Tennis no Ouji-sama © Konomi Takeshi, Shuheisha, Inc.


- Act IV -
[ Vampire King ]


He never planned to confront the girl.

All he wanted to do was continue watching her dance but he didn't anticipate that he would flinch the moment she cried. It was too late to hide when the girl noticed his presence so he showed himself confidently with all his greatness.

Throughout his life, Keigo's presence was hailed by women—old and young alike. His face charmed them and his personality attracted them. Everything about him drove those little kittens mad. He never executed his charming techniques on them, but when he finally used it for the first time, he got the result he never expected.

The girl cringed her nose, looking at him up and down like he was the most disgusting presence she ever saw and even insolently called him…

"Pervert!"

"What did you just call me?" he asked disbelievingly. But she shrieked again while she ran towards the corner of the court. He quickly chased after her and pushed his left arm in front of her, then his right when she was about to go another way. "You're not going anywhere until you tell me what's wrong with you."

"T-that is none of your business! Let me go!" She pushed his chest but he remained firm on his stance. Keigo caught her hands and stared deeply into her eyes, the dark brown eyes that still shone with tears.

"I can't do that. I told you that I'm a man who couldn't stand seeing a damsel in distress, didn't I?" he confidently said while flashing his signature smirk.

The girl gasped as if she just realised something. "D-don't tell me you are…"

"I am what?"

She quickly made a cross sign with her index fingers. Keigo glanced at her fingers then back to her. "What are you doing?" She jerked her index fingers closer to his face but he was still looking at her with questioning eyes.

"Aren't you afraid of this?" she asked, bringing her finger closer to him.

"How am I supposed to be afraid of that?" he asked back.

"Aren't you a…" she gulped, "…vampire?"

It took him a good five seconds before her words were downed to him, bursting into maniac laughter that probably scared the trembling girl between his arms.

"Vampire, huh? What makes you think like that?"

"Y-you're living in that manor, right? M-my friend said that there's a vampire living in it." She hiccupped. "A-also, tonight is full-moon so is it possible that you are—" she gulped, "—looking for a prey?"

Keigo smirked wider. If she thought of him that way, it might be interesting to play the game she started. "Hmm… You got me." She widened her eyes. "Indeed, I am looking for a beautiful maiden who can give me…" he lowered his head to her neck, "…what I want."

It turned out to be a bad idea to do because she shrieked right beside his ear. He promptly backed away to cover his ear and she used the brief moment when he let her running towards the hole located right on the corner of the court.

So that's where she came from. But he wouldn't let her go like that. Keigo circled his arms around her waist and pulled her.

"L-let me go!" She tried to break free from him so he put his arms behind her knees and carried her in a bridal style that earned him another ear-piercing shriek. "W-what are you doing?! Put me down this instance! Don't kill me! Don't eat me! Don't suck my blood! No, no, no, no!"

Keigo snorted as he avoided her flailing arms. "Who said anything about killing, eating, and sucking your—"

"You won't like my blood! I ate a lot of garlic today so my blood smells like it! You hate garlic, do you? It will kill you so don't make me breathe itinto your nose!" Keigo rolled his eyes at her empty threat.

"Though I barely eat garlic because of its smell, I don't particularly hate it." He smirked at the girl. "It won't kill me if you must know." He put her down near the bench but still circled his arm around her slender waist.

She started to sob and pushed his chest. "No! Let me go! Tou-chan! Kaa-chan! Jii-chan! Onii-chan! Please help me! Some—hmph!" Keigo put his palm over her mouth to cover her scream.

"Ssh… Wouldn't want to wake the staff since they need rest." But her eyes still glazed with fear and he didn't want her to look at him with that kind of eyes. Keigo gently pulled her down so she would sit with him on the bench, then slowly retracted his hand from her mouth. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you… I was wondering what you are doing in this court in the middle of the night."

"This is my secret place! It's up to me what I want to do here!" she snapped back.

