Secrets have been around since the beginning of mankind.
At first, it might just be two people who decided to hide something from another person. Unknowingly, it developed into a few people hiding something from a group of people; a few people hiding something from an entire city; a few people hiding something from an entire country. , such a level.
The secret itself has not changed.
But the act of hiding a secret has many different definitions.
In political struggles and military battles, the behavior of deceiving the other party, hiding one's own weaknesses and exploring the other party's weaknesses to defeat them is called strategy; the behavior of concealing one's black income by certain means is called corruption.
On the plus side, human society has seen the birth of magicians who work with bards, and they keep their secrets tightly and bring incredible fun. On the bad side, there are also endless deceitful people throughout the world of Rigar.
Human beings have various ways of calling someone hiding a secret, and the way of hiding a secret has also evolved from stratagem to not hesitate to kill others.
…
The wind by the lake blew gently, and the sparkling waves shone on the faces of the two girls.
Emonica no longer looked as inhuman as before. She sat some distance away from Mira and did not come closer. "..." Mira looked at her side face. To be honest, it was impossible to say that there was no trace of fear in the Luoan girl's heart. But compared to these, I am afraid that the emotion of "care" was more important.
"..." Emmanica also turned her head, just in time to meet the girl's bright eyes. She immediately lowered her eyes, no longer looking directly at Mira, and then made a sound like a choke. Turned his head. "..." Mira clenched her fists. She hesitated for a while, and then stood up with a "snap" and walked over as if to strengthen her determination.
"Ugh——" Emmanica shook her shoulders, seeming to be afraid of Mira's approach.
"Tell me...talk to me." The girl noticed this, so she slowed down and stopped. Emmanica curled up her knees and buried her face in her arms, refusing to raise her head, while Mira continued: "Tell me, what exactly happened." "Hiss..." The blonde girl was indeed Crying, she heard her sniff, and then said in a tone with a hint of crying, or asked in return: "You... do you really want to hear it?"
"When a problem arises, you have to speak out." The Luoan girl looked down at the other party with a serious face and said: "Someone told me such a thing!"
A strong tone can always make an uneasy person subconsciously believe the other person.
Emonica raised her head and looked at the white-haired Luoan girl, while Mira sat down and accepted the breeze of the lake with her.
"..." She hesitated for a while, but she seemed to have no choice now.
"Remember..." Emmanica spoke slowly. She was still resisting, but it was at this time that she turned her head and met Mira's shining eyes again.
There was no hatred or fear in the pair of blue eyes that reflected the silvery moonlight of Xifink's magic moon. They were filled with concern for his friends and full of curiosity.
"Thank you..." The blonde girl sniffed heavily, and then continued: "Remember, what I told you before, that Joshua saved me-"
As she spoke, time seemed to go back to eleven years ago.
…
"What on earth do you want to do? If you want to kill me, hurry up!" The nine-year-old Emmanica had the same cheerful temperament as she does now. She said this bluntly to the person who kidnapped her. Zi said, but the other party wearing a long cloak just threw a piece of bread wrapped in linen.
"...I won't eat your food." The little Loli said stubbornly in a clear voice, but the other party just showed a disdainful smile, then turned and walked to the side. For two and a half days, he didn't say a word. During the day, he stayed in this cave with only a dirt floor. At night, he would go out for a short while and then return with some necessities.
Emmanica had no idea what the other party wanted. The last thing she remembered was playing in the woods behind her home, getting lost, falling into a coma, and finally waking up in this place.
Emonica tried sneaking out while the man was out at nightfall. She tried it on the first night, but she didn't know the road on this side at all, and the man stuck a torch on the rock wall. Go to a very high place, and with Loli's height there is absolutely no way she can touch it.
It was pitch black outside, without anyone around, and only inside the cave could there be a trace of warmth. And he always stayed here during the day, with no intention of going out.
"What do you want to do?" As a young girl, she couldn't understand what the other party wanted, and wouldn't answer even if she asked. Only at certain times, Emonica noticed that the man would show a slightly sad expression - he didn't intend to kill her, so what was the purpose of catching her?
