Part 16 is done!

I took a little break because my job reopened lol. But I'll try to continue updating!

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"And I don't want Shu thinkin' he can just bite you whenever, pancake."

My eyes opened. I was on the floor just inside of my bedroom. I still held my father's letter in its envelope to my chest. Ayato sat at my desk. He continued on with his one-sided conversation. "Your back is gonna hurt like hell if you keep sleepin' like that."

My body ached. Needles prodded incessantly at my forehead. One of my legs had fallen asleep under the weight of my body. I sat up slowly, ignoring Ayato. "That a love note?" Ayato stood and tugged at the envelope, but I tightened my grip and yanked it back. I looked down at it. My father had written this to Reiji. My father. He did not write it to me. I had no last words from him.

Last...

I clenched the envelope in my hands. Once again, I felt myself sobbing. My hands trembled. "What the, hey, pancake. Calm down. What's up with ya'?" Ayato lifted me from the floor and carefully placed me onto my bed.

"I... I, he..." I mumbled between heaving breaths.

"The hell happened to your hair?" Ayato cupped my cheek in his hand and brushed the ends of my cut hair. His eyes focused on my torn neck. "Whose bite is this?"

I couldn't give him any answers. All I could do was cry and attempt to breathe. I let Ayato take the letter from me. He slipped it out of the envelope and read it to himself. "What the fuck?" He looked at me, a blubbering mess. He pulled me into his arms and pushed my face against his chest. "You're alright," he told me.

I shook my head. I was not alright. I, never again, would be alright. Even if I cried every tear I could. Even if I escaped and lived a thousand peaceful years. Even if one day, this was all just a series of painful memories, I would continue to suffer knowing that my father was dead. And deep down knowing that it was my fault. That I was just a demon sent to ruin that kind man. After all he had done for me. Ayato's shirt soaked up my tears. My arms, without realizing it, had wrapped around him. He held me close. I wished he would be cruel. It was what I deserved.

Eventually, I couldn't cry any more. And my head hurt too badly to think. "You can let me go now," I whispered to Ayato. He let me lean back, but his arms still wrapped around me. "I'm sorry. Your shirt."

"Forget it. So what happened?"

I went over my night to Ayato. Meeting Shu, realizing I had met their father. Telling him how I met him when I was fifteen, but had a feeling that he knew me well before then. I told Ayato that, going by the letter, it was clear that my father knew exactly where he was sending me. That he knew they were vampires. I wondered if the whole church knew. I, summarizing it quickly and leaving out some parts, told Ayato that Reiji had bitten me and cut my hair after being provoked by my outburst after reading the letter. "You were right. You all were. I have nowhere to go. My father... is," I couldn't speak the words. "And the church follows Karlheinz. I think, possibly, most likely it was him who ki- killed..."

"You're probably right about that, pancake." Ayato looked away from me and leaned back against the headboard. "He'd kill anyone in his way. Even a vampire." I gripped my arm. "Our dad killed my mom. And Shu's and Reiji's. And Laito's. No clue why. But we all just sorta accepted it."

So their mothers were vampires as well. Killed by their lover.

"Yui, I," Ayato began, grabbing my hand suddenly, "I won't let him do anything to ya'." He kissed my hand. "You're mine, Yui. I won't let him touch ya'."

When I awoke, Ayato was gone. But I was tucked snug into my bed sheets and I had the faint memory of his lips on mine. I touched my lips, remembering Ayato's promises. On one hand, I couldn't imagine him following through. But on the other, it brought me just a smidge of relief. I could at least fool myself into thinking I had one person on my side.

I got out of bed and redressed, being sure not to catch my reflection in the mirror. I didn't need to know what it would show me. The letter sat at my desk, unfolded. I quickly left the room.

Walking down the hallway, I realized I had no real destination in mind. I wondered how many rooms sat unused in this massive place. Turning a corner, I could faintly hear the sound of a piano and, I could tell immediately, Laito singing.

