Chapter 6

Whenever I hear the scratching of a nib against paper, I am instantly dragged back into the archive of that place.

It is no different right now, as I scratch across paper with this long-used fountain pen. The heavy silence of that room envelops my eardrums, and the stale, musty stench of moldy dust brushes the tip of my nose.

That day, the notebook provided by the priest was of such poor paper quality that it was busier repelling ink than absorbing it. The murky, raw air of the archive made me resent my sharp sense of smell.

Yet in that suffocating space, what tormented me above all else was his scent.

The smell of sunlight, like crisp, sun-dried linens, wafting from the white nape of his neck as he walked ahead of me up the narrow, steep stairs; and the warmth of a young creature heating the surrounding air. The blue veins pulsing vigorously beneath translucent white skin, and the sweet scent spreading along his pulse as though flaunting its vitality.

I had to struggle considerably not to record that scent instead of the old church history. Almost desperately, perhaps, I buried my gaze into the ancient chronicle.

It was an uncanny thing.

It was hardly the first time the scent of a human whose blood suited me so well had stirred my appetite, so why, in that place, did I find it exceptionally agonizing?

I do not wish to offer the comfortable excuse that it was fated from the beginning; yet setting aside fatalism, it was a sensation inexplicable by any words, and so I have still found no answer.

“Master.”

The first him addressed me thus. Perhaps that is why, even now, whenever I hear that word, my gums throb with sudden jolts. How laughable.

“Yes.”

Acting was an arduous task. Particularly so for one neither living nor dead, possessing eyes devoid of a single speck of vitality, to mimic the gaze of an impassioned scholar indulging in the knowledge of this vast world.

“Master, for what purpose do you travel?”

“I travel to learn what records this earth holds beneath my feet, what manner of people dwell here, and what they believe, and why.”

“Then what knowledge did you gain in Serbia? Did you gain enough to make leaving Vienna worthwhile? Ah, I am also curious about what you think of the rumors circulating among the public.”

The guise of a scholar—devised to exploit the church’s reverent atmosphere toward men of learning and to offer a reasonable justification for wandering alone in such times—proved to be poison not before the priest who was the intended target of deception, but before his son.

“Even if one gains nothing, there is worth in the journey. Vienna is called a city of learning, giving a strong impression that all knowledge is concentrated there, yet in truth, it is a place where the search for what exists nowhere is far more active than the study of existing information.”

I answered with my eyes fixed on the ink spreading along the coarse grain of the paper. Behind me, I heard him hold his breath. He seemed to be waiting for what followed.

Pretending to concentrate on my transcription, I deliberately paused for a moment, then slowly turned a page of the church records spread beside the notebook.

“Serbia was a harsh land. Not to speak ill of it, but their records were largely crude and superstitious. The ‘public rumors’ you are curious about may also have drawn their strength from an environment where such superstitions thrive.”

Hearing my answer, Ilie drew in a sharp, deep breath. I felt the presence leaning against a bookshelf a few paces away slowly turn toward me.

“But Master, superstition means belief without evidence. Can the mere fact that it was preserved in records not serve as evidence in itself?”

I heard approaching footsteps. His voice grew closer. Naturally, his scent drew closer as well.

“Could it be that someone in the past crudely recorded what they experienced, and because no one experiences it anymore, it is merely treated as superstition now?”

Sharp insight and guarded curiosity mingled simultaneously within his increasingly distinct voice.

Though I had calculated my answer to maintain the veneer of a modest scholar while causing him to lose interest, it seemed to have only stimulated his intellectual curiosity further.

Without even realizing that my hand had stopped moving, I blinked blankly and spoke:

“No record in this world can be completely objective. It invariably reflects the thoughts and experiences of the one who wrote it. For that reason, one cannot definitively declare something a fact simply because it was written down.”

“Hmm…”

“A prime example would be the witch hunts of a century ago.”

“Ah.”

Belatedly moving my hand as Ilie’s presence drew right up beside me, I continued:

“When the events in a record cease to repeat and room is made for alternative explanations, that record ceases to be an explanation and becomes a trace. A trace of misunderstanding, of imagination, of illusion, of ignorance. Ah, though of course, this applies strictly to superstitious records.”

The moment I finished speaking, vibrant warmth wafted strongly from right beside me. His sweet scent drove away the musty air lingering at the tip of my nose.

“You are very articulate. It makes it easy to understand. …My father rarely listens to talk like this.”

The scratching pen halted once more. Just as the thought struck me that his voice was far too close, he suddenly thrust his face out from beside my arm.

“By the way, Master.”

