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When Re:vale had announced that they were disbanding after Ban-san’s accident, Sunohara Momose had been unable to accept it. It would have been one thing if Yuki-san and Ban-san simply hadn’t wanted to continue as singers anymore. If that were the case, it would have devastated Momo, but he still would have accepted it. But for things to end like this—
Obviously Ban-san’s accident hadn’t been a real accident. Yuki-san and Ban-san were smart, so they had probably noticed it too, if it had even been staged as an accident in front of them. Nobody else had been there; when Ban-san had called Momo up with the rest of the part-timers who worked for Re:vale, his voice had been shaking as he’d explained that there had been a car accident, a hit-and-run, that a producer by the name of Kujo Takamasa had accidentally hit them with his car, and that though they were both still alive, Ban-san had sustained a facial injury and Yuki-san had sustained severe mental trauma and that they would be announcing Re:vale’s disbandment on social media within the next few days. Momo had managed to get his hands on a few recent photographs of Ban-san, and the facial injury really was real, but it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough to make Re:vale quit. It wasn’t enough for Ban-san’s voice to shake that badly, for Yuki-san to completely vanish from the public eye. It wasn’t enough. Someone had done this to them, and that someone had to pay.
But first Momo had to find out that someone’s identity. If Ban-san had been asking him to take care of the person who had hurt him and Yuki-san that day it meant that Kujo Takamasa really was Momo’s enemy, but Ban-san had never asked Momo to do anything like that before. He hadn’t even seemed to think it was an option, which was unfortunate; Momo’s friend from college, Ryo, had people going after others for him all the time, and Momo had been a little envious of their devotion to him. He’d wanted to devote himself to Re:vale like that, but he’d never gotten the chance.
Never until now, that was. He would visit them, and figure out who was really behind their “accident”; he would take care of that monster for them, and then Re:vale would come back. Maybe it would take some time—but soon enough they’d see that Momo really was protecting them, that it was safe and okay to come back, and he would get to see them perform again. Everything would be perfect.
He arrived at their apartment just as the sun was setting, and knocked, and waited, and knocked some more. There was no response at first, but after a moment the door opened and Ban-san appeared in the doorway, eyes shadowed, a thick stained wooden stick with pungent flowers tied to it clenched tightly in his hand.
“You can’t come i—oh! Momo-kun,” he said. “You’re…what are you doing here?”
“Is Re:vale really ending?” Momo blurted out. “And—what really happened to you and to Yuki-san?”
“Re:vale’s over,” Ban-san said shortly. “You should leave too. Just—forget that you ever heard of us. It’s for the best, for everyone.”
“No, it isn’t!” said Momo. “Something happened to you—I know it wasn’t an accident! But if we can stop whoever it was who hurt you guys—”
Ban-san smiled bitterly. “Oh, I’ll do that, believe me,” he said. “But that won’t bring Re:vale back, Momo-kun. Re:vale is dead.”
“It isn’t. As long as you and Yuki-san are alive—”
“Yuki’s dead too. For all intents and purposes.”
Momo’s blood turned to ice in his veins. “No…” he said. “No, that isn’t true. That can’t be true!”
“It is. I’m sorry.”
“But you said that he was alright! Just traumatized! How—how could—”
“That’s what I thought at the time, but I was wrong. Yuki is dead, Re:vale is over, and you should just forget about us. Goodbye. ”
Ban-san tried to shut the door in Momo’s face; Momo grabbed it and forced his body into the crack so that Ban-san couldn’t shut him out.
“I’m not leaving. Re:vale means the world to me— you and Yuki-san mean the world to me, Ban-san. I won’t let things end like this!”
“It’s already over!” Ban-san shouted back. “Re:vale was a mistake from the start. I never should have agreed to join! If I hadn’t—then Yuki still would be—” His voice cracked, and Momo could tell that Ban-san was doing everything he could to hold back his tears. “Just leave, Momo-kun. This ridiculous illusion has hurt far too many people already. Please, just…just go. Yuki is dead. There’s nothing left for you here.”
“That isn’t true! Please, Ban-san, just let me help you. I’d do anything to help you!”
“No! And you wouldn’t believe me, anyway. Just leave, Momo-kun. Please—please, just leave.”
Momo’s eyes narrowed. “Okay, Ban-san,” he said. “If that’s what you really want from me…I’ll leave. Just tell me whatever it is that really happened first. That way, if there’s anything I can do…”
“There isn’t.”
