Chapter 9

A half-naked Kiyomizu approached Ryouta and started removing his clothes. He wanted to fight back, but the poison seemed to have a powerful, immediate effect, so he could barely do anything. It was as if he were physically bound. Alfoncina had given him poison the other day as well—this was becoming a pattern. “I-I’m going to be raped… And this all looks like I’m the offender here…” “No, we are both consenting here. We just have a little difference in opinion.” “If our opinions are different, it’s not consent!” “Give me the right to do naughty things to you, and then I’ll stop.” It was a childish stretch of an argument. “This is the first thing that’s happening to me when I try to leave the Empire? Is this my punishment…?” Ryouta sighed. It was his punishment for abandoning Shiren. He wondered what it was that she had wanted to say. “First, we’ll start with a kiss… This is actually my first kiss. Ryouta, please take my first.” Kiyomizu slowly reached out to Ryouta’s cheeks. She seemed a little awkward for having come this far—maybe she was shy. If it was at all possible, he wanted her to be too shy to move on to anything else. “Hmm…? What’s this wound on your arm? It’s like you’ve been bitten by something…” He had an even worse feeling than he’d had before. That wound was from Alfoncina XIII. “Oh, there’s also a bite mark on your neck…several of them.” Those were from Shiren. She would bite him every night the moment he let his guard down, so his neck was in bad shape. “Could this be a bite from when they were whispering sweet nothings to each other in their chambers…? He’s bitten in so many places; this can’t be a coincidence… And this collar… And so the conclusion I come to is that Ryouta’s purity has been sullied by the vampires……………………………” The shock seemed too much for her to handle, and Kiyomizu froze. She sat like a statue, still clinging to Ryouta. “Hey, Kiyomizu, are you okay? Are you dead? I mean, I’m not going to ask you to die, maybe just lose all your memories from the shock.” “…My apologies. I was only lost in thought a little. I was thinking about what I should do if God were desecrated by the vampires. I believe this means my job is to remove as much of the taint as I can. That is all I can do.” Her hand was already on his boxers. “Wait. I’m not pure or dirty or anything! I just got bitten!” “I don’t need your lies. Um…am I really not that cute to you?” Kiyomizu looked at Ryouta with worry. “I—I mean, I guess you are…” He couldn’t lie about that. Kiyomizu was definitely a girl with issues, but that didn’t make her not cute. She was good-looking enough for some guys with issues to create a group called “Protectors of Kiyomizu and Her Small Tits.” “I’m glad… Then don’t a beautiful girl and a beautiful boy make a nice couple together?” A smile bloomed across Kiyomizu’s face. He hated to say it, but it was a cute expression. “Then become one with me. I will be taking this off, too.” There was nothing he could do, since he couldn’t move. There was nowhere for him to run… But then came the sound of feet rustling through the grass. Someone was running toward them. And just as his boxers were about to slip off— “Don’t go touching other people’s minions! Don’t expect me to go easy on you!” —Shiren leaped toward them. “Shiren…” “Ryouta, are you okay? You were taking really long in the bathroom, so I came after you. I remembered what happened with the archbishop, so I got scared and came to check on you! I won’t make the same mistake twice!” Ryouta had been saved by Shiren’s wit. “And for some reason, I had a feeling you were going to go pretty far away.” Her words stung him in the chest. That was exactly what he was trying to do. “But to think you’d be attacked by some woman again. Come on, Ryouta, we’re going back.” She took his arm. “Please wait. Who are you?! Ryouta will be going home to Japan!” Kiyomizu pulled on him from the opposite direction. “Hey, let go, little elementary kid.” Shiren pulled on him harder. “I refuse. You let go, middle schooler! And I am a high school student, thank you!” Kiyomizu pulled back against her. And of course, Ryouta’s arms stretched in both directions. It hurt. “What?! You can’t be a high schooler, looking like that! You can’t skip grades in Japan! And I am in high school, too! I will bite you the next time you call me a middle