Involuntarily, I turned my head toward him. The sunlight struggling through the small window illuminated his vivid blue eyes.

“In that case, do you not believe in the Holy Bible either, Master?”

The instant I met those innocent yet cunning eyes, I became certain that he would be the greatest obstacle to my settling in this place.

“That is a dangerous question.”

“Are you afraid I will tell my father?”

“No. Because that is a question that can only arise if one already considers the Bible to be superstitious in the first place.”

Ilie, whose attitude had been strangely curt and aggressive as though intent on testing me, wore a struck expression at my words. He rolled his eyes in fluster, then gently bit his lower lip.

“…Will you tell him?”

“The priest? No.”

“Then will you not answer me either?”

I deliberated briefly. If I said I believed, it would amount to contradicting the logic I had just expounded; if I said I did not, it would be an exceedingly troublesome blasphemy for a guest sheltering in a rectory.

His curiosity was, on one hand, intriguing to me, and on the other, bothersome. There are different kinds of curiosity. There are those who dig straight down a single line toward the root of a question, and those who continually shift direction and shape to uncover the ‘core.’

“I do not believe, yet neither do I deny it.”

The one fundamentally incompatible with me was distinctly the latter.

“It would be more accurate to call the Bible a ‘record of faith’ rather than a ‘record of facts.’ If the records of the witch hunts revealed the ugliness of humanity, the Bible proclaims the nobility that humans ought to strive toward.”

That he was precisely of that mold, I had suspected from that very first conversation.

“I believe what matters about a record is what influence it leaves upon future generations. Even if it is not factual truth, if the hearts of those who believe in it incline toward harmony and benevolence rather than fear and division, there is no reason to deny it.”

Knowing this in advance yet failing to shake him off—that, surely, was my fatal blunder.

“Even if it is not fact, if the believer’s heart inclines toward harmony and benevolence, there is no reason to deny it…”

Ilie repeated my words with wide eyes. Casting away whatever guardedness and petulance had lingered in his gaze until then, his eyes flashed with an astonishing luster as he stared at me as though gazing upon a one-of-a-kind, rare ancient tome.

“I never knew such a way of thinking existed. It feels as though the horizon inside my head has expanded. Is it because I grew up hearing only to believe and never to doubt?”

His face, which had taken on a strangely dazed expression, quietly dismantled its walls. The edge in his eyes melted away softly, like thawing snow.

“So the stories left behind are not meant to be judged solely by whether one ‘believes or does not believe.’”

Nodding to himself, he murmured:

“I think I understand. A record is not merely the letters written before one’s eyes. The thoughts and emotions of the one who wrote it, the thoughts and emotions of the one who reads it… only when all of that is added together does it hold true meaning. Right?”

He looked at me as if seeking agreement, then, suddenly realizing he had let his guard down too easily, furrowed his brows and snapped his head away.

“That was just me talking to myself. I didn’t ask you.”

I remember everything about that moment with absolute clarity. The strangely buoyant voice, the pointlessly sharp demeanor meant to conceal it, the high body heat warming the air, the sweet scent of his skin, the blue eyes so clear they seemed capable of letting even light pass through them, and the hair gleaming like golden threads. Every single piece of it.

Yes, I shall admit it. From that very moment, I was already the defeated party.

With the price of my lodging having become companionship with a mortal rather than external labor, my settlement began to drift in a direction entirely different from anything I had envisioned.

My plan to casually blend into the village using the priest’s trust as a foothold crumbled in an instant with the appearance of a single person: Ilie.

Though I had chosen the presbytery library as a means to integrate into Luncani, with Ilie shadowing me, the room felt less like a sanctuary and closer to an interrogation chamber.

“Sir.”

He never left me alone for a single moment. With eyes harboring something between suspicion and curiosity, he observed me persistently, relentlessly probing me with questions that were trivial yet far from light.

“Earlier, I overheard Father explaining things to the parishioners. He said you wandered through the forest fleeing those rumors before ending up here.”

For me, forced to constantly steel my consciousness against the sheer vitality radiating from him, it was an agonizing ordeal.

“Did you not distinctly tell me it was pure superstition? If you do not believe it, you ought to have no reason to fear it.”

Throughout the hours I spent examining and transcribing records I cared nothing about, I had to shave away, bit by bit, the masks I had accumulated over ages alongside my eternal knowledge just to answer his petty questions and guarded curiosity.

“Personal disbelief and collective terror are two different things.”

“You mean one can still be afraid without believing?”

“I do not believe the rumors, but I feared the terror exuded by those who do. It made me uneasy and restless, so I fled.”

