Part three. Sorry for the delay, guys! It was totally unintentional. In compensation, I present to you all a longer-than-what-came-before-it final chapter. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: Nothing you recognize originated with me.
You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger
Three
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I won't soothe your pain;
I won't ease your strain;
You'll be waiting in vain:
I've got nothing for you to gain.
—"Eyes on Fire," Blue Foundation
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She didn't see him again for almost a month. In the intervening time, Tokio was sure she was having a major psychotic break, because two days after that awful, horrific night, she began searching for everything she could dig up on vampires to the detriment of her job. She felt stupid at best, crazy at worst, but it had become necessary, for reasons she couldn't articulate or exactly understand.
Maybe, she thought often to herself, this is what going insane feels like.
She found all sorts of literature on vampires from everywhere. They were, it appeared, some of the oldest creatures of the night. Vampires in Japanese cinema were a relatively new phenomenon, only appearing around the late 1950s and heavily influenced by American film, but in Europe—and especially Eastern Europe—they had been a presence since at least the Middle Ages, if not earlier. There were even suppositions putting what would now be called vampires as existing during Ancient Babylonia and Assyria.
And though all of this would have been fascinating under other circumstances, Tokio could not enjoy all of this information just for the sake of knowing it. Not when she was clinging desperately to the hope that her neighbor was just deluded, that he was the one in the midst of the psychotic break and not her. Because although she didn't believe he was a vampire, there was something so unsettling and disquieting and just off about him that she had a difficult time attributing it to psychosis. There was something not right about him, something that was alien and wrong on a fundamental level, going far beyond any kind of personality or genetic defect.
Unfortunately, her reading wasn't helping her exactly disprove the ridiculous notion that Hajime was a vampire. There were certain "facts" that made her uncomfortable, made her uneasy, such as the notion that vampires could not enter places uninvited. She remembered vividly how solemn and tense Hajime had become the first time she had confronted him about his entering her apartment without asking her. It had been such a bizarre reaction that it had stuck with her. The other thing that made her uneasy was the way he seemed to almost "wake up" as the sun sank below the horizon; he always seemed a little listless when he arrived in her apartment during the afternoon, but as the hours passed and night grew closer, he became more alert, more aware, seemed to radiate more strength. And since vampires were nocturnal, it stood to reason that night time was their time.
Even the weird dog thing could technically be explained: apparently vampires were thought to possess some shape shifting abilities. If that were fact—and she used the word loosely—then conceivably, Hajime had shifted into the dog last night. Maybe. Possibly.
Tokio fought with herself for a long time as she read more and more and grew more and more fretful. And when she really couldn't stand it any longer, she leaned back in her chair, looked up at her ceiling and sighed, exhausted.
"I give up," she murmured. Then she rose, walked over to the shared wall between her apartment and Hajime's, and tapped softly.
"Hajime-san," she said quietly. "If you're there, I would like for you to please come over."
There was silence from the other side of the wall, but that wasn't necessarily a no. Hajime didn't speak, as a rule, unless he had to. So Tokio waited for a few moments, and then felt ice trip down her spine, felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up, and knew he was in her apartment. A glance over her shoulder only confirmed what she had had known: he stood by the kotatsu, watching her with those unblinking amber eyes that looked at you and through you all at once.
"Thank you for coming," she said, and he inclined his head. "Please sit."
He folded himself down at the kotatsu, and Tokio walked over to him, distantly wondering who was crazier—he for believing he was a fictitious being, or she for inviting a clearly unstable man into her apartment.
"I've been doing some reading," she said after a pause, and he smirked that odd little smirk of his and nodded. "I want to ask you some questions."
"If you like."
"How old are you?"
He raised an eyebrow, and she knew she had surprised him; obviously he had anticipated the conversation going in a different direction.
"I was born in Meiji 2. I believe that translates to 1869. So that would make me a little over one hundred and forty years old. As for appearances, I'm about thirty-five."
"And how did you get to be a vampire?" she asked, and he narrowed his eyes, his smirk widening and becoming suddenly threatening.
