Thanks to everyone who reviewed.


But in those dreams were hidden dragons...


I blinked. "What? I mean, pardon?"

"I know this will come as a great shock to you, but I'm being serious here. You are a member of one of the most well-known vampire families."

Had I fallen asleep again? I pinched myself and let out a squeak when it hurt. A lot. "No, you can't be serious. Why? How? When? I don't get it! Why are you saying this? I don't even, well, I don't even have the right teeth and I'm always in the sun! This is a joke, right? Do you, like, have any proof or something?" I took a deep breath and made sure I hadn't risen to ultrasonic pitch yet.

"It's no joke." Narumi sat back in the armchair and put his feet up on the table. "There are certain signs and features... like your strong spirit, for example. An ordinary human would never have recovered so quickly from what you just went through - mentally, I mean, because obviously a healing Stone was used on your body..." The 's' of the "stone" sounded like it should be capitalised when he said it.

"This is like what happens in some of my manga," I said. "Only if it's true, of course. Which it can't be. Just please let me call my granddad so I can go home. I won't bother you any more!" I could think about Stones and strong spirits later!

"This is why I should've waited until other people got here," said Narumi thoughtfully. "Speaking of which, it's almost dawn, so..."

And right on cue, a door banged open. From somewhere else inside the apartment I heard a babble of voices and rather a lot of crashing about.

"I saw that you let Natsume escape," said a woman's voice as she walked into the room. I stared at her. Although her expression seemed sad and sorrowful, she looked as if she could have been beautiful once. Her features were definitely European rather than Japanese, and her long golden hair was half tied back in a neat ponytail. She looked at me with tired grey eyes. "Who is this?" she said to Narumi.

"Heh, sorry about that," said Narumi, grinning at her in an apologetic manner. "I went out for a few minutes and when I got back, that window was smashed. Mikan here told me that Luca got him out with a bird of his. Mikan, meet Serina Yamada. Serina, I think I've found someone important! Is anyone else staying here today?"

"Yes. Misaki managed to trip over the umbrella stand and pushed me over as he came in," said Serina with a somewhat disapproving look. "I assumed that he had come back from his trip, and I confirmed that later."

"Yeah, I know. I meant Noda and..." His voice faded into the background as I absorbed myself into my confused thoughts.

Serina Yamada's Japanese was flawless, though; she had obviously lived here a long time, probably married a Japanese man. Or maybe it was a fake name. Same with Narumi; even with the perfect accent and everything he obviously wasn't of Asian origin. (I grinned inwardly at the thought of him marrying a Japanese man.) I sighed. Was Serina also a vampire? With all this stuff about fangs and my real parents, I was beginning to consider the real possibility.

But I can't be a vampire.

It just didn't happen in real life. Real life was working at a shop five days a week and hoping for that lucky break that just hadn't come yet. Real life was studying for exams and failing, and letters of rejection from universities, job applications, everything. Real life was about finding happiness and hope in the smallest of ordinary things, not losing myself in stupid fantasies about vampires. Real life was realising that I wasn't a princess, that my lost parents hadn't really been a duchess and her secret lover, nor had they been vampires. Pah. Real life was helping my granddad with the housework and hoping to find a boy who would lift me out of that life and into a new one - not that I had found him yet. Not a clue. But I knew that one day it would happen. It had to! I dragged my mind back to the present situation. (How had I got to boyfriends again, anyway?) Time for thinking about my future wedding could go later. One thing I knew for certain - real life did not include blood-sucking vampires and colossal eagles breaking into houses.

In any case, whatever this stuff meant was still unclear to me and what I really needed to do was let my granddad know I was safe. Well, at least alive. That was the most important thing. Maybe this was all a hallucination and I would snap out of it any second.

"I need to call my granddad," I said out loud.

Narumi looked up. I could feel Serina's eyes studying my features. Had Narumi just been telling her about my hypothetical mother? Had she known her as well?

Don't be stupid. Don't get your hopes again. You'll just end up disappointed, like always.

I swept away my depressing thoughts and repeated what I had just said.

