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Blood and Satin Suitcases; Cracked Stone and Rain
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There had to have been some reason... (now drowned out by the eerie, sticky-sweet fog of this place, or washed away by the storm she’d battled her way through)... for Nene Yashiro to have set out on the journey that brought her here. To this crooked hotel with a graveyard sprawling around it, full of creaking velvety corridors and a single room she must, must, must not open. There were cracked stone graves carved with staring eyes, here, that blinked sometimes, and statues that seemed to shift whenever Nene wasn’t watching them, and a whispering wrongness just at the edge of her mind all the time. But there must have been some reason she’d fought through the storm to reach this hotel, too, where creatures that used to be human gathered, knowing they could never leave.
If there was someone Nene loved here, maybe trapped in the hotel the same way she might be, now, she couldn’t remember their face. If there was something she had to do — or be — or shatter apart once and for all — of course she couldn’t know it.
Nene did know that her feet ached, after wandering around the hotel for so long. She knew something about the flickery candlelight on these dusk-soft walls made her dizzy. She knew her bag was full of dresses and trinkets she didn’t recognize, and the inside of the suitcase itself was lined with satin, like somebody’s fancy coffin. A vampire had brought Nene supper just a little while ago, actually. Maybe, when he was finished talking with her a while, the vampire manager of this hotel might go and rest in a coffin just like that. It felt like it would be impolite to ask him. He’d gone out of his way to bring her food, after all, and he brought along something for himself to drink without immediately tearing her open for her blood.
The vampire held his cup casually, letting the heavy red liquid inside glow ruby-deep and viscous in the candlelight. Maybe he thought it was strange that Nene didn’t question him drinking someone else’s blood so close to her — a living human’s blood, maybe? Was there anything else this could be? Maybe he was testing the waters with her, sort of, trying to understand what she’d think of him right from the start of things. This was a Ghost Hotel, in the end, and even if the vampire manager had been human once upon a time he probably didn’t remember enough about it to spit the blood back out into his hand. He belonged to this place, and he wore his fangs easily, like he knew exactly what he was. Like he hoped Nene didn’t mind a laughing kind of horror story.
It was surprisingly easy for Nene to smile back, when the vampire manager grinned at her. He seemed so happy to hear about her adventures. So happy to hear she’d had a little fun, exploring his hotel. The vampire manager poured her some tea, and gossiped about his coworkers a bit, and told her which entertaining activity rooms he recommended she visit the next day, or the next century, or whenever suited her.
Nene told the vampire manager she’d be leaving in the morning, sir, and he reminded her she could call him “Hanako,” if she wanted. They could be on friendly terms, you know — she‘d let him in when he asked, without any hesitation, and she was such a beloved guest. He would be sad to see her go, in the morning, if he didn’t drain all her blood first.
“Thank you for the tea, then, um. Hanako-kun,” Nene tried, and the vampire manager leaned back in his chair, firelight casting oily shadows over him and catching against his eyes, against the buttons along the front of his suit. He gave her such a bright, warm “You’re very welcome, Yashiro-san!” that for a second she almost would have believed he had a beating heart. For a second she almost believed he might have been drinking some kind of thick fruit juice, after all, or maybe a strange, expensive wine.
Nene probably should have been afraid, when the vampire manager smoothed her hair off her shoulder, leaning in, telling her she should stay with him forever. But she wasn’t. She listened to the ticking of a huge grandfather clock in the corner of her room, and the rattling thrum of rain on her window, and let this vampire... let Hanako-kun... whisper an entreaty against her neck. He was talking like he knew her already, although of course that was impossible.
No — maybe it was like Hanako-kun half-remembered her, or remembered somebody like her? Like he wanted to know her? It seemed as if the vampire manager was going to bite Nene’s throat, but Hanako-kun pulled back at the very last second.
“We just met,” he reminded her. “You don’t know I only take a little blood from people when I drink. You aren’t gonna try and stop me?”
Nene knew she should generally be opposed to having any of her blood drained, even here, in a Ghost Hotel, even knowing she might never make it past the front gates and back to whatever she left behind. She held Hanako-kun’s gold-red eyes, blood and coins, red flowers and honey, and asked him right back, “Were you going to kill me? Really? Right after you said you didn’t want me to leave?”
Hanako-kun laughed, then, bending over the armrest of Nene’s chair, bracing himself against her shoulder for support. His hand was so cold, colder than the rain. When he wasn’t making an effort to smile and chat and float around between jobs at the hotel, there was something unnervingly still about the vampire manager, not needing to blink, not needing to breathe. But when he laughed, it sounded so honest Nene found herself snickering a little, too. He didn’t stop her when she draped her hair back over her shoulder. Over her neck.
“I wasn’t planning to kill you,” Hanako-kun said. “Definitely not. Maybe I’ll make you the second vampire manager by my side... some other night, if you let me in again when I ask... but kill you? No.”