“There might be. We won’t know unless we try, right?” said Momo. “And…and if Yuki-san really is dead, then…then knowing more about it will help me protect you.”
“Absolutely not, Momo-kun,” Ban-san snapped. “I don’t want you to protect me. I want you to live your life happily and safely. I don’t want you to put yourself in any danger.”
Momo’s heart was very nearly swayed by the passion in Ban-san’s words, but he steeled himself and prepared to lie to the very person his world revolved around him—the only person, if he believed what Ban-san said about Yuki-san being dead ‘for all intents and purposes’.
“Okay…” said Momo. “So, tell me so that if I see them I can run in the other direction as fast and as far as possible.”
For a moment, he thought that it hadn’t worked, that the lie had been too obvious, but then Ban-san’s face softened, and he said, “Alright. But only if you promise to get away from this man as fast as possible if you ever see him, regardless of whether or not you believe me.”
“I promise,” Momo lied. “Please, Ban-san?”
The pressure on the door subsided as the tension drained out of Ban-san’s body, and then the idol looked away and said, “Vampires.”
“Vampires?” Momo echoed. “The…the monsters who suck blood?”
“Yes.” Ban-san’s voice was dull, dead, defeated. “They’re real, fangs and all. Kujo Takamasa was one. He wanted to turn Yuki as well…he managed to attack us the night after our fifth anniversary concert. He took me down and hostaged my life in exchange for Yuki’s, but luckily I was able to attack Kujo and get Yuki away before he was fully turned…or so I thought. Yuki was unresponsive, but Kujo was gone, so I barricaded us in the apartment and then announced the dissolution of Re:vale. That night, Yuki…” Ban-san swallowed. He was audibly choked up now, and Momo hated himself suddenly for forcing Ban-san to relive all of this. “…changed. He woke up, but he wasn’t Yuki anymore. He screamed and screamed. When I went to comfort him, he grabbed me and pinned me down and bit into the cut on my face that Kujo had given me. He kept biting me until he choked on the blood and I was able to get out of the room. Over the next few days, he grew weaker and weaker, but kept trying to get blood in his mouth, even though he couldn’t swallow it. I…was trying to get him to know what was happening, and so I attempted to feed him my blood and animal blood, and even blood I bought off of some girl in a back alleyway, but he couldn’t swallow any of it. Then I decided…that I should put him out of his misery, but though legend says that sunlight kills vampires, it had no effect on Yuki. Neither did garlic. Neither did staking him through the heart. I think he might have starved to death either last night or this morning, but I can’t be sure. I hope that he has…I hope that he isn’t hurting anymore. I don’t know, though. Once I do know for certain that that…that thing that used to be Yuki is dead, I’ll be going after Kujo and killing him the same way. He doesn’t know that I know that traditional vampire weaknesses don’t work, so I’ll pretend that I’m going to stake him and that Yuki is alive in order to give him a false sense of security. He wants Yuki, so he’ll probably allow me to capture him—and then I’ve got a storage unit I rented that I can leave him inside of until he starves to death. It’s—not the most sophisticated plan, but it will work. It will. And then…and then Yuki will be able to rest easy.”
“I could help you with your plan, Ban-san,” Momo said. “I believe you! You’re honest and kind and brave and handsome, Ban-san. I know you’d never lie to me. If you say a vampire killed Yuki-san, then a vampire killed Yuki-san. There’s no doubt at all in my mind about it. I just want to be of use to you, Ban-san.”
“So you’ve told me,” Ban-san said, his lips twisting bitterly. “But no, Momo-kun. I’m afraid I can’t ask that of you. I would never forgive myself if anything happened to you because I dragged you into this.”
“But…I want to avenge Yuki-san too, Ban-san! And if you died, I couldn’t go on living. You and Yuki-san gave me a reason to live! I can’t…I couldn’t live in a world without you. Please, Ban-san. Please. Please trust me.”
“I do trust you, Momo-kun. I…” Ban-san sighed, sounding both relieved and as though he was giving up on something. “What if I contacted you once I set Kujo up in the storage unit? That way, you wouldn’t be in any danger, but you could also help me secure him in there and thus avenge Yuki. Would that be alright with you?”
I could torture him that way, Momo thought. I could make him hurt. Even if stakes and sunlight and garlic won’t kill him, they’ll still hurt him, probably. At least stakes will. Stakes would hurt anybody. And then Ban-san would definitely be safe…
“Yes! It would be alright. It would definitely be alright. So…please, Ban-san…”
Ban-san took a deep breath. “Okay,” he said. “I’ve tracked Kujo to a family called Nanase. They run a cabaret club that Re:vale performed in a few times. Once I’ve managed to capture him, I’ll call you. I promise, okay?”
