"You what!?" Osamu exclaimed in disbelief, "Are you sure???"

Tears streaming down my face, I nodded as I tried hard to swallow that sob lodged in my throat.

Lance suspiciously trotted over to the booth to investigate, his thin brows knitted tightly. "What's going on?"

"Vigil just told me Marcy attacked him! Now she's dead!" Osamu echoed.

"Quiet, Osamu!" Lance hissed, "Someone may live in the stable, do you want to raise suspicion??"

Osamu and I only kept our eyes trained on Lance in guilty silence.

"..I'll go investigate. You two follow." he finally ordered and then trotted off out of the arena and up the hill, at last, disappearing into the thick woods.

Osamu and I trailed behind on foot. All through the woods, I didn't even realize where I was going. I felt the ground beneath me, but it didn't feel solid. My mind and heart were racing. I felt much like how I would imagine a child would feel just before a secret that they kept from their parents was unearthed to their eyes.

How will I be punished this time?

Will Lance beat me?

Will he kill me?

Sooner than expected, we arrived at the dreaded house. Dionysus was tied to a tree by the back door. Through the sliding glass door, I could see Lance by the stairs, his head angled down so he could look at Marcy's corpse with his own cold, dead eyes.

Osamu and I came in through the glass door and joined Lance. While Lance seemed completely unbothered, I had a numbing fear of what I was about to endure. However, upon seeing the bloody corpse I left on the floor, Omsau gasped in panic.

"Oh my god, Lance!" he shrieked, "What do we do!? We've never killed anyone before!!!"

As Osamu rambled on, Lance didn't pay him any mind. It was like he wasn't even looking at a blood stain on the floor. He didn't appear to have any ounce of feeling.

"I can't even look anymore!" Osamu whined and then ran upstairs out of sight like a child. "Take her away!!!"

After Osamu left, Lance rolled his marble eyes to the side, peering at me in silence. It was the thickest silence I had ever experienced in the entirety of my over 300 years of life. It made me want to take the knife I killed Marcy with and just jam it into my own chest to end the suspense of waiting for Lance to think of something to say.

"...I hope you enjoyed her blood, Sai." he uttered at last, but what he said only confused me more.

"Sir..?"

"You didn't think I was actually going out and buying it, did you? No. The blood you were drinking was old blood from Marcy's menstrual cycles. It's the most efficient source of nutrition because it has so much protein from her eggs."

As Lance explained, my eyes grew wider than redwoods. I looked down at Marcy in shock.

Her... I...

In that moment, I contemplated whether I wanted to eat again.

"Animal blood will suffice now." Lance chimed, "You have a mess to clean up."

Lance strolled away, the sound of his leather soled shoes sliding across the floor and fading into nothing as my eyes stayed fixed on Marcy below me.

Marcy...