Nene thought the vampire manager wanted to tell her that he’d never actually killed anyone before — that he was one of those noble vampires, an undead creature she didn’t need to fear. But he didn’t say anything like that. Maybe he knew it would’ve been an outright lie.
Hanako-kun flopped back into his own seat, instead, and he finished off his cup in one huge gulp. He closed his eyes, while he drank, that time. Nene looked at the flowers he’d brought her, and nibbled at the food he chose, and wondered what being bitten by a vampire felt like. Was this place changing her, already? How was she so calm, so willing to play along with the hotel’s new games? She drank hot chocolate with purple and green marshmallows floating around inside and the whipped cream dyed orange. She ate fruit grown in subterranean caverns, beneath the crypts surrounding the hotel; fruit that had never tasted sunlight.
“Tomorrow, there’s going to be a gingerbread house competition, for staff and guests alike,” Hanako-kun told her, before he left. Back to his own rooms, and his maybe-coffin, possibly with a book propped up over the edge and already opened to the place where he’d left off. “You’re welcome to attend. Please don’t leave us.”
Nene remembered the mummy bandages choking that tree in the hotel’s entranceway, then. Was it close to Christmas? She nodded, slowly. Maybe she could stay just one more day. Even once the storm died down, and she saw what all the gravestones looked like under a woozy, spectral sun.
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Mildewed Photos and Holiday Lights; Grave Dirt and Candy
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It took a few days of competing in gingerbread house contests... her hands all sticky with frosting, stained purple from the goo seeping off some surprisingly popular gummy spider candies... and getting to know the keepers of that Ghost Hotel, but soon enough Nene Yashiro honestly forgot why she’d wanted to leave. Looking back on that feeling of desperation, on that storm, on her suitcase knocking against her legs as she walked, felt sort of like trying to remember what her life had been like before coming here. Her thoughts had become soft around the edges, worn away like the names on some of the oldest gravestones in Hanako-kun’s cemetery. So many faceless monuments, sprouted up at the foot of the hotel like a lopsided garden.
Hanako-kun himself still remembered a ton of those worn-away names, though, it turned out. He cleaned the graves himself, and held Nene by the arm, strolling between stone angels with splintered faces, between gargoyles that breathed and so many of the waiting dead. Hanako-kun told her stories about some of the creatures those graves belonged to... zombies that would wake up when spring came again, like perennial flowers, and that new hire, Sousuke Mitsuba, who Kou-kun the werewolf chef liked to chase around. Mitsuba-kun the mummy was busy wandering outside his grave, mind you, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t have one waiting if he wanted it. Giving your employees a place to rest their rattling bones was only polite.
Hanako-kun could laugh at himself, too. It was one of the things that made Nene wonder about him, honestly. Hanako-kun could drape his tattered cloak over his eyes and dissolve into dusty-smelling shadows, and he carried a little flask of somebody’s blood tucked close to his heart as if trying to keep himself warm... but he also asked Nene questions about how her day had gone nearly every night. Did she have fun, again? Did she want to play cards with him? Why was she looking at him so funny — he didn’t have something weird on his face, or anything, did he?
Hanako-kun had just been working in the graveyard, so that was probably it. Maybe Nene could tell him where he should scrub at his cheek, right? Mirrors were useless to vampires, after all. Such a pain.
Nene told Hanako-kun about how Kou-kun and Mitsuba-kun had tried to teach her to waltz in time for the Holiday Ball the hotel threw every year, and he danced with her under a ragged moon. For practice. She stepped just all over his toes, and Hanako-kun told her he’d been a way worse dancer when he first became a creature of the hotel. When he’d first shown up here, bleeding and wild-eyed, muttering things that didn’t make any sense to him looking back on it anymore. His first memories as a vampire had involved hunger for his own blood, coloring the air all around him sharp and human. Wasn’t that funny?
Nene mostly thought it was sad. She let Hanako-kun spin her around and around, light on his feet, now, even if he’d tripped over them before. She let him dip her down, chirping a cheerful “Ta-da!” and when she noticed the grave all twined around with Christmas ornaments he told her, yeah, he’d hung those there himself. He didn’t seem to want to linger by the decorated grave too long.
Nene didn’t ask Hanako-kun if it was his own grave all hanging with sparkling lights, just then, though she wanted to. Maybe she’d spent so long talking to Hanako-kun, she didn’t want to think about how being a vampire had to mean he remembered what it was like to die and wake up again. Maybe she didn’t want him to go crawling back under the dirt, calling, “Goodnight, my dear guest!” like those zombies must have done, when a particular season came around. It was fun, cooking with Kou-kun and helping out the beautiful fairy housekeeper Aoi-chan, but the longer she stayed at the Ghost Hotel the more Nene counted on Hanako-kun dropping by her room to say hi. Things got almost lonely, when he wasn’t around. Nene was growing accustomed to that slight tangy smell of blood and grave dirt that followed behind him wherever he went.
