Page 272 of Mercy Written in Blood

Cruel, Haruki thought. Then immediately corrected himself. Honest. That was worse.

Mrs Okada looked towards the door. Then at the police memorandum projected on the wall. Slowly, she sat. Her handbag remained clutched against her body.

Sota waited until she settled before continuing.

"The First Law is defended as protection," he said. "Vampire authorities argue disclosure would create panic, persecution and war. They may be correct."

A murmur moved through the room. Haruki had expected Sota to dismiss the danger. He did not.

"Human governments would detain vampires," Sota continued. "Some would attempt weaponisation. Others would order extermination. Religious violence would increase. False accusations would destroy innocent lives."

"Then why reveal it?" someone asked.

"Because the danger of truth does not automatically justify a lie."

"That's easy for you to say," the delivery driver replied.

"No."

For the first time, Sota's composure thinned. Not anger. Pain.

"It is not."

The room quieted. Sota looked towards the projected names.

"My mother spent thirteen years waiting for my sister to come home."

Haruki felt something in the room draw tighter. Sota had not mentioned family in the garden. He stood with both hands resting against the edge of the desk.

"She was seventeen. She left work shortly after ten. A camera recorded her entering an underpass. No footage showed her leaving."

"What happened?" the teenage boy asked.

"We do not know."

The answer sounded different now. Not the calm acknowledgement of incomplete evidence. A wound repeated too often to bleed visibly.

"The police said she ran away. Then they suggested a boyfriend. Then drugs. Then suicide."

Sota's eyes remained on the names.

"My mother believed each explanation for a few weeks because belief was easier than emptiness. She searched railway stations. Shelters. Hospitals. She kept my sister's room unchanged until she died."

No one moved. Haruki watched Sota's profile — the reasonable voice, the measured arguments, the refusal to promise outcomes he could not control. All of it had been built around this. Not ideology first. Absence.

"What makes you think it was a vampire?" the student asked.

"A witness saw someone feeding in the underpass that month. Her statement was removed from the case file. She was admitted to psychiatric care three days later."

"Was it your sister?"

"We do not know."

Again. The same answer.

Sota turned towards the room.

"My mother died believing her daughter had chosen to disappear."