Book 3 Chapter 1
Part 1
(Garlic Count: 1)
I had to think about the environment I found myself in and what I could do.
“Your memories seem confused.”
“Well, can you blame me when I’ve turned into garlic!? I have no idea how I ended up here!”
The Class Rep sat on the bloody room’s bed and she placed my round garlic body on her lap.
“First, this is an old convalescent hospital on the border of our Kukyou City and the neighboring city. It’s deep in the forest, so you wouldn’t even know it’s there except for satellite images from something like Mobile Earth. It’s a bit of a mystery why they would build a hospital here, but it may have been for patients who didn’t want to be seen. It ran into difficulties and the director and the rest of the management went missing like they had skipped town, so all the rusted medical equipment was left here.”
I was actually more interested in why I was a garlic, but I guess she had to go over things in order. And I wasn’t about to complain when it was the nice-smelling Class Rep and I was resting on her lap! Rub, rub!!
“We received permission from school and the government office to come here and investigate what happened. It was for social studies. We wanted to know why the hospital couldn’t stay in business and why it hasn’t been demolished. The idea was to do some investigation, announce the results in class, and learn how difficult the world of adults can be.”
“A secret hospital kept out of view and the management went missing like they had skipped town? That doesn’t sound quite so simple.”
Especially with that bloody dress girl wandering around. If she had something to do with the old hospital, then it was possible the disappearance of the director and the rest of the management had not been them running away in the night.
Were they buried somewhere around here?
Or were they lurking in the shadows just like that bloody dress girl?
Those options seemed entirely possible.
“Ah ha ha. Looking back on it, yes. But our teacher and the government worker didn’t seem too worried about it. They immediately okayed the idea. If it was really dangerous, they would have stopped us, right? Or so we thought. But we were wrong. The truly frightening things are hidden so that no one knows they’re there. Why didn’t I realize that no one would be caught by a trap if they could predict it was there?”
I can’t believe this.
My older sister Erika was a vampire, so what did that make this? A neighbor? A turf rival? To be honest, I doubted that bloody dress girl would just leave if I used my sister’s name. For one thing, I wasn’t even sure she could understand human language. And I wasn’t about to test it.
She was somehow different from Erika or my little sister Ayumi. Archenemies and the immortal were just girls, weren’t they? But I couldn’t see anything like that here.
She was a pure monster.
If she sensed us with her eyes, ears, nose, tongue, or skin, we would lose our lives. We were surrounded by the atmosphere of pure night where we could not afford to run across something like that.
After thinking through all that, I asked the most fundamental question of all.
“…What do we do?”
“Good question.” The Class Rep kept my giant garlic body on her lap. “First of all, we can’t defeat that. I’m not saying that from a moral or humane standpoint; it’s simply physically impossible. We might be able to temporarily scare her off, trip her, or guide her in the wrong direction, but there is simply no way to defeat her and settle this once and for all.”
I produced a gulping noise, even though I wasn’t sure my garlic body even had a throat or saliva.
“B-but. But we can’t just continue hiding here, can we? That won’t solve anything.”
“Ah ha ha. True enough. We can’t call for help since our phones don’t have a signal. And even if our teacher or the government office would come looking for us when we didn’t return…if they enter the hospital without being warned first, they’ll just suffer the same fate. I don’t think we can count on help from outside. In fact, that might actually increase the number of vampires.”
With that, the Class Rep held garlic me between her soft hands and lifted me up. She got up from the bed and approached the wall of the room…which I now realized was a dusty hospital room.
She actually approached the window covered by a light-blocking curtain.
“Look.”
She opened the edge of the curtain just a crack and placed me in the sunlight stabbing in.
We were quite high up. It looked like the third or maybe fourth floor. But this was no time to stare at the green sea spreading out below.
“The sun is still high in the sky. If we could get out of the hospital, I don’t think that vampire would be able to pursue us.”
“True. But, Class Rep, doesn’t that mean the opposite as well?”
“Yes.”
The Class Rep likely didn’t want to say it out loud. But to share our information, I took on that unpleasant task.
“If we don’t get out of here before the sun sets…the vampire can pursue us outside. In that case, there would be no saving us. We’d be caught in the forest before we reached the city.”
Part 2
(Garlic Count: 1)
It turned out I could do a surprising lot as a garlic.
