Chapter 2: Photograph

For my return home, I choose the darkest, most isolated alleys.

For the kyūketsuki, the shadows are among our closest allies. They cloak us from the eyes of the living, who fear what hides within them. They protect us from the awful sun, whose light weakens us. They aid us in the hunt for food, blinding those who walk during the day.

Tonight, they are my confidant, for there are none of my kind with whom I can share my thoughts.

As ordered by Okāsan, I removed the threat of the vampire hunter. My actions were swift, my aim perfect. I was upon him, draining him, before he could react. My bite paralyzed him, sapped his strength. When he was empty, I released him, and he fell slowly onto the cracked asphalt.

If he had been a normal man, I would have returned to the shadows as soon as the feeding concluded. This was a vampire hunter, though. This was someone who had come within days of finding us. Within days of forcing us to once again abandon our home. Because of the threat they pose, Okāsan demands that the bodies of hunters always be searched, to discover what they know. To uncover their secrets.

But this hunter had no secrets of his own to share. Instead, he carried one of mine.

I stop by a burning barrel. The street person who started this fire flees at my approach. He knows it is better to face the cold than one like me. I stare into the flames. They jump and twirl and grow and falter. They give light and warmth. I cross my arms over my chest and try to remember what it was like to be cold. What was it like to need the comfort of a warm fire?

What was it like to be human?

It is the question I dare not utter but to the consuming flames and the empty shadows. I am one of the kyūketsuki, and the ways of the living are no longer mine. When I chose this existence, I forfeited such concerns. To try to think as a human is to guarantee my undoing, either under the stroke of a hunter or by the will of my own kind. I no longer share the needs of humanity. There is no place for a warm fire among the kyūketsuki. It fends off the shadows that keep us safe.

Yet tonight, I feel at one with the fire. Inside, I am burning as well.

In the flickering light, I take out the one secret the hunter carried with him. It is an old photograph, worn with age.

How the hunter managed to obtain this picture, I cannot guess. I am equally unsure of what his plans for it may have been. All that I do know is that it is dangerous. This photograph could be the harbinger of my destruction.

How easy it would be to drop it into the barrel and be rid of the hazards it portends. But I know that will not extinguish the fire within me that seems to be expanding, racing along my veins, searing my flesh.

That would not erase the image of Tomo.

How long has it been since I imagined him this way? Young. Handsome. Loving. This photograph had worn the decades better than the image of Tomo in my own mind. He had become indistinct. A phantom.

After transforming me, Tomo disappeared. No one knew where or how. He was lost; therefore, I was lost. Not only was he my lover in life, but he was my master in death. And he was gone.

But he was not destroyed. As I stand in the light of the fire, the burning inside me rivaling that of the barrel, I know he still walks somewhere in the shadows. He is my master, and the tie between us tells me that.

This burning is not the strength of that tie, though. As I tuck the photograph away, keeping it safely close to me, I know this feeling to be human. This is the burning that a young Ai felt for her Tomo. This is the burning that caused her to drink Tomo’s infected blood.

I make a decision to allow the burning within me to continue. I will uphold a promise made decades ago, whatever doom may come.

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Credits:
Ai Ōnishi/Mukade
Hair: Deviant Kitties Alienor-Red
Skin: Deviant Kitties Runny – China
Eyes: Celestial Studios Mirror Amber
Outift: Bare Rose Tokyo Carmilla
Gloves: Musashi Leather Gloves
Boots: Beckenbauer Productions Revolver Darklord Boots
Sword: Musashi Tek Yakiba

All pictures taken in Hollow Eden and the City of Lost Angels.