590: Relationship of Hate

Relationship of Hate

Finally, after god knows how long, my consciousness returned, and I quickly shook my head. Claire, standing in front of me, licked her lips in an alluring pose, hand beneath her chin and other arm folded beneath her ample chest. She was wearing a translucent black night gown with nothing underneath, so if I focused hard enough, I could see her naked body beneath the black fabric, but that was the least of my concerns right now.1

"Ugh… what did you… do to me…"

"… Hm… this blood… it's acceptable," she murmured to herself, completely unconcerned with my words. But upon reading her mind with a bit of Psychic Magic, it was revealed she actually thought very highly of my blood, but just didn't let that show on the surface.

In other words, she noticed I was still awake.

"Hey…" I growled in a more forceful tone, but I still felt dizzy from the blood loss, so it felt more like a drunkard's tone than anything.

"… Oh, you are still conscious. How surprising. Usually, after being fed on by a vampire, the victim in question falls unconscious if they didn't mean to kill them, or they simply die if the opposite is true."

"And? Did you expect me to die?"

"Naturally not," Claire said, folding her arms and closing her eyes. "I purposely held back. After all, you are the only blood source I have right now."

"Gee, thanks…" I muttered in disdain. "However… I'd advise you not to try suddenly feeding on me like that, in the future."

Claire frowned, and tilted her head. "Oh? And what will you do to stop me?"

At this, I smirked. Finally, the words I've been waiting for. Slowly and threateningly, with a wide, smug grin on my face, I lifted my right hand, and dangled from it the prize I had secretly taken when she first latched onto me.

Her eyes widened.

"That's…!"

Her cheeks' blushing soon followed, as she recognized the item I was holding. It was none other than a girls' most prized possession—her panties.

"… Give it ba-"

"Oh, no no no no," I said with a evil smile, stepping out of her reach. "This will serve as a constant reminder for you to remember your place. You may have been born a princess, but don't forget—right now, you're nothing more than a parasite leeching off of me to survive. I can get rid of you at any time I want… keep that in mind."

"…!"

Startled by the deadly coldness in my voice, Claire flinched a bit. When I spoke just now, I let a bit of my true power, my Chaos aura, show. Just to indirectly let her know she could not best me in a one-on-one fight, and she should show some respect to me. It seemed to have worked, as Claire blushed furiously and averted her gaze.

"… I understand," she said quietly through grit teeth, fists clenched.

It was very obvious she didn't want to say this, and the word 'RELUCTANT' was practically imprinted on her forehead in massive capital letters, but she did it anyway, pressured by yours truly. Seeing her reaction, I smiled warmly, and stowed away her panties into my Space Locket.

"Great. Now then, have a good night. Oh, and don't try to do anything to me when I'm asleep—I'm quite the light sleeper. If I catch you… ohoho. It won't just be your panties I take."

With that, I left into my own room on the left, far more simplistic than the one I gave to her, which was larger and more high-quality in terms of furniture. After shutting the door behind me, I heard her curse at me in hatred under her breath, but I pretended to not have heard it and instead merely gave a soft chuckle to myself. 

I couldn't exactly blame her. Being raised as a spoiled princess can do a lot of detrimental things to one's personality, such as giving birth to arrogance and condescension towards everyone except herself. If she continued on like this, it'd make everyone around her generally dislike her. 

And so, since I was going to be spending quite a long time with this girl until the first long vacation came for us (god knows when that's going to be) I decided to make it my personal goal to help fix this problematic personality of hers in the time I had of being her blood supplier.

Why was I doing this? Well, it wasn't necessarily because I was just a nice man, per se. In fact, I was far from that. But meeting my parents again made me realize one thing—I wasn't the same broken kid I was back then, after their supposed 'deaths'. Slowly but surely, I've built up a community—a family of my own around me, and the girls who made up it had nursed my heart back from a shattered soul to a somewhat complete shape once more. It wasn't perfect, of course, but it was something I could never have achieved without them.

And since none of them in particular needed any type of treatment like this from me with all the other girls there to support them, I decided to pay them back by helping someone else out the same way they did for me. Claire wouldn't have much interaction with the other girls for sure, and even if she did, it might just have a negative effect—causing the other girls to hate her due to her personality. I didn't want that to happen, so I'd have to take care of things myself before she came into communication with the other girls.

Although… doing that is a lot easier said than done. Getting her to warm up to me the normal way was never going to work, as seen just now, so I decided to take a different approach—getting her to hate me, but still being stuck with me as a result of our pact. Then, across days, months, and years, even, I'd get her to change her views on me by doing little things one at a time, until she at last accepted me.

And by the time she does that, she'll also have realized how foolish she had been in looking down on everyone else and thinking she was high up in some kind of imaginary throne, above these 'peasants' (she probably thought of them as such in her head). She'll have fixed her personality through these various tiny experiences, and learn for herself.

I didn't want to teach it to her directly, like tell her 'your personality is horrible' or something like that. That would never work. 

I needed her to realize it for herself—and the first step to doing that, began with hate.

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