“Oh.”
I left the Class Rep’s hands and rolled along the floor. I was only a garlic body with no hands or feet, but it was like I could control my center of gravity. It felt like there was a small metal ball inside a larger, hollow ball and I could move that to roll in any direction.
Controlling that small metal ball seemed to be the key to movement. By making it bounce upwards, I could jump. As high as the Class Rep’s navel seemed to be my limit.
“But how are we supposed to fight that bloody dress girl like this? Just being in the same room as her was enough for me to freeze up. It wouldn’t be possible even if I had mastered Chinese marital arts, learned qigong, and could split a boulder with a piece of newspaper.”
“But, Satori-kun, don’t they often say that garlic is a vampire’s weakness?”
“But how are we supposed to use that garlic, my kitten?”
“Umm, throw it at her?”
“Throw…!?”
“Or how about grating it and spreading it across the floor? Maybe that would create a sort of barrier.”
“Wait, wait, wait! First of all, I feel like we’re just throwing my basic human rights out in the trash! You can’t treat me carelessly just because I’m garlic. You need to take good care of me. There’s still a single life inside me!”
“But, Satori-kun, didn’t you multiply before?”
“Hm…hmm???”
“Y’know, if we stick you in a flowerpot, give you water, and open the curtain to let sunlight shine on you, then you start to flower…”
“No, wait. I don’t remember any of this!”
Where was I trying to go?
But I wanted to know everything my garlic body could do. And if my garlic body had multiplied without my knowledge, what had happened to them? Regardless, I wanted to try it out.
“There isn’t a flowerpot in this room, is there?” asked the Class Rep.
“Eh?”
“I think there was a withered houseplant at the nurse station. The building’s water isn’t running, but the fire hydrant on the third floor was broken and the wall-…”
“If it’s gonna be that kind of pain-in-the-ass quest, then forget it! You wait here, Class Rep. We’re up against a zombie, so a normal human like you would be at the most risk just wandering around.”
But if garlic like me moved to the corner of the hall, the vampire might walk right past me, assuming I was garbage. Not that I wanted to test it out if I could avoid it.
So I rolled toward the door, leaving the Class Rep in the hospital room. The floor was covered in sweet blood, like someone had been dragging a dirty mop around. It was disgusting, but I couldn’t complain. I left through the cracked door and entered the hallway.
It was just as dimly lit. I had to rely on the slight light that made it in through the windows sealed by curtains and wooden boards.
And it was far more cluttered than I had expected.
Several filthy buckets were lined up and rusted metal racks were piled up along one side of the hallway. The stairway leading down was completely blocked by garbage at one point. I couldn’t rely on the map on the wall. The place had become something of a labyrinth. There were no cigarette butts and no spray paint graffiti. No one must have bothered coming to this inconvenient place just for fun.
“Is that the nurse station?”
But it was not difficult to find where I wanted to go. Unless the designer had not known what they were doing, the nurse station would be located at the intersection of several halls. In other words, where the most people would pass through. It was best to place it at that “prime traffic point” so they could immediately reach a patient needing help and observe people’s comings and goings.
“Still…”
There was indeed a flowerpot on the counter. It only had some brown and withered leaves inside, though. But how was I supposed to carry it? I apparently needed water and sunlight as well.
“Let’s see.”
I moved right up to the counter and jumped straight up as a garlic. I could reach the height of the Class Rep’s navel, so I could just barely jump up onto the counter.
But…
“I don’t have any arms or legs, so I guess all I can do is push it.”
The flowerpot was ceramic, so it would probably break if I dropped it. There was nothing I could do.
Man, being a giant garlic was really inconvenient. If I really could multiply my body like the Class Rep said, I might be able to push it down from above while catching it from below.
I took a break as I thought about that. And when I looked down from the counter…
“Oh.”
I spoke without thinking.
Even if the one on the counter was hopeless, there was something else I could use. There was a large bucket-like pot meant more for a “tree” than a flower at the end of a row of benches in the waiting area in front of the nurse station.
And it had a large plate-like thing below it. That plate was wet. It was meant to catch water. That water would have been dangerous for a person to drink, but that shouldn’t matter when it came to wetting some dirt. The Class Rep’s information was not all that reliable. I was just about to run around on an unnecessary quest while that strange bloody dress girl was wandering around. I decided to complain to the Class Rep later and have her let me rub all over her!
