APIBAGS Chapter 41

"It's not particularly important to me."

Kanna said this with complete composure.

What. Not important? Even knowing about this?

"The one who saved me wasn't someone else. It was you."

Well, yes. That was true. The original Evangeline would never have saved Kanna—the original Evangeline would have been the one who ordered the kidnapping.

"And you?" Kanna turned to Daisy. "Are you planning to pretend you didn't receive her help?"

Neither Daisy nor I found anything to say to that.

Kanna was getting very good at this. Apparently surviving as the heroine of a particularly grim romance fantasy required some degree of gaslighting as a basic competency.

"The Evangeline Rohanson you knew is already dead."

Kanna...

The original might still be dormant somewhere inside, possibly. Though given that I'd woken in the middle of her funeral, probably not. And it wasn't as though you could simply dismiss someone who'd only just died—that wasn't how people worked. Still—that was a brutal read. Like a closing statement in the record—

"...I know."

Daisy was already fully convinced. Kanna had gotten there in record time.

And meanwhile I was sitting here as the most troubled person in this carriage while the two of them were somehow more distressed about my situation than I was. How had that happened.

The carriage was silent. The road back to Rohanson Manor had never felt so long. Jelly. Save me.

Jelly arrived at the estate the way he arrived at most places—without announcement, out of nothing.

Mary saw him materialize and bolted immediately, bouncing in place beside him.

"Wow, wow! You just appeared out of thin air! Was that the same thing as before?"

She'd been equally delighted when he'd teleported them the first time, and the wonder had apparently not worn off. Jelly waved her off. Yulma and Ranen pulled Mary back, both of them shifting into careful defensive stances between her and him.

Good. The older ones had sense.

Henna was watching. She'd expected Kanna and Evangeline. She got one unfamiliar man.

"Where are Kanna and my lady?"

"Coming by carriage. The ordinary way."

He'd caught the sense that Evangeline had things to discuss with Daisy. She'd be in eventually. Jelly felt faintly pleased by the prospect—once Daisy settled into the household, Kanna's current level of unchecked confidence might come down a degree or two. Being treated as a pet dog by someone's chosen heroine was not something he intended to endure indefinitely.

"Then why did you bring him?"

"Would I have brought him without authorization? Your mistress is apparently taking him in. He said he was hungry, so apparently he'll be fed."

"Ah."

Henna accepted this with the nod of someone who had already come to understand that Evangeline was, against all apparent evidence, something of a collector of strays.

"Food?"

The word reached Melek. He'd been somewhere between conscious and absent—eyes half-glazed, drool running freely, ravaged past coherence by hunger. Somehow he'd been managing not to lunge at whatever was nearest. Jelly hit the back of his head.

Mary moved toward him immediately.

"Melek's really hungry. That's why he wouldn't eat the bread I gave him!"

Henna redirected her before she got any closer.

"His meal will be sorted when my lady arrives. Mary, aren't you hungry too?"

"I am..."

"Then let's find something to hold us over until she's back."

Henna took the children and disappeared. Sensible. Quite unlike her sister, who had decided that operating under Evangeline's roof meant ordinary caution didn't apply to her, and that Jelly was a reasonable target for pet-register treatment. Henna read the room. She acted accordingly.

This was the correct and proper way to treat him. Jelly let himself enjoy it briefly.

He turned to Melek.

"Coming to your senses? Can you hold on a bit longer?"

"Probably."

Probably. Couldn't even close a wound a child had made on him. Going to starve to death. And the child in question was watching him suffer and clearly trying not to collapse about it.

"Do you know who I am?"

"Jelly?"

That confirmed it. Jelly, not Andras.

"So you're not actually Melek."

A faint smile from the body wearing Melek's face.

"...Latched on."

The estate staff had been whispering about Evangeline being resurrected, a corpse moving around—the real version of that was standing right here. Not Melek. Something else wearing him.

'Had Evangeline taken him in because they were similar.'

"Inhabiting a dead shell—that's why you reek. No nutrients to heal with either. You've never consumed a human soul, have you."

"Correct."

He was genuinely going to die soon. He'd been surviving on what remained in Melek's body, and that was nearly depleted.

"The fact that you can't even heal—it's serious." Jelly exhaled. "Right."

How to properly feed something that refused to eat humans.

Whatever. Lady Evangeline would have a plan. She wasn't a liar. There'd be a solution somewhere. Hopefully not pouring holy water down his throat. The memory of that produced a phantom ache in his own tongue that he did not appreciate.

"Why won't you eat humans?"

"Because I used to be one?"

So the original Melek had been killed by a human-born entity and stripped of his body into the bargain. Served him right. Jelly would have followed him into whatever afterlife he'd ended up in just for the pleasure of saying so.

