{ "dataList": [ { "id": 0, "content": "We were happy... at first." }, { "id": 1, "content": "Father spent his days twaddling about silly things like dreams, but... I suppose he had his own charming mirth." }, { "id": 2, "content": "But it was a good life, if the worst thing I had to do was to placidly indulge his stories." }, { "id": 3, "content": "My memories of the years I lived as a human have all but disappeared, but... at least this life had to be better than whatever that was." }, { "id": 4, "content": "Maybe that's why I agreed to become his Kindred." }, { "id": 5, "content": "... Or, maybe I was seduced by the promise that my beauty could be made to last for all eternity." }, { "id": 6, "content": "I began to understand my Father only when I began to create my own Kindreds... my Children. When they began to grow in number..." }, { "id": 7, "content": "I understood that Father wanted us to be happy." }, { "id": 8, "content": "He wanted to free us from the crippling loneliness, for he was the first to suffer it." }, { "id": 9, "content": "Or so I thought." }, { "id": 10, "content": "Until some traveler visited our Castle and deluded my Father with that sickening manipulation that his dream could somehow be realized even in the waking world." }, { "id": 11, "content": "... Sancho." }, { "id": 12, "content": "Father always tried to bring us two closer, as if we were 'sisters'." }, { "id": 13, "content": "Perhaps it was fortunate that neither of us was the friendly type. We both liked to put up a wall between us and the rest of the world. So, naturally, we distanced ourselves from each other as well." }, { "id": 14, "content": "I had a degree of faith in her, however; her strength, her abilities, and her... more down-to-earth perspective on life that heavily contrasted our Father's wild imaginations." }, { "id": 15, "content": "Sancho never had Children of her own, but she always seemed... at least neutral when it came to looking after my Kindreds." }, { "id": 16, "content": "... And it is that odd distance between us that brought this plan to fruition." }, { "id": 17, "content": "Though we were both Second Kindreds, I could let her take care of our Family, to look after my Children and their Kindreds... while I devised this plan." }, { "id": 18, "content": "Eventually, our Father's sanity was completely broken; he destroyed our castle and built a bizarre amusement park in its place..." }, { "id": 19, "content": "... rambling a plan that seemed to have come straight out of a madman's dream that we could coexist with... humans." }, { "id": 20, "content": "That we must live begging for stagnant blood in packs when veins, pulsating with hotly flowing blood, walk right past us." }, { "id": 21, "content": "That we must subsist on that thing, more flavorless than even pastel paste." }, { "id": 22, "content": "That all of his Kindreds must live trapped in a fate worse than that of a Bloodbag... all for the future in which Bloodfiends and humans may coexist in harmony." }, { "id": 23, "content": "His eyes gleamed with the conviction that to dream, he could endure even the yearning for blood..." }, { "id": 24, "content": "Yet... desire is not something that can be so easily overcome." }, { "id": 25, "content": "It has broken my undying loyalty; this hunger coerced me to think of committing the inconceivable crime of filial impiety." }, { "id": 26, "content": "No. It may just be that I do not have the strength to pursue the dream as he does." }, { "id": 27, "content": "... There was a peddler, a merchant of odds and ends who'd always come to visit us at the amusement park." }, { "id": 28, "content": "Our Father is... tragically naive and innocent. Every time the merchant brought him false Relics, he'd get swindled into buying every single one of them." }, { "id": 29, "content": "But the peddler didn't just carry counterfeits." }, { "id": 30, "content": "Sometimes, Sancho and I would go behind our Father's back to threaten the peddler, and we would be presented with an authentic relic the very next day." }, { "id": 31, "content": "So, one day, another day of suffering through that hunger, I thought to ask the peddler about this rumored Relic." }, { "id": 32, "content": "'Say, do you know about the legendary helm of Mambrino that brings the wearer to equal ground with all those around them?'" }, { "id": 33, "content": "That little tomb raider could not possibly have imagined what we were planning to do with the artifact." }, { "id": 34, "content": "Of course not." }, { "id": 35, "content": "Just as we could never gain an understanding of humans, just as we could never be one of them, no matter how long our lives may be..." }, { "id": 36, "content": "... They won't ever understand us." }, { "id": 37, "content": "Gregor, that Child... he claimed that wasn't true. That humans were really starting to see us in a new light, but..." }, { "id": 38, "content": "... I saw it all, from the apex upon which I stood." }, { "id": 39, "content": "Humans looking up at me and the Parade, their faces brilliant with happy smiles..." }, { "id": 40, "content": "... and Bloodfiends, who shuffled among humans with their eyes lost and wavering with hunger." }, { "id": 41, "content": "It doesn't matter anymore." }, { "id": 42, "content": "It doesn't matter whether humans saw us in a different light or not." }, { "id": 43, "content": "What matters is that I... and my Children... are going hungry." }, { "id": 44, "content": "Besides, Sancho agreed with me. We couldn't just sit here and watch that human corrupt our Father with that silver tongue." }, { "id": 45, "content": "Finally... the preparations for the Carnival are complete." }, { "id": 46, "content": "Now, I leave this endlessly whirling yet stagnant, self-devouring Parade..." }, { "id": 47, "content": "... and announce the beginning of a true feast of blood." }, { "id": 48, "content": "Ohh..." }, { "id": 49, "content": "It's going to be so... beautiful..." } ] }