Colorless. Transparent.
Born for the sake of others. Used by others.
Compared to the average person, she lacked nothing.
And yet, a life of merely walking the well-paved path laid out for her, beckoned by someone else, was hollow. Meaningless.
To her, living was like a muddled painting by an unskilled artist, splashed onto a blank canvas without purpose or depth.
It took up space without offering value or beauty.
Lilia.
That had once been her name.
She couldn’t even recall the surname she was given at the time.
They had praised it as a “clear, transparent name”.
What was so admirable about being colorless?
To her now, that entire period was too faint to even call “time”.
She had lived in a grand mansion, tucked away in some remote countryside in Europe.
Maids filled the halls. She didn’t need to lift a finger to receive meals or have her clothing changed.
Carefully calculated meals. Regulated exercise.
She wasn’t even sure if her mother had ever existed, or if she had still been alive back then.
Honestly, she couldn’t even tell who was supposed to be her mother.
The only “family” she remembered clearly… was that color-obsessed man.
In the darkness, a faint blue light floated. It dimly illuminated her small, childlike form.
Rough breathing from a man.
A black silhouette clung to the naked body of the young girl.
His stubble scraped her skin, it hurt.
「Ahh… Perfect.」
A saccharine voice called her name.
As the shadow rubbed his cheek against her, Lilia stared down at him with eyes colder than ice.
It was all so unbearably dull.
The man would do this daily, watching over and controlling her growth.
He was repulsive.
He held a considerable position within the terrorist organization CODE:I, and he shamelessly indulged in a life of debauchery.
He relished carnal pleasure, and every maid in the mansion had already been claimed by him.
No other men came near the estate.
And yet, Lilia alone was treated differently.
Ironic, but the man saw himself as an artist.
He intended to mold the being called Lilia into his own vision of the perfect woman.
Her face, her figure, her hair, everything.
Her father had ordered the maids to manage her every detail: meals, education, even grooming in the bath, all according to his exacting instructions.
If a maid so much as left a small scratch on Lilia’s hand, she would be taken away, and only screams would echo from the dungeons below.
Every maid who touched Lilia trembled with fear.
「…Boring.」
That single word summed up her entire childhood.
No lavish meal, no form of exercise, no indulgence ever stirred her heart.
She gazed at herself in the mirror.
Her carefully maintained black hair gleamed like a mountain stream at midnight.
Her porcelain-white skin bore not a single blemish.
And yet, her pale blue eyes held no spark of life.
Because she had no need to think.
She had no reason to live, only a lack of reason to die.
-0-
One evening, in the courtyard.
Beyond a low fence, rows of brick houses stood neatly aligned.
Compared to them, this mansion looked like a fortress.
No doubt the town was rife with rumors, something about an eccentric, reclusive millionaire.
She bounced a ball off her palm and let it fall back onto the lawn.
It was utterly dull.
Perhaps it would’ve felt different if she had someone to play catch with.
…Rustle.
Just as she grew tired of counting the ball’s bounces, she heard something.
She looked toward the sound.
Beyond the warped bars of the fence, a beast clad in matted fur leaned through.
A stray dog.
To her, still a child, the creature looked enormous.
It bared its fangs and bristled its fur, growling at her with pure hostility.
It was bad timing, the maids had taken their eyes off her for just a moment.
And in that tiny lapse, the beast had slipped in.
「What’s wrong?」
She spoke to it.
It only growled, low and deep.
She glanced at the ball, then asked again.
「Do you want to play?」
The beast moved in a flash.
In the blink of an eye, it lunged at her, slamming her small body to the ground.
Without hesitation, the beast sank its fangs into her.
「It hurts it hurts it HURTS!!!」
She had never felt pain like this before.
Its fangs pierced her slender arm.
Its full weight crushed her tiny frame.
Its claws dug into her skin.
The pain stabbed through her body like lightning.
Terror rattled her brain.
Death.
Whether her young mind truly grasped the concept, she couldn’t say.
But in that moment, something deep inside the innocent girl clung desperately to the dull life she had known.
And then,
She felt it.
The blurry membrane that had always dulled her vision suddenly shattered.
――Thump
Her heart slammed inside her chest.
A pulse so fierce it felt like her body might convulse from the shock of it.
Her thoughts accelerated.
Through her blurred vision, she reached for the beast’s foaming mouth.
Its jaws clamped down on her hand, sinking into her flesh as if to tear it apart.
Blood splattered across her face.
「Lilia-samaaa!!」
A maid screamed somewhere in the distance, nearly hysterical.
――Thump, thump
Heat surged through her.
She saw everything.
The beast shaking its head with her fingers between its teeth,
The sky blazing with the fire of a searing sunset,
All of it burned into her eyes with vivid clarity.
Even as blood dripped into her eyes, she kept them wide open.
Breaths slipped from her lips, rasping, animalistic, not unlike the beast’s own.
She was thinking.
Layer upon layer of thoughts piled up.
Desperate to find any way to change this situation.
It was like reaching out and reclaiming the mind she had always left dormant.
――Thump, thump, thump
――What… is this?
She listened to the wild, boundless impulse welling up from deep inside her.
It felt as though something had extended its hand,
To the girl who had been sitting motionless on the path of life.
Her thumb pressed against the dog’s eyeball.
It flinched, just slightly, but it was enough.
At the same time, the maid struck it forcefully with a broom.
Startled, the beast backed off.
After a moment’s hesitation, it turned and fled through the bent fence, vanishing into the woods.
「Lilia-sama!! A-Are you hurt…?!」
The maid, pale with terror over what punishment she might face, ran to her.
She embraced the girl from behind,
Because Lilia had already stood up, her bloodied right hand stretching toward the fence,
As if drawn to follow the retreating beast.
Her heart pounded so fast and so hard it felt like it might burst.
Her entire body was burning.
The impulse still shivered at her core.
――What was that…?
――I want to feel it again.
She would never forget the color of that sunset.
Or the blood that shone beneath it.
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