Maybe the decorated grave was Hanako-kun’s own, or... maybe... it belonged to the girl some people said he’d killed, once, when he took too much of her blood on accident. It was a rumor the spider at the front desk had told Nene, and that she knew people murmured about around the hotel sometimes whether or not it was true. It made sense that Hanako-kun would leave tributes, for someone like that. Maybe he brought flowers there in the spring, too, and strings of seashells when summer came.
But imagining Hanako-kun wanting too much of somebody’s blood — imagining him pulling his face back, mouth dripping red, and whispering that girl’s name even suspecting in his dead-cold heart what he’d done... oh, that was such a strange thought. Nene imagined Hanako-kun shaking this drained girl’s shoulder, and telling himself “No, no, no, please no,” and she became a little unsteady on her feet. She told herself it had been an accident, if it had ever happened at all. She told herself Hanako-kun seemed fine, from night to night, when she played games with him and read aloud to him while he rested his head in his folded arms, so still he might have been truly, completelydead. Hanako-kun didn’t seem to be tearing himself apart inside... but then, everybody knew the vampire manager could keep his secrets well.
Nene was thinking about that decorated grave the first time she pulled her hair back from her neck herself, and told Hanako-kun he could drink a little of her blood, if he needed to. If he was hungry. They had been stranded a little ways into the brambly forest during a hotel-wide scavenger hunt, just then, to be honest with you. Hanako-kun and Nene had been trying to hunt down some clue or another, and they’d wandered far enough to get a little lost. Hanako-kun did know these woods, he promised her, but they were a skittering, uncertain place at night. Stick close, okay? He’d protect her.
They had been walking for a while, truth be told, with Hanako-kun occasionally crouching down to scribble himself makeshift maps in the dirt, when Nene offered him her blood. It had been longer than usual since she’d seen him drink from that flask of his, see — so she thought probably it was empty. Hanako-kun’s skin was getting greyer, less human, and his movements were getting eerier, and he probably wouldn’t have liked Nene to say it but there were bruised dark circles forming under his eyes. But of course Nene thought about the dead girl even as she made her offer... the girl who Hanako-kun might have carried to her grave, cradled in his arms. Had he cried for her? She thought probably he had. Could it ever happen again?
Hanako-kun had blinked up at Nene, then, path-charting stick held loose in his hand, that cloak of his trailing in the dirt. He hadn’t seemed to know what to say, but when she crouched down next to him and squeezed his arm — “It’s okay, Hanako-kun. I chose you as my partner for the scavenger hunt, and next week I’m gonna try not to break your feet at the Holiday Ball. We’re friends, right? I trust you,” — Hanako-kun nodded. He took only a little, little blood, then. Only enough to learn the taste, and get a tiny bit of life back into his eyes. Maybe he would’ve apologized after he drank, if he’d been a bit more human. But instead he just thanked Nene, smiling with his mouth gone red and smeary with her blood.
Nene smiled back at him. She heaved Hanako-kun up to his feet, and told him they had better keep walking. They found their way out of the woods before anything too strange happened, of course, and the twin pinprick scars on Nene’s neck didn’t hurt, exactly. They felt like a part of her skin had become numb and cold, forever, cold like a vampire’s hands.
It was hard to know how much time passed, outside of the shifting seasons and the arrival of new guests. Sometimes Nene met the ghost that looked unnaturally like Hanako-kun his own self, who told her she could still escape, if she wanted to. She could go home — she could do whatever felt right, even if that meant opening up the one door deep in the guts of the hotel that no one should be able to open. Even if that meant defying the hotel itself, as it wrapped its ornate luxurious halls around her. As it shifted in its cemetery-ground, all hazy candlelight and drinking tea late at night, while the vampire next to her showed her mildew-sticky old photo albums he hadn’t expected her to be interested in until all of a sudden she was. The hotel, before she got there, and Hanako-kun himself, unchanging, posing with the staff that had become both of their friends. Sometimes Nene wondered if any of the pictures featured the poor girl Hanako-kun might have accidentally drained. If he wanted to talk about it. If he skipped those pages, sneakily, and she didn’t even know.
“We’ve commissioned Mitsuba to put together this year’s photo album,” Hanako-kun said. “When his finger bones aren’t falling apart, he’s actually pretty good at this kinda stuff! You’ll be in some pictures with me, right?”
Nene would. And she would offer the vampire manager her neck again, sometime, she knew, whatever that could mean. She would trust that he didn’t want to hurt her. She would trust that the Ghost Hotel meant well for the both of them, and that even that awkward dancer, that human Hanako-kun who had come here long ago, would agree. He wouldn’t be terrified, and struggling to leave, and begging her not to let him take her blood. Nothing like that.
That ghost Tsukasa said Nene could still leave, if she put her mind to it, but why would she want to do a thing like that?
By the time winter passed, Nene would belong here just like the vampire manager and all those room keys behind the desk.