Chapter Text
Being a creature of the night made it being attracted to the sun against his nature, yet Keigo couldn’t help but crave to feel its warming rays every morning. The warmth reminded him of old times, times he wasn’t cold yet, times when he was nothing but an ordinary human.
However, he was aware of the dangerous side of his cravings. While the whole dying because of sunlight was nothing but a myth, the shining rays could expose his secret easily. Humans didn’t sparkle like diamonds and hunting was also an activity you shouldn’t do in broad daylight. Still, after each night he stayed outside a little longer to feel the warmth.
On that fateful day, the sun was hidden by some clouds, so there was no need to hurry home for Keigo. He blended into the crowds of people rushing to work or school easily, no one suspecting his true nature.
In the decades since his transformation he had learned to be as unsuspecting as possible, not being seen made his life easier, even when it was against his very own personality. When he was still human, he had enjoyed to stand in the spotlight.
If Keigo was honest, he could dress more unsuspecting. But he liked today’s fashion and not having to buy food or another human needs, made him save a lot of money. Part of his act of being an ordinary human made him work from time to time and he usually spent that money on fashion items.
Also, being handsome made hunting easier, victims literally begged to go with him.
Speaking of victims, Keigo was actually hungry again. He had been out searching for the right victims the whole night, yet everyone had smelled rotten. If the person’s smell was bad, the blood wouldn’t be tasty, too. It wasn’t like Keigo was picky as Sukai always claimed, all he wanted was to have a good meal. Humans also didn’t eat stuff which smell they did not like, did they?
While it was hard to control himself while bring thirsty, it was still manageable. Keigo guessed that he still had another two or three days until he had to drink before going crazy. In all those years he had learnt to be patient. Also, attacking someone in the middle of the crowd was the exact opposite of being unsuspecting.
Moreover, the crowds were especially bad on that day. Keigo barely managed to squeeze himself into the train heading home. A quick check on the news monitors inside the train explained why it was so bad – it was the first day of the academical year which also marked the first work day for new employees.
Because he had taken his time earlier, he was caught in the rush hour at the very moment. It was a nightmare for him on a normal day and being thirsty made everything even worse. He tried to slow down his breathing as much as possible to avoid more smells hitting him and distracted himself with his phone. It worked - until the next stop.
In the middle of the chaos of people getting off and boarding the train, the most delicious smell ever hit the tall vampire and the mass made it impossible to flee from it. The train was too crowded and before Keigo could turn himself into the direction of the doors, they had closed already. To make the matter worse, the source of the smell was pressed against him when the train departed.
It was a black-haired guy wearing a suit who was a little shorter than Keigo. He looked still young, so Keigo assumed he was one of the new employees who started their work life today.
The smell was maddening and the fact that he hadn’t drunk in a long time made the situation nearly unbearable. But they were in the middle of a train during the rush hour. There was no way he could drink without causing a mass panic now.
“Hey sorry for being pressed against you.”, said the deliciously smelling guy suddenly.
His voice was as pleasant as his smell...Keigo thought.
“I really should have taken a train earlier…”, continued his potential victim to talk.
“It’s okay.” Due his thirst and the maddening smell, Keigo’s voice came out like a growl which made the other one wince. He had wanted to answer normally, yet the whole situation drove him nuts. Why did it happen now?, he wondered.
Luckily, the next stop was the one where he had to get off the train and as fast as he could he pushedhimself though the crowd. He had to get away from the smell or else he would attack the human on the spot. Only when he reached his apartment, he slowly started to calm down.
“You are too picky.” As always Sukai had returned earlier than him.
The other vampire didn’t share his desire to enjoy the sun and always returned before dawn. Also, unlike him, Sukai had been able to quench his thirst that night. Even in their barely lit apartment the older one could see that his eyes were blood red.
“You need to drink soon.”
“I know.” Again, his voice came out like a growl. It didn’t happen on propose. He had wanted to drink soon.
“No need to be aggressive like that. Seriously, get some blood. Rob a hospital for fuck’s sake.”
