Chapter 191: Are you not afraid?

He found her in a corner of the garden, beside the farthest fence, where the lantern light barely reached.

She was quietly gathering the used skewers into a basket. An old habit. When everyone else sat down to rest, she would find work to do. Elowen’s scarf was still wrapped around her neck, now neatly adjusted.

"Runi."

She looked up.

Erik raised the camera. "You are the only one left."

Runi set down the basket, straightened her back, and folded her hands before her stomach. The exact posture of a maid.

"Can you smile?"

Runi tilted her head slightly, as though considering an order. Then her lips lifted. Bit by bit. Precisely. Symmetrically. Both corners of her lips raised to the exact same height, down to the millimeter. Just like that bow from before, so perfect it was strange.

Erik looked through the viewfinder for a long time. Then he lowered the camera.

"It does not look right."

Runi blinked.

"Your smile earlier was prettier."

The smile on Runi’s lips froze.

Erik glanced around. The tall rows of lavender blocked the view from the party table. Laughter and conversation only drifted over faintly. This corner of the garden held only the two of them, and the chirping insects in the grass.

Meira was going to scold him.

He knew. He had promised. But tomorrow morning, he had to go to the ruins. No one knew what waited there, or whether he would return intact. There were things he did not want to entrust to a snake eye or someone else’s promise to watch over her. He wanted to say them himself.

"I know you are not Runi."

The wind stopped blowing.

In a single breath, everything vanished from that face. No more obedience of a maid. No more bewilderment of a girl who had only just learned how to smile. There was only cold emptiness, like the surface of a frozen lake.

Then her right hand swung upward.

Dark Mist erupted from her fingertips, twisting into dozens of black tentacles, then tightening together and spinning into a razor-sharp drill. The wind shrieked. The surrounding lavender was flattened. The scarf around her neck billowed in the air.

The drill shot straight toward Erik’s face.

Then stopped.

Exactly a hair’s breadth from the bridge of his nose.

Erik did not step back. He did not raise a hand to block it. Nor did he call forth lightning. He only stood there, staring directly into the eyes behind that spinning black drill.

The two of them remained still.

Then the corners of her lips slowly rose. This time, it was an entirely different smile, sweet and warped, exactly like the smile of the one who had spread her arms and introduced herself as Death on the battlefield.

"Are you not afraid?"

That voice was different too. Higher and more melodic, every word as if she were acting in a play she greatly enjoyed.

Erik did not answer.

He stepped to the side, slipping past the spinning drill. The wind from it cut across his cheek, leaving behind a thin red line. He did not care. He only took another step forward, then leaned down and brought his face close to hers, so close that their breaths touched.

"If you wanted to kill me, you have had countless opportunities."

She went still.

"When you poured tea for me every morning. When you adjusted my scarf at the gate. When you sat beside me in the car while I bandaged your hand." His voice was very soft. "Especially... then."

Then.

Her face instantly turned scarlet.

The mark beneath her abdomen flickered wildly beneath her clothes, lighting up, fading, then lighting up again. The drill in her hand froze, then collapsed into thin black strands of smoke that scattered over the lavender. She staggered two steps back, nearly tripping over the basket at her feet.

"You... you..."

Death’s smile vanished. She clutched her own arm, as though trying to hide something.

"I am a monster." Her voice trembled. "You saw it. At the outpost. I borrowed those female soldiers’ bodies. I wanted to kill you. Now I am inside her body." She raised her head and looked directly at him. "Are you not afraid?"

"No."

"Why?!"

Erik did not answer that question. He only asked in return:

"And you? What are you afraid of?"

She opened her mouth, then closed it again.

Only after a long time did she ask softly, her voice so quiet it was nearly swallowed by the insects:

"You want me to give this body back. Do you not?"

"Yes."

Erik answered without hesitation.

"Runi is family to me. I will definitely bring her back."

Her shoulders slumped. The hand clutching her arm tightened. As though it was the answer she had expected for a long time, only now finally forced to hear.

"But not by killing you."

She abruptly looked up.

Erik stepped forward and took her right hand. The very hand that had just turned into a drill was still wrapped in the gauze he had bandaged around it in the car that afternoon. Those fingers were ice-cold, trembling faintly in his palm.

"You smiled today," he said. "Not because someone told you to smile. Not because you were copying someone. You smiled because you were happy."

She did not say anything.

