Author's note: Bromance. What's it good for?
When I think of bromance, I think back to my idyllic high school days, back to that time of my life which, upon recollection, seem as if they were forever locked in a ray of golden summertime glory. I think of that time my mate replaced my shampoo with mustard. I unfortunately only realised this while I was in the shower, so I ran out and beat the ever living shit out of this mate of mine.
Those were the days, all right. We were tight, man. We did everything together. We took the same subjects, played the same games, listened to the same music. People said we were one and the same person, only my mate was more of a twat than me, an undeniably true fact. Neither of us had girlfriends, so we'd just hang out every day and do stupid shit together, like throw our shoes up trees and run around screaming inappropriate religious jokes at the tops of our lungs.
Actually, on retrospect, I think this mate of mine was gay.
Without further ado:
Kuroko and the Vampire of Shinjuku
Chapter Two: A Bromantic Comedy
Kagami was the first to notice that there was something… off… about Kuroko that day.
To you, dear reader, it might seem strange that Kagami, who was well known for not being the sharpest tool in the shed, could read Kuroko's moods like a barometer. Especially since to most people, Kuroko was about as easy to read as ancient hieroglyphics. It all came down to how Kuroko passed the ball. They had played together so often that Kagami could notice when Kuroko was more sluggish than usual. He could tell that if Kuroko did not pass the ball instantly – if he had to make a conscious effort to identify openings – then Kuroko's mind was not on the game.
Kagami was not about to admit it, but he was kind of worried for him…
"What is up with you today?" he demanded gruffly. He had always known his team mate was a bit of an odd duck, but he had never let that bother him too much. Kuroko was Kuroko – it was hard to imagine him as anyone else. Sometimes, though, he made Kagami scratch his head in confusion, like right now, for instance.
As he did sit-ups, Kuroko kept stuffing mouthfuls upon mouthfuls of garlic into his mouth. His breath stank so much it was hard to be even within a meter of him without cringing. When Kuroko noticed Kagami staring at him strangely, he said, very solemnly, "It's a precaution."
Garlic. Precaution. Wait. Whaaaaaaat?
Kagami took a wild swing at the underlying question. "Is this about your vampire-phobia?" he asked finally. Kuroko opened his mouth and proceeded to contaminate the air with more of his garlic breath. Then he nodded.
Kagami found it hard to decide whether he wanted to laugh, cry or slap Kuroko repeatedly across the face. He ended up doing none of these things because of something that happened next.
A girl walked into the gym hall. She was pale, she had blue hair and she was armed with a parasol. If Kagami had been scrutinising Kuroko's blank face carefully at this point, he would have noticed the smaller boy's left eye twitch.
Aida looked at the girl suspiciously as she attempted to make her way across the court. "You're interrupting," Aida said crossly. "And who are you, anyway?"
The girl did not respond to that. She simply stood with her hands on her hips and let her gaze sweep across the court. Kuroko ducked his head very low indeed. It seemed as if he was trying very subtly to hide behind Kagami. But even Kuroko could be spotted if someone was looking carefully enough for him, and as soon as she saw him, the girl waved.
Kagami stared at the girl, then at Kuroko, then back at the girl.
"What the hell?" he said incredulously.
Having noticed the commotion, the other players on the team stopped what they were doing so that they could take it in turns to point and stare at the girl as if she was a specimen of a foreign species.
"It's time for you to make sweet, sweet love to me, Tetsuya-kun!" the girl enthused.
"This is my sister," said Kuroko.
"Bullshit!" said Kagami with a snort.
The girl – whose name was Katou as you might remember – strutted her way across the court. She was just about within kissing distance of Kuroko when she stopped, made convulsions, and took a step back, a look of undisguised horror replacing her previously bright smile.
"Your breath stinks!" she protested volubly.
"Yay, the garlic worked," said Kuroko nonchalantly.
Kuroko made an unintelligible rasping noise with his throat. It sounded vaguely as if he was being strangled.
"IS THIS CHICK A VAMPIRE?" he demanded finally.
Only now did it seem as if Katou noticed him. Before replying, she whipped out some sunscreen from her tracksuit pockets – which clearly belonged to Kuroko – and dabbed some of it on her face and arms.
"Yes," she said. "Yes, I'm a vampire. But I'm not a slut, in case that's what you're thinking. To be honest, Tetsuya-kun is not really my type. I just need him to be my vessel. But you, on the other hand, you fine specimen, you delectable hunk of a man, you…!"