Clever as he was, he would approach precisely to the very edge of the line I wished him not to cross and plop himself down. In word and in deed alike.

Rummaging through the library’s books and thrusting some intriguing point of debate before me the moment he found one; hovering near me as I feigned absorption in my transcription, casually tossing out personal inquiries; taking a seat a few paces away and simply staring at me in silence for hours on end.

It was a distance so exquisitely measured that it only made me more uncomfortable—a proximity I could neither pinpoint nor push away.

For some time, I could not tell whether he had seen through me—a spider masquerading as a butterfly—or whether he was merely a butterfly that had flown into the web on its own wings, unable to escape. Nor could I discern whether his curiosity lay with me or with the knowledge I possessed, or whether his gaze fell upon my outer shell or my inner self.

The only certainty was that I, who could have easily slipped away, pushed him aside, or overpowered him at any moment, had set aside all those options and silently endured his gaze and his questions.

Perhaps… I had been waiting all along.

Waiting for someone to discover the self that lay beyond the web. Waiting for someone to burrow through the false life I had so meticulously stitched together over endless years, to unearth the core hidden in my deepest depths. Waiting for someone to leave footprints upon the dusty bedrock of my soul.

“Where do you think we go after death?”

“You seem inclined toward philosophy today.”

“I only wanted to have a conversation on this sort of subject. Everyone around me believes in God, in heaven and hell. There’s no one I can talk to about things like this.”

And Ilie acted as though he had faintly perceived that deep desire within me.

“Because you don’t believe in God, Sir.”

He approached without hesitation, peering into me without reserve. Even as he remained cautious, guarded, and blunt, he could never seem to tear his attention away from me.

“I’m curious how someone like that thinks of the afterlife.”

With each passing day, his questions narrowed their scope—drifting away from ‘knowledge’ and homing in on ‘me.’ Though cloaked in various guises, at their heart they were always about me myself.

“If you don’t believe in God, or heaven, or hell, I wonder if you believe in the soul, too.”

That day’s conversation was no different.

“Anyway… what about it? What do you think exists beyond death?”

I slowly raised my head and met his eyes. The hand transcribing the records halted, the quill slanting in my grasp.

I drew a meaningless breath. Gazing straight into those vivid blue eyes, I spoke.

“I believe there is nothing.”

My voice had sunk low. I paid it no mind.

“Only a tranquil darkness, most likely.”

“…Tranquil? When it’s death?”

“Because a dead body can feel nothing. From the moment consciousness fades, it will be peaceful forever. Because it is a complete end. Rotting in silence, turning to dust, blurring away on the current of time.”

My slightly raspy voice brought the matter to a close with firmer resolve than usual. Ilie, who had not blinked once while listening to my answer, finally exhaled a brief breath.

“I understand what you mean.”

Falling silent for a moment, he murmured quietly.

“Still, hearing it feels rather… unsettling.”

Blinking slowly as he gazed at the empty air below, he raised his head and looked at me again.

“Did you hope I believed in the soul?”

“No, not that.”

The moment our eyes met, the air felt pulled taut as a drawn cord. It was a tension so acute that even a speck of dust floating before my face, spun lightly through the air by a stray breath, grated on my nerves.

“It’s just that… it sounded as though you longed for it.”

I looked at him for a while without a word. He did the same.

It was only a fleeting instant, yet in those words, I felt as though a hunger centuries old had been pierced through. Not by an elder whose long human years had granted him profound insight, but by a young mortal who had barely lived twenty years.

“Is that so.”

I answered as I turned my head back down toward the notebook. That was likely the most neutral reaction I could manage then.

It was not that I had no urge to point out how such conjectures could offend another, or to dismiss it as an overactive imagination when I had merely stated a rational conclusion. Perhaps fulfilling my assigned role as a tutor would have warranted doing precisely that.

Yet I did not. I had no intention of dispelling his suspicion or his guard. For, as I have already written, I was perhaps waiting for someone’s footprints.

“You had better not go outside for the time being.”

“Hm?”

“The ominous rumors are growing worse. Distrust toward outsiders has reached its peak. I heard they already held a trial in the village across the river.”

“Are there still people who believe I am that sinister creature from the rumors? Even while I spend every day beneath the cross of the Orthodox Church?”

“Father is trying to persuade them too, but there’s no helping it right now. You’re an outsider. And especially because you, Sir… resemble ‘that thing’ from the rumors far too much.”

Even though I had noticed his presence encroaching bit by bit long before, I did not bar his path. Nor did I push him away.

“That is rude, even for a jest.”