She couldn't figure it out, she just instinctively continued to refuse the other person's food, until she was so hungry that she was so exhausted that she finally gave in.
"It tastes so bad!" The bread has a salty and astringent taste, but it can fill his stomach and give him the strength to act. Emonica swallowed it hard with this thought, but she didn't notice the smile on the face of the person next to her when she saw all this.
…
"That's...added with vampire blood." The light from the lakeside shone on half of her cheeks, and Emonica said with a trace of self-mockery on her face: "At that time, I was still confident about accepting the other person. I will try my best to survive with this little charity, and then someone will definitely come to save me later..."
"But it's no longer possible. No one can save me anymore... He didn't want to kill me, but what he did to me was even worse than killing me. But that person also..."
"In the final analysis, he is just lonely..." Amonica said this in a very sad tone. She looked at Mira. Although her eyes were sad when she recalled this incident, they did not contain any hatred.
"Immortal, but can only walk in the darkness. Although everyone is afraid of vampires and think they are very powerful, I feel... very pitiful." Emmanica reluctantly said Smiling, Mira was a little uncomfortable with her becoming so quiet. After all, the blond girl usually laughed, making people feel that she was carefree, sunny and cheerful.
"On the fourth day, maybe because I had eaten bread, he started to tell me..." The blond girl paused and started to tell again.
…
"Do you think immortality is a blessing?" The man said in a slightly hoarse voice. Although he spoke the lingua franca of the West Coast, his accent was quite unique and obviously not from around here. He spoke with an obvious lack of fluency, as if he hadn't spoken to others in a long, long time.
"..." Emonica didn't answer him. She was still hostile to this person, so she just curled up her little body in a corner of the cave, hugged her legs, and stared at him without saying a word.
"It seems that you don't want to answer me." The man still said this in fluent words, smiled at the end, and then continued: "Humans always envy other races." He said: "I envy those races whose lifespan is longer than theirs."
"Because life is very short, so human beings always covet and want to live for a few more years." He looked at Emonica, the blond loli still stared at her with hostility, as if she only wanted to If she does this, the person will back down and let her go.
Children's thoughts are always innocent and simple, and Emmanica felt that she had hidden the little secret in her heart. She quietly hid the bread under a sloping stone near the cave exit, and then decided to go out to explore the surrounding environment next time he went out to make all preparations for his escape. .
"It seems that you really hate me." The man smiled bitterly, and then continued: "Humans, haven't they always been envious of long-lived races like the elves..." It seems that he has mastered the knack of pronunciation. , his words gradually began to become fluent: "Although elves cannot have eternal life, humans still envy them very much."
"It's a common feature of life to be envious of what others have but what you don't own..." He raised his hand. Emonica, who was still young at the time, felt more and more that this guy was really inexplicable. In the muggy weather, In the Thoradin area, not only did he wear a thick cloak when it wasn't raining, but he also wore a long-sleeved, long-tailed coat that covered his whole body, and black gloves.
Isn't this man afraid that he will be suffocated to death? She thought this way. He is indeed a strange guy. She should leave him as soon as possible and return to the village and return to Joshua and the others.
"You still don't quite understand the meaning of this..." The man turned his head and looked at her. Emmanica finally answered for once. She shook her head and then said: "Just live happily. Why do you have to live so long?" The blond loli said, and then suddenly remembered that she had decided to remain hostile to this person, and quickly covered her mouth.
"Haha..." The man smiled again: "You can say such things precisely because you don't quite understand the meaning of life."
"When the time comes, for some reason, people always want to delay for some more time. Although many people will say that they have no regrets, if they can, many people still want to continue living. Yes." He said this: "Even if it's just climbing a mountain that I've never been to, to see how the sunset above is different from what I've been watching; even if it's just taking a boat out to sea, doing something I've never done before. past things."
"It will always add some new meaning to life and leave some new memories."
"In midsummer, when the trees are green and green, no one cares how many leaves there are on them. But when late autumn comes and there is only one dead leaf hanging alone, they always hope that it will not fall."