schooler!” “Stop! You’re gonna rip me in half! I can’t stretch anymore! Seriously, I’m gonna break!” “Ryouta is hurt, so let go. I own him.” “I am just carrying out the simple job of returning a Japanese citizen to his home country. You should let go!” “No! I don’t want to be alone anymore!” Shiren’s cry rang out through the trees. “I’ve been all alone since this country was created! I don’t want to be treated that way anymore! I want friends, too! I want someone who’ll talk to me!” He remembered Shiren calling Tamaki Shijou her only comrade. Shiren had never called anybody her friend. Had anybody ever interrupted them when he’d been talking to her? Even that very day on their field trip, had Shiren talked to anybody besides Ryouta? Shiren didn’t want a reverent domestic helper. What she needed was an equal, someone she could relax with and blow off steam. It had taken this long for Ryouta to notice. “By the way, Ryouta, who is this girl?” “I’ve come a long distance to obliterate the parasites known as the Sacred Blooded.” Both of them dropped Ryouta when Kiyomizu spoke, and their standoff started again. Kiyomizu’s eyes grew sharp, and she then put her hand in her bra. A moment later, she pulled out a set of rings on several of her fingers, metal spikes protruding from them. She had a hidden weapon. “I’m sorry—I have no intention of going easy on a Sacred Blooded. I will annihilate you with my own power.” “I see; you’re a member of the Virginal Father.” “The Virginal Father? That was the assassin’s group mentioned in our textbook… I didn’t think they were real… Wait, you’re one of them, Kiyomizu?!” “Yes, we are a global organization that aims to protect the purity of humanity. We’ve mixed ourselves in with religious communities all over the world to lend a hand in exterminating these parasites.” Slipping on protective fingerstalls, Kiyomizu smiled. Ryouta spotted a katana poking out of the box behind her when he looked more closely at it. She was armed to the teeth. “So you came here to wipe out the Sacred Blood Empire…” “No, I came to see you, Ryouta darling. I’ll only deal with the Sacred Blooded along the way.” “Does your organization know or care how sloppy you are about this?!” Feeling a little ignored, Shiren interjected. “You certainly are bold to underestimate the Sacred Blooded. I, Shiren Fuyukura, will quickly show you what our people can do! You cannot hold a candle to us!” “Fuyukura?” Kiyomizu reacted to her last name. “Yes. I will be making Ryouta my minion in the future. He’s not officially mine yet, though…” “I’m impressed, Ryouta. She might be a parasite, but she has such high standing.” “High standing? What’s so high standing about Shiren?” “Now, come at me. I can deal with you with my bare hands.” Shiren stepped forward, unarmed. “Stop! You don’t have to fight!” Ryouta yelled, still paralyzed. Kiyomizu had the build of a little girl, but she was armed with dangerous weapons. This would probably end up as more than just a petty quarrel. “Heh-heh-heh. There is no way for you to win. My training yuigesa overcoat and skirt are specially made to burn the skin of the Sacred Blooded if they touch it. It is a concentration of the essences that make up the prayer and magic of my denomination—this ordinary fabric is filled with the automation of farming and fishing of the head temple of a just, heretical, genuine, fierce love and courage of overwhelming, strongest, unrivaled, Olympian, new-age miracles of Buddha with Academy Award–level power! In short, you are at a great disadvantage in this fight, Sacred Blooded!” “Erm… You sort of lost me with all the adjectives, but you’re essentially saying I’ll be in trouble if I touch your clothes, right?” “Indeed! I shall kill you!” “But you’re not wearing any clothes.” The temperature in the air plummeted for a moment. Kiyomizu was wearing only a bra and panties. Her clothes were behind her, tossed aside. “Ryouta, did you know this was going to happen, so you took my clothes…?” “Your strike zone is way too low, Ryouta…” “You took your own clothes off! Stop making stuff up! And you’re way off base here, Shiren!” “It is not to my advantage to fight in my underwear. If my bra were to rip during battle, things might end up a little steamy. I don’t mind Ryouta seeing, but I will not stand for this parasite looking at me.” That was a