“I didn’t mean it in a bad way.”

“How could being told I resemble a devil not be in a bad way?”

“I didn’t say you were ‘like a devil,’ I said you share the traits of ‘that thing.’”

Because whenever such trifling banter was exchanged at a temperature that was anything but trifling, I felt as though the dust accumulated heavily inside me was scattering, bit by bit.

“Traits?”

“According to the rumors you don’t believe, ‘that thing’ is said to possess an extraordinarily attractive appearance.”

It was not pleasing, yet neither was it disagreeable. And so, feigning devotion to my role as scholar and tutor, I would continually indulge Ilie’s brazen intrusions.

“They say you must not meet its gaze, because just locking eyes will bewitch a person. And its voice is so fine that merely hearing a whisper makes you want to bare your throat. Enticing someone like that until their heart races, so the blood… Ah.”

As if he had held his tongue all this while because I had never properly indulged him, Ilie had blurted it out in a slightly excited cadence, only to snap his mouth shut with a belated jolt of realization.

Behind his abruptly severed words, only the sound of a quill scratching across paper settled into the quiet. Only after placing a period at the end of the sentence I was writing did I turn my head toward him.

I saw his reddened ears. Having unintentionally spilled from his own mouth just how attractive he found me, Ilie sat with his head jerked sharply aside, looking as though he wanted to punch the empty air if only he could.

Slowly laying down the pen that had rested frozen in my hand, I turned my seated frame. The pale face that had been needlessly pretending to stare out the window tilted a fraction toward me at the rustle of my clothes. I could see his tightly pressed lips twitching.

Was it because I had felt so heavily swayed and dragged around by him all this while? Watching him chew on the innocent flesh inside his cheek in mounting mortification brought me a small sense of satisfaction.

“Ilie.”

Dropping my voice deliberately low, whispering as if to prove the ‘dangerous traits’ he had spoken of, I rose from my seat.

“Superstition feeds on that sort of imagination.”

The scrape of chair legs against the floor sheared through the stale silence of the library. Faintly into my ears drifted the sound of Ilie catching his breath—no, swallowing his spit.

“It is well to wish to understand the world. It is well to take an interest in tales wandering the earth because you find them curious and fascinating. I know it cannot be helped. Curiosity is the purest, yet most virulent of human desires.”

With each step, the dust motes drifting in the sunlight spun in gentle arcs through the air. With the beam of light from the small window—distant from me, close to him—standing between us, I gazed into his faintly trembling blue eyes.

“Yet, Ilie. You must never forget that curiosity is a desire as well.”

I slowly reached out and stroked his alabaster neck. With the back of my fingers, exquisitely slow and faint.

“Always be on guard.”

Pressed firmly against the bookshelf like a cornered mouse, Ilie faintly trembled beneath wide, strained eyelids. A tremor of either bewilderment or tension.

“For the moment desire fails to keep its proper bounds, it inevitably turns to poison.”

I cannot say what thought possessed me to utter those words. Whether I wished to warn him to step no further, or to provoke him to step in deeper, or to praise him for doing well.

“I-I know that much without you telling me! I’m being cautious enough as it is.”

Naturally, Ilie did not merely sit by and listen. Swatting away my hand that had barely brushed his neck, he pressed his back even flatter against the bookshelf where he had no room left to retreat, covering his crimson ears with his hands.

“…I said I am.”

Then, with an expression wholly unsuited to the words he had spoken, he cast his eyes down. As though fearing that if he met my gaze any longer, or listened to my voice any further, he might truly be bewitched.

“Is that so.”

Absurdly enough, an unidentifiable tremor rippled along my back in that instant.

“…What a relief, then.”

Had the dissonance I felt from the very moment I first laid eyes on him been a desire for conquest? Because he seemed to possess blood that suited me so well, because he exuded such a sweet scent? Was it a predatory urge—to snatch him up, crush him down, and devour him whole?

As I turned away alone and left the library, leaving him frozen in his scarlet blush, my head had been entirely filled with such thoughts.

That night, I spent a longer time than usual washing my body. It made little sense, but I did so because I felt ‘sticky.’

Yet every time the warm, damp cloth swept over my cold skin, the sticky sensation enveloping me only grew thicker. As though I were painting over it rather than wiping it away, a bizarre sensation kept welling up from deep within my body.

Whenever moisture gathered on my dry skin, there surfaced in my mind the flushed cheeks of a young man poised between boyhood and adulthood. I recalled his softly parted, moist lips, and eyes glistening with some emotion concealed beneath curiosity.

