It had been a couple of days since human hero Julian Beleng had turned against his will into a little vampire girl named Julia. Ever since that unfortunate encounter with the vampire queen Loriam, is this formal hero has refused to leave the bed in the hope that all of this was just a bad dream that would end soon.

"Your highness, A-Are you perhaps still asleep?"

The blonde-haired maid named Mirei entered the room with her trademark nervousness and quietly approached the bed, on which lay a pile of blankets.

"I-It’s time for breakfast, your highness."

The only answer she got was silence. Mirei gulped nervously and stepped closer to the bed.

"You haven’t eaten for days, your highness. Please, you should go eat something."

To this, a pile of blankets shook and the head of a silver-haired girl peaked from it. Her blood-red eyes landed on the maid, who trembled in response.

"I said that I don’t want to eat anything, so just go and leave me alone."

The girl, a former human hero named Julian, and currently vampire princess Julia, answered the maid lazily and wrapped herself in the blankets. Mirei, however, didn’t seem willing to drop the subject in the slightest.

"B-But your highness, it was sever…"

"Don’t call me that!

Julia was thrown backwards from her body and yelled at the Mirei, her face and voice filled with anger. Mirei trembled more than ever before and hurriedly lowered her head in a deep bow.

"I-I am sorry. Please, forgive me!"

Mirei was franticly apologizing, on the verge of tears. Julia came back to her senses when she heard Mirei’s crying. Julia felt terribly for yelling at her for something that wasn’t even Mirei’s fault to begin with; everything was that overaged loli’s fault.

"Mirei… I am sorry. I didn’t mean to yell at you... Stop crying, ok?"

Julia approached Mirei but stopped a half meter from her, unsure of how to comfort her. But it didn’t seem necessary as Mirei started to calm down slightly on her own once she heard Julia’s apologetic voice.

"Huh? Do-Doesn’t your high… y-your excellency doesn’t wish to throw this useless maid to the wolves?"

"…Why would I want that?"

Julia was baffled. Was this the reason she was so nervous and scared?

"Because I displeased you? It is a common practice for nobles to throw eyesores, such as myself, to the wolves after all."

Mirei answered as if throwing somebody to the wolves for something so banal was the most natural thing in the world.

"Well, I don’t want that, so don’t worry about it, okay?"

Julia gave a reassuring smile to Mirei, who in turn looked at Julia in awe, her eyes sparkling with admiration. Then she proceeded to kneel in front of Julia.

"Your excellency, I Mirei Yassale, offer up my services and my undying loyalty to you, my master."

Mirei spoke as she kneeled, her previous nervousness disappearing into thin air. While Julia watched Mirei’s change in demeanor, as if she was a completely different person from the Mirei just a few minutes ago, What is with her? I only said I would not throw her to the wolves.

"So, you two are getting along after all."

Their silent moment was interrupted by a cheery voice that came from the door. Its owner was none other than Loriam, dressed in her at this point typical black lace dress. Her warm smile and the backpack that she was caring made her look just like a young innocent girl, if Julia didn’t know who she really is they would be charmed by her.

"Why are you here?"

Julia didn’t bother to hide her annoyance as she faced Loriam, who just kept smiling at her.

"Just brought you something, that’s all."

Loriam pated her backpack for emphasis. Mirei could feel tension in the air between her mistress and her employer. Unsure of what to do, she opted for her top-secret technique: run away, and leave it to somebody else.

"I will go and make some tea."

"Yea, please do."

She was relieved that the queen had given her permission. Mirei left the room with a deep bow and an excessive smile on her face, her vow forgotten. Julia was just watching in disbelief how her supposedly loyal maid left her behind with this loli-hag. You goddam traitor!

Loriam ignored Julia’s expression as she walked towards the now empty bed, all while humming happily as she looked around the room.

"So, what did you come here for?"

Julia repeated her question once Mirei closed the doors behind herself. Loriam just planted herself on the bed and turned to face Julia, her smile being replaced with a more serious expression, closer to the expression that Julia saw on Loriam’s face back when she was still a man.

"It has been a week since I brought you here. You can’t just stay holed up in your room forever."

Loriam smiled slightly as she patted the fabric she spread on the bed with her palm before continuing without facing Julia.

"Incidentally, there is going to be a birthday party for one rather important noble girl next month. So, I want to ask you to come with me."

Loriam peaked at Julia from the corner of her eye, her face barely concealing the fact that she looked excited by the idea. Julia, on the other hand, was dumbfounded.

