Chapter 11

Taking advantage of that opening, I hid myself. From the outside, it would have looked as though I had fled. After allowing enough time for Vincent to carry Ophelia away from the scene, I raced desperately through the forest, pushing myself to the absolute limit before appearing before him once more.

My once-lustrous golden fur was now ragged and patchy, and I could barely even meow anymore. Even so, the eyes Ophelia had praised still glinted with an eerie, ferocious light.

I sank my bloodied fangs into Vincent’s neck, biting down as hard as I could. In the very next instant, an incredible force sent me flying, and my tiny body slammed against a tree trunk.

“You think a mere cat could bite through an artery?”

My slender fangs had pierced his skin, and blood was slowly seeping from the wound. I had known that an injury this minor wouldn’t make Vincent let go of Ophelia. That was precisely why my mouth had already been smeared with blood before I bit him.

“Don’t tell me… You did something to me?”

Perhaps he sensed that something was wrong. His eyes wavered uneasily. Before long, his body began to go numb. He could no longer hold Ophelia, much less support his own weight. At last, Vincent’s knees buckled, and he collapsed to the ground.

“You filthy little cat…!”

In this pitch-black forest, I was the only one who could see everything clearly. But even that advantage was nearing its limit.

Before attacking Vincent, I had raced all over the forest, biting insects and animals along the way. I had searched especially hard for venomous spiders and snakes, coating my slender fangs with as much poison as possible. On top of that, I had taken in an excessive amount of bacteria from wild animals. And, to top it all off, there was my own feline nature.

A bite wound alone wouldn’t be enough to kill him, but poison and infection were another matter entirely. Even Vincent, who had built up a certain resistance to toxins, wouldn’t be able to withstand the mixture of poisons and pathogens from the filthy mouths of wild animals.

I had worried that I might die before he did, but it seemed that all those years of conditioning my body to tolerate poison back when I was Alexandra had paid off. Well, it was also entirely possible that I had simply been too stubborn to die first.

“Damn it, damn it…! I was so close to finally having Ophelia…!”

Even with his cheeks smeared in mud, Vincent was still beautiful. When he fell, Ophelia had slipped from his arms and landed out of reach. No matter how desperately he stretched toward her, he couldn’t reach her from where he lay.

While he struggled, the poison continued spreading throughout his body. Before long, Vincent would die.

And as a cat, I was the only one who knew exactly where Ophelia was.

“I love you, Ophelia…”

Those were the final words of the man who had died. I regretted that Helena was already dead, because she would have been absolutely furious if she had heard them.

I had taken poison into my own mouth to kill Vincent. Naturally, that meant my own death as well. On top of that, I had fought a desperate battle against the beasts of the deep forest, and Vincent had hurled me away with enough force to shatter my bones. Even so, I summoned the last of my strength and dragged my battered body toward Ophelia’s corpse.

“…Meowww.”

No matter how much I cried, I could no longer hear her voice praising me for being cute. Even if I endured the embarrassment and exposed my belly, there would be no fingers to stroke me happily. That warm, sunlit scent of hers had been drowned out by the unpleasant stench of blood, like rusted iron.

The time I had spent with her since she picked me up amounted to only a few years.

I slowly closed my eyes and rubbed my cheek against her cold body. I wondered whether God would guide me to the same heaven as her, then scoffed at the thought. After killing Vincent, the only thing waiting for me was a path to an immeasurable hell.

Even so, I would never regret it. Compared to the life I had lived as Alexandra, indulging my every desire, my days as a cat had been far more fulfilling.

“I suppose I have no choice. I’ll love you, too, Ophelia.”

Those first and last words of love escaped me as a faint, ragged breath. The slight night breeze carried them away, and they quietly faded into silence.