While wiping my own chest and neck, where barely a pulse could be felt beneath the skin, I thought of that alabaster throat I had brushed with the back of my fingers. I remembered the pounding of his heart and the faint tremor of his eyelashes.

I had wished to at least refresh my body because the sticky feeling was unpleasant, yet the more time I devoted to washing myself, the stickier my thoughts became.

To the me of that time, it was a profoundly unsettling experience. Uncomfortable, confounding, bizarre.

Likely it was because I had never experienced an emotion I could not clearly define for myself. Back then, I was truly an entity that knew nothing of human feelings. A creature that merely existed because it was born, and went on living merely because it could not die.

And so, it took me a long while after that to finally realize the name of that emotion.

It was about a month after my arrival in Luncani when he truly began leaving traces within me. Around the time I resolved in earnest to settle there for the long term.

It began with the words I spoke early one morning before the presbytery table, where freshly baked bread and freshly drawn goat’s milk sat in simple array.

“Father.”

The prayer had concluded, and everyone was picking up their bread and dishing out cheese or eggs.

Though it was the priest I addressed, it was Ilie who looked up first. The priest, spreading cheese across a slice of cut bread, raised his benevolent eyes to look at me a beat later.

“Thanks to the grace you have shown me, I have fully regained my strength. My transcription of the records here is also nearing its completion. Having imposed upon your hospitality for so long, I feel only embarrassment sitting at this table every morning.”

I spoke, carefully selecting the plain, polite cadence of a scholar—the very tone that had broken down his vigilance.

“Having no further face to lean upon your kindness, I intend to vacate the room soon.”

At those words as well, it was Ilie who reacted first. As if he had heard tremendously shocking news, he froze with his mouth midway through biting his bread and stared at me, eyes wide.

“Do you intend to return home?”

To the priest’s inquiry, I slowly shook my head, taking pains not to look in Ilie’s direction.

“As I have mentioned before, I lost all the precious records I had gathered on my way here. For a scholar whose primary purpose in traveling is transcription, this is entirely unacceptable. Therefore…”

Yet at the part where I deliberately dipped my chin in apparent embarrassment and trailed off, I had no choice but to cast a glance toward Ilie, who was staring only at me without even blinking.

“Until the fear of outsiders and the sinister rumors die down, I plan to remain here in Luncani. Once the world grows quiet, I intend to retrace my steps and record anew the records I lost.”

A peculiar silence hung over the table for a moment. Not a silence of doubt, but the kind where people ponder how they might offer their assistance.

Only Ilie harbored a completely different emotion; hurriedly casting his eyes down as if fleeing my gaze, he resumed chewing the bread he had paused.

“Indeed, scholarship is a pursuit of endlessly chasing traces. For my part, you are welcome to stay as long as you wish, but since you have spoken first, it would be courteous to understand your discomfort. Very well.”

As I had anticipated when bringing it up, the priest nodded benevolently and offered something without even being asked.

“If so, I would like to recommend a place for you to stay. How would that suit you?”

Rather than answering right away, I looked at the priest with an affectedly bashful gaze.

“Though it is slightly removed from the village, there is a small building once used by the parish caretaker that currently stands empty. While it leaves much to be desired as a proper dwelling, it is far too sturdy to use merely as a storehouse. A single day spent on repairs will make it endure easily for several years.”

Having spoken in hopes he would offer lodging on his own, I had no reason to refuse. Still, I feigned hesitation, dabbing at my mouth as though giving it serious thought before delivering my answer.

After that, exhausting, exceedingly formal pleasantries were exchanged as always.

Only before returning to my room when the meal was finished did I meet the eyes of Ilie, whom I had avoided throughout breakfast. He, who had been stealing glances at me persistently as if unaware he was doing so, whipped his head away in startled surprise the moment I met his gaze.

Yet the feelings with which he had peeked at me the whole time were plainly visible from his scarlet ears alone, which he could not hide no matter how sharply he turned his head.

Perhaps he had already foreseen, even then, what that isolated house outside the village would become for the two of us.

Ilie’s words—that distrust of outsiders had reached its peak—were true. His assertion that they were even more wary because the ‘traits’ in the rumors fit me all too well was true as well.

The moment I left the church building to live in isolation, the villagers went out of their way to come to that secluded spot daily, taking turns watching me. Whether they had organized a watch among themselves, torches flickered outside my window in the dead of night, and ashes or water were scattered before the door when I stepped out in the morning.

It was a method that did not hide in the least their desire to see where I went during the night.

Whenever I stepped outside, without exception they averted their eyes and busied themselves whispering among themselves; if I so much as attempted to speak to them, they scrambled to flee as if my voice were a demon’s curse.