"Take care of your tone, Tokio. I came at your request as a courtesy—I won't suffer insolence, not even to convince you. As to that, the choice to believe me or not is entirely up to you."
"You have to realize how—"
"I don't have to realize anything," he said imperiously. "I know what the realities of my existence are. Whether you choose to believe them is your business, not mine."
"This doesn't happen in real life!" she burst out in frustration. "It's like being stuck in a bad American horror movie!"
His smirk took on a more amused slant. "They aren't that bad," he said. "Even if they only get it about half right most of the time."
"What?"
He shrugged. "Sunlight isn't lethal. It's annoying and uncomfortable, but it won't kill us."
"What about holy water?"
"Also annoying and uncomfortable," he said. "More than sunlight. I suppose in large quantities it has potential, but I haven't tested that theory."
"Crosses?"
He smirked. "Are just wood. Very handsomely fashioned wood, but only wood all the same."
"Do you have a shadow? Or a reflection?"
"No, and yes."
And so it continued for over an hour: she quizzed him—demanded answers, more like—and he, in as good-naturedly a way as he was capable of, answered her, elaborating when she asked (demanded) it of him.
"Why did you kill Yoshida?" she asked finally.
"Because I disliked him intensely," he replied.
"You can't go around killing people just because you don't like them," she said. "There's laws against that."
"Perhaps it's escaped your attention, Tokio, but human laws don't exactly apply to me."
"So you go around indiscriminately killing people?"
He shrugged. "It isn't indiscriminate," he said. "He's the only person I've killed since I've been here."
"No one else?" she prodded, glaring at him. "Not once?"
He smirked, wider than he usually did, teeth flashing briefly.
"Waste not, want not," he replied. "Don't you think it would be very foolish of me to kill off my food supply?"
"Why him?" she asked, deciding not to touch that line. "What was so special about Yoshida that you decided to kill him?"
"He wasn't special," he said, idly taping the top of the kotatsu with one of his long-fingered hands. "I didn't even drink from him. I only disposed of him."
"But why? Because he was coming after me?"
He cocked his head and eyed her, and she forced herself not to fidget under the intent scrutiny.
"After a fashion," he said finally. "I very much disliked him around you. So I…remedied…the situation."
"By murdering him," she said flatly, and he shrugged one shoulder, expression bored.
"As you like," he said. "I never asked for approval or a blessing from you, Tokio. You're the one who asked. I'm only answering."
"I don't like the idea of you killing someone on my behalf—"
"Ah, make no mistake, Tokio," he said, voice so low it made icy fingers ghost down her spine. "That man's death was not for you in the slightest. It was for me. I am a very selfish creature. I didn't care for having him around you—there was an alarming tendency for your blood to be spilt when he was. And so, I took care of it."
"You don't like it when I bleed?" she asked incredulously, not sure she was understanding him correctly.
"I dislike the wanton waste of blood," he clarified. "It's annoying."
She stared at him. "You're out of your mind," she said finally, and he shrugged and rose.
"As you like."
"Are you leaving?" she asked, scrambling to her feet.
"I have things to attend to," he said, walking toward their shared wall. "As do you."
"I do?" she asked, frowning.
"Hn." He slanted a considering look over his shoulder. "Your keys have been very quiet of late."
"I'm taking a sort of…sabbatical, I guess you could call it."
"Hn. I believe the sabbatical's over."
And then he was gone again, and she was no closer to a resolution than she had been.
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It didn't get easier.
Hajime resumed his daily visits, and Tokio allowed them. They fell back into their former routine, but she wasn't comfortable with him anymore—or at least, she could no longer tolerate his presence the way she once had, because "comfortable" and "Hajime" didn't exactly go together. She had no idea what his thoughts on the matter were, since he rarely if ever spoke. She allowed the impasse for two days before she decided enough was enough.
"Tell me about your life," she demanded suddenly on the third afternoon, and when the silence behind her stretched on she turned around to look at him.
To her surprise, he seemed startled.
"I beg your pardon?" he asked finally.
"Tell me about your life," she repeated.
"Why?"
She shrugged. "Why not?"
