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The first time Yuuichirou’s mother wiped his mind clean of the only love he ever had, she assured Mikaela the process had been merciful and swift. The day petals more beautiful than any sprouting in the garden ejected from his throat, not an ounce of fear besmirched her face. A serum devised with the finest of Hiragi spellcraft, coupled with the power to eliminate her son’s love with her fearsome word, was all the queen needed to continue her duties with an ever-alluring smile.
He’d entered his life with full awareness of his curse. In vengeful irony, her selfish love had been the driving force of her rebellion against her entire clan. She had made their blood her ink and wrote a lowly Ichinose off as her king. To deprive the fruit of their bond that opportunity, they knew, brought more pain than they could ever inflict on her body.
'Should the young prince fall in love, his lungs shall fill with a sea of blooms. Should the one he adores accept those feelings, the seeds shall plant in his lover.'
In the hall leading to the prince’s chamber, only vampires lurked among him.
Dead. Emotionless. If the heart of every Hiragi family’s staff member had long-since expired, who would become an object for his affections?
But a stillness more deathly than their presence plagued the chamber of their heir.
Resting upon a collection of pillows capable of supporting seven men lay the young man to whom he spent years answering. His bottom lip trembled, shoulders tensed, and more petals collected beside his mouth. Others traveled down his chin and scattered across the mattress when he stirred.
Mikaela’s fingers traced the syringe in his supply bag, and the same question raced through his mind.
Why, despite all their efforts, did Yuuichirou fall prey to his curse?
None of his visitors or suitors could boast more than an hour of his time. A small kiss upon his hand was the closest he received to intimacy.
His breaths were sluggish and wheezy, and his bangs clung to the sweat adorning his brow. Morning trips in which Mikaela carried him to his bedroom windows served as his only ‘outside time.’
Just as Mikaela reached out to brush a stray hair from his eyes, Yuuichirou’s soft whimpers shriveled his hand back to his side.
“Who…”
“Go back to sleep,” Mikaela replied in a voice soft yet urgent. He squeezed his wrist—their agreed-upon gesture when opening his eyes proved difficult.
“Mika…?”
He forced himself upright, and his laugh bore hints of satisfaction when Mikaela propped him with cushions.
“You…” Mikaela stared at his lips and bit his own. “… Haven’t visited me in a while. I was worried that—”
Another attack consumed his body. He bent forward, clutching his chest and all but tearing his nightshirt. Mikaela rubbed his back helplessly between retches. He honeyed his ears with gentle reassurances until, at last, Yuuichirou fell back into his arm.
The boy brimming with life he once knew existed in the fire not yet extinguished in his eyes, the playfulness of his weary voice—his smile dimmed yet living.
Despite his silence, resentment festered within him like an ulcer. His suffering should have ended the day he first cleared his throat, yet Yuuichirou threw up in his washroom on the back of boasting about his recovery. He denied food. His afternoon teas watered the plants.
He knew. But how did he know?
Who in his eyes deserved his health?
The more he pondered, the more the question burned at his core.
Whose protection meant more to him than his life?
‘Talk to me…! Whatever you’re hiding, tell me!’ overpowered any expression he attempted. A smile couldn’t sustain the weight of his desperation. And as though a keen intuition guided him to all Mikaela’s moods, Yuuichirou smiled as if to impart the delight he couldn’t muster.
“Mika…”
His heart lurched upon hearing his name, and the bloodlust for whom he admired rose.
“You should be thirsty by now. You can have my blood…”
“Don’t be stupid! Never mind me! Who would take your blood in this condition!?”
His rebuttal left with more force than he desired, and he amended his response with, “Please. Just rest.”
“Right… sorry.”
Another cough decorates Yuuichirou’s death bed in blue, and a breath later, he slept.
‘If I injected the serum into him now,’ Mikaela thought, fingers drifting into his bag, ‘that still leaves who he’s in love with.’
