Elena, who was supposed to be cleaning obediently, was not being very obedient at all.
Every time she passed behind Lilith she would crane her neck for a look without thinking about it, and every time Lilith caught her and stopped her.
Left with no choice, Elena could only go back to working in silence, sweeping while she cursed Lilith under her breath.
If anyone with second sight or a similar ability had looked at Elena just then, they could probably have seen the endless resentment radiating off her.
Work is always dull, and in the long silence Elena once again could not stop herself from breaking it.
Every time she passed, she saw Lilith lift the cup and take a sip; she had lost count of how many times.
The tea in the cup still had not run out, and by now she honestly could not tell whether Lilith even liked it.
She was curious. Genuinely. Not having a definite answer left an itch in her mind.
In the end she went and stood behind Lilith, and after hesitating a long while she spoke up cautiously.
"Hey. Do you really like drinking tea that much?"
"Hm? Why the sudden question, my little maid? Are you plotting something wicked~?"
Hearing her voice, Lilith set down the cup she had just picked up and turned to look at Elena.
"Tch. Forget it if you don't want to say. Why do you always assume the worst of me!"
Elena rolled her eyes at her.
"Pfft... So cute. All right, I'll stop teasing you."
Lilith picked the cup up and held it out in front of Elena, giving it a gentle swirl.
"Care to try?"
Elena eyed the cup in front of her with some hesitation; she had the distinct feeling Lilith was up to no good.
But she really was curious what the stuff was. The tea was red all the way through — it looked like black tea, and yet it was far too dark.
In the end she could not hold out against her curiosity, and took the cup.
"Eh? Fine."
Elena took the cup and gave it a light sniff at the tip of her nose. The tea's aroma was rich, but there was a strange smell mixed into it.
Something like... the smell of blood.
She immediately sensed that this was a bad idea, but Lilith was watching her the whole time with a strange smile on her face.
"What's wrong? Aren't you going to drink it~?"
Lilith's prompting reached her, and perhaps she had never had a choice from the start.
Dammit... down it goes! If I die, I die! With that thought, Elena took on the air of a warrior marching bravely to her death.
Even though all she faced was one slightly strange cup of tea.
She raised the cup to her lips, swallowed once, and then drank the whole thing down in a single go.
The tea ran down her mouth and throat and straight into her stomach, and a rich, sweet fragrance of tea burst across her palate.
But only for an instant. The next second, a far heavier reek of blood came slamming into her taste buds.
Her body rose in instinctive nausea, but the tea was already down, and all she could do was retch over and over.
The cup slipped from her hand beyond her control, though fortunately Lilith caught it in time.
"Cough, cough — urgh— Wh-what in the world is this stuff!!"
She could not help shouting it furiously, then went back to retching, trying to bring the tea up, though clearly to no effect at all.
"Pff-hahaha. Of course. You humans still can't appreciate a delicacy like that."
Lilith laughed at the sight of her, stood up, and patted Elena lightly on the back.
"It's called Blood Iris, and it's a very rare tea indeed. This is probably the only place left in the world that has any."
"Though to you it's likely no different from drinking a mouthful of blood. It is a plant unique to us vampires, after all~"
By the time Lilith had finished explaining, Elena felt somewhat less wretched, but the taste of blood still hung in her mouth and refused to fade.
"You could have said so first! That's disgusting...! And the taste won't go away — how is anyone supposed to stand this!"
Elena shot Lilith a glare, looking for all the world like an adorable little cat hissing.
"Well, my little maid was curious, wasn't she? What better way to find out whether it's good than tasting it yourself~?"
"Hmph! I think you were just up to no good. You did it on purpose, because you wanted to watch me make a fool of myself!"
"Pfft... All right, all right. Since you put it like that, I'll admit it openly. You really are adorable with that hissing-kitten look on you~"
"Hmph!"
Elena let out a furious snort and turned her face away, not wanting to look at this awful woman a moment longer.
Lilith was deliberately amusing herself at her expense, and there was nothing she could do about it!
Elena was livid, but she had nowhere to vent it. She could not beat Lilith in a fight, so in the end she simply had to swallow it.
That was not the main reason, though. The main reason was that she could not stand the taste of blood in her mouth and needed to rinse it out immediately.
Elena hurried out of Lilith's bedroom and went to the ground-floor washroom to rinse her mouth.
A set of toiletries sat on the washstand, and the cup was even shaped like a little white cat — extremely cute — and even the toothbrush was tiny.
Who would have thought Lilith used such an adorable cup. She had quite the girlish streak after all.
Thinking that, Elena picked the cup up, filled it with water, and used it herself without a shred of concern for whether it was Lilith's.
It took several rinses before the taste of blood gradually faded, and she brushed her teeth while she was at it. Thankfully the toothpaste was ordinary mint and not blood-flavored.
Once she left the washroom, Elena did not want to go back. Lilith's room was not finished, but nothing good ever came of sharing a room with her.
With that in mind, Elena turned instead to cleaning the ground-floor living room.
She had not looked at it carefully before. This house's living room was gorgeous, the sofa and the coffee table both made of materials that plainly cost a fortune.
The kitchen also adjoined the living room, the two of them practically open to one another.
Wait! The kitchen? Something occurred to Elena, and she went into the kitchen.
Lilith had said she was going downstairs when she went to brew tea before — and the only place downstairs where tea could be brewed was the kitchen!
With that, she started rummaging through the bank of cupboards in the kitchen.
Except that finding the tea leaves was not as simple as she had imagined; there were a good dozen cupboards in the kitchen at the very least.
She went through them one by one, and what was inside was either ingredients or cookware, along with every kind of tableware and knife.
The kitchen cupboards were nearly full to bursting, and she genuinely could not imagine why Lilith, living alone, needed to keep so much tableware.
At last, using a small stool, Elena managed to dig a dozen-odd packets of tea in red wrapping out of one of the overhead cupboards.
No name written on them, nothing at all, like some no-name product out of a back alley.
One of the packets had been opened, and it looked freshly opened at that — this must be the one Lilith had just brewed.
Wasn't this the perfect chance to poison her!
Elena was ready to do it on the spot, and then it suddenly hit her that the poison was not on her!
She had just moved to shut the cupboard door and go fetch the drug from the storeroom when a voice came out of nowhere.
"What are you looking for? Have you found it~?"
"Eeep!!"
The sudden voice startled Elena badly. Her foot slipped, the little stool under her was kicked over, and her body went toppling backward with it.
I'm done for!
It hit her all at once that the rack holding the kitchen knives was behind her, and if she fell like this she would become the first assassin in history to die of tripping over — an utter disgrace!
But there was nothing she could do. She had no control over her own body and could only let it fall, and in the end she closed her eyes and waited for her ending to arrive.