“... Let me warn you now: if you intend anything indecent, that must wait until after you revive my heart. Lay a hand on me prematurely, and...”

“What are you talking about? I need to give your heart an electrical massage, so open your chest. I mean cut through the flesh. It’s much easier for you to open it yourself, Trainee Tyrkanzyaka, than for me to slice it open with a skewer. You’re a vampire, after all.”

As I stared at her and questioned her, the vampire belatedly realized what I meant. Embarrassed, she clutched her chest.

“My chest... Ah. Yes... I suppose so.”

People kept getting the wrong idea lately, and it was becoming a problem. Sure, if she offered me a look, I’d gladly take it—but then she’d kill me, wouldn’t she?

Sorry, but my life was twice as precious to me as anything else.

“... Y-yes. He exposed his heart, so I suppose I must do the same. Yes...”

Nodding, the vampire traced a line down her cleavage with her index finger. A line of blood appeared down the center of her pitch-black dress, then her white chest parted to either side, exposing the flesh within.

The snow-white wrapping around her body was so clean and smooth that it was hard to look away. Yet just one layer beneath it lay a sight that would make even someone with the strongest stomach grimace. Inside her body, bloody froth seethed, fascia writhed, and white bones made their substantial presence felt.

“... There. Can you see clearly?”

A naked body brings embarrassment to the person exposing it, but go any deeper, and the discomfort passes to the observer. Apparently, there was truth to the saying that things reverse when pushed to extremes. The vampire had been uneasy even about touching her own chest, but now that she was showing me beneath her skin, I was the one who wanted to look away.

Why was she embarrassed to bare her breasts but had no qualms about exposing what lay inside them? What an irony...

No, was that normal? If I had to choose between peeling off my skin to show someone my heart or taking off my clothes to show them my naked body, I’d choose the latter. Only because she was a vampire who wouldn’t die could she lie on an operating table with her chest split open.

“There. All done.”

The vampire spoke as she held her chest open. Through the gap in her sliced flesh, I could see bright red muscle and sloshing blood.

It seemed we had lost something human long before we lost our sense of shame. Once again, I was reminded just how inhuman the girl before me was.

“I distinctly told you today not to expose your heart.”

“Y-you were the one who told me to! I did not want to look like this either.”

“Let me stress this again: you really mustn’t show this to anyone but me. Honestly, I’d rather you didn’t show me either. Blech. Gross.”

“Enough idle chatter! Well? Can you do it?”

“Let me have a look first. Now, then.”

It was too dark to see clearly. I slipped my index finger into the narrow opening and cast a spell.

“Lux.”

A brighter light flashed from my finger. I pushed the glowing finger into the vampire’s chest. Cutting through the dark red gloom, it illuminated the deeper recesses of her body.

The vampire watched my hand intently, lost in thought.

‘Stranger than anything, I feel little embarrassment despite being in such a state...’

If this embarrassed you, there’d be something wrong with your head. But don’t worry. Your embarrassment has been replaced by my nausea. Bleeergh.

“Um, could you clear away some of the blood inside? I can’t see very well.”

“Ah, of course.”

At that, the red blood scattered every which way out of the light like a swarm of insects. A patient who opened her own chest and even cleared away the blood to give me a better view—should I call her exemplary or be terrified?

Urgh. With the blood gone, I could see the shapes even better... Hold it in.

In any case, thanks to my patient’s active, conscious assistance, I soon found her heart. Behind her deflated lungs, it lay utterly motionless. I reached toward it, and my fingertip brushed against it.

“Ngh.”

The vampire had experienced all manner of things, but even she had never had her own heart touched. She reacted strongly to the unfamiliar, indescribable sensation.

Whatever. Frankly, as the person touching her heart directly, I didn’t want to feel anything at all. I kept feeding little trickles of mana into it, assessing the possibilities.

Hmm. This...

I spent a while gauging it, prodding the heart lightly, my face twisted into a deep frown.

In the end, I shook my head.

“This won’t work.”

At my matter-of-fact declaration, the vampire’s red eyes widened sharply.

“It... won’t? You say it will not work?”

“That’s right.”

“Do you truly mean there is no possibility?”

“Yes. It won’t work.”

The vampire despaired.

Of course, that did not make her heart move. Even such profound disappointment could not stir it. And so, even now that her cherished wish had come to nothing, she could accept my words with a cool head.

With my finger still resting against her heart, I spoke.

“Your circumstances and Trainee Rash’s were different to begin with, Trainee Tyrkanzyaka. His heart had stopped because he was in a state of suspended animation. He’s an undying one, and his body is made of different things from a human’s, but it still operates on the same principles. You, on the other hand...”

I lightly pinched the vampire’s heart between two fingers. She flinched in alarm, but the heart beneath my fingers did not move at all.

Normally, it should have moved without even being touched, but this heart had already lost its purpose. It remained only as a symbol.

“You move your blood with blood manipulation, Trainee Tyrkanzyaka. Even at this very moment, with your chest open.”