"It worked!" Laito cheered as I opened the door to the music room. "I was hoping my kitten would come find me." He turned to look at me and then gasped, "Oh no, kitten!" He ran over. He combed his fingers through my hair. "Were you running with scissors?"

Right. My hair. Scissors. Reiji. I pushed him away, pushing the thoughts back as well. "No. Um, it was an accident. Kinda."

"Hmmmm," Laito pulled me close again and kissed my hair. "You know I'd find my kitten simply adorable no matter what, but" he tilted my head up to meet his gaze, "if you want my honest opinion, I don't care for this hairstyle. Let's fix it."

Laito grabbed my hand and before I could dissuade him he pulled me back through the hallway. A little ways down, we entered through another door. I was met with an extraordinary sight. An elegant, antique vanity, a king sized bed with red satin sheets, a large, plush white rug and a wardrobe that took up almost the entire wall, leaving room for a doubled window adorned with thick curtains. Laito led me through his bedroom and into a connected bathroom.

"Laito, have you ever cut hair before?" I asked him, now sitting on a chair in the middle of his bathroom. He wrapped a towel around my neck and pulled my hair through.

"Of course, of course. Don't worry, kitty. It can't get much worse, can it?" he chuckled as he reached for a pair of small scissors that laid next to the sink. I hadn't had a chance to examine the damage, so I took his word for it. Laito seemed to be cutting a lot. I could see strands falling to my sides. My whole life, my father had told me to grow my hair long. He told me I had beautiful hair. Like an angel. I dug my nails into my lap. Maybe it was fitting that I cut my hair short. It's of little consequence to a dead man, Reiji had said.

"Yui," Laito placed a hand on my shoulder, "You have to sit still, okay?"

I realized I had been shaking. "Sorry." I closed my eyes and focused on the sound of the scissors snipping open and closed.

"Voila!" Laito sighed. "A job well done, if I do say so myself. Look, kitten." He turned my head to look at the mirror above the sink. My hair was cut just above my shoulders. Reiji's bite was still brightly inflamed. My eyes were hazed and irritated from crying. I was unrecognizable.

"Thank you, Laito."

Laito ran a finger over my locket. "Kitten," he murmured, "You've had this locket since you were young?" I nodded. His finger tapped the rose etching. "Hmmm. Do you feel like exploring, kitten? I'd like to share a secret discovery I've made."

Laito led me up a set of stairs and through hallways I'm sure I'd never seen before. We stopped suddenly and he took a copper key out of his pocket to unlock the door in front of us. "I was messing about in my father's study one day and found this mysterious little key," he explained. "To my surprise, it unlocked this door and revealed a room that I hadn't seen before. But your locket seems to fit right in." Laito opened the door to a fairly empty room. Dust settled on the floor and faded, torn wallpaper decorated the walls. Immediately across the room was a huge window that overlooked the courtyard and its rose bushes. To the left was a large bed with sheets adorned in roses and a canopy of lace curtains, eerily similar to my own bed. At the end of the bed, a door sat ajar, leading to a small bathroom with just a tub and toilet. On the opposite wall was a small crib made of a light wood. Only a blanket laid inside of it. Again, decorated with red roses.

A rock sank deeply into my gut. I walked over to the bed. The air felt stale and coated my lungs. My hand hovered over the comforter.

"Kitten?" Laito asked.

I turned to look at him, but as if it was pulled, my body fell down onto the bed before I could take a step towards him. I laid on my back, lace curtains blocked my view of the ceiling. And I remembered a beautiful woman who, years ago, laid in that same spot, her hair spilling around her head like a golden halo. I sat up. I saw the woman standing at the window. She wore a loose nightgown and she steadied herself against the glass. She slowly lowered her hand, painting the window red. I heard her laugh. "Mom?" the words escaped my mouth. She turned her head just slightly. Her neck was cut deeply. Blood spilled out over a small silver locket. She mouthed silent words. "Welcome home," I repeated.

