She wanted to eat.
She wanted to eat so badly she could hardly stand it.
Ever since that day, she’d been stuffing the hole in her heart with human flesh.
And now, perhaps, someone had appeared who could finally fill that emptiness for good.
Oakley Mercury.
Stella Belmont opened her eyes, sweat pouring off her like a waterfall. It was the dead of night, the hour when the whole world should have been asleep, when some strange, gnawing hunger dragged her up from a shallow doze.
Her proud black drill curls had come undone, her semi-long hair plastered to the corner of her mouth. Since she was awake anyway, she decided she might as well head for the kitchen, only to freeze as a particular scent drifted from her destination, making her spine snap straight.
A rich, intoxicating fragrance.
She drew in a slow breath, taking his familiar scent into her lungs, and Stella’s mind came fully awake.
“This smell…”
Still in nothing but a baby doll, Stella padded down the hall toward the kitchen. The girl, who’d been given a strict “no snacking” order by Whip and Joanne, let a soft rumble escape her slim stomach.
Ah… This is bad. Stella will end up sneaking a bite.
She’d worked so hard, clenching her teeth, sucking on her fingers, waiting patiently for him to ripen.
Heart pounding too hard to control, she stepped into the kitchen, where that heady scent was flowing.
There he was: Oakley, enjoying a late-night snack. Noticing her in the doorway, the young man awkwardly rubbed the back of his neck, clearly caught red-handed.
“G-Good evening. Out for a little midnight nibble yourself, Stella-sama?” he asked.
“Something like that,” Stella replied.
“Care for a bowl?”
He seemed to be eating out of a stockpot, and now, thin sheen of sweat on his brow, he held a spare dish out to her. Ordinarily, Stella would have eaten him instead… but Whip had explicitly forbidden it, so she held herself back.
“I suppose I’ll have some.”
If nothing else, she could at least trick her stomach for a while. Stella accepted the soup.
As he watched her quietly begin to eat, Oakley spoke up, looking genuinely surprised.
“Didn’t expect this. I was sure you’d say, ‘I’m not here to eat the soup. I’m here to eat you,’ then go ahead and do it.”
At his utterly tactless remark, Stella clenched her molars so hard it hurt.
He could at least try to imagine how it felt, breathing in the concentrated scent of the very object of her obsession at point-blank range.
To be perfectly honest, Stella’s appetite was on the verge of exploding.
Her body should have been altered into something that never grew tired from any kind of exertion, and yet she felt lightheaded. Every time she leaned back against the rock wall and drew in a breath, a thick, murky ache throbbed dully in her lower abdomen.
And still, the rational part of her slammed the brakes on the idea of eating Oakley, the very man who had become the catalyst for the cult’s meteoric rise.
Stella recalled something Aros, the founder, had once told her.
“Discipline yourself, Stella. Actions driven purely by desire invite ruin.”
A week ago, when Oakley had said not to eat him until Aros-sama’s ambition was fulfilled, it had hit her.
Whip told Stella the same thing, didn’t she? Why was she a part of this cult? Until she fulfilled her role, she had to think of the organization’s benefit and live without hurting anyone.
But when a violent impulse took hold, she lost sight of herself. The moment she saw Joanne’s smug, triumphant expression, her composure slipped away. No matter how deeply she regretted it afterward, her rage would hijack her mind and leave her memories of those moments hazy and incomplete.
And whenever that happened, she always saw the same scenery.
Her hometown, being swallowed by a world of silver. The memories of a past where she could only survive by eating flesh…
Oakley slid down to sit beside the girl as she quietly worked her way through her meal.
“Stella-sama, why do you try to eat people?” The question slipped out of him naturally.
Stella’s expression didn’t shift in the slightest; only her gaze drifted upward. “Stella was born into the family of a local power. Stella still remembers it. It was a very warm little town…”
According to her, her family had once ruled as lords over a small city. From the scattered fragments of memory she offered, Oakley could tell that she’d held a real fondness for that place.
Stella, of all people.
The realization left him with a strange, unsettled feeling.
This was someone who had tried to kill him more times, someone he’d written off as even less reasonable than Joanne, and yet here she was, revealing the kind of ordinary attachment anyone might have.
His chest stirred uneasily. If he asked any more, he might not be able to kill her.
That was the instinctive warning that ran through Oakley’s mind; there was so much quiet sorrow in the girl’s voice it almost hurt to listen.
“Stella’s town was in a region with very harsh winters,” she said softly. “Even so, we were wealthy enough that we never had trouble finding food.”
When Stella turned ten, her town was struck by an unprecedented, abnormal winter.
A sudden, long season of snow and ice descended on them, bringing death to the city. Heavy blizzards cut off all roads and contact with the outside world, and the food piled up in their granaries ran out before spring ever arrived.
Once they’d eaten the few animals they had, they turned to what plants remained. The fruit vanished almost instantly, then they dug up roots, stripped bark from the trees, gnawed on new shoots—anything that could possibly be considered edible.
But after the townspeople had devoured all the organic matter they could find, they finally turned their helpless hatred on Stella’s family, the local rulers.
Why do you get to sit by your fireplaces in your cozy castle when we can’t even get a proper meal? While we starve, you pampered rich folk feast on meat!
Resentment boiled over, and the people turned into a mob. As if venting all their bottled-up misery, they slaughtered Stella’s kin.
Of course, killing people didn’t make winter end any faster. The bloodshed spread until even those in the same households turned on each other, and Stella’s hometown was slowly buried beneath the white snow.
The long, long winter ended at last, and over several weeks, the snow began to melt.
The only one left alive was Stella.
“Stella’s big sister once said,” Stella murmured. “‘Survive, no matter what. Eat people if you have to, but live.’ After the food ran out, for three months, I kept myself alive by eating people. Stella didn’t waste even the smallest scrap of meat. Stella ate all of it.”
They were lucky, Stella said, that the temperature had always stayed below freezing.
The cold slowed decay, and the bodies lying outside didn’t rot. She took meat from that natural freezer, smoked it, roasted it, gulped it down raw. She tried every way she could to eat it.
She never hesitated. But there was always a storm of complicated feelings churning in her chest.
Couldn’t there have been a way to stop the fighting?
No matter how she turned it over in her mind, she never found an answer.
At some point, Stella started to find human flesh delicious. More than that, when she ate someone, she felt as though she could sense the life they’d lived. Understanding people through devouring them became an unbearable pleasure.
“Stella likes the winter,” she said. “Because it reminds me of that time. And Stella likes eating, too. Because it feels like I can go on living together with the person I’ve eaten…”
Listening to that conclusion, Oakley thought, Stella really is deranged. But he also found her pitiful.
Aros himself had warned her: If you eat too many capable believers, I’ll have to send you back for retraining. That alone spoke volumes about how poor her self-control must be.
“You’ve given me quite the story,” Oakley said quietly. “I feel like I understand you a little better now, Stella-sama.”
“I see.”
Stella’s past, huh? Better to have that information than not, he decided.
With that thought, Oakley simply stayed there for a while, sharing the quiet night with Stella.