"Mikan," said Serina, as if trying out my name. "Mikan, there are entities and connections that rule us, so far down and dark that even I cannot see them clearly. You do not know about any of this. You are an important person in our world, and contact with a human would be deeply dangerous."

I gaped at her. She could not be serious. "No!" I crossed my arms. "I'm not an important vampire or whatever you think I am. I'm just a normal teenager living with her family and I need to talk to him! He's the only real family I've got and you guys are just avoiding my questions and taking me away from everyone that I know, telling all this stuff about vampires and my supposed real mum. This is all, I dunno, crazy! I want to wake up now!" I checked myself. Too late - that was definitely too high for normal speech. I thought I saw Serina wince, but then her completely unfazed expression made me think again.

"Mikan, calm down! I just need to explain some things to you, and then you're free to go crazy," Narumi said, giving me a reassuring smile and pat on the shoulder.

"What? I've been asking just to give my granddad a quick call for ages not, then you people do is just tell me all this crazy stuff about vampires and dark spiderwebs or whatever it was! Why won't you let me talk to him?"

"You need to listen to us first," said Serina. Her face showed no apparently change of emotion, but I could have sworn her eyes grew noticeably colder.

"I don't want to hear it!" I yelled. "I need to go. I'm going!" And with that, I rushed out of the room, away from Narumi telling me to come back, down a short corridor, past another shadowy figure in the entrance hall and out of the door.


I woke up. The sun was shining high in the sky and I instinctively shut my eyes harder and snuggled back into the duvet. Too early to get up...

Then I sat up with a start. What time was it? Had my granddad called the shop and told them I was off sick? A nagging thought about vampires ate away at the back of my mind, but I put it off for now. I hadn't spontaneously run all the way from that apartment back to my house for nothing.

I quickly put on some clean clothes, ate some rice and thought about things. How did I know that it wasn't all just a dream? After all, now that I was back into real life with cold rice and too much washing up to do, everything seemed so much brighter and more normal than anything that had happened last night. Had I really escaped kidnap at the hands of two thugs? Maybe I'd had more alcohol than I thought at that party. I put the dish into the sink and hit my hand hard on the tap.

Ow ow ow ow ow!

Rubbing my hand hard, I looked at it to check for a bruises. Ow. Ow. No, no bruise, but there was something else there - a funny-shaped red mark, as if I had been burnt by something. That was strange. I didn't remember seeing it yesterday, and it hurt quite a bit when I poked it.

I brushed my teeth, tied my hair up into its customary two pigtails and set off for the shop. I'd decided to spend a year studying and retaking my failed exams before applying for a university again, and I had made myself useful to my granddad by taking a job as a sales assistant. It wasn't the best paid of all jobs, but at least it was something, and it was very close to my house which meant I didn't have to pass that driving test just yet. Plus, I got to meet people, which was always a good thing. My mood improving as I walked in the good weather, I reached the shop a few minutes later in good spirits and smiled cheerfully at the passer-bys there.

"Hi! Sorry I'm late - did my granddad call this morning? I was in bed because I think I had some sort of weird illness," I said to the manager as I bounced in.

"Yeah, we heard," he said absentmindedly. "There're some things for you to do over there."

I sighed. He never seemed interested in anything I did, and I wondered if I should tell him what happened to me last night. He'd probably just shake his head and call me a dreaming liar, and then give me two extra hours to work because I'd missed this morning making up that story... I guessed that he wasn't going to be my dream guy who'd take me to Paris and propose on that big metal tower thing.

I spent my afternoon rearranging shelves and counting sales. Maths had never been my strong point... I groaned inwardly as I realised that I had another page to do, and reached for the calculator again.

My hand grabbed something small and hard. I frowned as I realised that it wasn't the calculator, but a small card.

Changed your mind? Call if you want to see me again. x3 Naru

I was willing to bet that I knew who this "Naru" was. I turned the card over to see a phone number and a few more hearts.