Kagami's face rapidly became as red as his hair. He spluttered, tried to search through his mind for something suave and manly to say, came up with an embarrassing blank, and proceeded to yell curses at her.
"GET OUT! GET OUT! WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE, YOU EVIL VAMPIRE? JUST LEAVE US ALONE, YOU STUPID LITTLE-!"
Aida interrupted by grabbing Katou by the arm and practically flinging her out the door.
"Well, that takes care of that," she said with evident satisfaction.
Koganei nudged Kagami. "So, um, what was all that about?"
"Beats me," said Kagami with a shrug. "I don't even – this is all Kuroko's fault, damn it!"
Satisfied he had come up with the deep meaning of life and the universe, Kagami went back to doing what he did best.
Meanwhile, Kuroko decided that he really was in a bit of a dilemma and that he would have to do his best to get out of it. The vampire was a persistent sort, he would grant her that. If she would not go away peacefully, that left only one valid option: to slay her.
He tried to summon up all the knowledge he knew about vampires. It turned out to be rather little. He had never been a fan of vampire fiction and his greatest exposure to their mythos before Katou came along was the Vampire of Shinjuku story. He wasn't sure if Katou herself was the Vampire of Shinjuku, though she had certainly implied that there was more than one vampire on the scene.
After basketball practice, Kuroko decided he would look for a vampire slayer. And yes, he had no idea where to find one, but hey, Tokyo was a big place. He supposed it took all sorts to make a city.
He was just about to leave Seirin behind him when he felt a large hand clamp down on his shoulder. "Hey," said Kagami.
"Hey," said Kuroko.
Kagami came into step beside him and the two of them started making their way down the street. "You know, you're right," Kagami said after a pause, looking away to his right, not really meeting Kuroko's eyes. "Vampires do exist and they're damned scary."
Kuroko nodded.
"Listen," Kagami went on. "I'll help you out here. If that vampire chick's harassing you…" He let his sentence dwindle away into silence. He certainly couldn't beat her up, but the sentiment was there, and Kuroko felt relieved to have someone like Kagami at his back.
"Know any vampire slayers?" Kuroko asked.
"Nope," Kagami replied. "But we can slay her ourselves – with a stake."
"Oh, I see," said Kuroko. He did not think he was strong enough to drive a wooden stake through someone's heart. "Can you do it for me?" he asked.
"Goes without saying," said Kagami with a devilish grin.
"Thank you, Kagami-kun."
Kagami's chest visibly swelled.
"Let's go kick some vampire ass!"
They went to Kagami's house, where they rummaged around the kitchen for a short while, looking for a stake. They found nothing there, but they did manage to find a garden stake out the back somewhere. A stake was a stake – it would have to do. Once they found it, they sat around in Kagami's room waiting for the vampire. This got boring very quickly, so they left the stake on the bed and went outside to play basketball with Kagami's spare hoop.
Naturally, this was the moment when Katou decided to appear.
It was getting dark when she showed her face. Only sparse rays of sunlight still lit up the surroundings and the air was becoming steadily chillier. Katou had abandoned her parasol and sunscreen and approached the two boys, licking her bright red lips as she did so. She was evidently in her element now that nightfall had come.
Let it go on the record: vampires are infinitely creepier at night time than how they are during the day, especially when they smile. In the dark, their fangs seem almost luminescent – your eyes are just drawn towards them you can't help but imagine them sinking into the base of your neck. You can vividly imagine the pain that follows. Vampires think they're being friendly when they smile, but the fangs they sport render the sentiment fairly moot.
These thoughts were very much on the mind of the two boys and they lamented over how the garden stake was not with them.
"I'm really sorry for disrupting your practice," Katou said apologetically. "I can get a little carried away. Please don't hate me."
Kuroko and Kagami glanced at each other. They exchanged silent words. Then Kuroko turned back to Katou said, "Would you like to play some basketball?"
"I'd love to!"
Poor Katou. Poor, poor Katou.
First of all, a note about vampires: they may be expert hunters and their strength may grow exponentially when the sun is down, but this does not instantly make them good basketball players. In fact, vampires are notoriously lazy. When they are not sucking blood from their hapless victims, they sleep in their coffins, often for centuries on end. Modern vampires have discovered the joys of late-night TV, and as a rule, it is not part of vampire culture to encourage exercise or to join sports clubs. As a result of this, Katou was even weaker a player than Kuroko – and she did not have any specialised talents like he did to make up for it. Against Kagami, she had no choice.