stupid thing to worry about. “I will return to Japan for today. But I will be back, so long as I hold love for you, darling Ryouta. So long as Se-san keeps airing. Then I will take you back.” “Quit pretending we’re in love! Quit it!” “We will battle together one day, Shiren Fuyukura. I will extinguish the Imperial blood with my own hands.” Kiyomizu hauled the large rucksack onto her back, then disappeared into the mountains like a ninja. In her underwear. Apparently, she’d forgotten about her clothes. Well, whatever. “I’ll make an exception for you and let you go, since you know Ryouta. Don’t ever show yourself to us again.” Shiren put her hands on her hips with a smug look. Well, at least she was acting normal. Ryouta felt a bit relieved. She just likes acting important— But then Shiren’s neutral expression crumpled, as if it had just been painted on. Now she looked like a girl who’d had more than enough of the fear of being alone. “Don’t go anywhere anymore, Ryouta!” She embraced him. No—clung to him. Desperately, as if she would never let go. “Didn’t you make a promise at the beginning? That you would never leave me alone?! Keep your promises! Keep them! I won’t stand for it if you don’t!” “You don’t have any friends, do you, Shiren?” He took her silence as a yes. “There was something I couldn’t tell you earlier, Ryouta.” “Oh yeah, there was.” “I’m sorry.” Shiren’s head drooped, her voice dejected. She seemed genuinely sorry, from the bottom of her heart. “I’m sorry for making you go out and buy bread yesterday. I was just being selfish. When you were late getting home, I realized what I’d done. I was worried something had happened to you. Really worried… But I couldn’t go out and search for you…” That was why she felt as though she had to go out and find him straightaway—she worried she would lose him; she explained as much with a hoarse voice. “Stay by my side. You don’t have to cook or clean if you don’t want to. Just stay with me. Talk to me about stupid stuff, be annoyed when I talk too much, make fun of me. That’s an order. Follow it to the letter.” Shiren had been all alone. In a way, she was like him. If he went back to Japan now, he wouldn’t be able to sleep at night. “Yeah, I know.” “Thank you, Ryouta.” “So…can you let go of me now? Uh…I’m still not really dressed.” Shiren realized and immediately leaped back from Ryouta. Things could take a turn for the worse if she kept hugging him while he was half-naked. Ryouta himself might end up taking it the wrong way, too. “This is just, um, a trick of your mind…” “I know. By the way, Kiyomizu said something about Imperial blood—what did she mean?” After Shiren spent a moment in silence with a guilty look— “My full name is Shiren Elisabeta Alexandra Florentina Sylvia Rosanna Fuyukura.” “I’d like to see you try writing that on a form. Oh, wait, I know that name…” He remembered it was unique to the women in the Imperial family. It was in the history textbook. “Yeah, I’m the previous emperor’s daughter, and my big sis…my venerable elder sister is the current emperor,” Shiren said breezily. “Wait a sec… That means if something happened to the Emperor, you’d be next in line for the throne… I don’t think I’m even allowed to speak casually to you…” Ryouta was paralyzed after hearing who Shiren really was. Of course she’d be acquainted with the archbishop. “That solves the mystery of why you’re so over-the-top arrogant. But still, why do you live in a house like that?” It was just a little house; the Imperial Fuyukura family wouldn’t live there, would they? “My mother is pure Japanese, so that means half of my blood is the same as yours, Ryouta. After a whole bunch of people tried to assassinate my father, my mother ran away and went missing. Some say they were both killed, but the more convincing argument was that my mother was a Japanese spy who ran away after killing him,” Shiren calmly explained, her eyes cold and emotionless. Her explanation of the tragedy was clear and thorough—meaning she was used to talking about it. “That is why I would never fit in at the Sacred Blood Imperial Palace, and that’s why I took my mother’s last name of Fuyukura as a commoner…” Dispirited, Shiren added: “And that’s why I was alone. I’m the daughter of a criminal. I guess that makes me a criminal, too.” But for her crime, there was no atonement.