“I can’t… not now.”
“It’s cloudy. You don’t need to worry.” But when Sukai looked at the other’s one face, he realisedthat there was another reason. A reason they had feared. “It happened again, did it?”
The older one just nodded.
Once in a while vampires came across humans that smelled unbelievably deliciously. For most vampires it was nothing but a festive meal, yet a previous encounter had traumatised both vampires.
Actually, it had been three of them until some years ago. For the first decades of his second life Keigo had been alone, yet one day he had met Sukai together with his older brother, Ren.
Before meeting them Keigo had expected to spend the eternity alone. He had met other vampires before, yet none of them made him want to spend time with them. The two brothers were more human and fun to be with, always laughing and playing games, like they were still ordinary young adults, so Keigo had enjoyed their company. Their dynamic was also well balanced, so he expected their bond to last forever.
Yet only the curse of living lasted forever.
One night during a hunt, both Keigo and Ren found someone with that special irresistible smell. The end of their friendship was sealed when it turned out to be the same human, a boy named Takumi.
At first, they wanted to honour their friendship and decided to play a game instead; whoever made Takumi fall for him, would get his blood. Sukai, the only one unaffected, served as a supervisor, so that no one could pull any dirty tricks.
However, what they did not expect was that they both felt in love to the human. Eventually, it wasn’t a competition for his blood anymore, it was one for his heart. Yet his smell was still maddening and unlike their lives Takumi’s one was limited. Both vampires started to fight on a daily basis. Their fight ranged from small things like who didn’t put away something to whether they should turn the human into one of their kind and let him live forever.
Even though he was just had the side lines, everything had been especially traumatising for Sukai. For a long time, it had been him and Ren against the world and their close bond hadn’t changed when they’ve met Keigo. But back then he wasn’t able to reach his brother anymore, everything was about Takumi. Keigo was also no help because he was equally obsessed with the human.
Then, one day, Ren and Takumi had disappeared without a trace. The night before the fights were the worst. It wasn’t just Keigo and Ren fighting anymore, Sukai had joined, too, and threated to kill the human. Before they started to kill each other, they had separated for the night, agreeing only on the fact that no one would go the see the pink haired human that night.
The next morning, Ren didn’t return home and when Keigo wanted to visit Takumi the next night, he had also disappeared. No one knew where had gone and Ren also didn’t leave any hints about his whereabout. Since that day, Sukai hadn’t smiled.
“What are you waiting for? Kill him.”
“I couldn’t. It was in the middle of the train.”
“Why are you using those? Especially when you are hungry? We don’t need them.”
The younger one was right. Their kind didn’t need trains because they could reach the same speed level on their own, but for the sake of appearing human Keigo liked to use them. When he was still human, trains didn’t exist yet, so, he enjoyed witnessing things he would have never able to experience if his life had gone the normal way. “It’s less suspicious.”
“If you returned earlier, you wouldn’t need to worry about being seen.”
He wanted to make a comment back, but in the last moment he stopped himself. The comment would have involved Ren and for their own sakes they tried to avoid talking about him. The memories still hurt too much.
“I will get him tonight. I know where his station is.”
Until the evening Keigo’s resolve was strong. He wanted to prevent another catastrophe, so in the evening he went to the station where the human had boarded the train in the morning. The windows of a café at the station gave him a good view of the exit, so he sat down near them acted like he was a student studying for his classes. No one noticed that in reality he was studying the people leaving the station the whole time and that his books were outdated.
At some point during his long life, Keigo had studied, yet writing all those exams were too bothersome, so he usually put up a different façade.
It was near closing time of the café when his meal finally appeared. Secretly, he started to follow his victim, hoping for coming across a more hidden place. Despite the alluring smell, this time the smell of alcohol radiated from the human and he wasn’t walking straight, Keigo guessed that after work there had been a party for the new employees which also explained why the human returned so late.
