Cheating death, and cheating on life.
There in the rubble and ruin, and there in the split-second that Kei felt Sho stop moving and drag heavy and lifeless on him, something ripped. It must have been the fabric of Kei's mind.
That one moment left him unhinged from his reason. He couldn't think, couldn't put the pieces that made up the history of him and Sho into any order, couldn't remember why he had refused when Sho had begged him to suck death like a poison out of Yi Che or what that refusal meant between the two of them.
With reason gone, all that mattered to Kei was the instinct to bite and the unbearably sweet smell of Sho's blood clouding out of his punctured chest like the arousing fragrance of ripe fruit.
Kei was wholly powerless in the teeth of his appetite, this desperate desire of his, this relief of yielding to a temptation which had haunted him for so many years, and which only Sho's living had given him the strength to resist. Oh, vampires were not like other people; they hid a monster inside, a monster whose driver was blood and whose physical nature included the strength and the speed to take their blood of first choice.
And Sho was always Kei's first choice.
So often, Kei had looked at the pulse ticking in that smooth neck, had felt the smell of Sho's skin sharpen his hunger into a fever, had watched and wetted his lips when cuts offered the internal Sho, red and vital and so strong, to the ache of Kei's starving eyes.
He thanked heaven that his teeth didn't have any power of their own to feel need; it was enough to contain the surges of need in the rest of his deprived, demanding body. For year after year, he had lived with his terrible need, and had lived too close to what could satisfy it.
When he first met Sho, Kei had not been bothered about the nature of his food, but, as time wore on, and Kei became conscious of his role as guide and protector for Sho, he couldn't consume more and more evil without fear of the consequences. He couldn't risk becoming the same material as his food – criminal, cruel, depraved, violent, self-centred, unfeeling. After all, you are what you eat. In those days, the boy Sho was like his son, and Kei didn't want his "son" to have a father like that.
Later, Sho began to catch him up, became like a younger brother – rude and familiar, reckless, real, his own person, but still affectionate, still vulnerable, still wanting comfort and reassurance even while his pride blew airs of confidence and vanity into the shell of that complicated ego. Kei had played along, stifled his own needs, remembered how Sho had never been afraid to be his friend, even that first day when Kei had been too weak in body and spirit to move his hand two inches out of the sun.
Was it the weakness, then, that had stopped Kei from attacking Sho for his blood that first day?
No; in truth, that day - that hour - the desire for Sho's blood had not really begun. The boy was no more than any other carrier of blood, the same as Toshi or Shinji or the fool of a crook who came alone for his money.
It hadn't taken long for Kei to feel an unusual desire for Sho's blood, though.
Perhaps it had been later during that first day, when Kei was feeding and Sho had stood looking on, curious and thoughtful. Kei had asked through bloodied lips, "Aren't you afraid?" and the boy had slowly shaken his head and had smiled, because he already trusted Kei as his friend. How, then, could Kei – who had been left deserted and friendless - not have desires to take a blood this unusual and this sweet into himself? How could he not have desires for this union?
Yes, even the silent attention of Yi Che didn't change the desires that Kei felt for Sho's blood. Yi Che looked longing at Kei, and never spoke to him, while Kei could see that Sho looked at Yi Che with words hanging like a poem in his gaze.
Kei often thought of the day when they first met Son and his sister; the heist had gone wrong and Son had been after the same gang for his own reasons, had teamed up with Sho, Toshi and Kei and had taken them all home afterwards to clean up their wounds and to share dinner, as there were no spoils.
That evening, Yi Che had leaned forward and gently wiped away the blood from a slash in Sho's arm, in front of Kei. He remembered how he had continued to feel the smell of Sho's exposed blood under the sharp tang of the antiseptic, feeling that sweet, trusting blood-smell like a lamb on the savage wolf of his tongue.
He had felt something else for the sight of Yi Che, her soft shape and dark eyes; vampires feel the need for more than just blood after all.