I hopped down from the counter and rolled along the floor. The large pot and the nearby windowsill were both easy enough to jump onto. I had trouble pulling on the thick curtain, but I managed it by placing my round garlic body between the glass and the curtain and slowly moving along the windowsill.
Pant, pant. Moving a single curtain was a lot of work. I really missed my human body. In fact, I still didn’t know why I had become garlic. Had a wicked witch cast a spell on me? In that case, would I not return to normal unless the sexy forehead glasses Class Rep princess kissed me? Pant, pant!!
“There.”
At any rate, the pot was what mattered now.
Like a move theater projector, the sunbeam shined through the dusty air and onto the dirt. As expected, it was damp. It had a bit of a sour smell, but I could hardly complain since I was garlic.
…What did it feel like to multiply?
Even if I did multiply, it would only mean creating giant, pumpkin-like garlics, but it was still strange to think about. I couldn’t fully backup Maxwell due to his specs, so not even that program had experienced this.
But…huh?
Wait a second.
I have a giant garlic body, but aren’t I only round because of the few cloves gathered together? Multiplying doesn’t mean for this round body to spit apart into 4 or 8 pieces and scatter the contents arou-…agagagagagagagagah!?
Part 3
(Garlic Count: 8)
I nearly lost consciousness.
In fact, I wasn’t entirely sure I hadn’t. Was this really the same garlic as before? This garlic led me to ponder the same questions as with a teleportation device.
“Oh, come on…”
The remains of a giant and split garlic sat at the center of the pot. And it was surrounded by eight identical giant garlics, including myself. Was that one dead? But wait. The other garlics would not move like I wanted them to. I tried thinking “right” and “left” and they moved accordingly. Controlling them each individually was as difficult as opening and closing individual toes, but if I focused, I could manage. I tried lining them up on the floor.
As I looked down from the pot, I was convinced.
This was not copying my mind as well. I could mass-produce the garlic bodies, but there was only one “me”, the mind controlling them. So the me that had split apart there and the me that was here now were the same. The file was being moved, not copied.
Which meant…
“Wow. It’s like having infinite 1-ups! All I need is water, dirt, and sunlight, which isn’t all that difficult to get. I can make as many as I want. What does it matter if I’m garlic? If it can multiply a thousand or even a million fold, even a 10,000 yen note can kill someone. And I’m garlic, so I can hold back a vampire! Ah ha ha ha ha!!”
In that case, I had to focus on increasing my numbers. I didn’t want to repeat that sensation of my head splitting open, but oh well. One garlic was clearly in control, but the pain reached me equally. I crammed all of them inside the bucket-like pot and they all burst out like popcorn.
Pop, pop, pop, pop.
But it was really picking up speed. Each one did more than just double, so the waiting room would be filled in no time at all. At this rate, I would really be able to create a garlic avalanche.
…Splat.
“Ah.”
My garlic head heard a wet sound. And one of my sensations was instantly blown away. Why hadn’t I realized it? When playing hide-and-seek, increasing your numbers only made you stand out. And I was garlic. Why didn’t you think about the smell, you complete moron!?
I slowly turned around.
As expected, the bloody dress girl appeared from the darkness. And before I could even think about rolling to the left or right, her claws swung toward my head like lightni-
Part 4
(Garlic Count: 300)
“Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”
I screamed.
I could only scream and run away.
The garlics scattered in every direction. I had no idea what percentage of them were sliced apart by claws or crushed underfoot. I couldn’t count them all. I had been filled with pain and fear at first, but those sensations quickly numbed over. Just like sticking your hand in the cold snow and waiting, I couldn’t feel the stimulation and pain once it passed a certain point. Each time the main garlic was crushed and had its insides splattered out, my mind hopped to another one. I instinctually understood that once that stock ran out and my mind had nowhere else to go, I really would die.
…It seemed silly at first, but that bloody dress girl was the real deal. Garlic was fairly hard when it was raw. Wasn’t slicing uncooked vegetables with your nails a greater feat than a karate master chopping off the neck of a beer bottle?
But.
To put it another way, no matter how freakishly strong she was, I would win as long as I had just one garlic body remaining. All the rest were expendable. I could replenish my numbers by climbing in a pot again later. I could build up my number of lives while making sure I didn’t stand out this time.