"How long?"

"About twenty years?"

Jelly laughed—sudden and genuine. The ghost stared at him, bewildered, missing the joke. Twenty years of bullying children, accepting tributes, carrying himself like something to be feared—and in the end, bested by an actual child. He was going to tell Flauros later.

He liked this new Melek quite a lot.

"How did you take him?"

"I was in the same orphanage as Merai—got locked in the basement and starved to death there. When I came to, I was already in this body. I'm sorry, but I genuinely can't remember how it happened."

The story came in pieces.

Back when Melek had still been human, the boy had been one of the children the demon used. When the original director sealed the basement door to avoid the temple's inspection, the boy was already inside. The door locked. In the days that followed he grew thinner and thinner, and then he died of starvation.

When he woke, he was very hungry.

Melek appeared. Probably come to torment the children as he sometimes did—found a different basement than expected, found the only soul in it still flickering. In that moment, hunger consumed Melek whole.

When 'Melek' came to himself, he was already Melek's body.

Same voice. Same face. Everything the same.

But even after that, the boy had always been hungry.

Twenty years later, Melek encountered a childhood friend. The director Merai had summoned 'Melek.'

Jelly heard this out and issued his verdict.

"Why didn't you just eat her? The director, not the children. She's facing execution anyway—being used as a meal is more economical than simply dying."

If it had been him, he'd have eaten her out of pure spite alone, even if it ruptured him. That was why human-born types were always so soft about these things.

Still—they were going to be living under the same roof from now on. Better to be civil about it. Jelly resolved to make his best effort at sociability.

"What's your name?"

"Melek."

"Not that one. Your original name. I don't want to use that Melek's name."

"Original name? I'm not sure..."

"A name?"

He wanted me to name him. Me, specifically.

I'd been about to treat his wounds first. But Jelly informed me there was something more pressing—giving his friend a name. Melek was a perfectly usable name. Why exactly did I need to provide a different one?

"I'd like a name like Jelly."

Charming taste. Jelly hated his name, which was half the entertainment of using it. This one was voluntarily requesting the same experience. Somehow I didn't want to do it anymore.

Though refusing would be discriminatory. And he had his own name anyway—this was just a nickname.

What to call him.

Pudding had been a cat I assumed was ordinary. Jelly was partly revenge, partly being completely undone by a soft pink jellybean. This was a seemingly normal adult man who specifically wanted a name in the same register, which meant—

I couldn't think of any other dessert names right now. Meringue was the only one coming to mind. Meringue and Melek—similar enough sounds. Fine.

"Meringue."

Not being sardonic. Jelly's friend—no, Melek—no, Meringue seemed genuinely pleased with this, which made me feel like I should have put more thought into it. But dessert names were all the same in the end.

"But why ask for a name when Melek is right there?"

"I'm actually not Melek."

Then who?

"I'm just... borrowing this body."

Borrowing. Wait. Were they also a transmigrator?

Meringue knew the title, knew things about Evangeline—so they must have read the full original work?

I needed to ask him everything.

"Tell me what you know about Rohanson Manor."

"What? Yes... Well, the building is quite traditional in its architecture. The garden is wide—looks very pleasant for walking. The surrounding area is quiet, and the staff are discreet, so it seems like a very comfortable place to stay."

Hold on.

Something wasn't connecting. I'd asked about the original work and gotten his impressions of the estate as a new resident. A cold feeling moved through me.

Something was wrong here. Let me try a different angle.

"You said you died and woke up somewhere else. Where did you originally live?"

"Oh, didn't I mention? I'm from the same Ainoa Orphanage as Merai."

What?

I'd asked obliquely and gotten an answer beyond anything I'd imagined.

"Merai—that director?"

"Yes, that's right."

Why was he from the same world.

Something had been nagging at me. Even in romance fantasy, where possession is practically a standard plot device, there's normally only one transmigrator per story. Two-person scenarios do exist—entering a possession story itself, or two people from the same original world descending together for a revenge arc.

But I'd made a fundamental error of assumption.

Readers who grew up on possession novels naturally think of book-possession when the word comes up. But if you considered it logically—ghost possession was considerably more famous as a concept, wasn't it.

Meringue was a ghost.

I briefly wanted to leave the room. I was fine with thrillers. I had a specific and longstanding weakness with ghost horror films.

"The original owner of the body?"

"Oh. Jelly said it looks like he died."

"Does Jelly know you're in there?"

"Yes. He says I'm better than the original Melek."

Meringue nodded. That was a relief. I'd been wondering how to tell someone their acquaintance had been ghost-possessed. But with a response like that, they probably hadn't been particularly close—maybe just fellow beastfolk who knew each other by name and not much else.

Then Meringue told me the short version of his story.