"Yui!" Laito shook my shoulders.

I blinked and she was gone. "Laito, I…" I held my head in my hands. "I think this was. I think I saw my m- mom," I grabbed Laito's jacket. "That's impossible, right? My mom. I never even met her. I… and she, there's no way she lived here. No way. No… way."

Laito sat on the bed next to me, one arm around my waist. "Well, kitten," he sighed, "anything is possible. Especially when it comes to my father. What did you see, exactly?"

I couldn't give him an answer. To replay it in my mind was too much. I clenched my necklace. "She wore this," I whispered. I looked up across the room at the crib. "Was that… mine? I couldn't have. I…"

"Kitten, I think we should find Reiji," Laito offered. My heart raced. "If this was your room, you must have been very young while living here."

The room spun. To think that I lived here with my mother. If that was true… it couldn't be true. If what I saw was a memory, it was too much. She had been covered in blood. And what did that make Karlheinz to me? And what had he done to her?

"Reiji loves his experiments and I'm sure he's concocted one that will help us out," Laito continued. "We won't get anywhere with unreliable visions that only serve to freak you out, kitten. Don't you agree?"

I nodded. "Yeah, but," I lifted my hand to the ends of my shortened hair.

Laito took my hand in his. "No worries, lil' kitty. I will accompany you and protect you!" he claimed, unknowingly marking himself as my second knight in the castle.

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Reiji stood at the large table in his study. His leather-bound book laid open in front of him. He adjusted his glasses, pushing them up at the bridge and looked up at Laito and me. He scoffed. "And why, exactly, would I help her?" His eyes met mine. "It's not as if she's been of any particular use to me."

Laito stood in front of me and I involuntarily reached for the hem of his shirt. I could see my hands shake and I could only avert my eyes from Reiji and hide behind Laito. I wasn't nearly ready to face him. I wasn't ready to remember the night before.

"Oh, come on, Reiji," Laito sighed. He grabbed my hand and we walked further into the study. "We both know you owe Yui an apology. Our little kitten is terrified." He didn't let go of my hand.

Reiji looked back down at the table. He picked up a test tube with a bubbling pale blue liquid in it. "I have been desiring to experiment with memories," he mused. "Reliving trauma can have quite interesting effects on a human's psyche." He tapped his finger against the glass. "I can't promise a positive outcome if you were to take this. Some memories remain locked in our subconscious for a reason. A forced coping mechanism, if you will."

"What a lovely warning label," Laito sneered. "Yui," he turned to me, "I'll be here the entire time. Don't let him scare you, kitty."

"I, um, I want to take it. I want to know." I squeezed Laito's hand. "Even if it isn't pretty. I have to know."

Laito nodded and coaxed me towards a chair. He sat on the small table, leaving the only other chair open for Reiji. "The taste will be bitter. But it acts quickly. It will simply lure you into a deep sleep and allow you to access early or forgotten memories," Reiji explained as he handed me the test tube. He placed himself in the empty chair across from me.

"If something seems wrong, we can wake you up, kitten. Right, Reiji?"

"Yes, of course." Reiji paused. "Do remember that these are just memories. You may feel inclined to change what you see, but it will be impossible. And if it's answers you are searching for, I would advise you to watch until the end no matter what is shown."

"Don't wake me up." I tilted the liquid into my mouth. It was bitter, but also sour. Like I had just taken a shot of lemon juice. I handed the tube to Laito, but before he could take it from me, my eyelids were already fluttering closed. I heard the faint noise of glass breaking. It echoed against my eardrums and it morphed into another sound. A woman yelling. A baby crying.