There was a long pause, and then he frowned. "I don't remember much of it."
"You don't remember? How is that possible?"
He raised an eyebrow. "I've been alive a very long time," he said mildly. "And this current un-life of mine is far away and very much removed from the one I led when I was human, Tokio."
"You have to remember something," she said. "It's not like you were too young to remember."
"That life was a long time ago," he said. "The cigarettes are about the only remnant of it anymore." His gaze pinned her. "I find myself very curious about your motives, Tokio. I get the feeling your inquisitiveness has very little to do with a sudden belief in vampires on your part."
"I never said that," she said quickly, and he chuckled low in the back of his throat; the sound was so foreign and dark it made goosebumps rise on her skin.
"I don't know you," she said finally. "I don't know anything about you, not really. That unsettles me."
He shook his head and ashed his cigarette over the smokeless ashtray. "Humans," he said wearily.
She glared at him. "Weren't you were human once?" she pointed out, and he smirked.
"Once," he agreed with a nod, "a very long time ago."
"I don't understand you," she muttered. "It's like you don't care if I believe you or not."
"What you believe is your business," he said. "I can't make you think a certain way. So either you'll believe me or you won't."
"You don't even try to convince me," she muttered, and he smirked.
"And what could I possibly do to convince you, Tokio?"
"Drink my blood," she said, lifting her chin in challenge.
An odd look came over his face—it reminded her of the way he'd looked at her when he'd thought she was taking back her invitation into her home.
"No thank you," he said finally, with curious exactness.
And even though she hadn't been serious, really—because the man wasn't a vampire, dammit—his refusal got her back up.
"Why not? What's wrong with my blood?" she asked, knowing she sounded offended but not able to hide it.
"Nothing," he said, ashing his cigarette carefully, gaze intent on what he was doing. "Your blood's fine. I won't need to feed for another week, that's all. I did last night."
"Is that why you look different from yesterday?" she asked before she could stop herself.
A corner of his mouth twitched upwards.
"Yes," he said, putting the cigarette between thin lips.
She eyed him. His skin had lost some of that sallow look it had been getting, and his eyes were brighter. He looked…well, healthier than he had been looking. And it was little things like that, little physical changes that happened in a fairly consistent manner, that made her disquiet with the situation grow.
"Well, why not feed from me next time, then," she offered. "That seems like the easiest way to prove you are what you say you are, don't you think?"
"No."
She raised an eyebrow. "No what?" she asked.
"No, I will not feed from you next time."
"Why?"
He eyed her a long time with those piercing, flaying eyes.
"What I want from you," he said finally, "is so much more than mere sustenance."
Dread crept through her. "What you want from me," she said weakly. "And what would that be?"
"That which you so readily give to those far more undeserving than myself," he said, rubbing his cigarette out and rising in that silent, graceful way of his.
"What?" she asked, brow furrowing.
He, of course, chose not to answer her, just breezed out of her apartment the way he always did without a backward glance, and Tokio huffed and thumped a book off their shared wall.
"I hate it when you talk in riddles, Hajime-san!" she hollered, and she swore she heard his laughter in her head.
Logic, however, assured her that the walls were so thin she could hear him laugh through them. And because madness lay in the other way, Tokio agreed fervently with Logic.
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She pondered over the riddle he'd given her the next day while she went about her day. Restlessness began to settle in, so she moved her ruminating to the outdoors, bundling up in her lined wool coat and trudging through the hard packed snow to the wooded area she had only a month before been so desperately trying to reach, Yoshida all but breathing down her neck.
The late afternoon sun was weak, barely enough to warm a mouse. It lit everything in golden tones, however, and charmed her enough to get her to sit down at the base of a naked, scrawny-branched tree. The quiet was lonely, but soothing, and as she soaked up her solitude, her mind turned once again to the puzzle her frustrating neighbor had so carelessly handed her.
Well, she decided with a frown, perhaps careless wasn't the right word—nothing Hajime did was careless. The man was exact, precise, careful. Which was its own special kind of irritation that was different from her current one.