"Your secret place, ahn? I'm sorry to tell you that this court is a part of my property," she widened her eyes at this, "meaning that it rightfully belongs to me."

She paused for a moment and lowered her head. "I-it belongs to you?"

He nodded.

"Oh, I… I'm very sorry for trespassing!" She bowed her head at him. "I thought it was still abandoned like before so I took the liberty and practiced here…"

"Do you like practising in here?" He frowned when he noticed her fingertips were cold so he took the coat she put on the bench and placed it around her.

"I do…" She pulled the coat tighter around her.

"I see…" He smiled. "Has anyone told you how beautiful your dance is?"

Though it was night, he could see her blushing as she lowered her face. "Y-you think so?"

"You captivated me just like what Princess Odette did to Prince Siegfried." He stifled his urge to laugh when she cringed her nose at him."And trust me when ore-sama said you're doing good, then you're good. Ore-sama has an unbelievably good taste after all." He flicked his bangs and that earned him another snort from her.

She scrunched her nose in response. "Ore-sama? Do you always call yourself that?"

"There's nothing wrong about calling my magnificent-self 'magnificent', isn't it?" His question earned him another disapproving look.

"Having cold blood running in your body must be what makes you so resistant to embarrassment…"

He snorted. "Do you still think that I'm a vampire?" he asked.

"You're definitely a vampire! You have pale skin, you're handsome, and most of all—you're disgustingly narcissistic! You have every cut to be a vampire!" Truthfully, Keigo didn't know whether he should be happy or feel degraded by that. Before she made any move, he held her hand and got down on one knee.

"Say, what do you know about vampires?"

"Uhm… They have sharp fangs?" Keigo showed his teeth to her. "T-they don't have a reflection on the mirror…" He took out his compact mirror and showed his reflection on it. "A-and… their heart doesn't beat." He smirked as he put her palm over his left chest.

"Tell me. What do you feel?" With the light from the moon, he could see red slowly spread from the center of her nose to her cheeks.

"Oh wow… You have a… nice chiseled chest." Keigo had to hold back his laughter when she was shocked at her own statement and cursed under her breath. "N-no! That's not what I meant! Forget I said that!"

He chuckled at her blunt comment. "Thank you so much, but that's not what I was asking. Do you feel my heartbeat?"

Her eyes caught his and stayed for five heartbeats before she looked down at her hand that was over his chest. She bit her bottom lip and slowly nodded.

"Then, am I still a vampire to you?"

"You still don't look like a nice person for me…" she said with trembled lips.

"Then what should I do to make you believe me that I won't do anything bad to you?" he asked.

"J-just let me go home!" she snapped back.

"I can't…" He brushed away the hair that stuck on her face because of her tears and stared at the braided hair she only made on her left. "Not when I saw you crying while dancing so beautifully. I was just wondering what makes you sad when you clearly love doing what you're doing."

She snorted. "Did I look like that? Loving what I'm doing? Because the world clearly doesn't like me doing that," she sarcastically said.

"Unfortunately for all of us, the world works like that. It's always against what we wish," he said as he moved to her side. "Care to tell me what happened?"

"I don't talk to strangers." She whipped her head away from him.

"But research has proved that it's much easier to talk to strangers than to your friends or family. Since I'm willing to be that stranger, why don't you use this chance to share than to keep things to yourself?"

"I have a choice whether or not I want to share this with you! If you don't want to leave me alone, then I will! Bye!" She was about to rise to her feet but he firmly held her wrists. She tried to pull her hands from him but he wouldn't let go.

Her breath hitched when he brought his face dangerously close to her. "When ore-sama asks you a question, you have to answer it."

"Why do you even care?!" she screamed. "I'm just another stranger who happens to trespass your property! Why do you care to know?" She sobbed. "I have no more place in something I've been working for years and it's not like you knowing it will change anything!"

Keigo waited until she calmed herself. Despite her outburst, he could see that she was finally willing to share her story. In an attempt to soothe her calm, Keigo drew circles on her wrist with his thumb.