And if this person’s existence remained, why wouldn’t he fall for them again?
He swallowed his guilt, all the respect he held for Yuuichirou that told him to flee, and he picked apart every inch of his bedroom.
If Yuuichirou wouldn’t tell him who it was, then he’d figure it out himself.
Between paintings of his parents, inside each ornate drawer, and under the embroidered rug, he cleared the more implausible options before approaching his real target: the wardrobe closet.
A rather cramped space compared to the rest of the chamber, a party of three could explore if they stood shoulder-to-shoulder. He found a few trinkets the queen reserved for the warmer seasons, but he passed nothing in prejudice. They, too, were meticulously cleaved. At the end of his journey, an old cloak tucked at the very corner was distinct enough to receive his utmost scrutiny, and beneath it stood a broad chest. Littered with locks of all kinds, any person would’ve given up upon the first or second.
Any human, that is.
His mind raced as he summoned the strength to break them one-by-one, but there to meet him wasn’t a grand talisman.
Yuuichirou’s sketchbook had been all he locked away.
Understandable. Creation was often an embarrassing process, despite being a hobby he held dear. His passion didn’t suffer abandonment upon his illness. Dizzy spells, delirium, and days where his hands quaked uncontrollably stole his ability.
In earnest, Mikaela had little interest in what he sketched. Yuuichirou demanded he mustn’t peek (the only request he gave with despotic adamance), so he obeyed.
But now, he couldn’t deny himself evidence.
He cracked open the little tomb, and enthralling dismay consumed him unlike any sensation he’d ever known.
It slithered through the cracks of his vampirism and burned the back of his eyes with tears that’d never fall, filled his lungs with an agony posing as air.
The darkest avenues in his mind, in which he planned the demise of Yuuichirou’s love, collapsed like a dying star and tore him apart with equal violence.
No matter what page he landed—the first, third, nineteenth—he stared at himself. Yuuichirou captured his likeness with such loving nuance, and he let no subtlety escape his watchful eye: his sidelong glances, the nights he gazed upon the moon, and even perspective shots of his strolls through the palace.
Beneath each picture lay a story. Phrases Mikaela used most. His blood consumption preferences. How it felt to love him unconditionally. Each development to his budding infatuation. A letter to himself of what to do should he ever escape his mind.
Remnants of torn out pages revealed the hints of an older love his mother destroyed.
He left the closet numb and shaking. The sketchbook hid under his arm.
It killed him. It breathed life into his wretched existence.
It hurt. It brought a joy indescribable.
But none of that mattered.
Fingers inches from the door, a soft voice beckoned his return.
“Wait…”
No.
He’d break the moment their gazes met.
“Don’t go…” squeezed his dying heart.
He would never be safe.
Not as Queen Hiragi’s descendant.
Not when his loveliness could rouse the tormenting affections of the dead.
Clenching his teeth, he stormed to Yuuichirou’s side and threw the sketchbook before his feet. It opened to one of their many nights resting on the balcony, prattling on about the stars above them.
Whether sorrow or relief made his eyes so luminous, he didn’t know.
“Why didn’t you tell them!?”
His voice cracked, and Yuuichirou’s wrist discolored from his grasp.
“I am not, nor will I ever be, a valuable replacement for you! What makes you think—”
“I love you.”
His eyes are teasing, unbearable, and all the vexation consuming Mikaela like fire smolders into sorrow. He dropped to one knee, meeting his unspoken admirer at eye level.
Being a vampire barred him from the mutuality of the curse, but that wouldn't save the person who deserved to live most.
“I didn’t want you to go away… I couldn’t tell anyone… not when they’d—”
The moment more flower petals ruptured onto his pillow, Mikaela exploded off the floor to his assistance. He guided Yuuichirou’s limp arms around his neck and returned him upright.
Want throbbed in the pit of Mikaela’s heart, hopeful and yearning, and his mind filled with nothing but proud lips accepting his kisses.
