I Revived My Maid, Now She Hungers for My Blood

Question after question hammered down like a relentless volley. Each one was simple, mundane—the kind of thing any student who actually lived and studied here could rattle off without thinking. And each one was an inescapable, undeniable interrogation.

The girl’s eyes began to shudder violently, pupils contracting and dilating in erratic spasms. Her face, still terrified but previously somewhat animated, now seemed to undergo a bizarre collapse. Like precision gears grinding to a seized halt, the details of her features blurred microscopically, as if resisting something.

She tried to remember. She tried to dredge up anything—anything—from the chaos of her mind that could serve as a passable answer. A name, a class number, anything. But her brain was a void. A suffocating, horrifying blank. There was nothing in there.

Elsa sheathed the crimson two-handed sword and quietly walked to Pandora’s side. Having heard the entire exchange, a thoughtful gleam flickered in her eyes. She looked at the girl, whose psyche was clearly on the verge of shattering, eyes hollow and unfocused. “My Lady? She is...?”

Pandora released her fingers. The crimson threads coiled around her fingertips retracted like living things, swiftly dissipating into the air.

With the threads gone, the girl was free. But she didn’t bolt like before. It was as if her spine had been ripped out; she collapsed into a limp heap, body twitching faintly, staring at the ceiling with vacant, glassy eyes.

Pandora looked down at her—this girl who no longer had any will to run. A faint smile crossed her lips as she delivered the answer.

“She doesn’t have a name.”

“But we can probably call her—”

“Miss Anomaly.”

Inside the cavernous indoor gymnasium, light slanted through the high windows, casting patchwork shadows across the wooden floor. The air was thick with the scent of aged timber, dust, and the acrid bite of floor varnish.

Pandora sat quietly in the front row of the spectator bleachers, legs dangling over the edge, her toes a short drop from the floor, swinging back and forth in a steady, idle rhythm. Beside her, the girl who’d been a wreck of terror just moments ago was now clinging desperately to the hem of Pandora’s robes, curled up into a tight ball and pressed against her side.

She looked like a frightened fawn—trembling, petrified—yet for some reason, she didn’t dare flee. Didn’t even dare put half a step between herself and Pandora.

Scattered across the gym floor in front of them was a heap of volleyballs. To Pandora’s eye, their design harkened back to the 1920s from her previous life’s memories. The leather was a crude patchwork of dark and light brown, the colors dull, the whole affair looking clunky and antiquated.

Before long, the gym’s heavy double doors creaked open from the outside. The faint, high-pitched whine of the hinges echoed through the empty space.

Elsa was the first to appear, and behind her trailed two others. Poppy and Ophelia Sterling.

Both still wore expressions of obvious confusion and contemplation. Poppy’s crimson curls were slightly mussed from the earlier action, her brow furrowed, lips pressed into a tight line. Ophelia’s face remained a mask of ice, but her violet eyes held a heavier weight of scrutiny than usual.

Clearly, they were still hung up on their respective encounters with the “unkillable Gunman” and the bizarre facts they’d confirmed after comparing notes.

When their gazes swept across the empty court and landed on the bleachers—on the unfamiliar, visibly terrified girl clutching Pandora’s robes—both stopped dead in their tracks.

Poppy spoke first, confusion thick in her voice. “Who’s this...?”

Her eyes quickly flitted over the girl, then flicked back to Pandora. She’d been racking her brain over that unkillable freak of a Gunman, and now Pandora had picked up a stray? A total rando who looked like an ordinary high school girl?

Ophelia didn’t say a word. Her focus zeroed in on the girl with an even sharper, probing intensity.

“Shh—”

Pandora raised a pale finger to her lips, silencing them with the gesture. Then she smiled—a mysterious, knowing smile. It was subtle, but it was enough to make both Poppy and Ophelia instinctively hold their tongues.

Soon enough, as if responding to Pandora’s silent cue, the almost stagnant air inside the gymnasium began to shift. Air currents stirred unnaturally, kicking up faint spirals of dust. The pile of clunky leather volleyballs scattered on the floor began to roll erratically, as if yanked by invisible strings, colliding with dull thuds.

Then, things got weirder. The rolling balls started to clump together, stacking and sticking to one another. The leather surfaces warped, as if unseen hands were kneading and shaping them. The dull browns rapidly bled into a deeper, ink-black stain.

The girl clutching Pandora’s robes went rigid the moment that deep black emerged. Absolute, soul-freezing terror practically hemorrhaged from her wide, unblinking eyes. But she forcibly held it in. No screaming. No bolting. She just huddled even closer to Pandora, knuckles blanched white from the death grip on the fabric. She stared, unblinking.

She watched the scattered volleyballs reassemble in the span of a few heartbeats. Until that iconic, slightly oversized black trench coat materialized once more. A crude, ramshackle rifle radiating cold killing intent took shape in its grip.

Stiff joints. Staggered gait. A blurred face, hollowed by sunken pits.

The “Gunman” was back.

This time, a flicker of realization dawned in Ophelia’s eyes. Poppy’s jaw just dropped, her red lips parting in naked, incredulous shock.

The moment the Gunman fully coalesced, it didn’t hesitate. Didn’t even bother scanning for a target. Like a pre-programmed automaton, it raised a stiff arm, leveling its pitch-black muzzle directly at the bleachers—directly at the girl clinging to Pandora’s side.

That malicious lock-on thickened the air, even from a distance.

There was no need for Pandora to say a thing. Elsa, who had been standing by like a loyal shadow, flickered—