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The night was always frightening. An never liked it, the way the woods creaked in the cold wind, the way the birds chanted and cried, the way she could never tell what she was looking at when she peeked out into the dark. Closing the blinds and locking her doors and windows was certainly enough to stay safe, of course, although nothing really made An feel safe. She reckoned that nothing short of covering every opening with iron bars and sleeping with a loaded gun in her hands could do that, but then she’d probably shoot herself in her sleep, so, that… Well, that wasn’t a functional idea. Of course.
The hunter groaned. Something about the full moon always bothered her. She knew vampires and the like could manage without it, that they could see just fine in the pitch of night, but there was always something a touch supernatural about the moon.
(Which could be a reasonable concern, but… Werewolves weren’t a problem in the area. It was entirely vampire territory. And An was always just paranoid.)
She groaned again, more irritably, and kicked her legs up into the air, listless. Her arms were laid limp over her face, body twisted into some strange pose as she wrangled with the boredom that flowed into the gaping hole insomnia left in her mind.
What a night. What a miserable, unbearable night.
She really wished something would happen. Which was a terrible thing to be thinking that late, but… Who could blame her?
The moon beamed down from above. For vampires who don’t have the greatest sense of sight, any light at all was a gift to be treasured, but Kohane couldn’t appreciate it that night. She couldn’t stop to see if she’d thrown them off her tail yet, nor could she afford to keep going on forever. She just had to hope she’d figure it out.
Conflicts between the clans always ended up like this. And for a weakling like her, they never ended well. She was finally about to eat when it happened, too.
She was weak and starving, all the friends that usually shared what they found with her were out on personal business, and Kohane just kept hitting worse and worse luck. Of course, somehow, that meant she’d hit even shittier luck and somehow end up sharing a target with a very cranky neighbor. Kohane didn’t even know how she ended up so close to another group’s territory.
So the only hope she had left was that whoever had been tailing her was hungry enough to give up on her and go back to their prey, although anyone with standards would never go drinking from something they left on the forest floor for five minutes to settle a territorial dispute and Kohane knew for sure that if she was still being followed they’d be right behind her.
Absentminded from the hunger, Kohane failed to notice she’d strayed too close to human society until she was barreling towards a window. Then slamming into a window. Then crashing right through a window. Into a home that proudly displayed evidence that it bore a trained vampire hunter.
Someone screamed in the other room.
Do… Do they usually still kill you when you play dead?
(Kohane would need to transform back into her regular form to look that up. She was not looking that up.)
A loud bang, the shattering of glass, an animalistic, high-pitched shriek–
“What the hell!!” An muttered under her breath in a panic, coming out more like a distressed cry. She scrambled to get out of bed, stumbling around as her feet hit the floor. What was going on in her living room?!
An quickly retrieved her phone and a shotgun—certainly not the most ideal weapon, but if she had to blow something’s head off, at least she’d know when it was over—and took cover at her door, ready to fight for her life once the door swung wide.
An’s palms began to sweat as she turned the knob and kicked the door open, not at all expecting what she’d see.
A single bat. One tiny little bat.
“What the fuck,” she grumbled, hands trembling as she inched toward the little thing.
She couldn’t help but feel bad. Despite being a vampire bat, it clearly wasn’t a vampire, being dumb enough to fly through a window and all. And An wasn’t cruel enough to shoot an ordinary bat for suffering the fate of being too stupid. Reassured by its twitching that it was too injured to hurt her in its state, An set the gun down and walked over to inspect the animal.
It clearly wasn’t flying through windows now. It let out a pained chirping sound every breath it took, the blunt impact of the window having trashed much more than its wings. An was well aware that handling this thing could end in her getting rabies and having to drive to the ER in the middle of the night, but… She couldn’t help but take pity on it.
An turned around for a moment, forgetting she’d put her phone in her pocket and–
“Gah!!” She shrieked, startled by a sort of poof sound as the… The bat… As it…
Dear god. It really was a vampire.
A vampire just crashed through her window. A vampire.
The creature, seemingly unaware that it no longer took the form of a bat, pathetically whimpered as it lay in the same stiff position. It was completely ignorant to An’s panic. Maybe it was in too much pain to even notice An at all?
An glanced over at her gun. It would be incredibly easy even if the thing did try to fight. It was still in no shape to handle combat. Not only that, but it looked very pale, even by vampire standards, indicating it hadn’t consumed blood in a while. An estimated that had to be around a week, but given how bad it seemed at the whole being a vampire thing, maybe this thing wasn’t even strong enough to hold out a whole week without food. And An wasn’t one to be fucking around with hungry vampires.
She backed up until her foot hit the gun. She could do it. Even if it was cruel, at the very least she was putting it out of its misery. She took a deep breath to still her hands.
Hey, was she still feeling… Sorry for this thing?
This was a monster. A kind of creature, a kind of thing that kills and eats people for fun. They have no morals, no empathy, no guilt of their own. This was a monster. A monster.
