“Half of my body is filled with vampire blood.”
Alice Blessbuck said quietly, lowering her head.
“It’s what I inherited from my mother. And there were dozens of siblings like me, who had half of their blood from vampires, as far as I can remember.”
Cass Lyle and I just listened to her story in silence.
“But none of the siblings I remembered are alive now. They were all disposed of by my mother, with a single word: useless. They were all powerful children. But ironically, only I, who had the weak blood of a human, survived until the end. And the reason for that was… nothing but alchemy.”
The hybrid of the other kind, who boasted of her alchemy that she had honed with her life at stake.
I finally understood the phrase that described Alice Blessbuck.
She literally polished her alchemy to survive.
“My mother wanted to cross the forbidden territory… and she ordered me to do similar research.”
Her words reminded me of the rumors that had spread around the academy, that she had conducted human experiments, that she was an evil alchemist, and so on.
She denied that she had done any human experiments, but she never denied that she had studied the related fields.
“My mother’s name was Natalia Milted… one of the confidants of the Seven Evil Kind Milted, and a founding member of ‘Milted’s Children’. I also inherited that name and was called Alice Milted. But I didn’t care. At that time, I only thought, ah, I survived. I can keep living. But then…”
Alice cautiously lifted her head.
Tears fell and wet the floor.
“L, Lyle… I met you.”
“…”
Cass Lyle didn’t say anything.
Even though it was the moment when the fact that he was a homunculus, created for human experiments, for the purpose of the Seven Evil Kind Milted, was revealed by someone else, he was just calmly listening to her confession.
“L, Lyle… you… when I met your eyes in that tank… I, I… just…”
She started to tremble, sobbing.
“I’m a coward.”
Her voice was filled with guilt, hatred for herself, fear, dread, and regret.
“I was afraid to die, I saw my siblings die, and I thought this worthless life of mine was too precious, and I committed an unforgivable sin against you. And yet, I just excused myself cowardly, saying that I had no choice if I wanted to live… and then, I met your eyes…”
She clenched her teeth and tried to swallow her whimpering.
“Only then, I realized how wrong I had been…”
“From now on.”
Cass Lyle cut off her words gently.
“From now on, let me explain.”
At his words, Alice looked at him in surprise.
He smiled, looking at her tear-stained eyes.
“I’m sorry, professor. I lied when I said I didn’t remember the first time we met.”
“What…?”
“How could I forget that?”
He quietly closed his eyes.
“You only told me that you made me because of your mistake, and that you would take responsibility for me. And it seems like you were going to say that again this time…”
Then he turned his head and looked at me.
“It might be different for someone else, but you’ve taken down three of the Seven Evil Kind, Marcho, Svengali, and Minerva. So I guess it’s okay to say this.”
“…”
Cass Lyle…
No.
Cass Milted smiled at me.
“I’m a unique homunculus, an artificial life form based on the body of the Seven Evil Kind Milted, or in other words, a clone of the Seven Evil Kind.”
“Ah…”
Alice gasped in disbelief.
Then Cass Lyle muttered with a scoff, as if he couldn’t believe it.
“Well… you’re also one of the World Tree’s kin, and you have that much energy, so I thought you might have noticed it sooner, but judging by your reaction, I guess I was right.”
He smirked and asked me.
“Right?”
I nodded silently.
“Do you know anything more about that guy Milted? It would be easier for me to explain later if you knew.”
“…He’s one of the Seven Evil Kind, who has many names and is the only one who openly claims to be a Seven Evil Kind and gathers forces. He has many talents, including alchemy, and he has no fixed form. He also has a great interest in ‘time’ and is after Minerva’s heart, that’s all I know.”
“Oh…”
Cass Lyle looked surprised for a moment.
“You knew more than I thought.”
He said that and looked at Alice Blessbuck, who was still kneeling.
“I don’t know what his purpose was, but I was a homunculus that Milted made with a clear intention. To be exact, I was one of the seeds of the homunculus.”
“A seed?”
“Yeah, a seed. A seed that can’t grow without being cultured and raised.”
He grimaced slightly, as if trying to recall his memory, and continued.
“I should have woken up at least a few hundred years ago. But after Milted suddenly disappeared, I also had to spend hundreds of years as a seed. Because there was no one else who had the ability to wake up a homunculus in a seed state, except for him.”
“Then…”
“Yeah.”
He nodded.
And then he walked slowly to Alice Blessbuck and looked down at her.
“You were the one who woke me up, professor.”
He whispered.
“I didn’t tell anyone, but I also had the memory of when I was a seed. So I know everything.”
And then he slowly knelt down on one knee and met Alice Blessbuck’s eye level.
“You woke me up.”
“Everything…”
Alice looked at him with a blank stare.
“You knew everything.”
Cass Lyle nodded.
Alice avoided his gaze, with an expression that seemed to want to cry, and opened her mouth.
“…Yes, I woke you up. I didn’t think. I’m not making excuses… I did whatever my mother ordered me to do at that time.”
“…”
“But when I met your eyes in the tank, barely awake…”
She closed her eyes, as if she couldn’t remember that moment.