"So I assume that you're a professional dancer…"

She nodded. "I was… back in Germany. I practiced really hard until the role of the swan queen Odette was within my grasp, but—" she hiccupped, "—that was until my friends betrayed me… We always practiced together, day and night. We always shared the joy and the hardships of being a ballerina until… the incident."

"Incident?"

"My rival was attacked by someone in her changing room, resulting in broken legs that could possibly harm her career. When we were investigated by the police, my friends told the police it was—" she hiccupped, "—my doing because I always hated her… I insisted that I would never do that but since they never caught the perpetrator, the school decided that I was to be punished… even though they didn't have enough evidence to prove it. They chose to trust five people's testimonies.

"As for my friends… I'm not sure whether they were behind this or they were just using the chance to get rid of me. But one thing for sure… they envied me… because I managed to land a role since my first year in Germany. So that was how I wind up here in Japan with no hope for my future career."

His eyebrows knitted into a deep frown, feeling disgusted by the story of her friends' betrayal. "That's very low indeed."

Fortunately, Keigo had never been betrayed by his friends, especially Munehiro who was very loyal to him even when they were still five. However, he did know how it was like to have everything he ever wanted in his life then having it disappeared the next second. Judging from the way she talked, the girl was too blunt but she clearly wasn't the type of girl who would stab her own friends from her back.

She snorted. "Now that I think about it, it might've been my fault indeed. I should never have said that I hated her make-up because it looked like she could fan the whole room with her fake eyelashes."

Her cynical joke made him burst into laughter. He was right about her way of talking after all.

"Is it that bad?"

"You should see her make-up yourself."

"I see…" Keigo patted her head and stared right into her red-rimmed eyes. "You should be careful next time. There's no saying when people will take advantage of our mistakes. There's nothing wrong about being honest but sometimes you have to keep the words to yourself."

"I know that!" She pursed her lips in response but he knew that she accepted his words.

"What happened to you is unfortunate indeed. But I think it's unfair to say that you have no hope for your future career."

"I'm saying the truth." She pouted.

"Not with a perfect pair of arms and legs, and most importantly—" he said, making her turning her face to him, "—not with so much love and passion you showed from your dance, Princess…"

Her face turned into the shade of magenta, visible even with the lighting of the was thrilled to know that it seemed that he started to gain her trust. However, the night was getting windy and the fact that her hands were cold made him frown.

"Anyway, let's continue this in my manor. We should bring you somewhere warmer." What he didn't realise was that his invitation sounded like it was implying something even when he didn'tmean it, so it made the girl set up her defences again as she pulled her hands from his grasp.

"I-I better be g-going now." She quickly put her shoes on and strode her way to the rusty fence opening he came from but he blocked her way."Out of my way, Your Highness." She stared at him with a waspish glare while emphasising her last word.

"So you called me yet you dare talk to me in such manner, Princess."

"It's past twelve so I have to put an end to this stupid 'prince' and 'princess' play."

He chuckled at her Cinderella reference. "Thus the prince doesn't allow her to go home because he hasn't known her name yet."

"He doesn't need to! Just let me go, will you?" She pushed his chest but he didn't budge.

"Not until you answer my questions."

"Don't make me do this to you!"

"Do what?"

When he challenged her, the idea of her pulling him down and biting his neck never crossed his brilliant mind. Heck, his insight ability didn't even see it coming. She used the chance while he glowered in pain to escape. Keigo hissed through his gritted teeth as the jaw-sized pain spread through the left part of his neck. When he recovered, he quickly traced her track but she was gone like she was never there.

Keigo set his eyes in the direction she might be going to, slowly letting his lips pull into a smirk when he spotted something she left on the ground. He took the object and chuckled to himself.

"She's a Cinderella indeed."

If she wanted to make this hard, then his magnificent self would accept the challenge.


AN: The fact that Keigo is charming doesn't mean that he's experienced with a girl, at least that's how I imagined him. XD So what do you think about their second encounter?

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