"And why exactly should I go with you to some stupid vampire brat’s birthday?"

Julia crossed her arms as she spoke. It wasn’t like she didn’t want to go out of the room after staying in it for the whole week, but somehow hearing it come out of Loriam’s mouth as the first thing after she didn’t show herself for several days, was kind of pissing Julia off.

Loriam let out an exhausted sigh, as if she found the entire thing to be bothersome and jumped from the bed.

"As a member of the royal clan of Leranpe, we have to both attend these sorts of noble gatherings. And besides, it will be the perfect opportunity to allow all those nobles to meet their crown princess. But I understand you. I don’t want to go either. So please go with me so that your poor old mother will not have to be all alone there, okay?"

"Cut it out! Also, what crown princess? What members? You are the only member of the royal family in this room!"

Before Julia could do anything, Loriam was right next to her, hugging her tightly and rubbing her cheeks against Julia’s, all the while she wailed about not wanting to go without Julia.

"Huh? What do you mean? Of course, you are also a member of the royal family, though. Didn’t I give you the... wait, I forgot to give it to you."

Loriam rummaged through the small pockets on the backpack and, after a while, pulled a small golden ornament from it and, with an apologetic smile, gave it to Julia.

Julia looked at the item that was now in her hand. It had the appearance of a necklace, decorated with a winged sword crest on one side with an inscription in vampiric language. On the other side of the necklace were highly detailed engravings of flowers with an empty space in the middle.

Without a warning, Loriam pricked Julia’s finger with a needle and let the drop of Julia's blood touch the empty space on the necklace. Then the necklace began to glow with a faint red light, and an inscription in vampiric language appeared.

"This is an prove of you being part of the Lerenpe clan, don’t lose it okay?"

With a gentle motherly smile, Loriam placed the necklace on Julia’s neck.

"What does it say?"

"It just says Julia Beleng Lerenpe, so your name and nothing else."

Loriam seemed happy with this outcome, while Julia looked confused by it. But Loriam decided to ignore her.

"With this out of the way, back to the topic at hand. Will you go with me to the party?"

"Hell no."

Loriam was shocked by Julia’s quick response and looked at her with her mouth agape for a bit. But she recomposed herself soon and spoke to Julia with a sulking tone.

"Why not? It's a perfect opportunity for a change of scenery. Come on, would you accompany your poor old mother? My daughter."

"Who is your daughter? You vampir... sigh. Just leave while I am still being polite with you."

Loriam sighed but didn’t leave. Instead, she went to the backpack that she had brought into the room with her and slowly opened it.

"Sigh, I knew it would be like this, so I came ready."

"Wh-What are you planning?"

Loriam didn’t answer, just completely opened the backpack and emptied it onto the carpet. Julia looked dumbfoundedly at Loriam’s ‘secret weapon’ that she had readied in her attempt to convince Julia.

"What do you say? Will you accompany your mother now?"

"…What?"

To Loriam’s smug smile, the only answer from Julia was confusion. Her ‘secret weapon’ turned out to be several colorful packages and a few bottles. Each one of them had labels in human language that Julia was so familiar with. All of it was obviously human-made snack food and sodas.

"If you go with me, I will give all of this to you, so what do you think now?"

"Do you think I am a little kid or what?!"

"Look, what do you see there? Do you see anything other than a little girl?"

With a light smile, Loriam pushed Julia towards a mirror as she asked. Julia didn’t have anything else to say about that. It was true that the reflection in the mirror was that of a little girl.

"No, but I am not a child. What made you think that this would convince me to go with you? And besides, vampires can’t eat anything other than blood. Did you seriously forget that about your own race?"

"What kind of monster do you think we are? Of course, we can eat other things, maybe not exactly the same things as other races, but to a degree we can."

Loriam looked a little hurt by Julia’s words but didn’t let it bother her and picked up a pack of bacon-flavored potato chips.

"I also made sure that all of these things are okay to be eaten by a blood-clan, so you can eat this…. If you go to the party with me."

"You think this will be enough to convince me? After all you have done?"

Julia didn’t understand why she was so defiant. Just seeing Loriam trying to convince her was making her happy for some reason, but some voice deep within her was telling her to not take a single step back, to defy Loriam for just a little bit longer. Even though she wanted to eat chips again, she gave in to this unknown desire for defiance.

"Sigh, okay, you won."

Hiyuuki

I feel like the quality of my writing went down during this chapter. So I would like to apologize for that, I will do my best with the next part that will come out next Saturday. (but I already feel like it will not be much different) [