“When I came to my senses, I was already running away with you in my arms. I knew very well how you would be used. Knowing that, I had been ignoring it all this time.”
She kept talking.
That’s how I escaped with Cass Lyle, avoiding the pursuit.
Along the way, I met Lee Myung-jun, who was a young boy then, and received his help.
It was around the time when I found a way to calm Cass Lyle’s body and protect myself, with the protection of Lee Myung-jun’s father, who was one of the Ten Powers then, that twenty years had passed.
“By then, the pursuit had become less frequent. It was only recently that we were able to settle down and live. Myung-jun followed his father’s footsteps and became one of the Ten Powers, and he helped us a lot…”
“Meanwhile, Professor Alice asked me to teach the children. And she suggested that I become an academy student.”
Cass Lyle said after that, and Alice Blessbeck nodded quietly.
Then she bowed her head deeply and said to him.
“…Yes, as I’ve been saying since before. I’m the one who ruined your life. Because of me, you woke up, and the countless experiments you went through before I found you… They were all because of me.”
“…”
“You have the right to get the price from me.”
She confessed her sin and said she would pay the price.
“I’ll do anything you want. You have the right to do that to me. If you want me to die, I’ll die here, and if you want me to be your slave, I’ll gladly be your slave. If you tell me to bring my mother’s neck, I’ll do it even if I die. If not…”
“Professor Alice.”
Cass Lyle cut off her words in a quiet voice.
“No, Alice Blessbeck.”
He opened his mouth quietly, but with a furious voice that I could feel from afar.
“Don’t insult me.”
Cass Lyle said to the person who could be called his creator.
“Do I look that foolish to you? Yes, at first I resented you. Why did you wake me up, make me taste the pain, and run away with me without any plan, feeling sorry for yourself. You made me suffer more, and you wouldn’t let me die when I wanted to, and you didn’t even remember what you did, and you told me that someday things would get better without any plan.”
Every time he spoke, Alice flinched as if she was hit by a club.
“So, I was distracted by those things and forgot the important things.”
He reached out his hand carefully and wrapped it around her shoulder.
“In the end, you risked your life to save me, and for over twenty years, you did all kinds of hard things for me, and you taught me how good it is to live in this world.”
“I, I…”
“And I forgot to say this.”
He gently, but forcefully, lifted her body up.
“Thank you, Alice Blessbeck. Sincerely, thank you for saving me. Thanks to you, I was able to live as a person, not an experiment.”
“Ah…”
“Thank you sincerely.”
“I, I… I…!”
Alice Blessbeck started to cry without saying anything, and Cass Lyle hugged her half-collapsed body and kept silent.
And as I watched them from right next to them, I heard the whispering sound of Svengali in my ear.
[What should I say…]
He made a clacking sound with his beak.
[It’s a very touching scene, but I wonder if you really need to be here.]
“…”
[Be honest. Aren’t you feeling very embarrassed right now?]
I didn’t answer his words.
And he seemed to know that silence was affirmation, and he just chuckled.
***
“Yeah…”
Professor Grossman looked at Euna, who was sitting in front of him.
It was a class with few people to begin with, and one of them was missing, so he thought he might as well have a consultation that he couldn’t do before.
“How are you doing as a caregiver?”
She answered with a smile, as always.
“Yes, I’m fine. It’s not really caregiving, it’s just playing with him.”
“Hmm, you look very tired for that…”
“I, really. Ji-hyuk doesn’t make me do weird things, and he’s not that kind of person…”
Euna was saying that, but she suddenly remembered what had happened before and unknowingly made a gloomy expression.
And Abel Grossman, who didn’t miss that, flinched and then pretended not to know and asked casually.
“By the way, Ji-hyuk seems to have gotten much better, right?”
“Ah, yes. He really got much better. An Joo-hyuk said it was a miracle…”
“…Then you don’t have to take care of him anymore, right? There must be eyes from other kids around. And you’re technically a student, so you don’t have much time.”
“Uh… that’s.”
Euna felt a clear reluctance to Abel Grossman’s words, but she didn’t even know why she felt that way and answered.
“But, when I look at Ji-hyuk, he seems to have some awkward corners. The last time, he almost fell when he went to the bathroom with wet feet on the floor… And he didn’t even know he was allergic to cucumbers and ate them, and he had a bad habit of sleeping and almost rolled off the bed. So, what I mean is, I’m worried until he gets better…”
“…”
As Euna spoke like an excuse, Abel Grossman recalled the heroine he had seen in a drama before.
She was a frustrating heroine who took care of the amnesiac male lead and said, ‘I have to do it’.
He had laughed it off as something only idiots would do when he watched the drama, but he couldn’t laugh it off when he saw it from his student.
“And… um. Ji-hyuk is good at catching the mood.”
“…He’s good at catching the mood?”
“Yes. And he’s more honest than necessary.”
Euna nodded her head.
And then she said with a confident expression.
“He’ll say he’s not, though.”
And then she added.
“If there’s someone who can control him well, maybe… But I’m really worried if he’s alone. Sometimes he shows a side that makes his previous appearance look pale.”
