The day after I started staying at the Bet house.
I woke up in the morning, tidied up the inside, and stepped outside to find Beatrice fast asleep with her head buried on the table.
It’s still dawn, with the air outside as dark blue as it gets.
There was a stack of papers on the right that seemed to be resolved, while there were only a few sheets left on the left.
I approached Beatrice.
“Wake up. We need to finish the work.”
“You’re making the worst noise, you know that?”
With a voice stuck to the floor, Beatrice opened her mouth. She’s awake now.
Judging by her voice, it doesn’t seem like I woke her up. Did she wake up when I came down?
“You’re almost done, right?”
“Yeah. Almost done.”
Beatrice got up from her seat. Seeing that she wasn’t all that groggy, it seems she doesn’t sleep deeply.
Or maybe she couldn’t sleep because of me.
Stretching, Beatrice walked past me to the kitchen. She opened something that looked like a fridge and checked the contents inside.
The difference from a fridge is that it doesn’t have a freezer.
Based on what Victoria knows, simply cooling it can maintain freshness at the level of freezing.
The problem is that it’s completely empty inside. Eventually, Beatrice closed the door and filled a kettle with water to boil.
Meanwhile, her gaze swept around a few times before landing on the gun by the table, and I’ll take her glancing a couple of times at it as a cute act.
Anyone would be cautious if an unidentified guest were inside.
It’s pretty amazing that there are cars in any world. Of course, there are places where leaves are brewed, and places where stems are brewed. There are also places where beans are brewed.
There’s coffee in this world too. Victoria doesn’t like it because it tastes sour when added, so I don’t really know much about it.
Beatrice made that.
“Here, drink up.”
“Thank you.”
She handed me a cup, and while placing her own cup down on the table, she smoothly picked up the gun—let’s call that cute too.
Beatrice sat down at the table.
I felt like she had something to say, so I waited, and after a long time of sipping her coffee, she finally spoke. It seems she had yet to fully wake up.
“Why are you here for my daughter?”
In other words, that means she’s now mentally awake.
“Victoria Bet. She was just unlucky. She got kidnapped by chance, got injected with a serum that turned her into a monster, woke up, and just happened to succeed in resisting. She was struggling, not knowing it was already over.”
Even though she killed several Sahaquin, that just meant other strong counterparts emerged, so they didn’t care about the deaths of other kin.
“If she hadn’t met me, she would have either died with that monster or completely become part of their species.”
Victoria slightly hid the story she experienced. After all, everything turned out fine, so she told it like it was a slightly dangerous adventure.
“But she was really unfortunate. By meeting me, she didn’t die and gained the ability to survive. As a result, she ended up surviving.”
Beatrice tapped her cup a few times with her finger and, looking puzzled, asked me.
“Why do you say that’s unfortunate?”
So I replied this way.
“I don’t lie.”
It meant I wouldn’t answer.
Beatrice, with her pupils narrowed in the dim shadows of the place, aimed a tiny revolver at me.
“If anything happens to my daughter, you will not die easily.”
I thought about mocking her with ‘if you can kill,’ but that probably wouldn’t be a threat to her, so I decided to torture her another way.
“If you’re going to say that, make sure to stock that warehouse by the time she returns. It looks empty, and there aren’t any stores that open early in the morning nearby, right?”
Just like a sore spot was prodded, Beatrice flinched and trembled, carefully lowering her gun.
“No, I didn’t expect this to take so long. I originally planned to finish everything yesterday evening.”
She made excuses while avoiding my gaze. Of course, she knows she spent a lot of time listening to Victoria’s story.
Logically speaking, it should be easy to overlook, but I continued to press her to divert her attention from my danger.
“You’re feeding the kid, right? Isn’t that why you’re working?”
Perhaps she had something in mind too as she lowered her head. I emptied the new liquid from my cup into my mouth and pointed at the leftover paper with my finger.
“It would be nice for her to wake up in the morning and see her mom working all night long. Hurry up and finish.”
With a slightly sour expression, Beatrice nodded, got off the table, and sat down obediently.
Then she began tapping at something that looked like a calculator, checking the documents. I don’t understand the papers even if I look.
So I recalled Victoria’s memories and compared them with this surroundings.
Nothing much has changed. If I moved my steps into the living room, there was a video receiver tucked away in a closet.
It was too vintage to be called a TV. I hesitated for a moment to open it and turn it on, but since someone was working, I decided to leave it alone.