The vampire didn’t like when his victims had alcohol in their blood. It made the blood taste weirdly and it had some effects on him, too. In the early days after his transformation, he had enjoyed that from time to time, but it made him too careless about being discovered, something he preferred to avoid now. Yet there was still that smell...
Eventually, his victim reached his home while Keigo was still debating whether he should drink from him besides the expected side effects. Because he didn’t know whether the other one was living alone, the vampire hid himself at the opposite side of the street and watched the house. After a few moments, there was a new light to be seen and the human appeared at a window, shutting the curtains. Using his inhuman powers, Keigo moved to a balcony which he assumed to belong to the apartment and waited for his victim to go to bed. It was easier to kill humans in their sleep because they didn’t struggle.
He could easily hear what’s going on inside, his dinner was quite loud. He wondered when the neighbours would start to complain, yet only the human inside the apartment made a noise. Maybe everyone got used to him already, the vampire assumed.
Suddenly, the human started to sing. While some notes were off, his voice was pleasant. It radiated warmth and Keigo had to admit that he liked what he heard.
Keigo had always enjoyed music, already in his life as a human. Because of this music bars were one of his favourite hunting grounds. They’ve made him be able to combine two pleasures with each other. Yet he had never heard the human’s voice in one of them. It was a shame that he didn’t share that voice with a bigger audience, Keigo thought.
When his meal finally decided to go to sleep, Keigo slipped into the apartment by opening a half open window. The smell the human radiated was still bewitching, but something made Keigo hesitate. He was already next to the bed and ready to drink, yet he couldn’t bring himself to bite and he had no explanation why.
Was it due the trauma the whole Takumi-incident had caused? No, he had been perfectly fine with killing humans afterwards.
Maybe it was the alcohol smell which also accompanied his victim, he guessed.
His thirst screamed at him to drink, yet he was paralysed. He just kept starring at the peacefully sleeping figure next to him.
At one point the whole situation became unbearable for the vampire, but instead of finally drinking his blood, Keigo fled the apartment. Aimlessly he ran through the streets until he bumped into someone.
“Pay attention!” were that human’s last words before the vampire sank his teeth into him. The streets were deserted and his thirst was so strong that he didn’t care about the taste anymore. He needed the blood.
Once the human was drained of his blood, Keigo felt better and worse at the same time. Better because his thirst was finally quenched, worse because the whole situation with the black-haired human confused him. Save Takumi, Keigo had never hesitated to kill a human and after the incident he had sworn to himself never do that again. Yet it had happened again and he didn’t know why.
Until dawn Keigo continued to walk aimlessly through the streets. He didn’t want to admit to Sukai that the human was still alive. He was ashamed of himself that he hadn’t been able to kill that nameless human. The whole thing was beyond frustrating.
In the end he returned home before the human world started into the day fully. As expected Sukai was already home, watching some videos on the internet.
“Took you long enough. At least you finally drank. Was his blood as good as his smell?”
Unlike him and his brother, Sukai had never met an irresistibly smelling human yet.
The older one still wasn’t able to admit the truth, so he just nodded.
“I thought you would be more excited about this and show some of your antics again.”
For a second, Keigo feared that Sukai had seen through his lie. “Spending time with you made my face freeze, too. Look how difficult it is to make a grimace.” He put up his best weird face, but Sukai’s pokerface stayed. Before Ren had left, those faces always had made the youngest one laugh, but nowadays a shoulder shrug was the best reaction he could expect.
“I’m glad to know that the problem is being taken care off. Thirsty you is even more annoying than the normal one.”
“But you like me~ otherwise you wouldn’t be still here.”
Sometimes Keigo indeed wondered why Sukai had stayed with him after the incident. He assumed it was because Sukai never had been truly alone in his life. He seemed to be like a loner who kept himself at the side lines of things, yet he was never alone. While he was different from Ren, Keigo had hoped to become like an older brother to him.
The older vampire went over to him and hugged him. While Sukai didn’t comment on it, he also didn’t struggle against him. “Don’t worry. I won’t leave you.”
No matter how the situation with the human would turn out, Keigo was determinate to keep that promise.