Chapter 15
It was during the lesson before the break that Mary's class was struggling over a tough Physics pop quiz; fifty minutes had already passed and the girl and Ruki had already finished answering their questions twenty minutes before, while Reiji was only re-reading and checking for the hundredth time that it was all flawless, from content to calligraphy.
The bell rang at last: those who had yet to finish were agitated, scribbling everything that the mind could still suggest; some exited the class after delivering their test sheets to the teacher, heading towards the school cafeteria; others did everything quietly, including the two vampires and the half-witch.
Ruki saw the girl stand up with her hands in the jacket's pockets and leave for the place where she would have met with Eve.
He grinned, before realizing that Reiji was standing in front of him, serious and firm.
- Yes? Do you need anything, Sakamaki Reiji?
- Just a curiosity... a few days ago, I happened to hear one of your brothers calling that girl "Izanami". I thought it was a simple nickname, until Yui-san told me that you call her "Eve" - he narrowed his eyes - I may be imagining things... these are pretty important names for some cultures and I wonder if they don't hide a particular meaning...
The other smiled enigmatically as he stood up and stared into his eyes.
- Oh? Didn't your father ever say anything to you? Heh - he snorted, taking the bag with his books and his school notes - He must consider you inept individuals, for not telling you about it. Goodbye - he said, keeping his mocking grin on the lips, which widened as soon as he felt nerves breaking when he passed the door to the hallway.
Walking beside the windows for a couple of minutes, he caught sight of the two girls meeting and sitting on the usual bench, chatting; he paused and looked around the surroundings, finding a pleased Yuuma who was watching her from the roof while eating an apple. He raised an eyebrow: his brother seemed a little annoyed too; his gaze shifted to a distant blond far away, that was the eldest son of the Sakamaki family leaning against a wall, seemingly asleep. And he noticed his painfully black eye.
He snickered, then returned to the two girls: they were laughing, or rather, Eve was, Izanami was just smiling and talking, calmly, as if nothing was bothering her at the moment or had never bothered her. He remained at the window a few minutes more, thoughtful, then went to find a quiet place to sit and read his damned book.
A few minutes before the break's end, Ruki was back earlier as always and satisfied with his punctuality; unlike as usual, someone else was already in front of the classroom. Mary was standing before the window, silent, in the same position as he had been.
The vampire stopped and carefully observed her, melancholy, eyeing the roof. Following her gaze, he realized the girl was looking at Shuu Sakamaki, who had moved just to lean on the railing; in those dark eyes, he saw her desire to approach the blond again and the frustration of not being able to get close to him.
Ruki frowned: he couldn't explain the reason, but the sight of it was kind of irritating him; after all they had taken the girl to choose one of them, so that they could achieve Karlheinz's goal. It was necessary to choose one of them: they were so grateful to their saviour... And the fact that she had a crush (it was a simple crush... right?) For Shuu Sakamaki wasn't helping them with their plans at all.
The young man, after having called her, went to class to keep on attending the following lessons; he saw her glancing at the roof once again and gritted his teeth, vexed.
- KOU! BASTARD! GIVE ME BACK MY SHRIMP!
Ruki glared at Yuuma, engaged in one hell of a fight against Kou to defend his portion of fried shrimps; he sighed and reproached them for their bad manners. Azusa watched the brothers carefully, ready to grasp under their nose some of the shrimps; Mary was slightly smiling, her face resting on her closed hand, moving each shrimp with her chopsticks a little to the right and a little to the left before putting it in her mouth and chewing it, absorbed in her thoughts.
The girl at some point sensed a stinging feeling on herself and, turning her eyes, she met with the lavender ones of the vampire sitting on her left (on her right there was Ruki, casually), concentrated on staring at her intensely.
They exchanged glances, her questioning him, and him indecipherable; until she offered him some shrimps of her portion; Azusa smiled softly and thanked her, taking a couple of them. Mary snorted amused and returned to her plate, ignoring the fact that he had moved closer to her, happy.
Kou widened his eyes upset and slammed his hands on the table, turning to her, who had jumped because of that sudden gesture; Yuuma muttered to him to calm down, reproached by the eldest brother with a "Look who's talking".
- Eeeeeh, Neko-chan, you gave your shrimps to Azusa-kun? It's not fair! - he complained, referring probably to those shrimps that the little brother had already stolen from them, while Ruki was trying to placate his nerves and telling him to lower his voice's volume.
