Chapter Text
“Vampires and humans… Never should they come into contact.”
It was a teaching he’d heard thousands of times over, and now, he only nodded idly as he tapped his feet against the ground. He could just barely brush against the grass from where he was stationed on a small stump, watching an older member of the village hack away at freshly-chopped lumber.
“It’s been that way for millennia,” the man continued gruffly, turning to drop a scrap of wood in the boy’s hands. “Vampires take from us, and they take, and they’ll continue taking until we’ve nothing left. You’d better hope that you never learn firsthand just what a vampire can do to us.” He shook his head. “By the time your seventh birthday rolls around, you’re gonna be helping out the village, too. You’re gonna start with carving out stakes.”
The boy stared down at the wood, waiting for the man to turn away before slowly lifting it to his mouth and chewing on the edge. It didn’t taste that good.
“Daisuke! Pay attention!” A woman chided, and he glanced up. Her ginger hair was tucked behind her ears, tied into a ponytail by the base of her nape, and her forearms were coated in mud as she approached.
“Misaki.” The older man nodded to acknowledge her, pivoting to wedge his axe’s blade into a nearby tree stump.
Misaki paused beside Daisuke, gingerly lifting the wooden scrap out of his hands, nose wrinkling up. “Why’d you give him this?”
“I was intending to help him carve a stake,” the man grumbled.
“Oh… that’s not necessary,” Misaki muttered, casting it aside before glancing down to her son. “Sweetie, go find your father, okay? He’s got something fun to show you!”
Her smile didn’t meet her azure eyes, as usual, but the older man’s shoulders tensed as she turned to him. Daisuke reluctantly obliged, shifting off the tree stump to weave back through the forest, where the rest of their village resided.
The human-vampire conflict had been going on for thousands of years, or something like that. Whenever Daisuke asked intellectual questions such as if vampire kids liked toys too and why they just hadn’t become friends already, those surrounding him always gave him dark looks. Maybe his family was just unusual, then… Maybe they didn’t belong in this village at all. Only his mother would answer his questions with a sense of hope, expressing interest in a human-vampire reunion. His father was a lot quieter about things, but he never chided Daisuke for his curiosity.
That walk through the woods was the last time Daisuke wondered about such things, though. For the village he returned to wasn’t the one he’d left.
The images of blood and fire were still vivid in his mind’s eye as he awoke with an unpleasant thud resounding through his room. He scrambled to sit up, breath swift beneath the stress of his memories.
Even from the floor, he could still see the village elders standing right by his doorway, eyes glassy and necks coated in blood. He held their vacant eye contact for all of ten seconds before reaching underneath his bed, unearthing a set of matches and quickly striking them.
With the faint illumination, the images prompted by darkness melted away, leaving nothing but an empty door in their wake. He exhaled slowly, standing just enough to ease himself back onto his bed.
He didn’t have time to lose sleep over something like this. At least… it could’ve been worse. He’d woken up in just enough time to avoid experiencing any visceral reactions, so…
Daisuke blew out the match, letting it cool for a few moments before discarding it on his bedstand. There was no opportunity for fatigue and error when travelling into the Merro region, and they’d be docking there tomorrow. All these senseless memories could wait.
It had been eighteen years, after all. For a time period that expansive, it was foolish to inconvenience himself any further with such issues.
That sentiment didn’t get him far, and before long, soft blue light lilted through his window. God, he needed to invest in curtains… It didn’t matter, though. He had a responsibility to fulfill, so his lack of energy was better spent managing affairs onboard than wasting away in bed.
Or something like that.