The unpleasant sounds of something being smashed, sliced, or even crushed came from all over.
Dammit, did she just tear apart that steel fire door like it was wet paper!?
“…!?”
But I wasn’t the only one that was afraid. That bloody dress vampire recoiled when she was hit by the unique-smelling juice that splattered from the dead garlic. It really did seem to be working on her. Even if I couldn’t defeat her, I could knock her back. That rising hope drove the pain and fear even further from my mind. If I could interfere with her movements, I could get my lifeline garlic away from here!
And once I knew that…
“Men, attack!!”
I cried out like I was raising the fan held by a sumo referee. The scattered garlics rushed at the vampire as a group. They had no arms or legs, but they could roll and jump as high as the Class Rep’s navel. If they got close enough, they could hop up and tackle the vampire.
Of course, it wasn’t that easy to hit her. Most of them were turned into diced garlic by a whirlwind of claws. But that was fine. The juice that splattered on her in place of blood would do damage to her. Ah ha ha! How do you like being coated in my bodily fluid! L-look the other way and complain that it smells!!
“Oh.”
A few of the garlics got too close and slipped below the bloody dress’s skirt. I was a step away, but I could see what they saw like an image you pictured in your mind while walking and thinking at the same time.
When the skirt group looked up, I could see that even her panties were soaked red. It was a little much, but that was a perfectly lewd image! But I showed no mercy. I finally had a chance to tackle her. Jump, everyone, before she can stomp on you!! Attack her together!!
“…Gh…!?”
When the multiple hits flew up at her, the bloody dress was knocked upwards.
This was my chance.
To reiterate, I could not defeat the vampire. My goal was to allow at least one of the garlics to escape safely. I could replenish my lives later. What mattered now was to leave one of them alive.
The bloody dress girl was focused on the garlics hopping around inside her skirt, so her gaze was directed straight down. The floor and walls were coated with the Special Satori Juice from the crushed garlics. If the entire area had become a toxic swamp for her, she would have difficulty pursuing.
She wouldn’t notice if I acted now.
This was my chance to escape.
I was located on the ground a step away, but I rolled away and left the rest to the ones still there.
Part 5
(Garlic Count: 21)
I knew what I could do.
If I created too many garlics, it was difficult to move them individually. And if their scent or presence grew too great, they would be noticed.
But if I created a smaller unit of elites, I could handle even that hopeless wandering monster. While one made a commotion and drew the attention of the bloody dress girl, another could escape along with the Class Rep.
…There were two things to keep in mind.
First, it didn’t matter how many times I was killed, but I couldn’t let my number of remaining lives fall to zero. Second, there was only one Class Rep. She had no extra lives, so I could not allow her to even be scratched.
I could die to protect her.
Huh? That sounds awfully badass for a garlic.
“…Class Rep?”
Or so I thought before I ran across the next bit of trouble.
When I returned to the old hospital room, I couldn’t find the Class Rep anywhere.
“Class Rep!? Damn!”
Just to be sure, I checked below the bed, but there was no sign of my forehead glasses childhood friend. I may have been garlic, but I felt impatience burning at the back of my head.
But wait. I had to calm down. I had just stopped the bloody dress girl with my garlic army. I doubted the Class Rep had been taken out by her. This was still dangerous, but there was still hope. My first priority was finding her as she continued her dangerous one-girl expedition.
But then an unpleasant thought occurred to me.
“…Why am I so certain that the bloody dress girl is the only vampire?”
If the bloody dress girl could make more of her by biting people, there might be other victims. What had happened to the hospital’s management who had suddenly disappeared like they had skipped town? The Class Rep had said we were investigating something for school, but was it really just the two of us? If we were working in a larger group and other students or a teacher were here too, then where had they gone???
This was bad.
The garlic army’s strength was their ability to fight as a group, but this changed the difficulty level. Even if I could draw the bloody dress girl’s attention to one spot, there was nothing we could do if there was another vampire blocking the other route. Since we couldn’t view everything from overhead like on a GPS map, the piles of trash blocking the corridors and stairways had turned the hospital into a life-sized labyrinth where any turn could lead to a literal dead-end. If we ran across a vampire and fled, we could end up in a dead-end or caught between two vampires. That would eliminate any chance of reversing the situation.
I couldn’t let the Class Rep be taken out.
