Rei is standing about five meters away from me, in the middle of the sidewalk.
She doesn't say anything. Neither do I.
I look at her aura and see that the upper layer has no defined color. It's all churning, shifting tone every few seconds, and on top of that the size keeps changing too, expanding a little, contracting, expanding again.
In short, Rei is a mess on the inside.
There's no single emotion dominating the others. There's fear, there's curiosity, there's affection, there's uncertainty, and there's anger, all stepping on each other and tangling together.
After what she just saw at Touka's house, it would be completely normal for her to want to run away again. I wouldn't blame her. If Touka and Rize are ghouls, then the conclusion about me is fairly obvious and she must have already reached it.
However...
"Hey, Rei."
She doesn't run, so the hardest step is already done. The problem now is that I don't know what else to say besides that clumsy greeting.
For a few seconds I considered using Talk no Jutsu, but I suppose I'm still inexperienced at that.
And honestly, I don't think this is the right moment for that joke either.
Without answering, Rei's eyebrows slowly draw together and she looks even more confused than the Rei of a second ago.
She closes her eyes, sighs, and finally clenches her fists.
When she opens them again, it seems she's arrived at some internal realization.
With short, hesitant steps she starts walking toward me, while her hands won't stop shaking, though she might not even notice it in that moment, putting all of her intent into reaching the monster standing in front of her.
Rei stops less than half a meter away and lifts her chin.
"Arata... what are you?"
At that sudden question, I don't show any particular expression. I was expecting something like it, but I feel my chest tighten a little.
Seriously? I'm still scared?
Maybe I'm weak in these kinds of situations. Not knowing how someone I love will react... whether she'll be frightened or run. But above all, I'm more afraid of someone I love being afraid of me.
I suppress all my emotions and hold her gaze. We're close enough that I can see my own reflection in her red eyes.
"Before I answer you, I want to ask you something."
"What?"
"Are you really ready to hear it? The truth."
Rei blinks.
I'm not asking because I think she's weak or anything like that, since I know she's fairly strong. Even so, the answer that's going to hit her mind might break her mental barrier. Once I say the truth there's no way to go back.
She lowers her head a little and bites her lip.
The upper layer of her aura churns again. A murky, violent color that expands, contracts and expands again. She's fighting against her own thoughts in there.
Several long seconds pass.
"I'm ready."
She lifts her head.
"If knowing the truth means understanding my childhood friend better, then it's fine."
"I see."
"Just..."
Her words hang there without finishing the sentence.
Mmm. I think I know what she's trying to say and can't get out.
I raise my hand and offer it to her.
"Are you doubting me now?"
Rei looks at my hand, and a second later looks at me. She shakes her head and holds out her own hand, taking mine.
She's a human, but her hand is cold and shaking, which shows how anxious she is right now. Even so, she grips my hand firmly, like she's holding the spear she uses for training.
"After so many years living practically glued to you, even if I wanted to doubt you I couldn't. It's far too late for that."
"Heh."
"But..."
Her five fingers curled around my palm tighten even harder.
"You have to give me a satisfying answer, all right? If you don't, I'm slapping you."
I let out a short laugh.
That threat is probably half for me and half for herself, like she needed to confirm out loud that she can still treat me the way she always has. Hearing that kind of thing in this situation calms me down quite a bit.
"All right, all right. Though talking about this in the middle of the street is uncomfortable. Let's go somewhere else."
I turn around and start walking without letting go of her hand.
Rei stays half a step behind me. Every now and then her hand trembles but I don't let go, and she doesn't seem to have any intention of letting go either.
Neither of us says anything the whole way. There's a slightly awkward silence, though it isn't that bad. Would it be right to say this is what happens when two people who have known each other for years have something enormous to talk about and still don't know where to start?
Shortly after we reach a park.
Since it's already night, the streetlights nearby and the lamps scattered around here throw an orange light over the trees and the grass, and there's nobody else at this hour. All you can hear are crickets somewhere in the bushes.
Beneath a tree with a wide canopy, we sit on a wooden bench, side by side.
Rei lets out a long sigh and leans forward, elbows on her knees. Her two long ahoges sway with the movement.
She stays like that for a while, probably sorting out what she wants to say.
"You're a monster."
"Mm."
"Like Touka and like Rize.... A ghoul?"
She already knows, but she still needs confirmation. As for what kind of monster...
I turn my head toward her.
Instead of answering, I smile a little wider than usual and open my mouth in a way that makes the fangs perfectly visible under the streetlight.
Rei's eyes go wide, and in them I can see the reflection of my own teeth.
"What do you think?"
"...What do you want me to think? You're showing me your teeth like a..."
She stops and her eyes grow bigger, as if arriving at an enormous realization.
"Ah. Wait..."
Yes. This is the Rei I know. A little airheaded.
Though it isn't that strange that she didn't catch it before.
She's seen my fangs plenty of times. On a couple of occasions she's even seen them much longer and sharper, in moments when I wasn't paying attention to controlling them.
The thing is she never took it seriously. To her it was always a quirk of mine, something on the same level as having a mole in a weird spot.
In fact, more than once she told me laughing that with those teeth I looked like a vampire.
"Are you a vampire?"
"More or less."
"More or less?"
"More or less."
Rei startles. The corners of her mouth tremble as she leans forward and brings a hand to her forehead.
"Wait. Wait, wait. I was saying that as a joke."
"I know."
"Ugh... How many times have I said it to you? Like twenty times? All these years... 'You look like a vampire.' 'Are you going to bite me while I sleep?', things like that."
"Um, though I've never bitten you."
"You would laugh... I must have looked like an idiot."
"I laughed because it was funny."
"It wasn't funny! It was pathetic!"
Saying that, she laughs nervously.
Her aura churns quite a bit.
Well. I suppose finding out that a joke you've been repeating for years was basically a diagnosis must be a strange experience.
"Unbelievable... really unbelievable."
"Right?"
"Don't say it with pride, idiot."
After that she stays quiet for a while.
I don't step in much at any point, because Rei needs some space to pour out everything she wants in order to confirm whether I'm still the Arata she knows.
While the crickets keep singing, one of the streetlights further off flickers a couple of times before steadying.
A while passes, and only then does Rei turn her face toward me.
Her expression has changed.
Ah. I can tell from her aura before she opens her mouth. Everything that was churning is gathering into a single point, and that point is the question she actually wanted to ask from the very beginning.
Rei opens her mouth, closes it, and opens it again.
"Arata."
"Tell me."
"...Have you ever killed anyone?"
Her throat seems to have gone dry all of a sudden, so she swallows hard.
"And... have you ever drunk a person's blood?"
She looks at me without blinking.
"Please. Please, don't lie to me."
"..."
"I know you're probably thinking about softening it so I won't be scared. Don't. For me there's no such thing as a white lie about something like this. If I'm going to know the truth, I want all of it."
×××
You can read advanced chapters on my Pa treon
pa treon.com/OlwinMoriarty