Instead of satiating both his and Yuuichirou’s desires, he asked:
“How is loving me worth the rest of your life…?”
“What else should I do with it?”
A response without hesitation, cradled by an understated laugh, was all Mikaela needed to hold him and nuzzle against his scent. His heartbeat enthralled him, more so for the assertion of his life than any sweet promise of blood.
“Yuu…”
He allowed himself one last glance in the eyes of a Yuuichirou who loved him, relished in the power he had to give him such ecstasy, and drove the needle into his neck.
"I'm sorry."
He couldn’t push him away. He was too weak. To scream took all the strength he possessed.
As he begged for him to stop, promised he'd never forgive him, Mikaela returned to his embrace.
Anything not to see the pain he inflicted.
Nails dragged into his back, and the more Yuuichirou sobbed, the less the flowers deep within his lungs choked his cries.
His fists lacked the force to bruise him, but his sorry attempts at kneeing him, his shoving, none of it damaged Mikaela like the life they’d never have.
“I’m not letting everyone lose you—”
“I don’t care!”
“When you wake up, you’ll feel better. All of this will feel like a dream.”
“I don’t want that! I want to spend my last day here! With you!”
“No!”
He held him until the outbursts strained his throat raw, until his wails dissolved into mere whimpers. When he finally fell limp in his arms, Mikaela tucked him back in.
The moment he turned, however, a hand grabbed a fistful of his overcoat.
“Pr… promise me.”
Mikaela swallowed. Undoubtedly, the serum coursing through of veins should have brought him into a deep slumber, but through sheer willpower, Yuuichirou clung to him like a child.
“Don’t… tell anyone it was you. Tell them you killed someone else…”
“What does it matter!?” Mikaela cried, aching to escape but tethered to Yuuichirou’s voice. “You won’t even remember who I am!”
“I don’t care… I want you by my side.”
“That doesn’t make any sense! They’ll know it was me when you—”
“Promise!”
Yuuichirou’s shortened breaths were the only sound in the room. Slowly, his sickly pallor transformed into the lovely glow Mikaela always knew.
And that, he thought, erased all the doubt in his choice.
Without a word, he dried Yuuichirou’s tears with the corner of his sheets.
As though he blew out a candle, a kiss on the forehead extinguished the last of his consciousness.
⁑⁑
“It’s getting chilly, Yuu. Come, we’re returning home.” Ashera commented for the fourth time.
The ‘light draft’ his master insisted upon nipped his elongated ears, all the while Yuuichirou switched the blue in his hand for forest green.
“Nah, just a bit longer.”
“Must you always waste your afternoons drawing out here?”
“Why not?”
Ever since he found his old sketchbook as smoldering remains in the fireplace, he endeavored to fill his new one with as many drawings as possible.
Ashera rolled his eyes. “Her Majesty’s sister is waiting—”
“I’ll take the heat from Aunt Shinoa later!” He promised, “It’s so stuffy in…”
Catching his eye before the garden’s lake was a vampire of cherubic beauty.
"… there."
With a lazy somberness, his gaze focused on nothing, and golden locks veiled his eyes. When he returned Yuuichirou’s glance, however, a biting chill colored his expression.
“Good evening, Your Royal Highness.”
“Yeah! You… too…?”
Despite his formal greeting, he departed before Yuuichirou could respond.
Ashera tracked him until his silhouette melded with the shadows.
“Who was that?”
For a moment, a germ of intuition blossomed within Yuuichirou, bringing with it the tiniest prick of sorrow and the awareness of a crushing importance left behind.
It vanished upon his next breath.
“… Dunno. But he doesn’t seem to like me very much,” He laughed, rising from the bench and tucking his sketchbook beneath his arm.
“‘Kay. We can go inside now.”
As he approached the castle with Ashera trailing behind him, he pondered how nice the vampire would look on his canvas.
And a cycle unbeknownst to them began.