He wanted what she so readily gave to others far more undeserving than him, he had said. But what did that mean? Tokio wasn't in the habit of giving anything away to anyone, particularly anyone undeserving, so the statement didn't make any sense. And that wasn't necessarily like Hajime. His riddles were never terribly cryptic, once enough time had passed and she had thought on them for a bit, but this one was much more difficult than she had been anticipating.
What, she wondered, was he talking about? I don't give anything away—I don't even have anyone to give anything away to. The only person I might have given anything to is Tami, and she's locked up.
Which is precisely when she remembered with startling clarity the first real conversation she had had with Hajime, the night her sister and Yoshida had robbed her:
"Why bother with them?"
"Tami's my sister. Everyone else cut ties, but I couldn't leave her alone like that, without anyone."
"Doesn't seem to matter to her. I'd say that fact alone should be enough to satisfy your conscience."
It was the way he'd asked "Why bother with them?" that held her. Not out of curiosity, as she had originally thought, she realized now, had he asked that question. He had asked it because he really hadn't known. Why bother with them indeed. Why bother with anyone, really? Everyone always took and took from you. But Hajime…
"What I want from you, is so much more than mere sustenance."
But he was wrong about that, in a way, wasn't he? Because what Tokio provided—what she had provided for him, until that night that seemed like such a long-ago bad dream—was a kind of sustenance, different from food or blood but no less significant. It was the kind of sustenance that fed a soul, that filled a basic need to matter to someone, to be something to someone.
He liked it when I asked him if he was hungry, she thought suddenly, startled by the realization. He liked it when I asked him if he was all right, if he wanted something. He liked it when I fussed over him.
'Yes, I did.'
Tokio yelped and looked around, then froze when she saw the huge dog from that night, the one with the eerie amber eyes that reflected their own light.
"I'm hallucinating," she muttered.
'Don't be tedious,' Hajime's voice came again, as the dog sauntered closer before settling down on its haunches in the snow before her. 'You know as well as I do that this isn't a hallucination, Tokio.'
"People don't just turn into dogs," she said from between her teeth.
'No—people don't,' he agreed. The dog's gaze conveyed amusement. 'Then again, I don't qualify as people, do I?'
"Because you're currently a dog?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.
The dog sent her a flat, glowering sort of look.
'I am not a dog, thank you very much. I am a wolf. There's no dignity in dogs.'
"There aren't any wolves in Japan,' she said immediately.
'Aren't any vampires either,' was the dry reply. 'Funny how all of these things that don't exist seem to be popping up suddenly, isn't it?'
"This doesn't prove anything," she said crankily, crossing her arms over her chest and glaring at him.
"I never said I was trying to prove anything, Tokio," Hajime said as he suddenly materialized before her, kneeling where the wolf had been sitting.
Tokio blinked, startled by his appearance.
"Where in the seven hells did you come from?" she demanded, and he sent her an odd, gloomy sort of look.
"Won't see the forest or the trees," he murmured, rising with fluid grace.
"You aren't wearing a coat," she said suddenly.
"I don't need one," he said, brushing snow off his trouser legs, then straightening to look down at her.
"It's freezing out here," she pointed out.
He shrugged, then turned and began walking back toward the apartment building, the very top of which was visible over the tops of the bare tree branches.
"It's daylight," she said. "Shouldn't you not be able to turn into a dog?"
"Wolf," he corrected without looking back. "And shouldn't doesn't equal can't."
She watched him until he had disappeared from sight, and then she frowned at the spot where the dog—wolf, her mind corrected—had sat before her.
She had carried on a conversation with a voice in her head. The voice had been Hajime's. He had appeared before her, replacing the wolf with the amber eyes that were so very much like his—too much like his to be some strange coincidence. And when he'd walked away, the lanky shadow that should have stretched from his long form had been glaringly absent, just as he'd told her it was.
"Maybe," she murmured, "I'm not going crazy."
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She found herself knocking on his door an hour later, after she had worked up the courage to face him.
"Hajime-san?" she asked. "May I please come in?"
Silence was the only answer she got for a long time, and then his door opened and he appeared in the doorway.
