The Maple Town market was much noisier than Lonia had imagined.
Lonia gripped Rafina's hand, weaving and squeezing through the gaps in the crowd.
“Make way, make way!”
Rafina was dragged along behind her, her feet stepping on the stone-paved road.
Her crimson eyes were wide with wonder, her gaze constantly darting from one stall to another.
“Nia, what's that?”
“Meat skewers.”
“What about that one?”
“...I don't know. It looks like some kind of bug.”
“And that red one?”
“Those are chili peppers. Don't touch them, they're spicy.”
Watching Lonia's serious expression, Rafina couldn't help but curl the corners of her mouth into a smile.
Lonia fished a small pouch out of an inner pocket of her cloak.
She had dug it out of her drawer before leaving. Inside was the allowance Eliza gave her every month—a few silver coins and a handful of coppers. It was nothing to the Catori family, but in a place like Maple Town, it was more than enough for two young girls to splurge for an afternoon.
The first stall they stopped at sold candied fruits.
Fruits of various colors were soaked in glass jars. The stall owner was a plump, short woman. When she saw the two little girls approach, her face wrinkled up in a warm smile.
“Would you two little ladies like a taste? One copper a skewer.”
Lonia pulled out two coppers and slapped them onto the counter.
“Two skewers. The red ones.”
The candied fruits were skewered on thin wooden sticks, their surfaces coated in a hardened sugar glaze that shimmered like amber in the sunlight. Lonia stuffed one skewer into Rafina's hand and took a bite of her own.
Sweet. It was cloyingly sweet. The sugar shell cracked under her teeth, and the soft, sour, juicy fruit inside burst forth, mixing with the sugary syrup that flooded her mouth.
Rafina took a tiny, cautious bite and chewed twice. Then she took another bite, her cheeks puffing out like a squirrel that had just swiped a nut.
Lonia watched her eat, forgetting to chew the fruit in her own mouth.
“Is it good?”
Rafina nodded. Her mouth was too full to speak, so she could only nod vigorously and repeatedly.
Lonia turned around and slapped two more coppers onto the counter.
“Two more skewers.”
After that, they came to a stall selling hair accessories.
A faded piece of black velvet was laid across the counter, displaying a variety of hairpins, hair ties, and headbands.
Lonia's eyes swept across the display, pausing on a pair of red, maple-leaf-shaped hairpins.
The veins of the leaves were carved with a fine needle—rough, but highly recognizable.
They came as a pair of two, tied together with a thin hemp string.
“How much for this?”
“Three coppers.”
Lonia pulled out the money, paid, and untied the hemp string, holding one hairpin in each hand.
“Come here.”
Rafina was still nibbling on her third candied fruit skewer and blinked in surprise when Lonia pulled her close.
Lonia stood on her tiptoes and clipped one of the red maple leaf hairpins into the left side of Rafina's hair.
The red of the copper hairpin contrasted beautifully against the silvery-white hair, looking like a fallen maple leaf resting on snow.
“...For me?”
“Duh. The other one is mine.”
Lonia clipped the second one into her own black hair on the right. Nestled in her dark tresses, the red maple leaf matched the real one tucked behind her ear.
“One for each of us. That way, even if we get separated, we'll still recognize each other.”
Rafina reached up to touch the hairpin on her head. As her fingertips brushed the cool edge of the copper, something seemed to shimmer in her eyes.
By the time they reached the fifth stall, Lonia began to feel that something was wrong.
The sunlight.
Unlike Abyss City, Maple Town had a real sun.
Even with her cloak covering her, and even though she wasn't constantly exposed, the light still found its way to her.
At first, it was just a faint itch, but as time passed, the itch turned into a burning sensation, and the burning turned into a dull ache.
Her exposed skin began to flush an unnatural pink, as if scalded by boiling water.
A vampire's tolerance for sunlight was directly proportional to their rank. High-rank vampires could move freely under the sun, experiencing only mild discomfort. The same went for adult vampires, like the two maids. But Lonia was only Rank Two. And she was only six years old.
She pulled the hood of her cloak up, shading most of her face.
Rafina noticed.
“...Nia, your face is really red.”
“It's just hot. This stupid place is too hot.”
“But it's autumn right now...”
“If I say it's hot, it's hot.”
Rafina's crimson eyes stared at her for a few seconds, then her gaze drifted to the unnatural pink on the back of Lonia's hand.
“...It's the sunlight, isn't it?”
Lonia withdrew her hand into her cloak.
“Vampires feel uncomfortable under the sun. It's written in books. I'm a hybrid, so I'm not afraid of it.”
“I know what the books say.”
“Then let's go find some shade.”
“No need.”
Lonia stopped, turned around, and stared straight at Rafina with her red slitted pupils beneath the hood.
“Haven't you always wanted to see the sun?”
Rafina's lips parted slightly.
She had indeed said so. In the old library, during those late nights when they communicated through their minds, she had mentioned the sun more than once.
