Page 276 of Mercy Written in Blood

Silence. Sota watched him carefully. Haruki hated that the truth felt like giving him something.

"Then help us expose it," Ryota said.

Haruki looked towards the young man.

"Exposure is not the same as justice."

"It's a start."

"It can also be an execution without a trial."

"Vampires get trials?"

"Some."

"And my brother didn't even get the truth," the woman in scrubs said.

Haruki had no answer that would not sound obscene.

Sota stepped closer.

"This is the First Law in practice," he said. "Not policy. Not theory. A room of people asked to accept ignorance because those with power consider knowledge too dangerous."

"You brought them here to make refusal look cruel," Haruki said.

"I brought them here because refusal is cruel."

"And disclosure may be worse."

"Yes."

Sota's expression did not change.

"That is what choice means. If one path were harmless, there would be no moral question."

Haruki stared at him. There it was again — the part of Sota that made condemnation difficult. He did not promise purity. He did not claim revelation would heal the grieving or prevent future deaths. He only refused to accept that fear belonged solely to those deciding in secret.

"If the truth causes war?" Haruki asked.

"Then those who concealed it helped build the conditions for war."

"That does not absolve the person who starts it."

"No."

"If children die?"

"They already do."

"That is not an answer."

"It is the answer secrecy has given us."

Haruki stepped closer. The room seemed to disappear around them.

"You keep placing existing suffering against future suffering as though one cancels the other."

"And you keep treating future suffering as more morally urgent because it has not yet acquired names."