Disclaimer: all the rights and profits belong to (Y)Ayana Itsuki/AIC.
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Light Walker
The sky was never completely dark over the city. In the deepest winter night it was lit up red by myriads of lights, lamps, signs, flares... For that reason Shido liked this particular cafe at the top floor of a skyscraper - it has toned glass walls and dampened the colors of the night city. Not to mention the sight over half of Tokyo, which was really magnificent at any time of a day, but the vampire could only witness it between sunset and dawn.
He remembered yet the vision of really pitch black sky sparkled with stars - just a century ago when people were fewer and lived far more modestly. Just a century, ha.
In such nights Shido felt the abyss between himself and humanity especially acutely. He was left outside of lifestream even amid the other numerous night walkers. They wanted something, hurried somewhere, planned their schedule, dealing with finite numbers only. And a color of the sky didn't disturb them, didn't rouse the thirst...
He touched a glass of wine. Why do they call it white? It's transparent yellowish. Pale and cold, so unlike the red hot liquid which only could give him strength. Not that he wanted to drink wine, but felt an urge to observe a human custom, nominally at least. And it's customary to take a sip of some liquors over one's friend's death.
Yayoi didn't live ten days to her sixty eighth birthday. It was raining hard yesterday at her funeral, so Shido could attend. Ought to attend, even if he was afraid to facet he relatives or friends, to explain them who he was to her - and he didn't know the answer. But it turned out that he hadn't to. He was the only present, beside the cemetery keeper and two workers. They didn't care a hell who was that young guy with lavender-white hair in an old-fashioned trench coat. He brought her hydrangea and sunflowers.
She had never married and had no children. Shido wondered often in the last decades if he had taken more than just some liters of blood from her. He could have justified himself by supposing that her existence was twisted by Night Breed long before he met her. But over the grave of her sister Yayoi resolved to live her life for her sibling too. And still...
She kept telling him that he was a good friend and business partner, and still... You? Sure you are an angel!, she said once and immediately laughed it off into a joke.
They had so much fun back then, all four of them. Like a common family. Mom Yayoi, little sister Riho (striving to be a Mom too), and babysitter Guni. He felt so warm and cozy. He felt... loved. And he loved those pretty fragile creatures while he was accepting their blood, care, love, lifetime. Isn't it in the nature of vampires? to feel hunger, thirst, to sate them at all costs. Giving is not among the features of Night Breed. But he believed in his human heart, believed that he was able to return everything they shared with him so generously. In their eyes he used to see the confirmation.
Now Yayoi was out of reach, and probably much happier than she pretended to be while she had been alive. And Riho.
Just to stay with him, Riho, a human girl with hot blood and bouncy attitude, had asked him to seal her in darkness. Vampire Riho would wander in the streets alone all nights long (and on rainy days too). Sometimes they were going to cinema together and watching any third rate flicks containing sunny scenes. She'd clean and dust his study, make coffee (which would be cooling down in the mugs with funny pictures and be poured out eventually, unless Yayoi visited them), and then she'd disappear again. With time her walks grew longer, and after the first week-long absence Shido attempted a 'family argument'. Riho just smiled and snuggled to him. "Why do you worry? We have an eternity, so who cares about a week?", she said blankly.
"I do. I thought, you too". And he added in a whisper, "You said that you wanted to stay with me.
"Maybe", she muttered. "I don't remember the past days very clearly. Guess in a century or two I'll have as much memories as you". Riho giggled, "Imagine, yesterday I checked my registration card for my address and had a memorial walk - and I had to ask a passer-by where 35 by 4-Chome is, 'cause I didn't recognize it".
He hadn't seen Riho for about twenty years already. Maybe she'd be back. Maybe they'd meet occasionally in the crowd. And he could fish out a Riho's picture from his wallet at any moment, just like now, and watch. Sure she looks the same now, After all, isn't she a snapshot of her human self now?
Yet, the picture would not talk and laugh, wouldn't make coffee, perch herself by Shido's side... Riho smiles so sunny and merrily in the picture, she's like a July afternoon, which didn't reflect anymore in the dim eyes of vampire Riho. After all, a picture contains memories only to the one who holds it, it has no memories of itself.
Does she remember him now as little as his own recollections of the past are? Then he shouldn't wonder at all. Now, in the beginning of XXI century, his memories of the events right after his conversion were distant, as the bottom of a deep lake, or on the cinema screen. He remembered his actions and words, but not the reasons or feelings behind them. Why had he hurried to that particular town, sought someone, called out two female names, why had he fallen to his knees at the dead body of that youthful woman? Was the pretty blonde girl so very dear to him that he infected her with immortality, and why had she rejected his gift, jumping into the sunlight? Did he feel the same as yesterday at Yayoi's grave? The same as holding bleeding Riho? No one could answer him already, and the darkness of his memory kept silent. Who knows what feelings Cain had captured in the form of Shido? The latter could not tell.