Ignorant young brats, perhaps assuming I was an evil person simply because the adults disliked me, threw stones at the house or discarded things like dead insects before the door.

It was a period in which I had to experience firsthand how even the endorsement of their most trusted priest held no absolute authority in the face of collective terror.

In truth, so long as they did not force me out, such treatment mattered nothing to me. To be even more frank, it was rather convenient. It gave me far less to worry about than positive attention would have.

“Stop it, all of you!”

But Ilie, who began visiting me directly as the days I did not go to the library grew more frequent, felt otherwise.

“He spent over thirty days beneath the cross, and not a single harm came to him! Nothing happened to our family who lived with him during that time either! Isn’t that enough?!”

It was around the time the season was crossing into autumn. There came a day when Ilie—who would pick a book from the library and come all the way to my house to read it even without any real business—raised his voice at the villagers he encountered on the path near my dwelling.

“Why can’t you see that suspecting him ultimately means you distrust my father? This is an utter insult not just to him, but to me as well!”

Hearing him shout in anger for the first time, I was inwardly startled and pulled back the curtain to look outside.

“A priest who dedicated the rest of his life to God, my father—the most trusted man in this village—believes him! Enough to entrust his only child to him to be taught!”

Ilie stood at the edge of the winding dirt road that formed the boundary between forest and village. As though he had run into men patrolling near my house in pairs on their way back, he stood facing men half a hand taller than himself.

“And in truth, he is the smartest, most prudent adult I have ever met! Hating someone blindly without ever speaking a single word to him isn’t vigilance for the village—it’s just ostracism!”

Ilie’s furious shouting shook the forest loudly enough to be heard without even straining my ears.

“Even setting all that aside, what demon in this world could freely walk in and out of the house of God?! What demon could sleep peacefully beneath the church’s roof and pray before the cross?!”

Unaware of when I had begun holding my breath, at that point I let out the breath pooled in my chest in a long exhale.

It was a breath laced with laughter—whether mocking Ilie for being so thoroughly deceived by me, or reveling in the villagers who had turned and retreated in haste, unable to offer a single rebuttal.

Where in that small body did such a blazing fireball hide?

In the instant I drew the curtain and turned around, I believe that was what I thought, touching my dry lips as if brushing away the laughter lingering at the corners of my mouth.

Pretending to have heard nothing, I quietly returned to my chair and opened my book. In my ears, tuned outward, echoed Ilie’s approaching footsteps, accompanied by his indignant huffing.

What a foolish, naive mortal. I found this young creature ridiculous yet intriguing—using his untouchable father and God as a shield to protect me, the very entity everyone suspected.

Behind that thought came a strange sensation I had never once experienced in all my life.

A dizzying tangle between the urge to openly mock him for believing in what he should have mistrusted above all else, and a fondness for how he pretended to suspect me even more than the villagers did to my face, only to flare with fury on my behalf behind my back.

Having never felt such a thing and knowing nothing of how to resolve it, I concealed everything as always and waited for him with feigned composure.

Before long, the door flew open. There was no knock.

Assuming I could not possibly know—since the disturbance had been at a distance ordinary mortals could never overhear—Ilie, barging through the door, had entirely retracted the sharp claws he had bared to defend me.

“Do clean up a bit. The front of the door is so filthy it’s hard to even step inside.”

Though that prickliness was immediately aimed at me the moment he faced me, as if it were only natural.

In truth, it was his usual bluntness, but having already overheard everything, I reacted a little differently than usual, annoyed by the thought of why he was so abrasive only when standing before me.

“Even if I sweep it away, it will be back by tomorrow morning. Why bother?”

I tossed the words out for him to find uncomfortable.

“…Then get angry! You could just tell them to stop. Or come to the church and ask Father. You speak well enough to wrap both Father and me around your finger, so why do you just sit back and take it without any sense in matters like this?”

Yet the moment I saw how genuinely upset he was—the moment he choked out those words with eyes looking truly hurt, unlike me who had suffered not the slightest blow—I was, uncharacteristically, caught off guard.

“I mean you should tell them that talk about superstition you gave me! Everyone is only acting like this because they don’t know any better. You know more than anyone, Sir! So why don’t you say anything?”

In a chest that had remained entirely unmoved through nights when torches flickered outside the window and mornings when ashes and flour were strewn before the door, an unexpected ripple stirred.

I had surely thought it a reckless flame. A useless trust, a sentiment bound to be abandoned and betrayed. I had scoffed at it, wished to mock it, and wanted to patronizingly praise it.