An watched the vampire curl up into a ball, gripping its knees tight to its chest.
They could feel fear, and fear is a weapon. A cornered animal is a weapon. It will make itself into a weapon by any means. A creature backed into a corner, anticipating the end of its life, it will gather more strength and willpower than it ever could before. This vampire was hypothetically more dangerous than anything she’d fought in her entire life.
It looked young. Foolish enough to end up in this situation, it probably was young.
She’d end up like Nagi. She’d end up like Nagi. She’d end up like Nagi.
An knew better than this. An knew…
“H-Help… Help me…” It cried feebly. The gun fell out of An’s hands. She still felt pity.
An should know better. It could always be a trap.
“Please… Please…”
She did know better. She knew she did.
Still, An inched closer, examining the girl in front of her. She was cute, at least. Her neck bore no evidence of ever being bitten, meaning she was likely born a vampire. An couldn’t help but feel awkward realizing that. Like she’d learned this girl’s deepest, darkest secret, that she had lived this long, her whole life spent as a vampire, and yet somehow ended up in this position. Yeah, it was awkward.
An knelt beside her face, pushing her hair behind an ear. The vampire wouldn’t make eye contact, well aware that she was more prey than predator. What An didn’t know was that she’d felt that way her whole life, but An didn’t seem to know anything about her.
An frowned at her. “What do you even need? Blood?”
“Ughh…” She groaned, continuing to avert her eyes out of fear or maybe even shame. It wasn’t a matter of tossing out pride, or being above taking help from someone who was likely still considering killing her, but…
Kohane sat up, steadying herself against the hunter’s warm body. She might as well take the offer. Her life was hanging off the edge, and even if it was a trap, well, she had a knack for falling into traps.
She moved the hand she had on the hunter’s thigh up to her shoulder, holding her steady. Less than a second later, she clamped down on her neck, and–
“ Augh!! H-Hey! That’s not what I meant– you, you!!” An flailed uselessly and sent the two falling backwards. The girl seemed to immediately realize her mistake and let go, humiliated.
“O-Oh. Oops… S-Sorry,” she pulled herself back in a shocking demonstration of self-control. An sat up, unimpressed.
“Aghh… I’m already bleeding so you– you might as well,” An huffed, flustered. The girl leaned forward and licked off the blood that had pooled around the bite, stopping it just before it could start flowing down her back. Frightened after the misunderstanding, she opted to not stick her teeth back in, gently running her tongue over where she’d bit as an apology.
An had no idea how to feel. There was a vampire latched onto her neck. A very cute and polite one, at that. Maybe it was a reciprocal giving and taking, that An was saving her so she felt it unfair to take advantage of her in this situation, but it still felt oddly benevolent for a vampire.
Eventually the welling up of blood slowed to the point that she could just leave it to clot, and she pulled off An’s neck.
“Sorry,” the vampire mumbled again, fidgeting with her fingers. She still sat on An’s knees, the proximity awkwardly intimate for the hunter. Her gaze met An’s briefly, before the vampire’s shy tendencies got the best of her again and she averted her reddish-brown eyes. An wasn’t any better, though. It really was hard to look someone in the eye after they just sucked blood out of your neck in silence for the last five minutes.
Still, An found it quite odd. Why was she still here? Did she feel safe after An sacrificed a bit of herself for her? An’s house really wasn’t that safe, considering the glass shards on the floor and broken window exposing everything inside to the elements. Did she not get enough and was waiting for An to realize and acquiesce once more?
“Um…” An scratched at the back of her scalp, bit down on her lip for a second, “Is that enough?”
The girl glanced back up at her, mouth parted as she figured out what to say. She really was cute. An felt some sick and twisted thing in the back of her mind start begging her logic and reason if she could keep this vampire around. Worse yet, An started getting the urge to kiss her, as if her own blood wasn’t stained around those soft lips. Wait… Kiss her? An needed to get this girl out as soon as she could.
But yet she didn’t. She let her take her time.
“I think I’m good…” She looked a lot better, but considering her injury, she certainly needed more to heal enough to fend for herself. An squinted at her in scrutiny.
“How have you even made it this far in life…?”
“Huh?!” Kohane was taken aback. It was true, she was naive, stupid, weak, and helpless. But hesitating to kill a vampire hunter only for that same hunter to still take pity on her was… Truly a new low.
“I’m serious. Any other vampire would’ve just sucked me dry and left me to rot, even if they could feel bad about it. And it would be the smart thing to do,” she hesitated, pulling back a little as she realized she shouldn’t be encouraging Kohane to do that, “and really, you’re being too nice. What’s up with that…?”
Kohane didn’t really know. She felt the same instinct, after all, to sever, tear, rip, drain… But she never did. Was it fear that inhibited her? Guilt? Her own physical weakness?
