I Revived My Maid, Now She Hungers for My Blood
Chapter 299: What Are They?!

I wanted to stand up. I wanted to charge out and stop those two girls.

But I had no reason. In Clara’s eyes, they were just two classmates buying a normal snack.

And in my own eyes… I couldn’t even be certain whether the “anomalies” I saw were real, or the products of a fractured mind. What if I truly was going mad?

Clara had already lost interest in the scene outside the window. Her attention was entirely consumed by the menu the waiter had handed over.

The shop we were resting in was a dessert parlor. Its menu was printed with exquisite color photographs. Waffles drizzled with chocolate sauce. Cream cakes piled high with fresh fruit. Adorably shaped macarons.

Under the soft lighting, the darling desserts looked irresistibly tantalizing. Girls found these pretty, delicate pastries hard to refuse.

Clara was no exception. Her slender finger glided across the menu. Her eyes sparkled. Every now and then, a tiny gasp of admiration escaped her.

But I had a gnawing suspicion. The “real thing” that would actually be served—the counterpart to those beautiful pictures—what on earth would it be? I didn’t dare imagine it.

Just then, the dessert parlor’s door swung open. The brass bell above it jingled crisply. Two new customers stepped in… the same two girls from before?

What puzzled me was the smaller, timid-looking one. In her hand, she was holding an empty, slightly greasy cardboard container—the exact kind used at the hot dog stand. Empty.

She’d eaten an entire hot dog already? But… why was she completely unaffected?

The pale cyan marks on Clara’s face—I’d seen them vividly. Yet this girl looked entirely normal. More normal than Clara.

Her complexion was rosy. Her eyes, though still carrying a timid edge, were clear and bright, without a single anomaly.

A thread of confusion wound through my heart.

The time that followed, I was somewhat distracted. I didn’t even notice what dessert Clara eventually ordered, or what the waiter said. My gaze doggedly tracked the two girls.

They took a seat at another table near the back. Dressed with a kind of formal propriety, they seemed slightly out of place in this warmly decorated dessert shop—yet oddly blended into that “young student” atmosphere.

The timid girl placed the empty cardboard box on a corner of the table. The other girl—just a touch taller, with an aura far more distinctive, carrying an aloof, noble quality that defied simple description—rose and went to the counter.

Moments later, she returned carrying a tall glass.

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Inside the glass was the shop’s signature “Dreamy Summer Ice Cream Milkshake.”

In the illuminated advertisement board by the counter, this milkshake looked utterly enticing.

Fine vanilla ice cream scoops piled into a mountain, drizzled with vivid strawberry and chocolate syrup, studded with wafer sticks and colorful sugar sprinkles. The glass sweating with fine beads of condensation.

But in my eyes… that glass held no milkshake at all.

It was a blob of viscous gel, slowly churning, its color shifting in ripples.

On its surface, bumps vaguely resembling human facial features surfaced from time to time, then smoothed back into nothing. Objects like eyeballs or knuckle joints bobbed and sank within the mass.

And what it emitted wasn’t a sweet, milky aroma. It was something more complex. Disturbing.

The two girls seemed entirely unaware of just what they’d just purchased.

The girl with that singular, noble air took a long-handled metal spoon and lightly stirred the substance in the glass. Her movements were casual, like any other girl stirring a milkshake.

I felt a pang of sympathy for what was about to befall them. Maybe, through some stroke of luck, they’d escaped disaster at the hot dog stand. But luck couldn’t save them forever.

I was just sinking back into my familiar frustration at my own powerlessness, preparing to avert my gaze, when—

“AAAAA—AAAAH—!”

A shrill, piercing scream tore through the air!

It didn’t come from either of the girls. That voice… unmistakably came from the “milkshake” being stirred right in front of them.

The noble-looking girl—who seemed about the same age as Clara and me but radiated a more mature presence—kept at it with that metal spoon. Unhurried, slow circles, round and round.

With every stir, the milkshake’s screams grew more agonized, more piercing! It wasn’t a sound any human throat could produce.

It was more like… the wail of something living, being carved apart by a thousand cuts, squeezed from the deepest recesses of its soul!

The sound was so sharp it cut through the relative quiet of the dessert parlor, stabbing into my eardrums, my head throbbing in rhythmic spasms.

And yet—the girl doing the stirring, and the timid girl watching beside her—they seemed to not hear this horrific shrieking at all.

Their expressions didn’t change in the slightest. The stirrer remained calm. The watcher even wore a trace of timid curiosity.

Twisted. Too twisted!

That feeling of wrongness had hit a crescendo. These two girls clearly looked like normal people—at least like Clara and me, rare “ordinary humans” on this street.

So why… why was the one being tortured, the one screaming in agony… the thing that was clearly the monster—the milkshake?

Could it be… that agonizing scream was just another of my hallucinations?

Had my mind truly been wound so tight that it was now conjuring such absurd auditory illusions? Had I really gone insane? I didn’t know.

I was on the verge of breaking, crushed by this contradiction of sight and sound, when—

In the corner of my vision, the waiter who’d been standing behind the counter—his face stiff as a wax dummy—suddenly moved! His speed defied reason.

He practically flickered from behind the counter, meters away, to the girls’ table. His pale, bloodless hand shot out and pressed down on the noble girl’s wrist, halting her stirring.

“Guest.” His voice was flat. “Our signature milkshake is best enjoyed promptly. Over-stirring compromises the intended flavor.”

The girl stopped her motion. She didn’t argue. Didn’t show any displeasure or surprise. She just lifted her head calmly and looked at the waiter. Then she released her grip on the spoon.

In the same fluid motion, she nudged the entire glass toward the timid girl beside her. The contents still emitted faint, low, whimpering sobs.

“Have a taste.” Her voice was soft and pleasant, yet devoid of emotion.

The timid girl looked at her, then at the horrific thing in the glass before her. Then she reached out, picked up the glass.

Under the frozen gaze of the waiter still standing rigid beside them. Under the seemingly casual but furtively fixed stares of the other diners nearby.

The timid girl raised the glass. And opened her mouth.