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Becoming a vampire came with a lot of perks. Immortality, immunity to all illnesses, super strength and in Seri’s case, clarity. Seeing the world for what it actually is, and how it actually works. The rules were quite simple to understand, if you didn’t let love blindside you. To become a vampire, a human simply had to fall in love with one. There was never any indication that the vampire would reciprocate that love. It was still a bargain trade, immortality for heartbreak.
And heartbreak wasn’t the only thing her sire had left her with. Being a blonde-haired teen with golden eyes in a school uniform that she hid underneath an oversized sweater might have made her an easy target, with a naiveness that vampires could smell from a distance, but that same “charm” that had made her an easy prey, had made her an exceptionally good hunter.
Nothing really changed on the outside, vampire or human, men still surrounded her like a swarm everywhere she went. It was only after being turned into a vampire, that she realized, none of them had ever considered her human in the first place. All they saw was a category, a series of tags surrounding her, the perpetual high school fantasy in flesh. But now she had the upper hand.
At the beginning it was fascinating, how easy it was to trick men with a couple of smiles and premade sentences. How quicky they’d assume they’d get to fuck her with little to no indication from her. How hastily they’d let their guard down around her, working on an angle to take advantage of her without even realizing she got them right where she wanted them.
With time that fascination grew into disgust and boredom. It wasn’t a fun game anymore, but a necessity for blood that kept her in the same type of pattern. Young, old, rich or poor, from businessman to high school students, they all saw her as a one-use doll, and so she began to see them as blood bags. Another decade of dull interactions that numbed her soul for the cost of survival went by without her awareness.
It was in one of those nights that she met him. Her eyes locked in a seemingly presumptuous businessman wearing 1-million-yen suit drifted to the drunk teen whose glasses had fallen right in front of her. She put his glasses on and indulged in easy flirting, offering to take him somewhere and buy him a water, fully expecting for him to suggest somewhere else. But he didn’t. Maybe he really needed that break. She waited patiently on that café for him to make his move. They were there for hours, as he vented about past heartbreaks with a stranger that kept shamelessly flirting. He smiled and blushed, partially because she made him flustered, partially because of the alcohol in his system. She waited for the letdown, when the interest he was feigning for her interest shifted to personal questions about her sex life or the inevitable suggestion to take her home. But as the hours went by his interest sounded more and more real, and the shift never happened.
She put an end to the conversation when noticed the sun was bound to rise soon. Noticing hesitation plastered on his face like he was bravely attempting to gather courage to ask her something she decided to make it easier for him:
“If you’re thinking of inviting me back to your place, you should know my answer is already decided.” She smirked with practiced ease, mimicking the same type of smile she had once fallen for. She leaned slowly making it look like the ribbon she was using had fallen apart accidentally and giving him enough time to notice the purple bra she had strategically revealed, whispering in his ear:
“Yes, Akiyama, I’ll go with you.”
And that was it. Even if he wasn’t planning on being so straightforward, even if she had met someone who had a minimum interest on meeting her, she had just made sure to cloud his intentions to what he wanted deep down. She turned around ready to leave and attack him on the first corner.
But he surprised her. Surprise was an understatement. She was dazed, as he asked her for her phone number. She was perplexed as he took her phone with shaky hands and registered his contact as “Akkun”. He gave it back to her with a small smile and had the nerve to tremble, like he wasn’t the one making her entire world quiver.
Maybe quiver was an exaggeration, there must exist a middle ground between subtle surprise and feeling your life shift in front of your eyes. But she had never been good finding middle grounds. There was a sort of morbid realization when he subtly refused her invite. Like all the decades of numbness had been put on suspicious hold by a superficial sting of rejection. In the midst of waiting for his shift, she forgot to notice the in-between that she had fun for the first time in what felt like an eternity.
She went home that night hungry and confused on with her own choice of letting him go unharmed. When his first text came, she made the decision to see him again. A walk in the park at midnight to see some fireworks. 13 kilometers walked side by side, filled with banter that dangerously evolved into deep conversation. He told her about his dreams, his hobbies and favorite places in town, and she realized dauntingly that she had stopped living when she became immortal. All she did was feed, sleep and go to places when she could find more people to feed from. The conclusion that just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean that something is good for you crawled into her heart without her permission.
The ping of hope she felt on that walk was something she knew she had to exterminate. The naïve echo saying ‘Maybe…with this human” needed to be proven wrong.