“In life… there are certain injustices…”

Yet when I opened my mouth before him, meeting his eyes, the inhuman facets of me that had mocked and derided his heart shrank back in an instant, like a dead spider.

“…which yield the most beneficial outcome when simply endured in silence.”

What flowed next were words whose meaning I myself understood least of all. Words spoken without even knowing whether the ‘injustice’ from my mouth referred to the villagers’ suspicions or to this very being named Ilie, who had stubbornly stirred a whirlwind of dust within me.

“I know you are far smarter than me, Sir, but I cannot agree with that.”

It seemed he was equally incapable of understanding.

“No matter how good the outcome becomes, the heart still gets hurt in the end. …It still hurts.”

Growing strangely uncomfortable at the faint choke in his voice, born of either frustration or pity, I lowered my eyes silently to my book under the guise of holding my tongue.

In that moment, there was only one thing I knew with absolute certainty.

That far more than the dozens of contemptuous eyes suspecting me of being a devil, a single pair of blue eyes—trusting and admiring me, flaring with anger and choking with tears on my behalf—struck me with an infinitely more lethal blow.

It was from that day forth.

The day when whenever I thought of him, that sticky sensation unfailingly began to stir.

Was it because I, a non-human, harbored emotions resembling a mortal’s? From some point on, whenever Ilie came to the cabin, my time—once still and quiet as though frozen—began to sprint as if pursued.

To me, it was truly bewildering. The flow of time, which I had left alone whether it drifted or halted, suddenly pressed upon me with piercing clarity.

What I felt back then was akin to suddenly perceiving something I had taken for granted all my existence without ever recognizing the need for it—like air itself.

The germination of this nameless emotion threw my monotonous time into utter disarray in an instant.

Without even knowing why, when night fell I calculated the hours until morning, and when he arrived I calculated the hours until he would leave. Confused by my own incomprehension, I could not shake it from my head.

It was the first time I had ever paid such keen attention to the passage of a single day called ‘today.’

“Last night… did you go into the forest?”

Was that why? Was it because my focus was drawn so entirely to him—no, to the moments where his time and mine overlapped?

“Someone said they saw you, Sir.”

Was that why I had moved without giving the slightest thought to the villagers’ vigilance, which had merely shrunk back at Ilie’s fury without ever fully dissipating?

“According to that person, you went into the woods in the dead of night, Sir, and…”

That was the day when the suspicion that had quieted through the passing of autumn flared up like wildfire in the village once more,

“…they say you suddenly vanished near where the moonlight couldn’t reach.”

and the day when Ilie, who had stepped back to watch after stirring a great cloud of dust, strode forward once more and began tearing away the cobwebs.

“So he hid near the cabin and waited until you returned. And then, just like when you vanished, you suddenly reappeared out of the darkness.”

Ilie tried to maintain a tone that treated it as ridiculous gossip, but in truth, I could hear it all. From the very first word he uttered, a strange confusion already lingered in his voice.

“And… they said there was blood on your mouth.”

Desperate to dismiss it as nonsense because of how deeply he trusted me, yet thrown into turmoil because a villager claimed to have seen it with his own eyes—unlike the groundless suspicions before—leaving him unable to take my side unconditionally. His gaze and cadence held precisely that conflict.

Pausing the fingers that had been unconsciously turning a page to focus on him, I realized his eyes were desperately waiting for a denial from my lips, and simultaneously averted my gaze.

“It is true that I went into the forest.”

I replied, casually turning the page as if it were nothing.

“And it is also true that my mouth was torn and bleeding.”

Speaking those words, I realized: from that moment on, my tongue no longer existed merely to deceive prey.

“However, claiming I suddenly vanished or reappeared is an overactive imagination. It was merely that the darkness was too thick for him to see properly.”

“…Why did you go into the forest, then?”

“I could not sleep and felt suffocated. It was merely to catch my breath.”

“If you felt uncomfortable walking around during the day and wanted a night stroll, going toward the river would have been better, wouldn’t it?”

“The river requires passing through the village.”

“What about that?”

The voice he found so sweet, the lies that had completely deceived him, no longer existed to lure blind prey to a secluded spot.

“If that person had seen me passing through the village last night, would the villagers not be several times more terrified by now?”

They were tools to pack earth beneath whatever pillar supported the ‘teacher’ he admired and trusted—a pillar I knew not how to name.

Falling silent for a moment as if torn between relief and doubt, Ilie quietly rose to his feet as though mocking my inner intentions and spoke.

“Show me the wound.”