A man with long silver hair holds a wailing baby wrapped up in a white blanket decorated with red roses. The man is crying. He is holding the hand of a woman who is laying on the bed in front of him. Blood flows in between their palms and is escaping to the floor below them. The baby is crying, but not as loudly as the woman is screaming. Her eyes are open wide, but they are focused on the lace above her as she begs for mercy. As she begs for whatever is causing her such pain to end. Her lips are covered in blood. So much blood that it trails down her chin, down her neck and onto her silver locket. Her golden hair is matted down with sweat and her screams fill the entire room.

"Rika, I'm sorry," the man whispers. "And how is Yui this morning?" he continues. But now sunlight fills the room. And the baby is clean and giggles as the man picks her up from her crib. He bounces her in his arms. The sun goes down and he feeds her. The man reads her nonsensical stories about princesses and knights. The sun rises again and all this baby knows is this man. All she knows is adoration and attention and love. But sometimes, she can see the other side of the room. And sometimes that man brings her to a large bed where a woman lays, always with her face to the wall. The man keeps his distance while holding the baby. "Rika, Yui is smiling again today. Do you want to see?" But the woman doesn't respond.

Sometimes the baby sees this man sit on the edge of that bed holding some food of sorts. He lifts the woman to have her sit up. The woman looks straight ahead. Her eyes never move. Her arms stay at her sides. But the man feeds her and he brings her to the attached bathroom and when they return, she is changed and her hair is wet. Every day this seems to happen. And the woman never looks over to the crib. The woman never wants to see the smiling baby.

She does get up eventually. And she walks to the large window in between her bed and the crib. Her hand presses against the glass. She mumbles words to herself before returning to her bed. She only gets up when the man is not in the room and she never walks past the window.

The woman never walks past the window until the day she does. The baby wakes up and sees the woman looking down at her. The woman's face finally shows emotion. She looks down at the baby with disgust. Her wide eyes are enraged. "You've ruined me." She lifts her hands which are clasping a silver knife. "You've ruined me!" she yells. Before she can plunge the knife into the just awoken baby, the man tackles her and rips the knife out of her hands. He throws her onto the bed.

A young boy looks down at the baby. His hair is a perfect storm. He adjusts his glasses. The woman is yelling words that mean nothing. The baby begins crying. The boy gently pokes her cheek. "You're okay," he promises. Suddenly the woman is not yelling anymore.

Next to the boy, there is now another woman. And the boy is in different clothes. And the man is standing a few feet away. "How dare you subject my son to such a… creature," the woman hisses. "It should have been dealt with the same night as its mother."

"Reiji, leave us," the man orders. The boy leaves the room quickly. The man walks over and smiles down at the baby. She smiles back. "She has her mother's eyes."

"Karl, you know what you must do. It can't continue living."

"I know."

It is a dark night and the baby looks up at the starless sky. The man places a silver locket into her small hands. She smiles as her fingers press against the cold metal. "This will not be forever," the man promises her. "You will be safe, my Yui." The man walks away. The baby is alone on the concrete steps of a church. The only noise comes from trees nearby. Their branches bounce and scrape against each other, provoked by gusts of wind. All the baby ever knew was that one room and that man and the woman. She cries, not understanding where they went.

"Daddy!" A young girl runs and hugs her father.

He is reading a bible. He pats her head. "Are you all ready for school, Yui?" The girl nods enthusiastically. "Are you scared?" She continues nodding, hardly listening to his question. The young girl attends classes every day, only having Sundays off for prayer. The first day of class, the teacher announces that she is a troubled child. That she does not truly belong to the church and has been abandoned by her real parents because they couldn't handle her. The teacher warns the other students to be cautious of her deceitful nature.

A few days in, a little boy whispers to his friend, "My mother said she's evil." He chuckles, raising his voice so the young girl can hear. "My mother says she terrorizes her dad."

"She must be a demon sent to ruin him," his friend sneers. "She's as ugly as one."

"Shut up!" The young girl, now standing on top of a desk while the rest of the class left for lunch, seethes in anger. Her fist is still red from punching her classmate, but she won't let herself cry. Her teacher sits at her desk in the front of the room, making sure that the young girl fulfills her punishment.

