WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 47: Beating for You

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"...Let me say this first. If you're planning anything shameless, wait until after you revive my heart. If you touch my body carelessly..."

"What are you talking about? We need to stimulate your heart with electricity, so you need to open your chest. I mean, cut open the flesh. It's much easier for Trainee Tyrkanzyaka to open it herself than for me to cut open your chest with a skewer. You're a vampire, after all."

When I stared at her and asked that, the vampire finally understood what I meant and awkwardly clutched at her chest.

"My chest... Ah. I see."

People had been imagining strange things far too often lately. If she showed me, I'd gladly look, but she'd kill me afterward.

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

"...R-right. He exposed his heart as well, so I must do the same. Yes..."

Nodding, the vampire traced a finger down her cleavage. A line of blood appeared down the center of her pitch-black dress, and her white chest parted to either side, revealing the flesh beneath.

The white wrapping around her body was so clean and smooth that it was difficult to look away. Yet only one layer beneath it lay a sight that would make even someone with a strong stomach frown. Bloody foam bubbled, fascia writhed, and white bones made their heavy presence known inside her body.

"...There. Can you see it clearly?"

A naked body embarrassed the person showing it, but once you went deeper inside, the discomfort passed to the one looking. It seemed the saying that relationships reverse at the extreme was not a lie. The vampire had been uneasy when she merely touched her own chest, but now that she had exposed what lay beneath her skin, I wanted to turn away.

Why was she embarrassed to expose her bare chest yet had no resistance to showing what lay inside it? What an irony...

No, was that normal? If someone made me choose between peeling off my skin to show my heart and taking off my clothes to show my body, I'd show my body too. She was only lying on an operating table with her chest split open because she was a vampire who wouldn't die.

"There. I'm finished."

The vampire held her chest open as she spoke. Bright red muscle and surging blood showed through the gap in her cut flesh.

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

"I distinctly told you today not to expose your heart."

"Y-you told me to do it. It's not as though I wanted to end up like this."

"Let me stress this again. You absolutely must not show this to anyone but me. Honestly, I wish you hadn't shown me either. Blegh. Disgusting."

"Enough nonsense! So? Can it be done?"

"Let me take a look. Hmm."

It was too dark to see clearly. I inserted my index finger into the narrow opening and used magic.

"Lux."

A stronger light flared from my finger. I pushed the glowing finger into the vampire's chest. Cutting through the dark red shadows, it illuminated the depths of her body.

The vampire watched my hand quietly, lost in thought.

'Strangely enough, even in this state, I do not feel particularly ashamed...'

If this embarrassed her, she'd have a problem. Still, don't worry. Your embarrassment has been replaced by my nausea. Blegh.

"Um, could you move the blood inside? I can't see very well."

"Ah, I understand."

At that, the red blood scattered in every direction like a swarm of insects within the reach of the light. A patient who cut open her own chest and even cleared away the blood so I could see better. I couldn't decide whether that made her exemplary or terrifying.

Ugh. Now that the blood was gone, I could see the shape even better... Endure it.

Thanks to the patient's active and conscious help, I quickly found the vampire's heart. Behind her deflated lungs was a heart that did not move at all. I reached for it.

Tap.

My finger touched her heart.

"Ugh."

The vampire had experienced all kinds of things, but even she had never had someone touch her heart directly. The unfamiliar, indescribable sensation made her react strongly.

That aside, I had no desire to feel anything while touching a heart directly. I kept letting small amounts of mana flow into it as I tested the possibilities.

Hmm. This...

After prodding her heart for a while and gauging it, I furrowed my brow deeply.

Then I shook my head.

"It won't work."

At my blunt declaration, the vampire's red eyes widened sharply.

"It... won't? You mean it won't work?"

"Yes."

"Do you truly mean there is no possibility?"

"Yes. It can't be done."

The vampire despaired.

Of course, that did not make her heart move. Even such enormous disappointment could not make it move. That was why, even when her wish had come to nothing, the vampire could accept my words calmly.

With my finger still against her heart, I said, "Trainee Rashy and Trainee Tyrkanzyaka were in different situations from the start. Trainee Rashy's heart had stopped because he was in a state of apparent death. He's immortal, and the elements that make up his body differ from a human's, but the principle that makes his body move is the same. On the other hand..."

Tap.

I gently pinched the vampire's heart with two fingers. She flinched in shock, but the heart beneath my fingers did not move at all.

Normally, it should have moved without being touched, but a heart that had already lost its role remained only as a symbol.

"Trainee Tyrkanzyaka moves her blood through bloodcraft. Even at this very moment, with your chest opened like this."

An ordinary person could not open their own chest. They could not expose the inside of their body while keeping even a single drop of blood from spilling. Even if she wanted a heart that beat on its own, what would it mean when all her blood moved exactly as she willed?