Cain crumbled, incinerated by Shido's sword, and the latter has already got used not to shiver at ominous places and not to fall into nightmares at random. He could not tell for sure that Cain was dead (or non-existent would be a better wording?). Maybe the ancient vampire was recovering slowly in some dark nook. But Shido killed his fear of Cain, overcame whatever remnants of attraction that fueled that fear. He understood the ancient vampire better, but cared less. Shido observed his vampiric youth more dispassionately now. Yet his understanding brought him a new terror, with the same name.
This guess would stop him every time he felt an urge to rush into the night streets to look for Riho, to tell her what she means for him, to spare her from that inanity. He'd recollect Cain. What if the girl's memories of sympathy turned into a nightmare, as it happened to Shido? No matter how fervently he yearned for the feeling of warmth, he didn't wish to follow the pattern of his Initiator. Cain. Hunter-haunter, demanding love with the full force of vampiric thirst. How long will Shido stand without blood and affection before he rushes to search for Riho or attaches to someone else? And watches someone else age and die or, still worse, walking in the darkness?
Lucky humans, not much farewells fit into their short lifespans. Poor humans, they don't realize it and crave for eternity.
Shido didn't want to become a Cain for Riho. So he'd stay back, alone, vis-a-vis with silent memory and dark night, with his questions and worries.
To think logically, there was really nothing to worry about for an immortal. She'd be safe, sure. The three ladies would cope, Riho, Guni, and the City that is their world. Sure some stray Night Breed still could come around as it was happening for aeons, but the humanity survived it even without Shido's helping hand.
As for the 'golden dawn' promised by Cain, it remained a riddle. Shido and Yayoi had kept an eye at that woman's child conceived by a Night Breed - yet it had been proving a common baby, lovely and yucky as all little humans, and didn't give off peculiar emanations of his father's kin. Nothing was happening to this world. Cars ran to and fro, people were being born and dying, the sun rose and sank to the broken skyline, and the dawns were most common. At least, Shido believed so, being unable to check it by himself.
One more thing out of the possibilities of a vampire. Really, he smirked, one should issue a Vampire Warning Note. Very simple one - remember of the law of energy preservation. By gaining endless quantity life quality is lost altogether. Then the kin of vampires would have luckily kept from multiplication. But alas, no one had told him.
How did she know? Shido froze in thought. That girl from long ago, with fluffy hair, how did she know she'd lose too much, why was she so sure that diving into the sunlight is the way out? Shido clenched hi head in hands, so heavily the burden of unanswered questions weighed on him.
No one, never, will give an answer. A human being would pray is such moment, or go insane. But the vampire felt no right to plead for mercy with any supreme entity. And yet, and yet, at least, an answer...
"Night creatures are eternally banned from God". That line from an antique manuscript would usually raise him from a cafe table and send home, to whatever shaded nook he called home at that time. But today... "At least, I won't drag anyone else into darkness".
Meanwhile his body stood up and headed for the exit customarily. Shido chuckled sadly and went instead to the bar to order a large cup of latte. It's disgraceful to occupy a table for the whole night with just one bottle of wine. So he would like to atone the bartender for the little shock in the nearest future - a sight of a vampire disintegrating in the sun isn't pretty or usual. And that future was really near. Seventh hour ante meridiem.
Light stripe was spreading stealthily at the horizon, grew whiter with each minute. The dawn promised to be pale and bleak. "A pity" he thought with sinking heart, "such a pity..." He saw that moment so many times in movies, glorious purple colors, a column of light erupting in the East. Such plain tone gradation tinged him with a feeling of disappointment, but Shido smothered that regret. After all, sightseeing wasn't his intention. No matter how wide and curious and spectacular this world was, still something was missing, something beyond definition or grasp, yet terribly important. In him?
"Alas! I lost a pearl in garden near"...
Without that something the surroundings stayed an empty mussel shell. And his glance strained and rushed to that yellowish gap between the folds of dim sky and dusky earth.
Luminance stung his eyes, and the vampire dumped sunglasses to the trash can as a useless shield, just as he was ready to discard that perfect body. It protested with searing pain, which, however, failed to reach his mind. Just tears turned to his eyes and blurred his sight so that the dawn light melted into a golden haze and enveloped the whole scenery, room, it seemed to wrap him up and penetrate into the scull and marrowbone. "Did you mean that, Cain?" Shido thought, keeping on absorbing light until it engulfed him.
Oware?