Chapter 9: Resurrection

Kaori felt horrible guilt just tearing at her soul, nonstop. She had just lost her childhood friend to acute heart failure(According to Dr. Ozaki), apparently caused by Anemia. Megumi was the person in Sotoba who died at the youngest age so far, much to the shock of every other villager.

There was, however, unusual, which no one noticed—Megumi's soul never left her body. She could still hear, and still think, despite being dead. She had become an Okiagari—an undead individual.

"Megumi I'm sorry!" a soft, tearful voice said, and Megumi immediately recognized it.

Kaori!? Wait...I can still hear you? Megumi's conscious had heard her. But this can't be possible...I died...how can I still hear? It was all so confusing to her—she was dead, and yet her conscious was still alive, and listening.

"The poor Shimizus, how will they deal with this?"

"This is all so unexpected..."

It's true, my life is over.

"I guess I feel kinda guilty for this." Another familiar voice was heard, Yuuki...he came. I guess I should've listened to what you and Kaori said. she thought to herself.

Later, nighttime

Megumi's eyes opened, to her surprise, as she found herself inside a strange wooden box. She could immediately tell it was a coffin just by reading a plaque at her face - "In loving memory of Megumi Shimizu" - which only confused her even more. Even more confusing was that it should've been pitch black, and yet she could see perfectly clear. Was she still alive, or was she something else? Though the coffin hardly had any space, she was able to move her hand to where her heart was - nothing, no heartbeat. Megumi was beginning to feel terrified - she knew she had died, and yet here she was, able to see, hear, and feel as if she was still alive.

Megumi wanted to scream, but she couldn't...her lungs weren't working - she wasn't even breathing. She was frightened to find herself alive, but not even breathing. The surprises were only getting started, however.

She heard something—the sound of scraping. Someone was digging her grave. Was it a grave robber? There was no telling. She couldn't see through the coffin, and even if she could there would still be dirt in the way. Megumi's stomach was in knots at this point. She didn't know who was digging her grave and why—she wouldn't even know how they would react to a living corpse. Suddenly, the lid of the coffin was ripped off, and the one who was digging was someone from Kanemasa—a young man in his twenties at least, with blue hair and yellow eyes. For a moment, she thought he would run off screaming—what he actually did was something unexpected. "Hi-ya!" He said, smiling.

What the fuck is 'he' doing here? she wondered. She tried asking him, but nothing came out of her mouth.

Over at the Yuuki house...

What a load of crap. Natsuno thought to himself, she was just like every other villager, expecting something I was assigned. She was nothing more than a Love-sick puppy, expecting me to return her feelings.

No matter how much he tried denying it, Natsuno felt as if something was missing from his life after Megumi's death. Did he like her and just didn't know it, or was there something else at work? There was no telling.

The pinkette looked around curiously. She wasn't inside the Kanemasa mansion, the one the Kirishiki had claimed theirs, but somewhere else. It looked like another mansion by its' size (they had gone through so many hallways that she already felt lost), but it didn't seem like the same style. More rural, and antique...More like the rest of the town.

When they finally stopped, it took her a moment to rememeber how he had told her to talk earlier. Fortunately, she was able to recall it correctly, and then she proceeded to talk as if she still breathed normally.

"Where are we?" asked Megumi, as her mysterious companion turned around to face her.

"You can already talk normally(That was fast)" he said, taken aback a little. "I knew I was right about you. You're different from the others."

Megumi's face lit up slightly. Not because he had said it, but because of the words he had said. Different from the others. She had always felt that way, that she wasn't the same as that bunch of old, ancient, shameless villagers. The fact that someone recognized that as well made her feel like jumping of joy. At the same time, she felt uneasy for the fact that she should have been laying in the coffin, slowly decaying.

Maybe it was for that, because he was different too, that she had decided to follow him almost immediately. But still, she couldn't quite comprehend what she was, what they were.

"What am I... exactly?" wondered Megumi out loud, still pondering about that little detail.

"A vampire. A spirit. A demon. Humans gave us many names" Tatsumi shrugged. "Pick the one you like the most, the important thing is that you realize you're not human anymore. You don't live or breathe like a human would. And you don't eat like a human would."

"What are we doing here?"

"This is our fortress" the man named Tatsumi explained. "Or at least one of them. You can spend the day resting here, because trust me, you do not want to see sunlight again."

Megumi trusted him. She wasn't an idiot; she knew that the sun could now kill her if she stay exposed to it long enough. Tatsumi and Mr. Kirishiki, however, she had seen both of them in broad daylight in the past, while she was still a human. Why hadn't they burst into flames back then, like in the movies?

That said, he opened the sliding door that stood before them. Something was moving in there. It was a man not much older than her, he couldn't have been more than seventeen or eighteen. She wondered where he came from; he didn't look like someone from Sotoba, or at least someone she recognized (and there weren't even many people in the town), maybe they had brought him from another town?

"Bon appetit" whispered the Kirishiki servant before leaving, closing the door behind him,"You've earned the privilege to kill."

Megumi stared for a minute at her potential victim. He wasn't to blame for anything of what had happened to her, but she didn't feel any pity towards him. They all had a destiny, and that person's fate was to provide her of strength to live—to keep going on and reach her dreams.

"I'm going to get out of this village no matter what!" she told herself, as her recently-acquired fangs emerged from her maw.

The blood had a satisfactory taste after that last thought. It felt surprisingly... good...tasty even.