An ordinary person could not open their own chest. They could not lift aside their flesh to reveal the inside while holding back every last drop of blood. What meaning was there in wishing for a heart that beat on its own when all her blood moved entirely at her command?

She did not even need to breathe. Progenitor Tyrkanzyaka could draw her blood out of her body, scatter it through the air, then bring it back inside.

“Earlier, you asked me to light a fire in your furnace, didn’t you? But that’s not it. To put it metaphorically, you aren’t a furnace, Trainee Tyrkanzyaka. You’re a waterwheel. Humans put in firewood, set it alight, and live lives that burn. Vampires, though, use blood manipulation to draw in a river, moving their bodies by turning a waterwheel.”

I extinguished the light on my finger. The glow illuminating her heart vanished, and darkness returned to the inside of the vampire’s body. Her expression as dark as the inside of her chest, she murmured.

“So it is impossible.”

“Yes. This electrical shock is only a spark. Apply a flame to a pile of firewood, and it catches fire. Apply it to running water, and all you get is a brief sting.”

The clever vampire understood what I meant and was disheartened. Having found hope for the first time in centuries and soared with it, she must have had a tremendous fall.

Yet that emotion, too, vanished in a flicker. Such were a vampire’s emotions. Calmly accepting failure, she voiced her last lingering wish.

“Then could you try just... just once? Even if it serves no purpose, I wish to be certain.”

“Well, they say you should grant even a dead person’s wish. So why not someone who keeps moving after death?”

“Hehe. This is precisely when that saying belongs.”

The vampire smiled faintly.

I smiled back and drew mana up from my elbow. The Military State’s standard-issue magic for producing an electrical shock.

“Volt.”

Short bursts of electricity stimulated the heart in succession. I felt it convulse against my fingertip. It twitched again and again, the pressure briefly forcing blood to well up.

This was less cardiac resuscitation than a mechanical response. Human muscles naturally twitched when exposed to electricity. In the vampire’s case, that muscle simply happened to be her heart.

Without feeling particularly moved, I started to withdraw my finger.

That was when it happened. The vampire urgently seized my hand and pulled it toward her. Before I could react, my hand slipped deep inside her chest. I felt the squish of living flesh.

Just as I was about to recoil in horror,

“It beat.”

“What?”

The vampire cried out, her face astonished yet extraordinarily bright.

“I felt it. I am certain. Only for a moment, but my heart beat.”

“Well, that’s because of the electrical shock...”

“Yes. Only for a moment, but it leaped of its own accord! This... My heart...”

She clutched my hand as though it were hope itself, refusing to let go. It was as if she feared it might escape and wanted to hold it inside her body.

“Is it truly, truly impossible? My heart... My heart...”

But reality was cruel, even to a vampire.

As the lingering mana faded and the agitated heart slowly settled back into stillness, the vampire’s hope tumbled down with it. Amid the flowing blood, her heart gradually stopped.

Her grip on my arm weakened in turn. When I gently drew my arm out, her limp fingers caught against my wrist. I took her hand lightly and spoke.

“There’s nothing we can do.”

“... So it seems.”

The vampire sat up, closing her chest. Hiding her disappointment, sorrow, and habitual resignation beneath a single layer of skin, she slid her fingers over the severed flesh. The wound healed in an instant, leaving her pale skin as flawless as though nothing had happened.

‘I thought it might work this time. Yet hope still slips through my fingers. Have my hands grown absurdly large, or is hope so small and fine? Even now... is it impossible?’

Yet even her heart did not cling to those feelings. Even the glimmer she had held only to lose was swept away by her cold, flowing blood.

Having neatly put her feelings in order, the vampire spoke as though she were comforting me instead.

“Do not trouble yourself. I am accustomed to failure. What cannot be helped cannot be helped.”

“What? Me? I only tried to help out of goodwill, then gave up when I realized it wouldn’t work. What would I have to be disappointed about? I’m not some fool who thinks doing favors is an obligation. You’re the disappointed one, Trainee Tyrkanzyaka. I don’t feel anything about it at all.”

“As ever... you have quite a way with words. Infuriatingly so.”

With a sorrowful smile, the vampire climbed off the bed. Pulling up the clothing she had opened and making herself presentable, she slowly headed outside.

“Forgive me for disturbing you in the middle of the night. Unlike us, your kind should be sleeping at this hour.”

“We’re in the bottomless pit anyway. Like I said, it’s fine. If you need anything, just let me know.”

The Progenitor of vampires, who had reigned for over a thousand years. If I could have made her heart beat again, I might have received an incredible reward.

But that was beyond my abilities.

Even with mind reading, even as the best gambler in the back alleys, I couldn’t conjure up a winning hand and take the pot when I had no cards. That was only natural. There was no need for regret.

What mattered was what I could gain from here on out. That alone.

“I can at least give your heart a massage now and then.”

I raised my finger slightly, to remind her of what it had touched—and the hope she had felt then.

“Only now and then, though.”

“Yes...”

The result was a little disappointing, but if I could at least gain a connection like this...

Watching the vampire leave my room, I smiled in quiet triumph.