The girl is now a young teenager. She looks down at her hands which have red welts painted across them. She hardly remembers what she did to deserve the lashings this time. She waits for her father at the entrance of the church. "This is what you agreed to," a man tells him. The girl hovers nearby, close enough to listen in. "You can push it off, but eventually they will have her." The man leans in closer to her father. "Karlheinz has already threatened to stop his donations."

"Rika, I'm sorry." The man with silver hair cries over a woman who is nearing death. "I had to," he continues. The baby cries in his arms.

The woman yells, "Make it stop!"

"I had to save you."

The woman stands at the window in that small room. She looks over the rose bushes. She mumbles to herself, "I will never be a monster like them." She peers down at a gazebo where a small boy reads books with his mother.

Scenes of this girl's life flash rapidly. Being sung to by the silver haired man. Threatened by the blonde woman. The little boy tells her over and over, "You're okay. You're okay. You're okay." And the silver haired man promises her over and over, "You will be safe. You will be safe." The sun rises and falls. Unknown forces decide this girl's future. One man's decision to save a woman's life sealed this girl's fate.

The girl is fifteen. There is a loud knock at the door. Her father jumps in shock. "Yui," he puts his hand out, "go to your room." The girl doesn't listen. She is sitting on the floor, a textbook spread across her lap. Another knock shakes the door and her father walks towards it. He opens it just a crack, but the man on the other side kicks it open. "I need more time," her father whispers to the man.

The intruder grabs the girl's father into what could be mistaken for an embrace. But the man's eyes fixate on the girl. And he hisses, "She is not yours to protect."

"Yui, this is Karlheinz," her father introduces her hesitantly. "He is… a good friend of mine."

"Yui." The man grasps the girl's shoulders lightly. "You've become such a beauty." His fingers glide across her long golden hair. "Such a beauty," he whispers, his voice cracking slightly with emotion.

Two years later, the girl's father sits her down. "Yui, the world can be a beautiful place." He looks past her, past the walls, focusing on something unknown. "But the world can also destroy you." He turns his head to the window and the girl looks as well, unsure of what she is supposed to see. "You're the only one that can decide your destiny."

"Yui?"

My eyes opened slowly. I was on the floor of Reiji's study. My head was on Laito's lap. "Yui?" Laito repeated. "You fell, kitten. Don't move, okay?" My arm pressed against shards of glass that scattered across the tile. Reiji sat unmoved from his chair. My eyes started adjusting to the light. I felt dried tears at my cheeks and my mouth still felt bitter. "We'll clean up your arm as soon as you're fully awake," Laito mentioned as I moved it slightly. Small shards of glass pierced my skin.

"Did you find what you were looking for?" Reiji asked.

I closed my eyes again, replaying all of the events in my mind. "Reiji, you," I began.

"I saw her from the courtyard one day," he explained. "It was merely a coincidence that I chose that day and that time to investigate."

"What did you see, kitten?" Laito asked. His hand stroked my cheek.

"Our father promised my mother that you were dead," Reiji continued, ignoring Laito. "Of course, when it came out that you were still very much alive, well," he sighed, "Let's just say you inadvertently caused quite a bit of damage."

"Reiji, don't be so harsh. It was our father who-"

"Yes, it is our father to blame. He turned Yui's mother and sullied Yui. He acted on impulse and then could not follow through with what had to be done. But the fact remains that if Yui had never been conceived or if she had simply died after birth, our mothers would still be alive to this day."

I sat up. "What does that mean?" I looked at Laito, whose eyes focused solely on the floor. "Reiji?" I tried standing, but my legs were weak and my body stung from glass cuts. My forehead was covered in a cold sweat. "Turned her to what?" Neither of them answered me. "What am I?" My body gave in and I fell back down, my head hitting Laito's lap. My eyes closed once again, but I did not dream of any more memories.