She did not even need to breathe. Tyrkanzyaka, the Progenitor, could draw blood from her body, scatter it through the air, and bring it back again.

"Earlier, you asked me to light a fire in your furnace, didn't you? That's not right. To put it another way, Trainee Tyrkanzyaka isn't a furnace. You're a water wheel. Feeding firewood into a furnace and tending the flames to live a burning life, that's human life. Vampires bring in a river through bloodcraft and turn a water wheel to move their bodies."

I extinguished the light from my finger. The glow illuminating her heart vanished, and darkness returned to the depths of her body. The vampire murmured, her expression as dark as her chest.

"So it is impossible."

"Yes. This electric shock is no more than a spark. A pile of firewood will catch fire when you apply a flame to it, but if you try it on flowing water, it'll only sting for a moment."

The clever vampire understood my words and became discouraged. She had found hope for the first time in hundreds of years, risen with excitement, then fallen. The drop must have been tremendous.

Yet that feeling, too, faded like a flicker of light. Such were a vampire's emotions. The vampire calmly accepted her failure and let go of her last lingering hope.

"Then, j-just once, will you do it for me? Even if it is useless, I want to confirm it."

"Well, they say you should grant even a dead person's final wish. Yours is the wish of someone who still moves after death."

"Hehe. So that is when one uses that saying."

The vampire smiled faintly.

Smiling back, I drew mana up from my elbow. It was a military state standard spell for producing electric shocks.

"Bolt."

A series of brief electric shocks stimulated her heart. I felt it twitch at my fingertips. It spasmed, and the pressure made blood surge out for a moment.

This was closer to a mechanical reaction than cardiac revival. Human muscles twitched when struck by electricity, and in the vampire's case, that muscle happened to be her heart.

Without much feeling, I tried to remove my finger.

That was when the vampire urgently seized my hand and pulled it closer. Before I could react, my hand slipped deep into her chest. I felt the soft, squelching touch of living flesh.

Just as I was about to panic.

"It beat."

"What?"

The vampire cried out, her face astonished but her expression incredibly bright.

"I felt it. Clearly, even if only for a moment, my chest beat."

"That was because the electricity ran through it..."

"Yes. It jumped on its own, even if only for a moment! This... My heart..."

As though my hand itself were hope, she held it tightly and would not let go. It looked as though she wanted to tuck it completely inside her body, worried it might escape.

"Truly, truly, it cannot be done? My heart, my heart..."

Even when the other party was a vampire, reality was cruel.

The remnants of mana faded. As her excited heart settled and slowly grew still, the vampire's hope tumbled down with it. Amid the flowing blood, her heart gradually stopped.

The hand holding my arm weakened as well. When I gently pulled my arm free, her limp fingers caught weakly around my wrist. I lightly held that hand and said, "It can't be helped."

"...I see."

The vampire drew her chest closed and rose. She hid her regret, sorrow, and chronic resignation just beneath a layer of skin, then slid her fingers over the severed flesh. The wound healed in an instant, and her pale skin became flawless as though nothing had happened.

'For a moment, I thought this time might be different. Yet hope still slips through my grasp. Are my hands absurdly large, or is hope truly so small and delicate? Even now... Is it still impossible?'

But even her feelings did not linger. The flicker she had held in her hand before it disappeared was washed away by her coldly flowing blood.

The vampire neatly put her feelings in order, then spoke as if she were trying to comfort me instead.

"Do not concern yourself. I am accustomed to failure. What cannot be helped cannot be helped."

"What? Me? I only gave up after trying to help out of kindness and finding that it wouldn't work. Why would I feel regret? I'm not an idiot who considers volunteering an obligation. Trainee Tyrkanzyaka is the one who should be disappointed. I have no feelings about it at all, you know?"

"Your words are still... very skillful. Annoyingly so."

With a sad smile, the vampire stepped down from the bed. She pulled up the clothes she had opened, composed herself, and headed slowly toward the door.

"I disturbed you in the middle of the night. Unlike us, nighttime is when your kind sleeps."

"We're in the Abyss anyway. It's fine, really. If you need anything, feel free to tell me."

Tyrkanzyaka was the Progenitor of vampires, who had reigned for more than a thousand years. If I had made her heart beat again, I might have received an enormous reward.

But that lay beyond my abilities.

Even if I had mind-reading, even if I was the best gambler in the back alleys, I could not force a winning hand when I had no cards to make one with. That was only natural, and there was no reason to regret it.

What mattered was what I would gain from this afterward. That was all.

"From time to time, I'll at least give you a heart massage."

I lightly raised my finger so she would remember the hope she had felt when that finger touched her heart.

"Only from time to time, though."

"Yes..."

The result was somewhat disappointing, but if I could gain even this much of a connection, that was enough.

Watching the vampire leave my room, I smiled with quiet satisfaction.

Footnotes:

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