"..." The words were so confusing to Emonica that she only thought they were like a poem. Obviously, she was unable to understand them at the age of a loli. The man smiled again, and the smile on his pale face, which even the torch could not warm, looked stiff, but this smile and the words that followed were deeply engraved in Emonica's heart.中——Even though it took many years for her to truly understand the meaning of the words.
"I've seen things you humans could never imagine."
"I have seen a powerful empire that is said to be eternal split because of a small and neglected illegitimate child; I have seen a giant dragon with an overwhelming wingspan gliding from the sky and flying towards the outer sea; I have seen the most dazzling stars, In the Heinzwom Meteor Lake, which is called the miracle of eternal night; I have seen countless lives and countless deaths." He looked at his hands, opened them, and then clenched them into fists.
"Because I didn't want to lose, I chose to gain the power of the taboo, but in turn, I lost more because of this power of the taboo." He looked at Emonica, and then said softly: "What? The result of not wanting to lose anything is to lose everything. You hide your own secrets and live cautiously, but in the end you can only say goodbye to others again and again."
"The so-called eternal life that humans long for is actually just being alone and watching other people die." He said with a wry smile: "Even in order to keep your own secrets, you sometimes have to give up certain things. "
"Eternal life is a curse."
"Knowing that you don't have much time left, you can seize every moment and get relief on that day." He looked at Emmanica, just as Emmanica looked at Mira at this moment - the blonde girl's With her face covered in silver-white moonlight, she tilted her head again, and then smiled bitterly.
"You will know what happened next. Joshua came running and found me."
"He was like the incarnation of the god in the mountain. He took me out of the cave easily and quickly, but..." Emmanica lowered her head again: "How can a human being outrun a vampire?
…
"Run first! Go find the adults!" Joshua, who had red hair tied into a low braid, turned around and shouted in a slightly immature teenage voice, while handing the torch to Emonica. .
"But..." Emonica, who was still holding the bread in her arms, said this. Joshua couldn't help but stare at her with his bright eyes: "Run quickly! I will hold him back. Don't worry!" He said this, and Emonica gritted her teeth and took the torch, but the bread in her arms fell down: "Ah!" The blond Loli squatted down, planning to pick it up. "Run! That guy is very fast, even faster than a black panther." Joshua's urging made her stop, then turned around and ran back and forth until the boy's figure was covered by the darkness. After being swallowed up, he pursed his lips and moved forward desperately.
Thorns, sharp stones, the thick leather that served as soles under the sandals she wore, and the stitching that fixed the straps were broken. The pain she felt when she stepped on the stones made Loli almost squat down in pain, but She held on to her beliefs, tried her best to ignore the pain, and ran forward step by step.
Bit by bit, bit by bit, towards the direction pointed by Joshua, Emmanica ran desperately.
"There's someone!" She didn't know how long she had been running, but when the sky began to emit blue light, she saw it, and saw dots of firelight in the distance - Emonica thought it was lights at first, but then But he immediately discovered that they could move - it was the adults in the village! They discovered Joshua's whereabouts at night and went out to look for him!
"Here! Here!" Emmanica waved her hands vigorously, and the torch made a "whooshing" sound in the air, which indeed attracted their attention.
"Emonica!? Where's Joshua?" The adults didn't seem to expect that she would actually be found. They asked eagerly, and Emonica, who had been running for several hours, was now because of Weak and blind, he knelt down and sat on the ground.
"Hey! Give her water quickly, give her water quickly!" The hurried adults handed over a bamboo kettle. Emmanica took a hurried sip, but the movement was too big and she choked: "Cough cough cough "Cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough" she coughed loudly, and the adults next to her helped comfort the blond loli with concern, but then the girl seemed to see some phantom when she closed her eyes.
"Uh-ah -" The person in the illusion pinched Joshua and lifted him up. No - it's not that person, this is - himself? She was confused, and then looked at "herself" in the first person, stretched out her other hand and pulled out the long arrow stuck in her arm.