The “other viewpoints” in a corner of my mind and the pain arriving remotely had all vanished. The garlic army holding back the bloody dress girl had apparently been wiped out. Now I was back to a single life and she could freely wander the abandoned hospital.
But I had to do this.
Only I, the giant round garlic, could protect the Class Rep from the vampire.
Part 6
(Garlic Count: 1)
Now, where was I supposed to search for the Class Rep? I realized I had yet to go around to the entire floor.
That said, I could not randomly search all of the rooms while shouting the Class Rep’s name. That bloody dress girl was still on the same floor. If I was killed now, I would lose my last life. I wanted to keep my risk of death to a minimum.
What would I do?
How could I find the best answer?
I thought as I rolled across the hospital room’s floor. For one thing, why had she left the hospital room now? She had immediately hid below the bed and held her breath just from hearing a noise, so she would have wanted to avoid an adventure if at all possible. And while the room was splattered with blood from the bloody dress girl’s tantrum, there was no other sign of damage.
So it may not have been that she fled because another vampire had shown up.
…But if she chose to leave, then why? Had she needed food or water? Had she heard cries for help from another survivor? Had she looked out the window and seen someone approaching the building? It was no use. It was all speculation without any actual evidence to back it up.
It looked like I would have to head out and investigate myself.
I poked half of the garlic out through the cracked door once more. There was…no one in the hallway. The room was hardly a safe zone, but this felt like heading into the dangerous “outside”.
“Oh?”
I hadn’t noticed before, but I noticed some interesting things when I looked at the dusty floor again: footprints. What looked like a red mop being dragged along the floor was the bloody dress girl and the narrow line was from me rolling along, but I also saw small footprints leaving the hospital room and heading in a different direction.
“The Class Rep?”
I decided to roll in that direction. But this was dangerous. If the bloody dress girl had also seen the footprints and pursued her prey, the person trying to hide would have an overwhelming disadvantage. I could only pray she was not smart enough to do that.
And I found another odd thing before reaching the creator of the footprints.
“?”
A white powder drew out a circle with a diameter of about a meter in the center of the hallway. It looked kind of like a magic circle. I hesitantly approached it. The powder…seemed to be normal chalk for a blackboard. This felt more like a good-luck charm than a sign for demolition work.
But with this, I felt like I had gathered a number of puzzle pieces.
A large abandoned building, a wandering zombie, and a chalk circle. I knew a legend that fit those conditions.
“The Polish Vampire Princess.”
I remembered my vampire older sister reading me a picture book about it long ago.
The fairy tale princess had oddly never had her name given.
“A beautiful princess lived in a castle. But the princess lived such a selfish and luxurious lifestyle that she earned the resentment of the people. She fell victim to a powerful curse and she turned into a vampire.”
At the time, I had wondered if all vampires, including my sister, were queen-like people with sexy proportions.
“Night after night, the Vampire Princess wandered the castle and turned her fangs against her servants and knights.”
That lifestyle had made me think of a spider. She never left her own territory, she set up a web and preyed on those who entered it, and she used her own beauty and circumstances as bait.
“There was only one way to save the princess. While she was wandering, you had to find the coffin located somewhere in the castle, seal the lid, and never let her enter it again. The coffin was the source of the curse and its effects cannot replenish inside her as long as she does not sleep inside it. So if she was shut out for a set period of time, the princess would return to being a normal human.”
That was a fair bit different from other legends.
Even after spending a long time as a vampire, she could be returned to normal if the proper process was followed. That was a favor not heard of in other stories.
“However, that was no easy task. After all, the castle was like a complex labyrinth and the Vampire Princess was immune to all attacks. There was no way to defeat her before locating the coffin deep inside the castle. If she found you, it was all over. The one and only way to survive was to draw a circle on the floor with white chalk. The Vampire Princess could not see you if you were inside there. Just like Hoichi the Earless. Thus, the only option was to head deep into the castle while playing a deadly game of hide-and-seek.”
My sister giving a Japanese comparison had confused my young mind a fair bit. I couldn’t stop picturing a Buddhist monk challenging a princess in a dress.
“By the way, this was apparently the sort of story where the knight who returned the princess to normal got to marry her later on. Kyah!”
My garlic movement came to a stop when I remembered that.
“Why did Erika tell me that story?”