Secondly, Katou was so fixated on playing with Kagami and trying in vain to impress him that she forgot about Kuroko, who was hard to notice on the court anyway. She did not even realise when Kuroko slipped off into Kagami's house and she certainly did not notice when he returned – bearing an ugly wooden stake.
With consummate ease, Kuroko passed the stake to Kagami. His movements were so quick and subtle that it would have been impossible for the casual observer to notice exactly when the stake passed hands. As Kagami took the stake, Katou managed to get hold of the ball. She stood directly under the hoop, squinted carefully at it and hurled the ball up towards it. The ball hit the hoop and bounced off it – it had been a rather weak throw and Katou was dismayed by it.
"Did you see that, Tetsuya-kun? Taiga-kun?" She swung around, a mixture of despondence and hopefulness on her features. "I almost got it in!"
Kagami cut her off. He gripped the stake tightly between his hands and came towards Katou, his eyes flashing with purpose. In that instant, Katou realised what was happening and her eyes and mouth opened wide. Reflexively, she stepped backwards, but her reaction was much too slow.
Viciously, Kagami drove the stake through her heart, so that the pointy end of it came out through her back.
There was no blood. Vampires did not have any blood. But they could certainly writhe around in agony and this one did. Katou threw her head back and gasped in total, overwhelming pain.
"Oh dear, I'm dead," she said sadly, and then she died.
Her body fell against Kagami's, unmoving. For a moment, they remained like that, fixed in the intimate embrace of the murdered and the murderer. Kagami's hands shook around his weapon and he could look at nowhere except the gaping wound he had made.
Before their eyes, the vampire began to disintegrate. Her flesh rotted and collapsed against her bones so that she appeared to be nothing more than a skeleton. Her cheekbones hollowed out. Her body withered away into a fine black dust, so that soon, Kagami was holding the stake in naked air. The neighbourhood was quiet and only the sound of the basketball still bouncing against the pavement was audible. Soon enough, even that noise faded away into the twilight.
"We did it," Kagami said numbly.
Kuroko bent down on his knees and inspected the dust Katou had left behind. It was wispier than ash and as he touched it, it softened and gave way to a gust of wind, scattering away from his grasp.
"Hmmm," was all he said.
They were silent for a moment, both of them contemplating the vampire's last moments. There was just something so surrealistic about the whole thing, like everything had taken place in another reality. They felt curiously detached from it all.
Then Kagami threw the stake to the ground.
"Well, I'm up for some dinner," he remarked. "I'm starving!"
And so the two boys adjourned for a well-deserved food break, little knowing that what had happened with Katou was only the beginning…
In every major city of this world, there exists a Den of Vampires, the name of which is fairly self-explanatory. It is hidden extremely well in the shadows. A person could spend his entire life scouring Tokyo and not even found a hint of a bat or a coffin anywhere. As per the legend, Tokyo's Den of Vampires was naturally hidden in Shinjuku, though I could not tell you which part of Shinjuku this was – the Den's location changes every day. Inside the Den, at any rate, was a small, enclosed, dark room. The only visible thing in it was a bunch of coffins, most of them squashed together and stacked on top of each other. It was not the most comfortable of hideouts, but for a dying race it would have to do.
It did not take long for news of Katou's death to reach the Den of Vampires. A bat flew into the Den and reported the regrettable incident. This all happened telepathically, or the bat screeched out ultrasonic waves only vampires and other bats could detect. Vampires have very good hearing.
It was up to the eldest vampire to decide what to do in the face of this tragedy. His name was the Benevolent One. He never came out of his coffin – his fashion sense was hideous and he knew it. Also, unfortunately for him, as vampires got older, they were less able to resist the effects of light. Katou had been a young vampire, the very youngest in the tribe. It had been up to her to find a mate and prolong the existence of her race. Now she was dead.
The vampires would have their revenge.
"Mwa ha ha!" laughed the Benevolent One in his coffin. "Mwa ha ha ha ha!"
Stupid as it sounds on paper, it was actually a rather sinister laugh. Please do your best to imagine it.
Next chapter: Honestly, I'm making this shit up as I go along.
