THE HERO'S SON IS A MONSTER-Chapter 90: Believe it

I looked to my left. The burglar was still on the floor, forgotten. He groaned, blood coming from his mouth as he tried to get up.

"Oh my, oh my, how impolite of us!" exclaimed the vampire girl. "I am so very sorry, Mr. Burglar! It seems I broke two or three of your ribs. It must hurt, right?"

She walked towards him, caught his collar and left him above her head with a single hand. She was holding a grown up man like he was an empty bag with no visible difficulty.

"Now, now, what should I do with you? Thieves aren’t exactly rare, you know? Not exactly the most interesting people. Yet, it seems you were about to kill someone I am interested in. Um... You know what?" She made a pause and her smile widened, "I don’t like you."

I don’t remember if I mentioned earlier, but this girl was always smiling. Well, mostly. It was her default expression if I may put it that way.

At that moment, she was smiling like usual, but when she looked at that man, it was as if her smile was suddenly wider. However, it wasn’t in a good way.

Up until that point, I wasn’t really afraid of her. She was a vampire and vampires are, apparently, evil by nature. Being afraid of bloodsuckers was something no one could hold against me, not even her. But I wasn’t really afraid of her. Many uncanny beings are more misunderstood than plain evil unlike what the old classification says. With that in mind, I figured that vampires – or at least her – must not be truly evil. They just happened to be beings that needed to eat blood. For instance, I am a meat lover but I don’t consider myself evil because of that. That is probably not the opinion of the countless chicken I ate though.

Anyway, I didn’t like her. At all. But I wasn’t afraid either. At least up until I saw her smile at that moment.

I couldn’t properly see her face and I was stressed at the moment so maybe it was my imagination but, there was something truly disturbing with her at that moment. Even the man she was holding had its face twisted with sheer horror.

*thud*

"...eh?"

Without realizing, I found myself sitting on the ground. My legs just gave out I think.

The vampire girl turned to me with surprise in her eyes. She let go of the man and after a short silence, adjusted her glasses.

"Mr. Burglar."

"..."

"Manners! You lack manners! When someone calls you, answer!" she scolded, pointing at the man.

"Y-YES!!!"

She lifted her skirt and put her hands under her pantyho—

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!!" I yelled.

"Hm? Is something wrong?" she asked, getting a purse from under her pantyhose... She was seriously asking me if something was wrong?

"You are seriously asking me if something is wrong?!!" I asked, yes. "Why do you keep your purse there?!"

"Evidence! It would be too classic if it was between my breasts!"

"What is evident here?! Don’t you have pockets?!"

"Duh, of course I don’t. Pullovers don’t have pockets!"

I put both of my hands on my face and sighed heavily. "I don’t care anymore. I don’t anymore. I don’t care anymore. I don’t anymore. I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t—"

While I was repeating the same sentence over and over again, the vampire girl crouched and gave her purse to the burglar, "Here. There’s a lot of money inside. You know, those 4D purse things. Technology is amazing, right? Right?"

"R-Right..."

She then got up again and pointed at the door, "Run. Run and don’t look back. If you do... Ah, I don’t know but you don’t want to know either. So, run quickly, okay?"

"Y-YES!!!"

He nodded, and ran. He left his bag, his gun, and everything was over. The vampire girl put her hands on her hips and sighed before turning to me with a smile.

"Well. I will go now. Good night!"

"Huh? Wait!"

I got up without realizing and caught her hand. The vampire girl turned to me with surprise, "Hm? Whatever is the matter?"

"Huh? Oh!"

I let go of her hand.

"S-Sorry. I couldn’t... uh... sorry."

I don’t really know why I did that. The vampire girl looked at me but I couldn’t help but avoid her gaze. Damn her vampire’s eyes!

"... Oh. Evidence. How could I forget about that? You are in a state of shock, aren’t you? Almost having been robbed. And killed. You are afraid, aren’t you?"

"Wha— I-I am not! Wait! You just gave him money, didn’t you?!"

"Ah! You saw that?!" she said, putting her hands together.

Well, I heard about it since she did even bother whispering or anything but I didn’t really think anything of it. At first. When I did however, my mind went blank. I didn’t clearly see what she did so I could be wrong but...

"...h-hey."

"What is it?"

I had to be careful and choose my words with the utmost care. "You... You gave money to that man..."

"Yes. I did!"

She wasn’t even trying to deny it!

"W-Why?"

"Why? Can’t you guess?"

"!"

I couldn’t believe it. Picture it: a burglar comes into my house around 2 AM. He inexplicably gets so frightened by the idea of being caught by the police he shoots me, and then, the vampire girl appears to save me just in time. Way too convenient, right? It was like a badly played scenario once I thought of it that way.

"...You aren’t even trying to hide it."

"Hm? Should I? I don’t want to lie to my only friend."

"... Don’t want... to lie? A friend? Is that a joke?" I asked in disbelief.

"Oh! Ah! Confusion! I think there’s confusion here!" she said putting her hands in cross.

"Confusion? About what?"

"I didn’t pay that man to attack you! I paid him because I don’t like him!"

...huh?

"... Come again?"

Again, the girl smiled and adjusted her glasses, "Question! You are a human, yes?"

"... Make it quick please."

"No fun. You are no fun," she said, shrugging. "Anyway, you must know that vampires drink blood to live, don’t you? That’s why we are considered evil by you humans. Just a misunderstanding between our species. A tragic misunderstanding, indeed."

"..."

Well, I thought so too but all it meant was that they weren’t evil by nature. In my mind, this specific vampire in front of me WAS evil regardless of her need to drink blood. Well, I guess I wasn’t so convinced since I was giving her a chance to explain herself. However, her explanation was... huh... how do I put this?

"Misunderstanding!!! Such a misunderstanding!!!" she yelled, pointing her index at me. "Vampires ARE evil beings!!! They are evil to the core!!! We live our whole life dedicating ourselves to our ultimate form of evil!!!"

I squinted my eyes, but she continued her explanation with a lot of powerful gestures as if she didn’t notice how lost I was getting. 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

"AS A VAMPIRE, MY MISSION IS TO FOLLOW MY VERY OWN PATH OF EVIL!!! WHICH IS IT YOU ASK?!! WHICH SORT OF EVIL MAKES THIS VAMPIRE’S LIFE WORTH LIVING?!! WELL, IT IS..." she got down from the table in my living room. I don’t know when she got there, but she got down and continued more calmly. "Life itself."

"Life? I am not sure I—"

"I don’t expect you to understand! Extending someone else’s life is the worst kind of evil out there!!! Wait, maybe you can understand after all? For each day you live, there’s more pain and suffering coming. Interesting, isn’t it? That would mean doctors, heroes, well, anyone who saves someone’s life is essentially evil. They can’t guarantee you a bright future but they still make you live through the hell that is life. Ah! How wonderful! I want to become a doctor!"

"..."

What was that? Seriously, what was that?

"Evil? Saving people’s lives? What are you talking about?"

The vampire girl suddenly stared at me for a few seconds until I avoided her gaze again.

"Believe it or not, I didn’t like this man earlier," she began, her voice barely above a whisper as she took off her glasses to clean them with her pullover. "So I gave him money. A lot of money. With it, he will probably be happy for a few decades if he doesn’t burn everything too fast that is. He won’t have to steal anymore whatever the reason. Yet... Having money will give him other problems. Problems he isn’t used to having. Maybe he will get into drugs or alcohol? Penthouses or casinos? Junk food or expensive gadgets? Maybe he will even embrace all of those and more! With this money, I saved his life and maybe extended it somehow. That only means more suffering for him. If that isn’t evil, what is?"