But if that was the setup here, the bloody dress girl would have a coffin somewhere in the abandoned hospital. If I could find that before I was defeated, I would win. This wasn’t part of the world’s most famous piece of vampire literature, but as a garlic, I could probably coat the coffin lid with my juices to act as a seal. I didn’t know how many there were, but that would likely allow all of the survivors to escape the hospital alive.
But this vampire had to be a fairly strong one. There were a lot of different kinds of vampires, but a Polish Vampire Princess probably wouldn’t die if you drove a stake through her heart. Sunlight might slow her down, but it wouldn’t annihilate her. After all, she received an endless supply of energy as long as the coffin existed as a source for the curse. Sucking blood was secondary. Her fingernails could shred through garlic and even steel fire doors like wet paper. If she could continue that kind of destruction at full power indefinitely, she might be stronger as an individual than Erika who was feared as a Queen-class. Group destruction of a city was a different matter, though. She seemed odd for a vampire and it felt like she was wandering around, unable to control herself, but that might have been due to the unending supply of energy.
“And the Class Rep didn’t have any chalk.”
I spoke it aloud because it was so important.
Since this chalk circle existed in the hallway, I had to assume the survivors were familiar with the story. So why had the Class Rep hidden below the hospital room’s bed? Why hadn’t she drawn a large circle on the floor?
Probably because she had run out of chalk.
She hadn’t even had a little bit left.
The amount of chalk was like her extra lives. Not being able to draw a circle brought death closer. She would only be able to rely on the few safe zones that already existed. How frightening had it been to be unable to draw a circle if she needed to? That meant she had gone out into the dangerous hallway while still in that situation.
“…Wait.”
That may have been why she had disappeared. Had she gone to collect some more chalk to act as extra lives, or had she sensed danger and fled to somewhere with an existing chalk circle? Looking at it that way, I could understand why she left that small room which was not a 100% safe zone even behind the door or under the bed. I had told her to wait for me, but she would have had to move if danger was approaching. We couldn’t secretly contact each other with a cellphone or smartphone now, so we might have just missed each other like that.
…The problem was the existence of this chalk circle near the hospital room and the absence of the Class Rep inside it.
“So did she go looking for more chalk? …But where?”
Had there been any at the nurse station? I didn’t recall a blackboard or chalk there. The schedule and message board had been a whiteboard that used markers. In that case, where would they have a blackboard in a hospital where cleanliness was crucial?
“The rehabilitation room in the pediatric department? They might have it set up like a school. The Class Rep might be there too.”
In that case, I couldn’t blame her. As a garlic, I knew just how much of a difference it meant to have some extra lives in stock.
I decided to search around the pediatric department and to give it more thought if I didn’t find anything.
…I needed to eliminate the most likely option first. I had to follow the small footprints in the dust that ignored the chalk circle and continued down the hall. I would probably find a likely location for chalk at the end of those tracks.
With that, I continued down the hallway.
It was difficult getting past the junk covering the hallway in places and a normal person would have had to turn sideways and press their back against the wall a lot of the time. On the other hand, there was almost nothing that would make a useful tool. There were boards and supports for collapsed steel racks, but it was obvious what would happen if you faced that bloody dress girl with only a piece of wood. She was worse than a man-eating tiger.
There weren’t any pots or watering cans either. It was difficult rolling into the darkness without a chance to increase my number of extra lives. If I was killed now, it was all over. I wouldn’t be able to save the Class Rep either.
I kept that in mind as I rolled on and on. The trail of footprints in the dust seemed to avoid the nurse station and approach the hall where the elevators and emergency stairs were gathered.
But…
“Wait a second,” I said after rolling out into the elevator hall. “Where’s the Class Rep? Why did the footprints vanish!?”
The footprints in the dust suddenly stopped.
But what had happened here? Had the Class Rep traveled along the wall or ceiling? Had she sprinkled something much like dust to cover her tracks? No, my imagination was completely lacking in reality. The answer wouldn’t be anything like that.
I had to think.
No matter what she did, the Class Rep’s mass was not going to just disappear here. She must have moved somehow. But where to? If she had gone off somewhere, I had to suspect somewhere with chalk. She might have been afraid of the vampire tracking her down before she acquired those extra lives and thus used some kind of trick. Or what if a third party had done this? My tension grew. For example, what if she ha
