Chapter 33
The voice above him shook Azusa violently to the core. At first, he convinced himself that he had simply imagined it until the limp corpse of a body he had curled up against it began to twitch. He realized that it was spoken and she was in fact beginning to giggle. Giggling. After all that had just happened. Azusa's eyes immediately darted up from behind his shielded armor and sulked at her feet, quickly snatching her by one of her hands. She was staring back at him with unusually calming eyes and he watched as a gentle smile began to spread across her pale, sickly lips. "You told me it was a girl," Yui said softly. "Remember?" Slowly but surely, Yui began to close her legs and hitched them up by the knees. It took her time to find her strength but she found to herself to feel abnormally at peace with the situation. She had never felt such a way and suddenly this feeling was her new home. The only thing to disturb her happiness in this moment was the sight of a stone cold Ruki caressing the child close to his chest, his eyes slowly meeting hers as she studied him closely. There was no need to exchange words, for he slowly readjusted the baby in his arms and handed him over. Her arms were weak but she gathered the newfound strength within her to hold her son and bring him to her chest. They were bare skin to skin. "He's so small," Yui said in a soft voice. Tears were swelling in the whites of her eyes and trembled at the ridge, only spilling over when her cheeks lifted into a wide smile.
"I don't understand... how this... could be," Azusa said breathlessly. He was clutching onto Yui's leg, which he could feel the life pumping through her again even behind her paper skin, and buried his face down into her thigh. His voice trembled as he spoke and there was no use trying to contain himself any further. "I don't understand it either," Ruki agreed. He tried to continue speaking but was quickly interrupted by an ecstatic Kou who clapped his hands and leapt to his feet, "M-Neko Chan is okay! Now go on, shoo shoo," He clucked at his brothers as he started pushing Yuma first out towards the door, "I'm sure the mommy and daddy would like some time alone with their new little darling." Despite the words being simple banter, the words penetrated everyone in the room deeply. Azusa lifted his head from Yui's lap to look eye to eye with Ruki, who was staring back just as intensely. Neither of them moved toward the exit.
His wide, blue eyes danced across the foreign world with a sense of both curiosity and newborn excitement; the only familiarity being the warmth, voice, and heartbeat of the woman who held him with a gentle yet protective grip in her comforting arms. Yui wouldn't allow herself to dwell in the thick tension that Kou had left behind after leaving with Yuma, for all of her focus was on the precious baby who laid in her arms and was gazing directly up at her. She recognized his eyes as something familiar. "I suppose we need to think of a name, don't we?" Her words were the first to break the silence and she finally tore her gaze away from the baby to look at Azusa, her face painted wit a permanent grin and her eyes still beaming with tears. Her happy gaze was met back by a serious stare. "How.. can you think of a name... at this time?" His words poured out of him without a filter but he began to realize he was becoming angry at the calmness that she was exuding. "It tore you apart... from the inside. You will never be the same..."
Yui was dumbfounded. She could not understand nor care to understand as to why Azusa would take some a memorable moment and turn it into something morbid; the audacity he had to speak such words as she held their newborn son in her arms. "I am fine," Yui snapped. To her surprise, Ruki stood up and then slowly lowered himself down to be perched on the couch beside her. He towered over her and she barely had time to react by the time he had turned her head by the chin to face him and hitched over her mouth fully. She let out a small squeak of protect and quickly snapped her mouth shut, letting out an additional sound of distress when she felt a sharp pain in her mouth. Quickly, Yui used her free hand to wipe the pain away and to her horror, she was bleeding from the lip. "Wha-?" She began. But then quickly, she shut her mouth and met eyes with Azusa, who quickly turned away with a grimacing look on his face. Ruki let go of her jaw and sighed as he sat back on the couch, combing his fingers through his dark locks and finally saying aloud, "And I suppose it will take you time to adjust to those new fangs of yours."
New fangs?
Those were Ruki's parting words, for he could feel that his presence was unwanted and felt no further need to be in the room. Yui was left with her little family and the taste of fresh blood in her mouth; to her horror, she swallowed without thinking twice. "Azusa," Yui sputtered out. Her smile had finally vanished and she looked down at her infant, which was still gazing up at her with those deep blue eyes. "How?" She whispered. But in the time it took for the words to leave her mouth, she had already thought of it and instead gasped. Azusa's head had buried back into her thigh and she felt him exhale a long sigh against her now cool skin. "He bit me," she choked, "he turned me from the inside." Her arms began to tremble weakly yet she held onto her son with a loving grip.