- I don't mind…? I'm not very hungry - she murmured, cracking a nervous smile; the giant was looking at her, worried, thinking that she hadn't eaten with much appetite in those recent few days and his thoughts became curses to a certain blue-eyed vampire...
- Eeeeeh - the blond uttered, puzzled, then stood up eagerly - Then you won't mind if I take your left shrimps?!
- KOU! – both Yuuma and Ruki told him off; Azusa gave them a somehow perplexed look.
- Mh-hm - she shook her head, lifting the plate toward him – Here you are.
The two brothers stared at her as if she had been a ghost with thirty hats on its head (?) as Kou was rejoiced and benefited from her kindness.
When they finished, they cleared the table and brought the dirty dishes to the kitchen, where Ruki and Yuuma stayed as determined by the shifts.
- Ruki - he called him at a certain point, as he was drying the freshly washed plates and stacking them in the cabinets above - Why is she wearing gloves recently? She doesn't even take them off when we're eating...
- She's becoming transparent - Ruki replied, grabbing the glass that Yuuma had dropped after he had carefully analysed the words that he had just heard; he was looking at him with his mouth and eyes wide open.
- HUH?!
- Don't yell. The process to become Izanami requires the body to become transparent - his brother briefly explained, after glancing at him; the other frowned, trying to mentally figure out the meaning of that and snapped again.
- Doesn't that mean she'll become invisible ?!
- ... No. Transparent. You can distinguish the shapes, but you can see through.
- I'd prefered the clothes, it would have been interest-...
- Yuuma.
The giant was silent, breaking in a clod sweat in front of Ruki's glare, and returned to their chores while listening to Kou and Mary's bickering, she suggesting to the blond to read something; the eldest brother approved her aim, despite finding it vain. And yet he had to change his mind as soon as he came out of the kitchen, the situation quieted down all of a sudden: Kou, lying on an armchair with his legs in the air and leaning on his elbows, was reading a book while the girl was sitting satisfied on the couch, cross-legged, beside Azusa, who had laid his head on her shoulder and closed his eyes.
Yuuma's laughter was still audible even when he retired to his room, but the blond was reading that book with such an engrossment in the plot that he wouldn't have moved by a millimetre even if a helicopter had been about to hit him.
- What did you make him read? - Ruki asked, sitting on another armchair, leaning an elbow on the armrest and resting his face on his hand.
- Alice in wonderland - she replied with a triumphant smile.
The vampire grinned.
- Heh. Not a bad choice, I had never thought of it.
Mary gave him a smile and he felt sinking into the armchair, ignoring the cause.
- Please excuse me - she got up after gently moving Azusa's head against the edge of the seat - I'm rather tired, I'll go back to my room...
That said, she took her leave, examined by the vampire; Kou didn't notice anything, that book had really dragged him into the land of wonders.
Ruki read the book which he never parted from, probably for the thousandth time, and waited a few dozen minutes; he put the book on the side table and walked away from the living room, heading upstairs; the two brothers were sleeping, the blond having fallen asleep during the pleasant and miraculous reading (surely Yuuma would have made fun of him the next day).
The young man knocked on the girl's bedroom's door three times, waiting for thirty seconds each; slightly impatient, he pulled down the handle and came in furtively, noting that she had apparently fallen asleep on the bed, among pieces of paper spread over the sheets and on the floor.
He stepped ahead, laying his hands on his hips and arching an eyebrow at seeing all of her hair (so much hair, it didn't look that way when well combed or tied) dispersed, almost hiding a part of her body under a large dark spot; he lowered himself on his knees to pick up some of her locks touching the floor and put them on her back, moving them a little further since they were slipping back to the ground.
- ... I'd cut all of your hair, Kachiku... - he whispered, grinning at seeing her fidget in her sleep, almost perceiving his evil intentions.
He glimpsed the letter that Mr Ari had handed over to Mary. Before grasping it, he quickly questioned his conscience (or rather correctness) and shrugged, with a mocking smile on his lips, pulling out the folded letter from the envelope, carefully reading the content and getting more serious as he went on.
His reading ended at the point where the woman wrote about her daughter's sudden appearance during her pregnancy one month after the conception; the letter was made up of two sheets, in fact, and the second wasn't inside the envelope. Ruki frowned and looked around in the room, looking for the missing part and, irritated, put the letter back where he had found it, on the desk.