So, she’d keep going out with him, to remind herself of the reality and go back to detach from it. He’d cave and realize she was easy, and he didn’t need to try so hard, or he’d keep trying to get to know the real her and leave disappointed when his hopes came empty handed from her void.
But as the months went by a third option she had never considered happened. She fell. She fell into herself, as the flirting attempts fell short, as she thought less about what she had to do to make him fall for her and more about the movies they were watching, and what she thought of them, and the places they were going and what they made her feel and she fell into him, so unfocused on what he might be feeling for her that she began to feel for him. And so she asked him sincerely not to fall for her.
Because she had a friend, the very same thing she judged Nazuna for, and she didn’t want to lose him, and she didn’t want to turn him. In the end he did fall for her, and she ghosted him. It wasn’t his fault, she asked him not to do the very same thing she had already done. But he refused to let go. And she ignored him in plain sight, taking other men to the same places he had taken her in days she knew he’d see. But he didn’t let go.
She ended up getting Nazuna’s little experiment and by consequence Nazuna in this mess. And that’s when she realized she had to kill him. The solution might have sounded ludicrous to someone else. But there was a mess, that she created by breaking all the rules she had first learned when becoming a vampire.
It wasn’t the first time someone had fallen for her. She had turned two humans at some point and left them with the same heartbreak she had once been left with. But turning him was not an option. She couldn’t live knowing she had passed that immortal heartbreak to him. The idea of Akkun wandering around aimlessly into a new life he didn’t choose broke her more than sending him to the grave.
She waited until Yamori was with her in the karaoke room to attack. She could’ve done It sooner, in same corner she had chosen not to attack him the first night they met, but a part of her felt it wouldn’t be right. She didn’t want to carry his memory alone. She didn’t want to grieve alone. Yamori seemed innocent enough. Seeing someone being dilacerated in cold blood in front of him would leave a mark, the memory of Akkun’s murder forever burning in his eyes. Good. Akkun deserved to be remembered, if in no other way, at least on the mind of a good person.
She swinged her claws impetuously seeing him splashed against the wall with his slit throat gushing blood, and eyes devoid of life even before moving. It was not the first time it had happened. In her mind, he had been dead from the moment she fell in love with him. Vampires don’t fall in love, they desert and kill the fallen ones, and since she had, breaking protocol, she’d show him the mercy that hadn’t been shown to her. She’d give him a dark quiet death, something painless and fast with just enough blood to taint her own memory.
Yamori putting himself in the middle had been unexpected. Protecting a human he didn’t even know. Recklessly prolonging a suffering, he had never experienced, making her run after them. Making her say it out loud directly to his face, her plan to kill him. The confused innocence in his voice as he said:
“What do you mean kill?” had hurt her more than any flesh wound could. It didn’t matter, this was her chance to confess, to break his illusion of her, a little mercy before a merciful death.
“Exactly what it sounds like. I was tricking you this whole time – I’m a vampire. Not a human. I look for humans who might fall in love with me so I can turn them into offspring. The reason that has to be people who might fall in love with me is because they can’t become offspring otherwise.”
“Seri-Chan what are you talking ab-”
“You don’t have to get it.” She interrupted him. He didn’t have to learn how her world worked. He would die with all the secrets she had shared with him, he would die and take with him the last part of her heart that was still pumping sentiments. She could go back to being the perfect weapon that she had been before meeting him, and his death would serve as a reminder to never feel again. “You’re gonna die now anywa-”
“No!” Yamori declared like he was worthy of a vote. “I won’t let you kill him. I swear.”
“Fine.” An idea came to her. “Then wanna die first Yamori-kun?” She didn’t wait for a reply before jumping to attack with a smile plastered across her face. The perfect solution for her painful dilemma. Yamori alone without Nazuna was the miracle she had failed to notice. She would kill him, in the same fashion she intended to kill Akkun after. Two bloody corpses sealing 3 death sentences.
She knew Nazuna well enough to comprehend, touching Yamori would mean her own demise. Her eyes glistened with delight; it would finally be over. Yamori’s life was a small price to pay for her own freedom. She never cared much about the concept of afterlife, but it brought her solace in this moment knowing her and Akkun would go to different places that they had never stepped foot together.
Her plan was ruined by the same key piece that would make it work.
“Did you really think I would leave you alone with Ko-Kun?”
