Looking at the pale blonde vampiric beauty casually sleeping on his shoulder, feeling the full weight of her softness draped over him, most men in this world would've howled in joy, thanking the high heavens.
But the raven haired youngster, stuck in that so-called enviable position, had a twitch in his eye.
This supernatural woman!
What the hell was he to her?
A body pillow and a spot for drinks?
"This woman... tch, whatever. Just endure it, bastard," he muttered under his breath.
He didn't bother trying to peel her off, even though she was clinging to him like a damn koala.
Instead, he licked his lips, shoved a finger into his mouth, then pulled it back out and checked it.
'Blood.'
Indeed… To snap out of that dizzying pleasure, he'd had to bite his own tongue.
Cursing under his breath while he tried to ignore the pain, he glanced at the white-blonde woman clinging to him, then at the unconscious ghoul girl lying a few meters away.
A bad feeling itched at the back of his mind. That kind of itch you get right before a storm or right before someone breaks your ribs.
And right on cue, the ghoul girl's body started to shift, just like her sister's had earlier..
"Damn… I'm seriously envious," he muttered, watching her limbs lengthen and her frame grow with an elegance that pissed him off.
'Both sisters are probably over five foot six...' he thought bitterly. 'Ahh, just don't think about it. You'll cry tears of blood.'
He shifted his envious gaze from her and checked the wound on the vampire woman in his arms.
The dark web-like marks were still there.
But the wounds were healing, albeit slowly.
His mood soured.
Looking around, he raised his voice.
"Oye, come out already. Or are you gonna keep pretending you were never here?"
Silence.
"Tch. I can sense you, you know," he said, pointing straight ahead.
A beat later, the air shimmered in front of him, and a woman appeared.
She stood tall, at least a head above him, with silver bob-cut hair, a poker face, and the kind of pale, flawless skin that screamed 'vampire'.
Her crimson eyes locked onto his.
She wore what looked like the perfect gothic maid outfit with a mix of black and white, sleek, and way too elegant for the situation.
Yeah. No one needed to tell him.
She was definitely another frekin' vampire.
And just like the sexy blood sucking Koala on his arms, she too was a jaw dropping beauty in her own right.
By now, he was numb to beautiful women showing up one after another.
But he quickly pulled himself together and met her stare without flinching.
This was it.
The moment of truth.
The outcome of his gamble—the one he'd staked everything on, even his own blood and life, was about to unfold.
"You knew?" she asked, straight to the point.
"I did," he replied, just as bluntly.
"...…"
"You killed that guy inside?" he asked.
"He has been teleported to Madame."
"What's tele-po-rtation?" He asked curiously.
For a while, the maid was slightly puzzled by the boy's lack of awareness about the basic term, but when she saw his old and ripped attire, her confusion faded swiftly.
This youngster was obviously a street urchin who had never had received education.
".....to instantly move an individual or object from one location to another without physically traveling through the space in between." She responded like a teacher instructing her student.
"Oh? So vampires can do that too? That's some crazy shit," he said, not even bothering to ask what happened to the 'abomination'.
His instincts had already warned him against it.
Not like he cared—whether the bastard lived, died, or got cruelly tortured.
"Is this ability related to your bloodline?" he asked without hesitation.
The maid's eyebrow raised.
"For you to deal with that corrupted ghoul and know about our bloodlines… are you connected to any 'community'?" the maid asked coolly.
But this time, he could sense an underlying threat woven into her tone.
"Oh, I didn't do much. That bastard was already half-beaten to death by your vampire and ghoul misses. I just fooled that fool by throwing a bait, and he got his ass handed over by himself."
He continued,"And if you mean 'supernaturals' by the word community, then no. I don't belong anywhere. I just have a slightly higher perception than most folks out on the streets, as you've already seen."
The boy cut off any suspicion before the maid's thoughts could go too far, in a dangerous territory.
"...…" The maid's eyes narrowed as countless thoughts ran through her mind.
'This boy isn't as simple as he seems. He seems to be hiding something,' she assessed silently. 'Not only is he strange in many ways, but he also doesn't show any hint of fear of our kind.'