"Please?" she asked, meeting that disquieting gaze despite the way her stomach quailed.
He moved aside, his invitation implicit, and she eased into his apartment, shrugging out of her coat as she went. He shut the door softly, then left the genkan, and Tokio hung her coat and removed her shoes, then stepped up into the apartment.
It was a spartan affair, with hardly any furniture outside of one zabuton and a small table. The blinds were drawn, only allowing a lone finger of waning afternoon light to creep across the floor.
"No wonder you like coming over," she murmured.
"Atmosphere is only one of many aspects," he replied from the shadows.
She turned to look at him, and saw only his eyes glowing at her from the gloom.
"You're being very creepy," she said. "Come over here, please. I want to speak with you."
He glided out of the shadows, but his eyes never lost their intensity. Tokio ignored it as best she could, holding out a hand to him. He stopped just short of that hand and made no move toward it, so she stepped closer to him and laid a hand over his chest. And felt nothing, even after two full minutes of holding her palm flat and unmoving to his chest.
"No heartbeat," she murmured, eyes flickering up toward him.
"Who needs a heart when he's no longer alive?" he asked, raising a brow. "Looking to catch me in a lie, Tokio?"
"No," she said, eyes going over his shirtfront in fascination; you could fake vampirism, but nobody could fake not having a heartbeat. "If you do drink blood, where does it go?"
"The life of a creature is in the blood," he said, looking amused. "How else do you think I, undead as I am, keep up appearances? Its effects are temporary. It feeds all of me for a time, then slowly dies. And because I'm not actually living, I have no way of replacing it without feeding this body."
"Are some blood types more special than others?"
"Blood that's clean is special enough," he said dryly, and her eyes narrowed.
"That's why you didn't drink Yoshida's—because he used, and it made his blood dirty."
"In a manner of speaking," he said, inclining his head ever so slightly. "Those who use, as you put it, aren't healthy enough to help keep up appearances." He cocked his head and studied her. "Am I to believe you've decided to believe me, just like that?"
"I still think it's crazy," she admitted after a moment, meeting his gaze. "But there's something so un-human about you that this seems like the only logical conclusion."
"And logic is very important to humans," he murmured with a sneer.
"Do you have fangs?" she asked.
"Yes," he said after a pause.
"May I see them?"
He eyed her for a moment, then opened his mouth just enough for her to make out the gleam of teeth. After a moment, she found the fangs, slightly longer than the rest of his teeth, but otherwise quite normal looking. She gazed at them intently, then raised her arm up to his mouth and pressed the soft underside of her wrist against his teeth.
"You've already said you won't, and I'm not going to ask you again," she said when he stiffened. "But I would like for you to know, that should the need ever arise, you're welcome to what you need from me."
His gaze sharpened and intensified as it focused on her, and it was silent for a very long time. Then:
"I'm welcome to what I need from you," he repeated, gently reaching up and taking hold of her wrist to tug it from his mouth.
"Yes," she said with a nod.
"As in blood."
She shrugged. "Blood…or anything else."
His eyes brightened and then shifted to a banked glow.
"Blood or anything else," he murmured.
"Including that which I so readily give to others far more undeserving than you," she said, smiling a little.
He watched her silently. She only smiled a little wider, and eased into his arms, wrapping her own around him. It was several moments before his arms came up around her, and she felt his fingers catch lightly in her hair.
"You have nothing to gain from me, Tokio," he said quietly, his hand gently cupping the back of her head. "I'm selfish, if you'll recall."
"That's all right," she murmured. "I'm used to selfishness. Yours isn't the worst I've known."
"Settling, are we?"
"Both of us are," she said, leaning back to look up at him. "But the truth of the matter's never bothered you before."
He watched her, then smoothed a hand over her hair.
"You want very much to matter to someone, and I very much want someone."
"No," she said quietly. "You want me."
"Yes," he said after a moment. "I want you. Precisely because you want to matter to someone so very much."
"That's enough for me," she assured, once again laying her head against his chest.
Hajime anchored his chin on top of her head, hand combing slowly through her hair.
"For now."
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Finis.