“I… I felt bad… You were nice to me, so… I felt bad hurting you…” It was the honest truth, she thought. It was the most honest truth she could pull together. It was the only truth that made sense.
“Huuuhh. You’re weird, y’know,” the hunter leaned back in and flicked her forehead. Kohane flinched.
“You aren’t getting back home in this state, though, are you?”
“Ah… The sun…” Kohane grimaced as she remembered how battered she was. She certainly wasn’t flying back, and she didn’t have the strength to walk that far.
“Stay here if you want. No… No random biting, no flying through windows, stay out of my fridge, and don’t touch the guns. I think that covers most of it,” the hunter leaned even closer, touching their foreheads together. Kohane couldn’t help but blush. Was she the one taking advantage here? Did the hunter have some ulterior motive?
“But why?” Kohane whispered. Her heart pattered in her chest. They were inches away from a kiss. What was even happening between them? Was she… Was she being hit on?
The hunter just smiled fondly.
“You’re fun. I like you,”
“Like… Me?” That was a foreign feeling. Among vampires, she was tragically undesirable for her timid and weak nature. Among humans, she was undesirable for simply being a vampire. Her friends only stuck around because they knew she couldn’t backstab them. Nobody had ever liked her. And to get in this close… Nobody had ever been so intimate with her before. Was this some sort of platonic ritual between humans? Why was she getting so close?
“You’re not scared of me,” Kohane breathed, dazzled by the hunter’s brilliant amber eyes.
“Oh come on. If you were gonna make it hurt you would be through with me by now,”
“But really, why…? Why do you like me?”
“Well, where do I even start…? You’re cute, you’re super shy and it’s also super cute, you’re awfully polite for a vampire which I find to be really adorable, you’re really pretty, and–”
Flustered, Kohane was quick to cut her off. “Wait– you’re not… You don’t mean… When you say ‘like,’ you couldn’t possibly mean it like…”
“Oh, come on. I let you suck my blood. Of course it’s romantic to me,” the hunter pouted. Had she been waiting for Kohane to take initiative?
“But… Isn’t that illegal?”
“Not if I don’t tell anyone,” what the vampire before her did not know was that a certain An Shiraishi had a terrible track record for things like this and would most definitely blow her cover within a month. Unfortunately, the vampire An was really desperate for was also incredibly helpless and stupid. It was a match made in hell, maybe.
“I don’t even know your name,” the girl shuffled from where she sat on An’s legs, pulling back slightly.
“It’s An. Shiraishi An,” she leaned back in, wrapping her arms around the back of the vampire’s neck.
“Oh… Isn’t that…”
“What? Oh, my dad? Pssh. I wouldn’t tell him about you, I’m not that stupid! Plus he retired, y’know. Back on topic, what’s your name?”
“Kohane,”
“Well, Kohane, since you certainly aren’t surviving out there alone, do you wanna move in with me?”
“H– huh?!”
“Don’t worry. I’ll protect you from all the scary evil vampires out there,” An remarked. Kohane couldn’t help but feel like this girl was missing quite a few cells up in her head but… The flushing of her cheeks gave her away.
“Um… I guess I can’t do much in terms of dates, but, uh… Does sucking my blood count as a date?”
“I don’t… I don’t think so…? I mean– I mean, I don’t really care about things like that… I’m just happy that you feel that sort of way about me…” Kohane had felt love quite a few times in her life. Unrequited of course. But even still then, never like this.
It was nearly humiliating. And for a human, too? A vampire hunter? A girl who only didn’t kill her because she took pity on her?!
Their lips collided and she fell backward onto An’s floor, right where she’d crashed, a time that felt like just moments ago. Yeah. This would do. Kohane could live like this.
In fact, for some reason, this was the happiest Kohane had ever felt. An was weird, but she had little right to judge her, and she didn’t. If anything, they were both insane in their own mundane little way. Anyone else would call it being stupid. But what was wrong with being an idiot if you were happy?
An, in an even worse situation, was now making out with a vampire girl who just shattered her window and drank her blood. Anyone who knew her knew that she did, in fact, know better, and that she was most definitely sick in the head in some way. Well, if she was sick in the head, could this girl be considered the cure?
(No. Absolutely not.)
An’s laugh was the sweetest thing in the world. As their lips parted it was all Kohane could hear, and An’s smile was burned into her eyes. It was ridiculous luck that she’d even survived this incident, that she’d been able to drink a vampire hunter’s blood without getting shot immediately, but to end up… Like this? Was it all her bad luck paying off by piling up every good chance she’d missed out on all in one girl? Was it God taking pity on her?
It isn’t unreasonable to say they lived happily ever after. Although, they also lived with a broken window and glass all over An’s floor for several weeks. All Kohane could do to pay An back was give her lots of kisses. And for some reason, An accepted taking a cute girlfriend willing to give lots of kisses as payment for breaking her window.
Yes, indeed, she is stupid. Both of them were very stupid.