"You shouldn't have come, she is about to become mine..."
"Since you are so confident in your eyes, then I will take away the thing you are most proud of." I grabbed his neck with my left hand and easily lifted him up against the tree trunk, then threw it away. With a long arrow, he stretched out two fingers and stabbed the eyes of Joshua, who was struggling in pain.
"No!!" Emmanica shook off the hands of the adults next to her and ran in the direction behind her.
"What's wrong with her?" "Hurry up and catch up!"
With the chaos behind her, Emmanica ran forward desperately. She ran and ran, passing the thorny road again, the surrounding environment getting brighter and brighter, and finally arrived at Joshua's side - —The man was gone, and Joshua fell to the ground on his back.
"No!!" Emmanica rushed over, and Joshua seemed to have fallen into a coma. The girl gritted her teeth and burst into tears, and the man's faint voice behind her rang again: "That's it...it's already there. Have you contacted me?"
"What a pity, what a pity." The girl turned her head and met his condescending eyes, but there was no madness or anger in them, only a touch of calmness.
"Hi——!" The first ray of dawn shone down, and the blazing sunlight shone on the man's body, and he immediately lit up a light smoke, but unlike his face that was twitching in pain, his eyes were still calm.
"Boom——!!" The flames burned, and the man finally showed a calm and relieved smile and then turned into ashes. Emmanica felt that a certain connection in her heart had completely disappeared. The feeling of the sun today She stood out so conspicuously that she subconsciously covered her head with her hands, while Joshua beside her let out a muffled groan.
"Joshua!" She was so happy that she forgot all about it. There were dense footsteps behind her, and the adults also ran over.
…
"You will know what happened next..." Emonica said in an unusually low tone: "From that day on, the sun became quite dazzling to me, although because of the thin blood, it would not be wiped out. , but it will also be quite weak in the sun."
"Although ordinary human food can also give energy, every once in a while, you still need to absorb raw blood to maintain your sanity. Otherwise, you will fall into unrest, become weak, and may go crazy and attack others..." Mira thought of her. From her previous actions, it was clear that Emonica was attacking a small deer.
"You don't have any special abilities. You will die if you are killed, but you will look like a monster, and you have to do such things to maintain yourself. What, even being a monster is half-baked."
"It's disgusting for me to look like this, right?" She raised her head and choked up again.
"..." Mira was silent for a while. This matter contained a lot of information for her. But no matter this, no matter all of this; no matter whether Emonica is half vampire or not. She understands, she understands very clearly.
What you should do in this situation.
"——" "!"
——Mira hugged her, and Emmanica was stunned.
"I don't even know that kind of guy." The white-haired Luoan girl said word by word. Her breath blew in Emmanica's ear. Her voice was not high, but she did not waver at all.
"The Emmanica I know is a girl who loves to laugh."
"Although I cry occasionally and show uneasiness."
"But respect life, be cheerful, sunny, always have positive thoughts, and be kinder than anyone, anyone."
"So what if she has the blood of a monster, Imonika is Imonika, and this will not change."
"I've given it back to you, hum." Mira snorted softly, and then continued: "I don't want to just be the one being comforted all the time." As she said this, Emmanica was stunned for a moment, and then When she realized that Mira was referring to what happened in the hotel before.
"Pfft..." She burst into laughter, then hesitated for a moment, stretched out her hand and hugged Mira.
"Thank you……"
"It's really great to meet you..."
"But can you keep this secret for me?" She said softly, but she no longer felt too uneasy.
"Actually, I think Joshua won't mind even if you tell him." Mira said, but Emmanica still shook her head: "No, I'm not ready yet. I'm mentally prepared for that."
She said, the two of them let go of their arms, and Mira held her hand: "Wow, it's so hot. Speaking of which, I came to take a shower with you in the first place, but now I smell so bad."
"Well, let's go together." The blond girl tilted her head again and said with a gentle smile under the blue moonlight.
…
Somewhere not far behind him, a tall figure sighed, then turned around and walked towards the camp. (To be continued.)
