surveilling—a non-human thing that had suddenly appeared before them.

Vacantly, I met their lifeless eyes. It was long in the past that I had felt any need to pick petty quarrels with holy things like some childish rebel.

After blinking blankly for a long while, I bowed my head and pretended to pray just as the young man finished tidying and turned around. Glancing sideways at me, he quieted his footsteps and exited the chapel.

Only after I heard the sound of the door opening and closing did I raise my head and look back. I had turned around expecting him to be gone, yet somehow, our eyes met once again.

He was looking back at me with his hand resting on the doorknob.

“…Ah.”

Just as I had not expected him to still be there after hearing the door close, he, too, seemed surprised that I had turned around immediately, averting his gaze in slight fluster.

“The meal… seems almost ready. …I was going to let you know when you finished.”

The sunlight, having crept deep into the room, now illuminated half his face. His dense, long eyelashes sparkled like the gold leaf in the icons. Involuntarily, I exhaled a breath. Only then did the scent of him, inhaled when I reached the iconostasis, leave me once more.

Meeting an inexplicable gaze amidst an unfamiliar tension in the dawn chapel.

That was our first encounter.

Upon the rectory dining table, as rustic as their faith, my future itinerary became the main topic of conversation.

“Did you pass the night in comfort?”

After offering a prayer of thanksgiving, the priest began by cordially asking after my well-being as he sliced a portion of mămăligă with a thread and transferred it to my plate.

“Yes, thanks to your grace, I passed a most restful night for the first time in a long while. Providing shelter alone is more than enough to earn my gratitude, yet you even offer a meal… I know not how I can ever repay this kindness…”

As I replied, watching apologetically as the hand that set down the mămăligă went on to serve goat cheese dusted white with salt, the priest smiled with a generous countenance.

“The very heart that wishes to repay kindness received is already repayment in full. Aiding those in need is as natural to me as offering morning prayers each day, so pray, think nothing of it.”

“Having lost all my possessions, I am in no position to leave immediately, so how could I simply accept your charity? Might there be some task in the village I could assist with?”

“Then, after our meal, I shall provide you with a fresh notebook, so how would you like to examine our archives? Small though the archive is for a church in a small village, its history is long, so there should be ample records for you to copy.”

As expected, with merely a slight nudge, the priest defenselessly accepted the subtly planted premise of an extended stay. When the most trusted member of a community is virtuous, appealing to the very goodness that forms his pride was always the swiftest course.

“Those are most generous words… yet is that not purely my own work? Even if it is arduous labor, I wish to do something beneficial for the village.”

It was a sound judgment. Everything proceeded according to expectation. Up to that point, at least.

“If you truly insist, then once you have examined the archives, would you consider helping my boy with his studies of the wider world in your spare time?”

The words the priest casually tossed out with an embarrassed chuckle were entirely outside my calculations.

The muscles of my face, straining to pretend to savor the ciorbă whose sour stench stung my nose and made it nearly impossible to swallow, froze for a fraction of a second. My gaze, fixed on the priest before me, drifted involuntarily to his right.

“Ever since he was small, he has loved history and possessed boundless curiosity about worldly affairs, so much so that he constantly talks of leaving… He would be overjoyed if you could be a conversation partner for him. In a village like this, news of distant lands is hard to come by.”

As if this had not been discussed beforehand, the young man looked at his father in slight astonishment before turning his head toward me. Once more, our eyes met. Those chillingly blue irises wavered faintly.

“I know not whether my shallow knowledge will be of any aid to your son… but if that can serve as repayment, I shall gladly do so.”

When I spoke slowly in reply, the young man flinched slightly and hurriedly cast his eyes down. With an expression that might have been discontent, discomfort, or embarrassment.

“I must endeavor not to hinder your son’s sharp intellect.”

At my softly added remark, the priest beamed, pleased that his son’s cleverness had been acknowledged, and patted the youth on the shoulder.

“Haha, you are far too modest. He is an imperfect boy, but I place him in your capable hands.”

Watching on, the priest’s wife also smiled brightly, encouraging the son sitting across from her.

“What wonderful news, Ilie. Meeting a learned teacher who knows the world so widely is no easy opportunity. Take this chance to ask much and learn much.”

Ilie.

The moment I learned the name of the first him, our eyes met yet again, and once again, he averted his gaze.

I remember my gums faintly throbbing even as I forced down food whose taste I could not comprehend.