He looked back at the sleeping girl, who had turned around in the meantime, an arm stretched on the mattress, and the other resting on her belly; he listened to her uneven breath, as always pointing out mentally that it seemed forced and, after hearing it several times, suffering.
He leaned over with his body, leaning against the bed with one hand to keep his balance, and with the other he moved a lock of hair away from her pale face: her eyelids and the rest of the skin around the eyes were flushed and at the corners of the mouth there were signs of a grieved grimace.
Ruki sighed.
- I considered you more interesting. I am disappointed, to get so depressed for so little... just because of him...
Ruki knew that Mary, at least in those days, was crying because of what had happened with the Sakamaki family's oldest son; anyone could deduce it, because all the pieces of paper scattered on the sheets and on the floor were dozens and dozens of different portraits of the blond, drawn with pencils of graphite, saguine, or ink.
Izanami? Laito? She would have had patience, she would have endured, and she would have reacted to change things in better as much as possible; she could have always tried to restart her relationships with Laito again, and concerning Izanami... she had prepared for this.
With Shuu Sakamaki it was a quite different matter: not knowing what had happened in the past between Mary and Ryan Plum, Ruki couldn't understand why she was so traumatized; human beings weren't able to love sincerely, so what could one expect from a vampire, a creature that was worse when feelings were involved?
Her mother had said she loved him, yet she had abandoned him.
... Had Sakamaki Shuu ever told the half-witch he loved her?
Something was itching him in the chest, as he immersed in those complex thoughts that concerned the relationship between Mary and the lazy vampire.
Something was irking him, and at the same time something else was deeply distressing him: why was he feeling this way?
Two minutes of silence passed, all motionless except for the chest of the girl rising and lowering because of her breathing.
Ruki sat on the bed's edge, resting his hands to the sides of her head, and lowered her torso until she found her nose a few inches from the girl's face; he observed her intensely, then moved to her neck, sniffing it and tasting her skin with his tongue. If the scent was very inviting, this gesture soaked his taste buds with an aromatic flavour.
He sank his fangs on her flesh and drank avidly, after having longed for her blood with patience for days: he knew that she had been "polluted" by Sakamaki's, so he had waited for his brothers to "cleanse" that essential liquid to their nature.
- Ru-Ruki-kun...? - Mary stuttered, waking up and jolting out of surprise, putting her hands on his shoulders to make him get off her - You could also have woken me up first... agh!
But the vampire tightened his grasp, folding his arms under her back, keeping on feeding on that scarlet nectar; the girl closed her eyes and clenched her teeth, trying to tolerate the pain, though it was less intense than with the other vampires...
- Hi...!
… forget it. She let out a suffering groan and her eyes watered; she perceived Ruki's grin on her neck, who got off.
- Your blood... has a singular taste... it's not like Eve's... sweet, inebriant... but it satisfies the thirst... and tempts to desire more - after these words and having ripped her sweatshirt, he bit on her shoulder, with a hand resting on her face, grasping her chin, and the other holding her arm.
- Those low-beings - he said in a whisper - the Sakamaki's don't deserve this blood. They wouldn't even deserve Eve's, but now she has found her Adam. Even the firstborn is not worthy to be chosen by you, Izanami.
Mary widened her eyes and replied, resentful.
- Don't you dare involve Shuu-san! It doesn't have anything to do with him!
Ruki snickered, lifting himself and stared at her eyes quietly, though she felt an unintelligible but unpleasant feeling within her chest; then he narrowed his cold eyes.
- Give up on him. Izanami doesn't need a companion who can abandon at any moment - he lowered again, sticking his hand to her cheek, after drying a tear - Choose me - he smirked again - You need me...
... and I need you to repay the favour to Karlheinz-sama.
Mary saw Ruki's face approach hers more and more; the distance between their lips decreasing more and more.
- Yuuma-kun~ Did you hear that noise? Azusa-kun and I were sleeping so well!
- It came from Mesubuta's room... Boh.
- ... Aren't these... Ruki and Izanami's voices...? Ruki... sounds really angry...
- ... It seems that Neko-chan... hurled him against the wall?!
- I don't want to be Mesubuta's shoes right now. No way, brr.
Thanks fo reading~! I hope you enjoyed this chapter!