After a tense pause, she finally spoke.
"Yes. That is my clan's bloodline ability."
"Hmm. Interesting." Then, with a casual shrug, he said, "Well, as you can see, I saved your misses from that monster. I don't know what kind of shady stuff these two were wrapped up in, but if there's anything that'll make your people wanna crush my skull to keep it quiet—just say so now. Otherwise…"
He gave a lazy smirk.
"I doubt your master's so shameless they'd stiff a poor brave pleb like me out of a little reward."
"...…"
"Or are you guys just broke?" he added. "Can't even spare a few coins for a miserable guy like me?"
He glanced down at the woman still slumped on his lap.
"And can you take your master, or whatever she is, off me already? Sure, her booty's soft and warm, but my thighs are going numb carrying all that divine weight."
"...…"
The maid's cold expression shifted for just a moment, her left eye twitched at the boy's audacity.
Then she disappeared.
The weight on his lap vanished almost instantly.
He looked up in surprise, then spotted her already lifting the unconscious girl over her shoulder, placing her next to the blonde one as if it were routine.
"Whoa," he muttered quietly, more impressed than startled.
And no, it wasn't because of the sight of four peaks of two unconscious pretty women, which were dangling in the air...but because of her speed.
That instant shift.
She was fast...too fast.
He had seen supernatural beings before.
But next to this maid, those were just trash.
His instincts had already told him this silver-haired maid wasn't someone to mess with.
But still… seeing it ... .seeing her in action—hit different.
It was one thing to sense danger. Another to witness it move like that.
'But I can sense that she's still far from her true potential,' he thought, not with fear, but with something closer to awe. Pure admiration, even.
What? Should he be fearing for his life right now?
Come on. He was already deep inside the lion's den… or, well, in this case, the bat's cave. It's a bit late to start trembling now.
A second later, she was in front of him again.
She tossed a heavy bag to his feet.
He stared at it. Then at her. Then back at the bag.
After a brief back-and-forth.
He crouched down, unzipped it, and sure enough, bundles of cash were stacked like bricks.
"…Where the hell did you even—ah, right. Telerotation or whatever the term is."
He picked up a bundle and sniffed it.
"Yep. Real." he said in surprise.
He didn't particularly like the scent, but it did smell expensive.
He gazed up again at the stoic vampire maid, her demeanor as unreadable as ever, those crimson eyes fixed on him as if she wanted him to kneel and worship her for her generosity.
This event was supposed to be a spectacular, life-changing gesture. A dramatic climax.
But he—
'Oh, she's wearing stockings… and what's that white string—wait, stop, bastard, she's gonna kill you,' he snapped at himself internally, yanking his eyes away before they lingered long enough to become a eulogy.
He shook his head, let out a long sigh, zipped the bag shut, and stood up like someone accepting their fate with a few pennies to survive.
"Nah. I'm not here for the money."
One of her eyebrows lifted. "Then what do you want?"
"You," he said. Like it was obvious.
"What?" she asked a little incredulously.
He pointed at her with the energy of a man pointing out a pothole. "To be like you."
"To be exact, I want to be like those freaks who are still human but are hella strong. Y'know, the ones who can bench press trucks and don't die from a strong breeze."
This time, the maid skipped asking where he got the info from.
She tilted her head slightly. "Then why not join them or the human army? Or one of the Faith Orders? They recruit gifted children from the age of ten. And from what I can see, you would qualify."
The boy's face shifted slightly.
He didn't answer right away. Instead, he took off his coat and sweater, then lifted his shirt.
The cold air pressed against his skin as he turned around, revealing his back.
The maid's eyes widened slightly.
He was painfully thin. His complexion was pale, his ribs were well defined, and his collarbones protruded out.
But this was widespread among street urchins in this low-level sector.
What struck her was the markings on the boy's body—irregular, blistered patches that covered his torso and back, as if his flesh was decomposing in parts.
'Is it due to 'that' phenomenon. No, it can't be.' She halted that thought due to its sheer absurdity.
The boy didn't say anything.
Just stood there like it was nothing new.