"I do not know how you were born. I do not know what you are." Erik gently squeezed that hand. "But what determines who someone is, is not the way they were born. It is their heart."

The wind began to blow again.

The lavender flowers that had been flattened earlier slowly rose, swaying beneath the moonlight.

She pressed her lips tightly together.

Her eyes had somehow grown wet.

Erik released her hand, stepped back, and raised the camera to his chest. Then he smiled, a very soft, warm smile, just like the one he wore every morning with everyone around the dining table.

"Then let us take a photo to remember this by."

He looked at her through the viewfinder.

"The stranger I have come to know."

She pursed her lips. For the first time, she pursed them like an ordinary girl sulking.

"...You are truly strange."

Then she tried to smile.

But the moment her lips curved, tears fell first.

One drop. Then two. Then more, rolling down her cheeks, still smudged with charcoal from earlier that night, and falling onto the scarf around her neck.

She froze. Raising a hand to touch her cheek, she looked at her wet fingertips.

"This..." Her voice turned hoarse. "What is this?"

"Tears."

"But I am not sad."

"I know."

She looked at the droplets on her fingertips for a long time.

Then she remembered that morning. Saraya sitting beside a bowl of soup, crying and smiling at the same time. Back then, she had stood beside the dining table and quietly asked a question that no one heard.

Can someone cry... and still be happy?

Now, she knew the answer.

She smiled again. This time, tears still fell, but her smile did not stiffen anymore.

Click.

The final photograph slid from the camera slot. Erik picked it up and waved it lightly in the wind. Against the white paper, the image slowly appeared. A girl wearing a crooked scarf, her cheeks smudged with charcoal, tears running down her face, yet smiling.

He placed it in her hand.

"Go to sleep early. I still have to wake up early tomorrow." He gently patted her head once, then turned and walked toward the lights. "What happened tonight stays between you and me."

She remained alone in that corner of the garden, both hands tightly clutching the photograph.

On the branch above her head, a translucent snake eye silently blinked once.

Then closed.

...

Late at night.

Runi’s room was at the end of the first-floor hallway. A single bed. A wooden chair. A small window. There was nothing else. No decorations, no clothes draped over the chair, not a single personal belonging to show that someone lived there.

She sat curled up in the corner of the bed, hugging her pillow with both arms.

Elowen’s scarf was still wrapped around her neck. She had forgotten to return it. Or rather, she did not want to take it off.

From behind her, Dark Mist tentacles silently emerged. They were no longer a sharp drill. They slowly swayed, then curled around her, weaving together into a thin cocoon, like a small creature trying to embrace itself.

On her lap were two photographs.

One was crystal, shimmering beneath the moonlight. The entire household stood crowded together, some smiling with narrowed eyes, some blushing and looking away, some pushing another person’s hand off their shoulder. And at the center stood a girl with arms linked on both sides, a pair of hands resting on her shoulders, smiling.

The other was a small paper photograph. A girl crying and smiling at the same time.

She looked at those two photographs for a long time.

Then tears overflowed again.

She did not understand why. In the garden, tears had fallen alongside her smile. But now, they fell alone. Her chest hurt. Not the pain of an injury. It hurt as though someone were squeezing her from the inside.

She bit her lip tightly, trying not to make a sound.

She bit down so hard that her teeth pierced the thin skin. A drop of blood ran down her chin. It was red, but mixed within it was a very thin black strand, like an ink stroke accidentally dropped into it.

Outside the window, moonlight shone upon the glass.

In that glass, the girl curled up on the bed was not Runi.

She was a woman with very long silver-white hair, spilling down to her waist. Her skin was glossy black as ink. Pointed ears rose beneath her locks of hair. Strands of black smoke coiled around her like a fluttering cloak.

And that face, the face that had once been smooth and devoid of any features, now, for the first time, had a pair of eyes.

A pair of pinkish-purple eyes, glowing faintly in the darkness.

Crying.

She stared at that reflection in the glass. The reflection stared back at her.

Only after a long time did she softly open her mouth. Her voice was so quiet that only she herself could hear it.

"Someone like me..."

Her fingers tightened around the two photographs.

"...who does not even have a name..."

A teardrop fell, settling on the crystal photograph, right over the smile of the girl in the center.

"...can I truly smile happily like that?"

No one answered.

Only the moonlight beyond the window quietly shone down upon the empty room, and a nameless creature hugged the two photographs tightly to her chest, crying until dawn.