Sora looked at Rosalind's face for a while.
"No."
Rosalind's eyebrows rose skeptically.
"I'm half vampire. Drinking blood is just an option." A short pause. "I hate drinking random blood."
Rosalind nodded slowly. As if she were mentally writing down the ingredients of a recipe.
Elena, on the other hand, couldn't stay still.
She poked her head out from behind her mother, eyes sparkling, hands clasped in front of her chest, bouncing lightly on her tiptoes.
"So how did you become a vampire?" Before Sora had a chance to answer, she threw her hand up. "No, no, wait! Don't tell me. Let me guess!"
Sora hadn't even opened his mouth.
Elena closed her eyes, pressed her index finger to her temple, and took a deep breath.
"One night," she said, dramatically lowering her voice. "There was a full moon. You were walking alone down a dark street. Maybe it was raining. Yes, it was definitely raining. And then..." She opened her eyes. "A woman appeared. A very beautiful woman. She had long black hair and blood-red lips. She had been sent to kill you! She seduced you, leaned toward your neck, and just as she was about to sink her teeth in... she looked into your eyes."
Elena put both hands over her heart at once.
"And she fell in love! She couldn't kill you! But she couldn't leave you to die either, because she wanted you by her side forever! So she gave you her own blood and turned you into a vampire too! And then the two of you, caught in a forbidden love, running from the hunters, in the darkness of the night..."
Smack.
Rosalind's hand came down on the back of Elena's head.
Elena's head hit the floor with a thud, and her feet ended up in the air.
Rosalind's merciless slap had flipped the poor girl head over heels.
"Ow!"
"Stop talking nonsense."
Elena pouted, rubbing her head. But as she propped herself up slightly, her eyes were still turned hopefully toward Sora.
Sora looked at her.
"No."
He didn't say anything else. He turned his eyes out the window, and that blank, expressionless mask settled back onto his face.
A brief silence fell over the living room.
Rosalind and Elena looked at each other. They had both understood the same thing. He didn't want to talk about it.
Elena's lips slowly trembled.
He didn't want to talk about it. That meant it was something painful. That meant there was a wound in his past, one he couldn't tell anyone about, one he had buried in the deepest part of his heart.
A scene came alive in Elena's mind. A mountain cabin in the falling snow. A blood-soaked boy at the door. Behind him, the lifeless bodies of the people who had once been his family. Just like the main character of that anime, the red-haired boy who carried a sword on his back, who had lost his family to demons and sworn revenge...
That was the kind of person Sora was. Alone. Wounded. Someone who had stepped into the darkness to avenge his family.
Elena's eyes welled up. She sniffled.
Rosalind saw that her daughter was showing signs of going autistic again, but this time she didn't hit her.
Then suddenly, Rosalind's eyes lit up. She raised her finger as if she had come up with the most important question in the world.
"Ah, right!" She turned to Sora. "They say vampires die if you drive a silver stake into their head. Is that true?"
Sora slowly turned his head and looked at her.
His brows furrowed slightly.
"Anyone dies if you drive a silver stake into their head."
Rosalind paused for a moment. She thought about it. Then she nodded, as if admitting it really did make sense.
"True."
Right then, Elena wiped away her tears and lunged forward again.
"So can you have kids with a bat?!"
Total silence fell over the living room.
Sora looked at Elena for a long, long time. For the first time, a real expression appeared on his face. The expression of someone questioning something very deeply, someone reconsidering his entire life and his decision to come to this world.
"That's enough questions for today."
And he turned his head back to the window.
He didn't answer any of Elena's or Rosalind's questions after that. He didn't even look at them. As if there were no one else in the living room but him, he kept sitting there without moving, his eyes fixed on the walls outside.
When Rosalind's questions showed no sign of ending, Elena finally grabbed her mother's arm.
"Mom, why don't you go make dinner?"
"What? But I still have so many things to ask..."
"Please." Elena pushed her mother toward the kitchen. "He must be hungry. And I'll explain everything to him. Promise."
Rosalind resisted for a moment. Then she looked at the white-haired boy sitting motionless in the armchair by the window, then at her daughter's pleading eyes, and took a deep breath.
"Fine." As she walked into the kitchen, she called back over her shoulder. "But this conversation isn't over!"
Elena waited until she heard her mother open the fridge door. Then she sat down on the edge of the couch, right across from Sora.
Sora was still looking out the window.
Elena didn't care about that at all.
"Okay." She put her hands on her knees. "I'm going to explain even if you don't listen. This world might not be like the worlds you know. Here, everyone awakens at eighteen and gets a Profession. I awakened today. I became a Summoner. And then I summoned you."
Sora didn't react.
"Let's try something first." Elena leaned forward a little. "Imagine a screen in front of your eyes. Like in games. And say 'system' in your head."
Sora's gaze didn't leave the window.
But what the girl had said had somehow caught his interest.
System.
The moment he thought the word, a translucent blue screen appeared before his eyes.