Fucking Nazuna jumping on her from the shadows and torturing her with questions she didn’t want to answer. ‘Why did you decide to kill for once? What’s special about Mr. Glasses?’
“It’s not Seri-Chan’s fault. I was never supposed to fall in love. Because we’re friends.”
The utter humiliation of having her soon to be murder victim intervene for her rescue. Fucking Mr. Glasses making her admit she had broken the rules she gave Nazuna shit for breaking.
“I never intended to turn Akkun into offspring and just hung out with him sometimes.”
Fucking Yamori questioning why she’d break the rules, when he was breaking rules himself.
“I got tired of all that. I got bored. But who could I possibly talk about that?” What even was “that”? The looks, the comments, the smiles she forced herself to retribute? How could she admit she was in love with him after trying to kill him for that very same reason? “That I’m tired of romance be a part of every human interaction I have? But I don’t know how to communicate like an ordinary friend.”
There was a third option she hadn’t even considered, so selfishly determined to forget that Akkun’s world didn’t revolve around her.
“Akkun let’s stop seeing each other. Let’s just say nothing ever happened Akkun. Like I said earlier, I’m actually a vampire. Nazuna and Yamori-Kun are doing the whole vampire-human friend thing but that’s a total exception. It’s not normally allowed. For us vampires a friendship with humans just doesn’t work. So, I’m sorry. After today, it’s goodbye…”
Once again Akkun’s effect stunned her. Eyes that had been dry for what felt like a millennium, now shed a stream of tears that she couldn’t barricade. She felt her knees going weak as the sobbing got progressively worst. How pathetic, how utterly human of her. Even Akkun looked shocked, from what she could tell through the blur that was her eyesight.
“I don’t want to quit being friends.” She said between sobs, with Akkun letting himself fall to hug her, surprise dripping from his voice as he tried to soothe her. “It was really fun…” His hands on her arms just made her more erratic. She could feel his warm. She fucking loved him. She wasn’t a living doll devoid of emotions, and all the emotions she tried to suppress had turned violently against her: holy shit; she almost killed him. Grief squeezed her heart for a person who was holding her. Ridicule, pathetic and stupid. But fuck did it hurt to think she was loosing him.
“It was?? I had fun too. But I fell in love.” She did too. But it wasn’t something she was ready to admit to someone who was going to become a stranger whose laugh she could recognize anywhere.
“To tell you the truth I was prepared to get rejected properly. But I can’t. I don’t want to be apart from you. Will you make me into your offspring?”
“You sure?” She asked as casually as she mustered, willing the tears to stop. That question wasn’t something she ever expected to hear. She was the kind of girl you see in wet dreams, dreams that you wake up from, and only think about with perverted intentions, until you get bored and never think of again. She was an enticing mirage that lost interest as you got closer. Not the type of person someone would give up sunsets and sunrises for. Not a reason to trade every clear blue sky, and every daylight activity for the mere reward of an eternity in the shadows by her side.
As he repeated his request, she asked herself if she wasn’t the one trapped in a fantasy. And she couldn’t help but wonder how long it would last before breaking. Turning him into a vampire was a happy moment that she celebrated cautiously wondering how long until this human threw her away the same way her sire had.
13 months had passed since he had been turned into a vampire. As he filled the rooftop of their apartment with daisies, Seri’s favorite flower, he reminisced on how they met. A year had passed by in the blink of an eye. He supposed a year should feel like a blink of an eye when you’re immortal, but god it simultaneously felt he had lived an entire lifetime. How could time pass so fast in the midst of so many things?
He could still remember how fucking beautiful she had looked with his glasses on. Love at first sight didn’t exist, and god knows he was trying to stay away from any sort of romance, but if it did, it would be what he had felt the first moment he laid eyes on her.
And yet there was something entirely different from that first impression, and those first months. She had been a beacon of light, an Incandescent hope that shimmered till his eyes hurt. A golden treasure that he was lucky enough to presence.
After fighting with everything he had to not fall in love again, still carrying internal damage from his first love, he failed miserably against the glimpses of Seri she would carefully reveal on calculated accident.
But those glimpses were nothing compared to the person he had built a life with. She thought revealing she was a vampire would make him the image he had of her break into a million pieces. But the only thing it did was put into perspective a lot of the things she had shared.