When I get the time later, I’ll have Victoria turn it on.
I just sat casually in the middle of the living room. Outside, the sun was slowly brightening, dawn faded, and morning came.
Was there a time like this before? What was I doing then?
Ah. Other than pondering what to prepare for breakfast with Soo-oh, there was nothing else, right? Aside from that, simply watching from the perspective of the harvesting season.
In this place, maybe because it’s the era where the strength of a group becomes more powerful than individual strength, those five.
They don’t swing their desires around.
The first man I made into a harvesting worker. Reason Brutal. This man led the other four and got off at the next port after we landed.
He was originally a construction worker who was supposed to return home after getting injured in an accident, but since an opportunity arose, he decided not to abandon it and took the lead.
At first glance, the world might seem great. Perhaps at that time, he could even perform some good deeds for others.
But all five of them are people who can easily trample on others. Even if they work diligently, how long will that last?
There are some who came out of their houses without wanting to do day labor, and some who lost their place to return to because their village was crushed by monsters.
Some have recklessly escaped because their homes were in huge debt, and others are living a life of thievery.
Having improved both body and mind, they will soon realize it’s disappointing to live like this.
Even if the five of them who found common ground suddenly created a strange organization called the Purple Twilight Society, it seems.
Yep.
It’ll be interesting to see when they break apart and go their separate ways, or whether they’ll transform into a violent group that robs people.
If that happens, it’s inevitable that they’ll end up in fights, leading to killing. The problem is that here, murder is a serious crime.
Of course, it’s something that routinely happens outside the city, but at least inside the city, that’s how it is.
I wonder if they will be able to survive long enough to give off a lot of warmth, or if they will shine briefly and then disappear.
If the chance comes, it might be fun to go and expand the harvesting workers.
While busy making plans for what lies ahead, I waited for Victoria.
And the sun had completely risen, making the day hotter.
Eventually, Beatrice approached me, seeing me just sitting still.
“Our kid doesn’t seem to want to wake up, want to go shopping together?”
“Sure.”
I nodded and got up from my seat.
Then I suddenly looked down at my outfit and realized a little problem, so I asked Beatrice.
“Clothes. Is this okay?”
Last night.
It’s the light pink nightgown that Victoria had dressed me in. I figured no one would wear this outside, so I asked Beatrice, who looked me up and down, told me to wait, and then left the room.
A little while later.
She returned carrying a large box lightly, placing it in front of me.
It’s a box with Victoria’s name on it.
In short, it means it’s a box containing her childhood clothing.
“There are plenty of clothes.”
“I guess I can just wear whatever fits.”
Most of the clothes were ones I remembered Victoria wearing. I had no resistance to wearing clothes someone else had worn, so I picked out a suitable outfit.
“Let’s try on a few first.”
At that moment, Beatrice said that, and I nodded, thinking that I shouldn’t just wear them haphazardly.
I shouldn’t have done that.
It was well past lunchtime, and I had to try on clothes until Victoria came down, yawning and saying she was hungry.
Don’t I realize that I’m a monster at this moment?
“Mom, what are you doing?”
“Are you awake? I’m picking out clothing for Bell right now.”
“That’s not my dress, Mom?”
“What’s wrong with that?”
Ah, I forgot that the one giving the clothes might not like it.
If there was a problem, I’d twist the dress I was wearing. I tried on dozens of outfits, so I got a rough idea of the styles.
Although they might be slightly outdated in timing, it’s not a big deal since it’s someone else’s clothes.
“Why didn’t you call me for such a fun thing, Mom!”
“Who told you to wake up late?”
“Hehe, it’s vacation, so please let it slide. So what kind of clothes have you tried on?”
Victoria naturally approached Beatrice and lifted a few outfits.
“Oh, I used to like this one, but I couldn’t wear it because it was too revealing. Mom, let’s try this on!”
“If you wear that, your outfit gets ruined, though… Right. If it’s Bell, you might wear it well.”
A little more, and I thought I’d become a dress-up doll at this point.
An emotionally warm monster, then a faded memory of a man, and finally the ritual of imitating a human. Emotionally, I’m closer to being a man.
So I thought I’d have a creepy feeling throughout this, but when Victoria looked at me, I didn’t feel that at all.
Eventually, noon and evening meal times turned into a whirlwind, and I ended up trying on clothes until the in-between.