There was no sun in Abyss City, and certainly none in Gloom Castle. Her entire concept of the sun came from descriptions in books:
“A giant sphere of light suspended in the sky, radiating warmth and illuminating the entire world.”
And now, the sun was right above them.
Golden light poured through the canopy of the maple forest, rendering the red leaves translucent, their veins as clear as blood vessels.
The light fell upon Rafina's silvery-white hair, coating every strand in a pale golden trim; it fell upon her crystal horns, refracting a rainbow of shimmering light; it fell upon her skin, painting her long-unseen-by-the-sun paleness with a thin, warm hue.
Lonia stared at the sight.
Then she puffed out her flat chest. “It's fine, I'm not afraid! I'm a high-rank vampire! It's just a little uncomfortable, that's all!”
Rafina gazed at her.
The pale little face beneath the hood was already completely flushed.
“...You're only Rank Two.”
“I'm a high-rank, pure-blooded royal vampire of the Catori family!”
“The books say that if a Rank Two vampire stays in the sun for more than two hours, their skin will start to peel.”
“Yikes?! I-I'm not afraid!”
Rafina gave a bitter smile. Grabbing Lonia's hand, she dragged her away from the main street of the market and turned into an alleyway covered in fallen leaves.
“Eh? Eh? Fina?”
“I noticed it just now. Look here.”
In the alley, the sunlight divided the empty ground into two halves: light and shadow.
Lonia looked at the shaded half, then at the sunny half.
“Ah...”
And then, she plonked herself right down in the sunlight.
“Huh?”
Rafina was a little bewildered.
“I said I'm not afraid, and I'm not! A Catori always keeps her word!”
Lonia patted the ground beside her forcefully.
Rafina hesitated for a moment, but ultimately sat down next to her.
“But Nia, you didn't bring any books...”
Lonia froze.
Right. She hadn't brought any books. Rafina hadn't either. From Gloom Castle to Maple Town, both of them had come empty-handed.
“...Then recite. Don't you remember everything?”
“Mm. What do you want to hear?”
“Slime's Big Adventure!”
“...Do you really like this picture book that much? It's literally a book from the Era of Dragon Sovereignty...”
“Because it's super fun! A slime dismantling an entire city and reassembling it into a giant mech—don't you think that's incredibly cool?!”
“Then we shall start from there.”
Rafina closed her eyes, her silvery-white eyelashes casting a small, fan-shaped shadow in the sunlight.
“An endless plain stretching as far as the eye can see, where a rusted giant of iron stands tall upon the earth.
Steam hot enough to scorch and evaporate all living things gushes from the cracks of its mottled armor. With every breath, a searing wind that seems capable of destroying everything sweeps across the land.
And so, only the plains remain here.
Above the rusted visor, the eyes that once flashed with a light as dazzling as the blazing sun have long since gone dark. Pitch black, a deathly, eclipse-like silence gazes upon this world...”
Lonia leaned against Rafina's shoulder, closing her eyes as she listened.
The sunlight fell upon her eyelids, a burning sting seeping layer by layer beneath the surface of her skin. The pink flush on the back of her hand had deepened into an unhealthy crimson, as if rubbed repeatedly with fine sandpaper. She could feel the skin on her cheeks tightening, stretching as if pushed from within.
It hurt.
It really did.
Yet Rafina's voice drifted into her ears, blending with the rustle of maple leaves stirred by the wind, the faint clamor of the distant market, and the subtle, sizzling heat of the sun on her skin.
Lonia nudged her face closer, rubbing against Rafina's shoulder. The cool fabric of the satin dress pressed against her burning cheek, bringing a relief that made her sigh in comfort.
“...Keep reading.”
“Your face is even redder now.”
“I'm fine. Keep going.”
Rafina tilted her head, looking down at the small face resting on her shoulder. An uneven crimson flush painted the otherwise pale skin.
Her arrow-tipped tail slithered over from behind, gently resting on Lonia's knees.
Lonia didn't open her eyes, but the corners of her mouth twitched slightly.
Rafina withdrew her gaze and continued to recite.
“That is no gaze; anyone would realize this truth in an instant.
Those are the eyes of the deceased, a death void of any emotion or life. It is a simple, unfeeling observation.
The giant, still standing tall upon the earth even after death, silently witnesses and destroys any existence that dares to come before it.
Between the two extinguished suns, the rhombus emblazoned upon it like a totem is the mark of what people call the ‘Hypothesis’.
—That which does not exist, that which shall exist; that which has died, that which shall return.
One of the most despairing of several possible futures that could be reached amidst unpredictable, infinite variations. Realized here by a single slime, using a city as its foundation, solely to protect everything it wished to protect...”
The wind blew from the direction of the maple forest, whipping up a flurry of red leaves that swirled twice above the two girls' heads before scattering down upon them.
“...Was this story always so melancholy?”
“Because when this part was written, the Era of Dragon Sovereignty had come to an end.”
“Oh...”
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