"Yeah," he finally said, voice dry. "Ten-year-olds with rotting skin and the build of a haunted scarecrow don't make the best recruits. Turns out the army's not really into that aesthetic. Said I've got some unknown disease they can't figure out—just that it keeps eating away at me, and one day, it'll finish the job."
He shrugged like he was talking about bad weather.
"It was the same with the others. They either rejected me outright or tried to trick me, thought I'd be easy to sell off somewhere… though that didn't really work out for them, obviously."
"For now, I'm somehow still alive thanks to a ragtag mix of cheap medical pills and painkillers. But the pain's been getting worse, and I don't know how much longer I can keep this up."
There was nothing in his voice.
Just the kind of acceptance that sounded too natural for someone so young.
"Even if I somehow scraped together enough money- stealing, begging, doesn't matter, those big hospitals wouldn't treat someone like me. They'd find some excuse to get rid of a street scum with a mysterious disease. Might even accuse me of stealing the money just to avoid the paperwork. And even then… there's no guarantee any of them could cure me."
"......."
As expected, there wasn't a flicker of pity in the silver-haired maid's crimson stare. Just that same calm, unreadable look, like she was deciding whether to swat a bug or ignore it.
'Tch. Should've known—dead eyes, dead heart,' he thought, mentally crumpling and tossing his emotional speech into a garbage fire.
What?
Was he an irredeemable scum for playing the pity card?
Well, screw that. He will use all means required to reach his goals.
Also, it wasn't as if he had said any lies previously, everything was true.
He scratched his neck and continued, "Anyway… that was when they said I was nine. About seven years back, give or take."
He gestured vaguely at his scrawny frame.
The maid's gaze subtly swept over him, from his messy raven hair down to his bony legs and barely there shoulders.
"You are around sixteen?" She asked.
"....Indeed," the boy answered.
Her eyes narrowed slightly, and despite her usual poker face, her lips quivered… barely noticeable.
But he, who was as perceptive as ever, caught it instantly.
"Oye—what? You thinkin' I am a shorty?!" he huffed, pulling his coat tighter out of sheer spite.
The maid didn't respond.
She simply looked at him with something unreadable in her eyes before finally nodding. "Okay. But for that, you'll have to meet Madame personally."
His eyes widened slightly.
"Alright. Deal." He accepted quickly.
"Then get dressed," she added, glancing at his bare torso. "Or do you plan on showing up like that?"
"Oh, right!" he quickly scrambled to throw his clothes back on, his teeth chattering slightly in the cold.
Once he was fully dressed, the maid stepped forward and held out her hand.
The youngster looked up at her calm and serene expression, then at the two unconscious women slung over her shoulders.
They appeared taller and heavier than her, but she carried them with ease.
Then his gaze fell on her hand.
He pressed his little, rough palm against hers. It seemed chilly at first, like snow, yet underlying that chill was something surprisingly warm. Soft and even. Not the type of hand he anticipated from someone who felt so powerful.
'How could someone with these soft hands be so powerful?' He thought, briefly contrasting her soft hold to the gritty texture of his own flesh.
He halted his thoughts and began to mentally prepare himself for the teleportation, but then her sudden voice cut through the silence—soft, even, and perfectly monotone.
"A small piece of advice—'behave' yourself in front of Madame. She 'hates' males… to the point of feeding their genitals to the bats."
Her tone didn't change, but he caught the faintest flicker of amusement hidden beneath it.
The boy's eyes widened like saucers.
'This vampiric maid!... why do I feel like she's getting some kind of petty revenge on me? No, no, she's probably just messing with me. Trying to rattle me, that's all.'
With a slow, reluctant creak of his neck, he glanced up at her, one eyebrow twitching in what could be considered as utter betrayal.
"You kiddin'."
"I am not."
"......"
Silence fell between them—long, heavy, and absolutely suffocating.
He stared at her.
She stared back.
The two unconscious women on her shoulders bobbed slightly as the wind picked up, almost like punctuation marks to the awkward tension.
"…You know what? On second thought, maybe I don't need—"
But before he could finish backing out of what was clearly a terrible life decision, reality folded in on itself and the world disappeared around him.