Death scared him far more than immortality ever could. The same jealousy that had turned his first relationship sour had transformed into fear. The only thing he had cared about was the feeling of love. Nothing had been easier than to fall in love with someone who had already fallen in love with him. It felt addicting to be loved by her, and the thought of losing that made him go crazy. Love bombing was a double-edged sword, and turns the person being bombed into a minefield, ready to blow at the minimal change. Every conversation was thought thinking on how to keep her attention on him, how to make sure she wouldn’t leave, and just a smile of hers directed to someone else would be enough reason for a panic attack.
With Seri, he just wanted to make sure she was okay. He didn’t care where he ranked in her life, as long as he was part of it. He wasn’t even sure if she loved him, but it didn’t matter, because he loved her. More than he had ever been aware someone could love someone else. And being loved was no longer a priority. Keeping her safe was.
Which was stupid in retrospect, vampire fodder worried about the safety of the immortal that initially saw him as food. It was silly all things considered, how he still felt the same way. He had been lucky enough to fall for her, and luckier that she had fallen for him too. Not that she admitted it easily.
It was confusing at first, how she promptly agreed on turning him into a vampire, knowing she was in love with him after saying she was tired of interactions surrounding romance. It was heartbreaking in the end, when he finally understood she didn’t have a problem with romance but a fucked-up conception of it in the first place.
Slowly falling into a routine, an arc of lovers, without ever calling It by what it really was, afraid to ruin it. Unlearning that every act of kindness is just a emotional chloroform, a clever attempt to make her let her guard down so people can take advantage of fragility. Realizing that a compliment to her dress could just be a compliment to her beautiful dress, and not a contract with strings attached that she forced herself to sign. He noticed some changes, as she slowly opened up, but he could ever really comprehend what he had done for her, not completely.
She thought about that as she climbed the stairs to the roof where he had asked her to meet, and was greeted by 13 thousand daisies covering every little surface except for an open trail leading to a pile of blue blankets creating a fluffy wave one could lay in.
The way his eyes shimmered and he his mouth flew open when he saw her, in a simple puffy light brown dress. A dress she had gotten specifically for this date, simply because she thought it was pretty, and it was on his favorite color. Only for a moment did she wonder if he’d be disappointed with the lack of cleavage in the dress. A silly concern she was sure no one else ever had. Not at this point in a relationship.
Romance still had a twisted perception on her brain, that he had been slowly detangling. She knew no one would wonder if when they didn’t show skin, whether their soul became too exposed. Others didn’t fear that once their soul was exposed, there would be nothing distracting the person who they cared about, the person that had been tricked into loving them, from the disgusting interior that they hid underneath a veil of inducing lust. But she did.
Romance had a twisted perception on her brain but not on her boyfriend’s eyes. That’s what she told herself buying the dress regardless of what her brain was saying. That’s what she remembered when she saw him in awe. That’s when she realized her definition of romance didn’t matter. She wasn’t being romanced for mysterious disappointments; she was being loved. She was loved. And it didn’t matter what she was dressed in, because it his eyes a dress wasn’t made to showcase a mere detail of her, a dress was nothing but a dress, a piece of cloth that only became beautiful cause she was the one wearing it.
Stargazing in their town wasn’t simply gazing at stars. Humans didn’t appreciate the Tokyo night sky enough. If they had ever really looked at it, they wouldn’t never go indoors during the night again. Or maybe there was something in the vampiric nature that had yet to be discovered that made it seem so alive. All she knew was that as a human the stars that twinkled brightly in the sky only held her attention for a couple of minutes every other night. The same could be said for every other vampire she met before turning, before meeting their sire and been told to look up.
And the suddenly the sky wasn’t the sky anymore, it had become the world's biggest canvas, that stars turned into their ballroom every night, proudly sparkling in choreographed extravagance. As she laid on his lap, she didn’t wonder how she looked through his eyes in that particular moment. She didn’t wonder if the angle made her look attractive, and she didn’t wonder if the hands playing with her hair wouldn’t prefer to be playing somewhere else. The grounding atmosphere born from bona fide love granted her enough lazed freedom to wonder if the stars had absorbed their life force when they had died. That was the only explanation she could find as to why they whirled so lively.
It was a fair trade in her opinion. The part of you that dies when you’re no longer human, for an immortal existence under a twirl of lavish dancing luminaries shared with the person she loved and loved her back. A wave of comfortable sleepiness took over and she let herself fall asleep in the only arms she never doubted would be there when she next woke up next. In that moment she wasn’t a disposable doll, an innocent human or a treacherous vampire.
In Akkun’s arms she was simply loved.