But it was only Sho's blood which tormented Kei mercilessly, night after night. Other needs could find another release, or could be lost in the distraction of a hundred amusements of their life together in Mallepa, but the call of Sho's blood was like the constant pain of a beloved curse - Kei was so entirely in love with it.
Eventually, it had become too much. Yi Che's eyes followed Kei everywhere like shy but sticky shadows. Kei's eyes tasted Sho through the night, eyes licking where his teeth wanted to bite.
Kei could not let Yi Che waste her love on a monster; neither could he take from Sho what Sho so plainly wanted, nor himself take from Sho the denaturing satisfaction for his own blood-lust.
There was no peace in this situation, and no solution without action. Eventually, it all became too much to bear and Kei had burst out into the night, craving nourishment and a salve for his howling frustrations. He had fled as far as he could in his weakened state, and then he had killed. And killed. And killed.
And there was no going back to the magnet which he had known as home. There was no return. He had killed that too, but, he had killed his right to return as a secret pact that Sho and Yi Che would find a consolation in each other. If Sho could be happy, Kei would accept whatever hardship came with exile as a just price for the bargain.
And the years of exile indeed were hard, were toxic to any sense of feeling.
Kei had been far too numb to feel surprise when Sho came to visit him in prison. At that time, Kei was no more than the undead suspended in the airless vacuum of an eternal deathwish. Each day he asked to die; all it would take was the sun. Each day, from the shadows of his cell, he begged his gaolers, the rats, the walls, his chair, his God – "Please. I just want to die. Please let me die." For, now, the old needs were buried deep under the weight of this new one.
Until Sho came to visit him.
Until Sho came to visit him with that voice, that expressive face, that determined searching for the real presence of Kei through the glass of the interview-room screen, and then that photograph of a new, young life, a new "Sho" – oh, the desire for death was not stronger than the calling of this long-time bond, this friendship which had been a life of its own, even if it had been one where the forbidden nearly fell nightly to the sickness of Kei's violation –
Yes, he was still a monster. In prison alone or in their room together, Kei always remained a monster. He knew he had never been a monster in Sho's eyes, but Kei was always a monster in his own heart.
Sho's visit to the prison, so many miles away from Mallepa, re-presented the trust that Sho placed in the vampire as a necessary friend and awakened in Kei something of an interest in at least one – two, three, four – living things. Even when Kei heard that he had been sentenced to his request, to death, he was grateful but no longer entirely numb to life.
And then came Sho's voice again, came Sho's heart and breaking spirit through the cheap plastic speaker of the prison phone: "I can't go on alone. Help me, Kei. I can't go on alone." It wasn't the line that was cracking.
The one thing – the one and only thing - which meant more than the easiness of death had summoned Kei and he went, appearing mild and slightly bashful as their eyes met over the skipping of Sho's six year old daughter and the fluff of pale, insubstantial candyfloss.
In the setting of a park and sugar and the trivial pastime of a child, they had met again, and the maturity of their alliance spoke seriousness and significance and, yes, Kei knew, it also spoke death. Son had understood that they would be the death of each other, had invited Kei to execute him and stated as a reason, "This is our destiny."
Now Kei and Sho were left to manage their destiny, their living and their dying together.
So, kneeling on the broken concrete of an unclaimed wasteland, Kei had willingly taken to himself the terrible spasms of Sho's life as it thrashed its last protests in the prison of that wounded body. And then Kei – involuntary and a toy in the hand of his fate – cracked, as that face which meant all slackened into a staring emptiness.
Kei felt himself bend forward into the sweet forbidden smell and graze open the warm, velvet skin of Sho's neck.
There was no time to chase after reason: he was a monster and the raw selfishness of his monster's nature could not solve the puzzle of loyalty and the greater love and whether absence and bereavement was more correct than saving this man who was precious to him beyond life, precious beyond death.
And there was no time.
And the taste of Sho's blood was already like heaven inside him.