I left the shop a few hours later deeply disturbed. Now my weird hallucination-slash-dream stuff was getting into my normal life - unless I chose to accept it as a part of my normal life. Even if "Naru" was the man I had met last night and not some random girl hoping to go out with my (very handsome, I thought sadly) manager, how on earth had he known where I worked? Were these people spying on me or something? This was just too creepy. First rapists, then murderers, and then a cross-dressing vampire who was also stalking me. I had a feeling that I should be slightly more traumatised than I felt right now - maybe that would come in a few days and I'd have to be delivered to a mental asylum or something. Hmm. I shuddered and went home. Besides, everyone knows that real vampires can't go out in sunlight, and there had certainly been no other time when he could have put the card there. Or maybe he had put it there last night, or even a night before that one. If those people knew who my real parents were, then they probably also knew quite a lot of other stuff about me. This was just getting too confusing and creepy now. I pushed the thought of stalkers out of my head. It was just a card.

That evening, I put the card on my desk and tried not to think about it. As long as weird calling cards were all that came of this, I told myself that I would be fine. Tomorrow, I would email one of my friends or call them, see if they believed me (my honesty had always come under question ever since that time when I said that I had once been scouted for the Takarazuka - in my defence, it had been a very realistic dream), and then laugh about how stupid I'd been. I felt happier already just thinking about it. Lying back in the darkness, I watched sleepily as the moonlight made strange shapes as it shone through the holes in my curtain.

With a new stab of fear, I realised that the silvery shape closest to me exactly matched the burn on my hand.


The next morning I thought about it over and over again while I sat at the breakfast table and my grandfather asked me what was wrong. I knew my skin was pretty sensitive to sunburn, but not like that. You don't get sunburn after spending a few hours in bed with sunlight coming in through a window pane and its ripped-up curtain and warming up your hand. That just didn't happen.

But nor do vampires.

Vampires can't go out in the sun. But this was stupid - this was the first time I had been burnt so easily like this. My skin hadn't always been like that! Maybe something had happened to me last night. That was when all the weird stuff had started. Or maybe it was nothing to do with the sunlight and sleeping in late at all, and was just a coincidentally similar shaped burn from the kettle.

It was too strange.

I rubbed some burn cream onto my hand and wondered if I should repeat the experiment. Um. What could I do for a few hours while I let my other hand burn up? It was a stupid idea, anyway, it was a waste of time. I probably should get going before I was late for work again.

Sunburn turned into flames and eagles in my mind and brought me back to those other boys, Natsume and Luca. Who were they? I realised with a small shock that I did want to know more about them, that I did want to know more about these people who apparently knew my real mum and thought I was a vampire. This burn on my hand... as much as I didn't want to leave my life with granddad and Yuuki-the-handsome-shop-manager behind, there was, without doubt, something more going on in my life.

That was it. I picked up the phone, ran up to my room to find the card with the phone number, smiled at granddad when he asked what I was going and why I wasn't talking, how unusual, and dialled. No going back now... although I felt more relieved that I had imagined, finally giving in to this curiosity. It'd only been a few hours, though.

"Hello?" I said when the ringing stopped.

"Hello?" said an equally confused voice at the other end. Definitely a man's voice - maybe that Natsume? I frowned at the thought. Why did I keep thinking about him, anyway? Urgh.

"Uh, hi! This is Mikan Sakura, Narumi told me to call." I didn't know what else to say.

"Narumi, your Azumi girl's on the phone," said the voice faintly on the other end. I guessed that this was the other unknown person that I had briefly seen as I had run out of the apartment.

There was a rustling noise as the phone was handed over and then I heard Narumi's voice saying loudly, "Mikan! I knew you'd call someday!"

"Hi!" I said. "Um, I think I do want to know more about who you think I am... not that I'm fully convinced yet," I added. I heard him laughing on the other end.

"I'll meet you by the neon Penguin advert at sunset, okay?"

"Okay!" I replied, and hung up. Well, that wasn't too scary.


Thanks for reading - yes, this chapter is quite a bit shorter than the first, but don't worry. This will hopefully be a long-term project.