Inside the restaurant.
Elena, having just been hauled bodily through the door, caught a faint smell of blood in the air.
The place was large, and nearly every seat was taken.
The waitresses wove between the tables, and without exception the trays in their hands carried blood-red dishes of every description.
At a glance, almost every table held a kind of vivid red tofu that looked extremely fresh, as though it had only just been pressed.
At the sight of this hellish scene, Elena could not help swallowing.
Lilith wasn't really going to force her to eat this, was she? Surely not...?
"Elena~ What are you standing there for? Come along~"
Elena was dragged off by Lilith once again.
The two of them followed a waitress who had appeared at some point to a private room at the very back of the restaurant.
Lilith settled into one of the room's only two seats with the ease of long practice; the other was directly opposite her.
"Elena, do sit~"
Lilith sat with both hands propping up her chin, smiling at Elena where she still stood frozen in the doorway.
"The private rooms here are in a very good position~ You can't hear the noise outside, and outside can't hear a sound from within."
"In here, whatever happens, nobody will know~"
The scene gave Elena a sudden sense of déjà vu; she felt she had seen this picture somewhere before.
Except that she did not appear to have any way of refusing Lilith now, and she did not dare imagine what Lilith would do if she did.
"Um..."
"Sit down, Elena."
Elena had barely opened her mouth before Lilith cut her off, and now she truly had nowhere left to go.
Screw it! Here goes. Life and death are fated, and eating a little blood product isn't going to kill her.
And so Elena inched forward step by step and, under Lilith's smiling gaze, sat down across from her.
"Lady Lilith, I shall withdraw. The food will be brought out shortly."
The waitress who had shown them to the room closed its door at that, and the whole room went quiet.
Silence. Endless silence.
Elena sat in the chair on tenterhooks, and the Lilith across from her went on watching her, still smiling.
She did not dare meet Lilith's eyes; the feeling was too unpleasant, and she could only keep her head down.
This calm before the storm was becoming genuinely unbearable for Elena. She badly wanted to flee, and could not.
At least... at least say something! Why is Lilith just watching me like this without a word?
Elena had lost count of how many times she had cursed Lilith inwardly by now.
In the end Elena chose to speak first, raising her head slightly to meet Lilith's gaze.
"Um, could I possibly..."
"You could not~"
"Then may I..."
"You may not~"
Every sentence of Elena's was cut off with precision, leaving her not the slightest opening to resist.
Ding-a-ling—
The private room's bell rang.
Before long the waitress wheeled a serving cart into the room.
And on the cart, without exception, were blood products of every kind.
Blood tofu, blood sausage, blood soup, blood vegetables and more.
In short, every dish was vivid red, and looked not merely unappetizing but faintly horrifying.
To Elena, at least. To Lilith, this was absolute delicacy.
As the dishes were set down in front of Elena one plate at a time, that faint smell of blood invaded her nose again.
But as the pot of blood-red soup came to a boil in the middle of the table, the smell thinned somewhat.
"Eat up~ Elena, these things aren't as frightening as you imagine. Plenty of humans love them~"
As she spoke, Lilith speared a blood sausage on her fork and opened her mouth, revealing the fangs that belonged to vampires alone.
She bit down, and the red juices burst instantly across her mouth, while what escaped ran down the fork and dripped onto the plate.
The sight could fairly be called gruesome!
By the time Lilith had finished an entire sausage, Elena was still staring blankly at the blood soup in front of her, with no intention whatsoever of starting.
Seeing this, Lilith speared another sausage and held it out to Elena's lips.
Elena instinctively shrank back, but almost simultaneously Lilith pressed forward and pushed the sausage into her mouth.
Startled, Elena reflexively closed her teeth, biting clean through the sausage, and the red juices burst across her mouth.
I'm done for!
That was Elena's first thought, but... the overwhelming reek of blood she had braced for never came. What came instead was a rich wave of spices.
Savory and faintly hot, filling her mouth along with the aroma of meat, and she began chewing without meaning to.
The more she chewed, the deeper the flavor of the sausage grew, and Elena's frightened expression turned gradually to surprise, and finally to contentment.
Only once she swallowed did she gradually catch a faint trace of blood, which if anything lent the whole experience a distinctive extra note.
"Well? Delicious, isn't it~?"
"Mm-hm!"
Elena nodded hard, then speared a second sausage herself and brought it to her mouth, plainly very taken with it.
"If it's good, eat plenty~ The rest as well."
Lilith watched Elena eat with a doting look on her face.
Lunch was swiftly annihilated under Elena's enthusiastic assault, and it left her thoroughly satisfied.
Frightening as the dishes looked, they all tasted wonderful — second only to Lilith's own cooking.
The thing was, the food was finished and the dishes cleared, and Lilith showed no sign of wanting to leave.
The waitress, having cleared everything away, closed the door of the private room again, leaving the two of them inside.
"Well then~ Now that we're fed and watered, it's time to discuss a little business~"
"Eh? B-business?"
Elena froze. What did that mean? Was this payback?
But she did not seem to have done anything?
"That's right~ Tell me, my little maid~ What did that woman Severina say to you? Answer honestly now~"
Lilith was still smiling as she said it, but Elena knew that behind that smile something far more frightening was hidden.
Still, the question was not a hard one for her to answer; Severina had not said much after all, though Lilith seemed to care a great deal.
"She only said that Lili... no, that you, Master, used to keep someone who looked a lot like me. Something like... Eve?"
At the name Eve, Lilith's smile abruptly vanished.
"Eve..."
She repeated the name once, as though confirming it, or perhaps remembering someone long gone.
"Besides her, what else did Severina tell you?"
Lilith's tone had turned considerably serious as she put the question to Elena again.
"Uh... she also said Eve got frightened off by you?"
"That..."
At that answer Lilith's fist clenched and she started to shout, but in the end she reined it in.
"Such a gossip... telling everyone everything."
Lilith muttered it to herself, and quickly got her composure back before looking at Elena again.
Elena, meanwhile, had just watched Lilith get angry for a moment, and the pressure of it was so overwhelming that she shrank back before she could stop herself.
Seeing Elena like that, Lilith gradually eased off; she was well aware she had frightened her.
After a brief silence, she spoke again.
"It's true. It's the thing I regret most in my life..."
"Eh?"
Elena was rather surprised. Lilith had actually admitted it?
"However~"
The words were barely out before Lilith reverted to the version of herself she kept for Elena.
"None of that has anything to do with you. As my little maid~ all you need to do is be obedient~"
If emotions could be worn on a face, then a 💢 mark would absolutely have appeared above Elena's head.
This Lilith showed no sign whatsoever of turning over a new leaf!
She had thought Lilith might soften because of the business with Eve, but she had been wrong — utterly wrong.
How could she have forgotten how Lilith had treated her during those two punishments? This old hag had not changed at all!
Then again, that was just as well; at least this way she would not develop any unnecessary feelings for the old hag.
It did remind her of something, though: Lilith's feelings about Eve seemed rather special, and that might be an opportunity.
Lilith had not treated her badly, but she had no intention of being kept like a pet in this little corner of the world.
And Vier was still waiting for her to come back, so... I'm sorry, Senior Eve. Just let me... use you this once!