“…Okay,” said Momo. “I’ll be waiting. Any time at all. I’ll answer you and come, I promise, Ban-san. I love you, Ban-san. And…and I love Yuki-san too. I always will.”
Ban-san’s smile was tiny and devastated, but it still came. “Thank you, Momo-kun,” he said softly. “We love you, too.”
That was the last time Momo ever saw or heard from either Yuki-san or Ban-san. A week and a half later, his phone rang and stopped while he was asleep; he stirred in bed, but his sister Ruri, desperately worried about her brother who had been running himself ragged for ages now, rubbed his back and said, “It’s nothing, it’s nothing,” until he fell back asleep. He awoke hours later and saw the message; the number was not Ban-san’s, but he listened anyway. It contained only the sound of harsh, terrified breathing, an unfamiliar voice saying, “Tenn. Be my good boy and drink this man dry,” and, finally, screams that eventually faded out into silence.
Momo listened to this message seven times on his way over to Ban-san and Yuki-san’s apartment; he finally stopped when he reached it, but no matter how much he screamed and pounded on the door he received no answer. Instead, he got a noise complaint and was taken away by the police; when he finally got out, he went straight back to their apartment and broke the window with a rock and climbed inside.
The apartment was dark, and empty, and stank of blood and garlic. Though Ban-san and Yuki-san had always been scrupulously neat in venues and in older pictures Momo had gotten of their apartment, it was a mess now; the floor was dirty, and there were bloodstains everywhere, and dirty dishes lying around, and as Momo rounded the corner to the bedroom he saw a shape huddled under a mass of blankets.
“Ban-san?” he said softly, creeping closer. “Ban-san, is everything alright?”
There was no response; when he turned the body over, he saw Yuki-san’s silver hair on its head, though nothing else of Yuki-san remained in it; its eyes were red and staring, and its face was twisted up in horror and desperation, and dried blood lined its mouth and stained its neck and shirt.
“Yuki-san…” said Momo, though he knew that the corpse in front of him couldn’t hear him. He carefully lay it back down and tucked the covers over it again, just like Ban-san must have whenever the corpse stopped moving, however long ago that was. He stood and began looking for Ban-san again, but as he did so the door to the apartment opened, and then Momo was arrested again.
This time, it took a lot longer for him to get out of jail, because both his parents and Ruri refused to post bail until they were sure that he was stable. Momo did not think he would ever be stable again, unless he found Ban-san right now, so he called up Ryo as soon as he could and begged him to track Ban-san down, or at least to tell him the current state of the Nanase family and any guests they
might have. Ryo had laughed at him and hung up, but he also bailed him out of jail the next day and gave him information on a middle schooler named Nanase Riku, so the call, as it was, had not been entirely a waste.
Momo found Riku a few days later, at the school gate. The boy looked about as miserable as Momo himself felt, though without the manic desperation that had been driving Momo ever since he woke up to Ban-san’s message.
“Hi!” he called, walking up to the boy as if everything was normal and he had all the time in the world. “Nanase Riku, right? Do you know anything about vampires?”
“They’re real, I swear they are, they’re real and they took Tenn-nii, Tenn-nii was real too he really really was and he didn’t run away! Tenn-nii would never run away! That man took him—the vampire—”
“Kujo Takamasa?” Momo asked.
“Yes!”
I can use this, Momo thought. I can use him. This boy will be the one to help me find Ban-san…
“Okay,” Momo said. “I believe you.”
“You do?!”
“I do. After all, I’m a vampire hunter, and I’m gonna kill Kujo Takamasa and take everyone he captured home safe!”
“Captured?” said the boy. “Do vampires really do that? I thought he would have killed—”
The back of Momo’s hand stung with cutting the boy’s words off; the boy stared at him in mute shock and horror, one hand going up to his now-bruised cheek as though he didn’t quite believe what had just happened.
“He’s alive,” Momo hissed. “They’re both alive. They’re not dead! And I’m going to get there before Kujo gets the chance to change that.”
“Both…?” the boy echoed.
“But he might,” said Momo. “If I’m not fast enough, he might…which is why I need to find him fast, so he doesn’t turn my Ban-san and your brother into vampire feed or vampires. I need you to tell me everything you know about Kujo, as quickly as possible, so that I can do that. Can you?”
Nanase Riku squared his trembling shoulders and set his jaw. “I can,” he said.