Poverty-Stricken Vampire

The cold air and oppressive atmosphere in the living room persisted, but at least the two culprits no longer looked like they intended to keep fighting.

Hao Ren sighed as he cleaned up the teapot, which had frozen into a lump of ice—and cracked besides—then looked at the ruined coffee table. He felt that life was probably just like this: eight or nine things out of ten never went as one wished, and the remaining one or two went even worse...

But no matter what, Vivian and Lily finally seemed to believe each other's explanations. Well, perhaps not completely, but at least they agreed not to fight for the time being—as long as the other did not show her "true colors," they would temporarily regard each other as neutral parties.

That was the result of a full hour of earnest persuasion, an hour spent laying out facts, reasoning things through, and appealing to the greater good. Hao Ren had worked up the nerve to push what little authority he had as the Landlord here—if he even had any—to its limit. He had barely managed to make the two girls listen patiently to each other's explanations and prove their claims in their own ways. To prove she had not coerced the Landlord, Lily called Roll over as a witness, then showed Vivian her hands to indicate there was no blood aura on them, meaning she had never cursed Hao Ren. Vivian decided to believe her because Lily looked rather stupid. To prove she could restrain her bloodlust, Vivian had Hao Ren rummage through the fridge and bring out a box of duck blood tofu...

Honestly, Hao Ren thought Vivian's method of proof was less reliable than anything else, but somehow Lily actually believed it... This idiot actually believed her. Could you believe that?

Once things had temporarily calmed down, Hao Ren finally got the chance to ask why Vivian had come over that morning. After all, Vivian had looked surprised when she first saw him, so she clearly had not come specifically looking for him.

Vivian nodded and fished a colorful piece of paper out of a small bag she carried with her. "I came here following this address. I'm looking for a place to live."

Lily, who had been hanging her head beside the broken coffee table in repentance, instantly shifted into Werewolf form. Her pointed beast ears sprang upright with a twitch. She had a strong feeling that something terrible was about to happen!

Hao Ren was stunned too. He took the paper and discovered that it had been cut from a newspaper. It was unmistakably the rental ad he had put out two days ago! He had gone half a year without a single customer, so why were tenants suddenly coming one after another now?

And why were none of the people renting his place normal?!

"Uh... the address is right," Hao Ren said with a strange expression, wondering exactly where his life had gone wrong. He looked Vivian up and down. "You're here to rent a room?"

"Yep." Vivian nodded repeatedly.

Hao Ren stupidly asked, "Why did it have to be my place...?"

What he really meant was why this sort of abnormal thing kept happening to him, but Vivian clearly misunderstood. The Vampire Girl blinked. "Because your place is cheap. I don't have any money, and after looking around for ages, yours was the only place I could afford—besides, I really don't want to keep living in ruins or graveyards out in the wilderness like before."

Hao Ren's mouth hung open and refused to close. He was utterly astonished by this Vampire Girl's frankness and her state of life. Weren't vampires supposed to be elegant aristocrats of the night? How had this one ended up like this?

"This place is cheap, all right. If you don't mind how remote it is, you can stay here," Hao Ren said after standing there dumbly for several seconds, finally nodding with a helpless smile. Well, one more louse did not make you itch, and one more debt did not make you worry. He already had a Werewolf, and his life was unlikely to become normal again anytime soon. One more Vampire would just add some color to it. "But I need to make something clear first: you can't cause trouble... Of course, I won't tell anyone about you and Lily either. I'm afraid you'll kill me to keep me quiet."

Though he mentioned being killed to keep quiet, Hao Ren was not too worried. These two nonhuman girls clearly differed from the ones in the legends. Never mind whether they were oddballs among their own kind; here, at least, they seemed pretty safe.

But just as Hao Ren and Vivian were about to settle things, Lily suddenly slapped the table and stood up. "Wait! This winged rat is going to live here too? Under the same roof as me?" Look at how slow she was.

With a crash, the coffee table, already covered in cracks from all the slapping, finally gave out.

"You think I want to live with a beast?!" Vivian was just as angry, but at least she remembered the truce they had agreed to and did not start releasing cold air everywhere. "If I weren't about to die of poverty, who would come here?!"

Hao Ren suddenly felt that rejecting Vivian might be the right thing to do. Letting a Werewolf and a Vampire live under the same roof was obviously asking for trouble, wasn't it? Neither of them looked remotely capable of abiding by a truce! Besides, he was not desperate for this bit of rent...

But he had already nodded earlier, and changing his mind now did not seem appropriate. So he could only do his best to soothe the displeased Lily. "It's fine, it's fine. Vivian doesn't look like a bad person to me, and I already agreed... Let her stay here for now... Hey, wait! I'm the Landlord here. This is my house! Why the hell am I discussing this with you?!"

At the last moment, Hao Ren finally remembered that fact: this was his own territory. Since when had these two nonhuman girls started acting like the homeowners?

He could only attribute it to the overwhelming presence of two people with such powerful auras. Besides, after that series of chaotic events, his already less-than-exceptional brain had become a little muddled.

Lily smiled awkwardly too. This Werewolf girl, nothing like the legends and surprisingly easy to talk to, hunched her neck and nodded. "Then you decide. But I still don't like that winged one."

"That's more like it." Hao Ren nodded with his arms folded, while planning how to make these two clearly abnormal new tenants live harmoniously in the days to come... Living harmoniously was impossible. He just had to find a way to stop them from tearing down the house. In truth, he was already beginning to fear this chaotic life. If he could, he really wanted to send the two great deities in his house away right now, but there were two problems. First, two female superhumans were not easy to offend. They seemed easy enough to talk to, but kicking them out without a convincing reason could lead to trouble, and Hao Ren did not dare take that risk. Second, Hao Ren did not think he could beat either of the two female superhumans. If his power of speech failed when the time came, he would be completely helpless. He would be stuck riding a tiger.

In summary, those two reasons could actually be summed up in one: how the hell was a human supposed to bargain with two monster girls?!

But no matter how conflicted he felt, he still wanted to use his meager strength to preserve, if only a little, his "normal" life that was clearly nearing its end. Just as countless thoughts ran through his mind, a nearly earth-shaking cry suddenly came from beside him.

"Ah! My wallet!"

Vivian practically sprang off the sofa. The Vampire Girl could usually barely maintain a trace of elegance, but that elegance had now vanished completely: her wallet was gone.

"It must've been last night... That bastard smashed me so hard last night that I was half-conscious, and I have no idea where I dropped my wallet!" Vivian rummaged through herself and her little bag for a long time before finally looking at Lily with despair and fury. "You stupid dog! That was my last bit of living expenses! Pay me back!"

Lily looked somewhat embarrassed, but she still turned her face away. "Don't blame other people because you're incompetent. It's just as well you can't afford the rent—I won't have to look at your stupid face anymore."

But after a moment, she turned back again. "Why don't you check the doorway and the streets nearby? Maybe you dropped it on the road."

This proved that this idiot Werewolf actually had a surprisingly kind heart.

"Yesterday, I flew a long way to find somewhere with bright moonlight so I could recover my strength," Vivian said miserably. "How would I know where I dropped it... Sob, my last living expenses, the money I saved for so long... I lost money four times this month. That was the last of it!"

Hao Ren's eyebrows twitched. How had this Vampire ended up living so miserably?! What happened to the aristocrats of the night?

But he quickly realized something else that was wonderful: it seemed he no longer had to worry about a future Werewolf-versus-Vampire war. He now had a perfectly valid reason to make Vivian leave.

Maintaining peace was the true path, damn it!

(Well, this is the double update...)