I did not think twice. The moment his voice entered my ears, my body, almost on pure reflex, bit down with my jaw and unsheathed the hidden fangs.

There was not even a process of contemplation or judgment. The moment I rolled my eyes toward the rustle of him standing, everything was already done. When he came to a halt before me and reached out a hand as if to cup my chin, a self-inflicted wound inside my lower lip was already welling with blood.

“Are you suspecting me?”

Even after puncturing myself with my own fangs to dispel his anxiety, I went out of my way to ask. Even though I had created the wound to show him, I thought I did not want to show it.

I did not know it then, but I know it now. It was likely petulance.

“Suspecting you?”

At that, Ilie arched his eyebrows high as if reading right through me, then knitted them fiercely. I had thrown a childish tantrum assuming he wanted to check out of suspicion, but that had not been his reason in the first place.

“If blood was running outside your mouth, the wound must have been deep. And knowing your temperament, Sir, you certainly wouldn’t have applied any medicine properly.”

Wearing a visibly sulky expression, Ilie caught the underside of my chin. While I thought his manner of laying hands on me without permission was insolent, his words—whether an excuse or an explanation—did not sound displeasing, so I quietly parted my lips for him.

“You’re meticulous only when it comes to records, Sir, and half-hearted about everything else. …Don’t go suspecting me instead.”

It was a warm hand. That warmth I could only feel when hunting gently, carefully cradled my chin and pulled down my lower lip. Upon the mucous membrane inside my lip, the faint taste of human flesh seeped in.

“Good heavens. It’s still bleeding. How on earth did it tear like this?”

His approach had been bold, yet the hand that touched me was damp with tension. Without answering, I simply raised my eyes to look up at him. As if to ask whether he did not realize the very means by which I could answer was currently held captive in his hand.

“Ah.”

Waiting for an answer while staring only at the punctured inside of my lip, Ilie belatedly lifted his gaze at the lengthening silence and flinched slightly.

“You… you must have bitten it? Ah, that’s not a question.”

I still vividly recall the sensation of his fingertips—shivering all the more pathetically because he was straining not to tremble.

“There should be a suitable ointment at home. …I’ll go fetch it.”

Of course, it was not as though I was composed in that situation either.

“There is no need.”

At that moment, I was straining every nerve over an issue far more crucial than consciously suppressing my body’s urge to heal the wound, or struggling not to bite down on the flesh of the prey that had pushed its way into my mouth.

“What do you mean, no need? It’s still bleeding from a wound you got last night.”

“It will heal if left alone.”

“No, if it keeps bleeding—”

“Ilie.”

Holding his relentless, sprinting time within my own.

“Do not waste time.”

Without even realizing it, my entire focus had been consumed by that single desire—and unlike the meticulous cunning with which I had fabricated the wound, it was a moment where I laid bare my inner feelings with brutish bluntness.

“There is not much of the day left.”

Just as I only realized what I had said after the words were fully out, he too froze with a dazed expression, as if shocked by my out-of-the-blue restraint.

“What…”

Then, belatedly coming to his senses, he snatched his hand away with a start and spun around.

“What do you mean, a waste? How long could it possibly take to bring that? …Why are you suddenly saying such s-strange things?”

Grumbling sharply as if he had heard something absurd, he turned his back, yet the place he headed was not the door, but the chair by the window. A spot directly visible if I only lifted my head from where I sat.

I could not take my eyes off him, even while wondering at the satisfaction spreading quietly within me.

“In the library you always gave stiff answers as if you were annoyed to death, and now you act like… like you’d miss me or something…”

Sitting down, he too could not stop peeking at me even as he grumbled ceaselessly with ears cooked crimson.

“Did you finally feel grateful because I’m the only one taking your side while everyone else fears and shuns you?”

Having understood his words a beat late because I was staring intently, etching into memory the sight of him sitting within my time that had begun to race once more, I exhaled a long breath I hadn’t realized I was holding and cast my eyes down toward the book.

“Perhaps.”

I felt his gaze touching my lowered eyelids. Yet I did not respond. I merely swept my eyes across the sentences before me—quietly, yet unable to concentrate in the least.

Only after turning a page did the wonder in my head settle a little.

“I do not know the reason, but yes.”

Once my thoughts were sorted, the words lingering on my tongue settled as well, and only then did I add my belated reply.

“Lately, I find the time we cannot spend together regrettable.”

The sound of Ilie gasping for breath in that moment remains vivid in my ears even now, hundreds of years later.

And his heartbeat, racing fast enough to burst the silent cabin, resonated past my ears and lingered in my body—and in my own heart, which stirred like that of a living man only before him.