Chapter 2

Splash! Miranda was forced to wake up after being landed a bucket of cold water. What!? What!? Her entire body sprung up in surprise as she immediately sat up onto the wooden floor she was lying on.

"You awake?" it was a man speaking in a very cold tone. Just after he poured all the water down onto Miranda, he tossed the wooden bucket away without hesitation, as if he was sure she would wake up with just a single attempt.

Miranda hastily looked around her surroundings, and obviously it was somewhere she had no knowledge of. The entire room was rather small, most prominently the fireplace which first caught Miranda's attention, shining brightly and radiating a comforting warmth.

Elsewhere, the other furniture found in the room was a wooden rocking chair, two wooden tables, two wooden cupboards and a kitchen that looked to be sloppily assembled. Everything seemed to be made of wood.

Before Miranda brought herself to speak, she looked up onto the supposed savior of hers. He was a rather large man, compared to her already deceased adoptive father. His face was too high up that the faint light from the fireplace could not illuminate sufficiently for Miranda to recognize his facial features.

"Umm…" tons of questions were filling up in Miranda's head, she weren't sure which to ask first.

"Get outside." Immediately the man turned his heels and walked towards the wooden door, confident that the girl would just obediently follow.

"What?" Miranda asked. There was no reply. So the girl followed the man out the door.

Then it came to the realization to Miranda why all the furniture inside were made of wood. They were in the middle of an unknown forest. Perhaps this was the best procedure to allow a peaceful night's sleep without an onslaught by those wretched vampires, after all, they were attracted by the very scent of human beings.

This man must be insanely strong, Miranda thought, as he didn't seem to get hurt much after surviving that hell that was yesterday, still up and walking and kicking. The entire town was slaughtered yet this man single-handedly defeated the entire horde of vampires?

As the multitude of questions still spiraled in Miranda's head, she was unexpectedly handed a small dagger. "Take it." The man said, with a very flat voice and no eye contact with Miranda. "Huh?" the little girl was even more puzzled by this turn of events, her entire time spending with the Roses she did not recall ever being close to a sharp object before. It's dangerous! Mrs. Rose's voice rung brightly in her ears, as she was taught very well by her adoptive parents on how to be an obedient daughter.

But they weren't here anymore. This sudden thought triggered a surge of emotions towards Miranda, as tears gradually began to crawl out of her tearducts, and flowed down her reddish cheeks.

"I said, take it." Not a single shred of compassion was offered by the towering man, as he pushed the dagger onto Miranda's nose. Miranda was still unwilling to hold the item, totally bemused by the awkward situation as well as the emotions overtaking her.

The man hissed, drew a scratch onto Miranda's beautiful cheek to snap her out to reality. Miranda released a yell of pain, and cried even more, as she hastily pressed against the wound with her left hand. Really snapped out of it, she looked up at the man, who was furiously glaring at her, patience being tested.

"Take it!" the man raised his voice this time, becoming an absolute command one should not simply disobey.

Without much of a choice, Miranda reached out her tiny and trembling hand towards the dagger's hilt, with the man letting it go as soon as Miranda grasped it. It was a small dagger, but had some weight that was a little too much for the tiny Miranda.

"Throw it there." The man with very few words pointed his index finger towards a tree, which has a white circle chalked out at the center of its trunk. After saying that, he took out a chalk and drew a line underneath Miranda's feet. "Hit it from here, and you will have dinner."

"Huh?" Needless to say the poor little girl was totally bewildered by what the man had proposed. He would expect a frail little girl like her, who never held a knife before, to hit the target from a considerable distance? Not to mention, the drawn circle wasn't very big, only around five centimeters of radius, and the distance was just shy of fifty meters.

"It's impossible!" Miranda cried out, begging for mercy from the man. But the man had already long gone and reentered the wooden shack, shutting the door tight. Miranda immediately tried to open the door, but unable to, she then proceeded to knock and lightly slam the door, "Mister! This… this is impossible!"

There was no answer. Miranda stood helplessly outside the door for a good few minutes, tears flowing down more and more. Yet her sobs was wholly ignored. Realizing that she had only one option remaining, she returned to the drawn line on the ground, tossed the dagger as hard as she could. But it would only end up a measly twenty meters away from her, still miles away from her designated target.

Miranda picked up the dagger and retried a few more attempts. She was not even close. Then a mischievous idea came to her: she could just walk ahead to the tree trunk and stab the dagger into the target, it would look like she actually hit the target and fool the guy…

"Don't even think of fooling me," the man's voice rang loud and clear through those wooden walls of the house. Miranda quickly had goosebumps and gulped, how did he know!?

So still that one option was the only feasible one. Miranda rubbed off her tears and sighed, and began the gruesome quest for dinner.