Takeshi's POV:
"Hey Daisuke, whatcha spacing out about?"
Without any response from him, it might have been right to think that he could be dead, or maybe he had just stopped breathing... Something like that. But any amount of yelling and pestering wouldn't let him loosen up from his state of endless staring into nothing.
"Dude!" I yelled once again, grabbing a handful of his hair and pulling at it, seeing if I would actually get some sort of reaction. And boy, did I.
"OW! Takeshi? What was that for?" He asked in a slightly infuriated voice, but mainly, he looked hurt, rubbing his head constantly where I had recently yanked his locks. Which, now that I looked back on it, might have been a bit too harsh and rash. But what the hell, it was a spur of the moment kinda thing, and it caught attention when I did stuff like that.
"Oh, sorry bout that man... But anyway, I've got some news that I picked up from my microphones set up in the main office. And it looks like the class play is coming up!" I told him with enthusiasm, it was a pain to bug the main office of the school, since there was like, always a teacher or someone around there watching you. But, those little babies sure got results, sometimes I could pick up scoops on the school, right from the central source.
As I went into more of the details that I had happened to listen into with Daisuke, I had gotten the impression that he was only like, two-thirds listening. I mean, when I'm talking, you can't be only half listening, I always make sure of that, you have to be like, 66% listening to the words coming out of this mouth. Still, I didn't know what the hell was distracting him from paying attention to me.
"Ya know... You seem off today, you feeling alright, Daisuke?"
In a sort of response, he meekly shrugged his shoulders once, as if saying that he wasn't really sure. Damn, is everyone turning strange all of a sudden? It's like most of the class has been dead or whatever, no sparks flaming up out of anywhere, just a bunch of boring blobs without personalities.
In such a grey and colorless place, how is a reporter like me expected to prosper? I live for the color and excitement, the bizarre and thrilling, every single detail of student lives that may even appear abnormal. Yet, it seemed like something sucked all the life from our once normal classroom.
Wait. Sucked life. Something.
"Oh my god... YOU'RE A VAMPIRE, AREN'T YOU DAISUKE!" And at once, the heads of everyone in the room within an audible range snapped upwards, including the one of the red headed vampire, with a truly shocked face. He must be surprised that I discovered his secret... I can't let my guard down.
I began to slowly back away from the "Daisuke" seated at the desk, not even sure if I could call him by that name anymore. After all, as far as I could tell, he might as well be one of those sparkly, freaky blood sucking weirdos like in that American vampire book... What was it called again? Moonlight? Something like that.
"Hey guys, what's going on?" A new voice said, and looking towards the direction of the door, I saw Shizuku, her appearance and tone quite similar to the rest of everyone else...
"You..." I said, pointing at her with one hand, and with the other, I was reaching for my ultimate weapon in this situation. "YOU'RE ONE OF THEM TOO!"
As fast as my reflexes would allow, I pulled out my camera with its flash setting on, and snapped a picture right in her face, before bolting out of there as fast as my damn legs would carry me. I ignored all those stupid teachers who started yelling at me for 'running in the hallways' or whatever they were bugging out about. Crap, if only they knew I was running for my life, then they sure as hell wouldn't be yelling at me.
Ha, taste the blinding light... Vampire bitches!
Third-person perspective:
Shizuku began to rub her eyes from the unsuspected flash of white light, and felt temporarily blinded by that stupid camera boy. Honestly, she had no idea of what was on Takeshi's mind, but it was clear that he had finally gone insane. Maybe something inside of his nutshell of a brain had actually cracked, although he would probably be back to normal in a number of hours at best.
What a nuisance... She thought to herself, and blinked a couple times in order to regain her previous ability of sight, and one of the first colors that she saw was a strawberry red. It was only rational that Daisuke would attempt to apologize for Takeshi's idiotic actions, being the overly-kind person he naturally is, but it was also a bit unnecessary.
"Shizuku, sorry about him... I think he just was feeling sick or something." He said, while in response she shrugged indifferently, and eyed the rest of the classroom, who were minding their own business, and had almost lost all attention in the sudden antics. It wasn't like they hadn't seen it before, since much stranger happenings had taken place thanks to a raven haired reporter.
On the other hand, Shizuku had made her way over to her seat, and began to silently read. Class would start in a matter of minutes, but that simple factor did not seem to make much of a difference. It seemed that she hadn't done so in a while, but old habits die hard, supposedly.
However, it was soon when the morning teacher entered the room, and the Classical Language lesson began. Throughout the whole day, each teacher entered the room at their appropriate times, and taught the same, long and droning lectures, again and again. For once, the entire day had actually proved to be completely normal, and continued without any sort of interruption.
Of course, sometime during the course of the arithmetic lesson, Takeshi was dragged back, or rather, "escorted" into class by the assistant principal himself. It was difficult to seize himself from screaming his head off about "taking a class with a group of unnatural beasts" or so he quoted. Yet, in a matter of time, he was able to be seated down in his usual chair, and continue to be the idiot that he is.
It was as if every single student had their eyes glued on the single wall clock that was hung above the chalkboard in the classroom, where Mr. Siu was still scribing white characters onto the black surface, creating a small screeching noise with every stroke. Some of the girls had begun to doodle flowers and abstract shapes in the margins of their notebooks, deciding that the lesson was far too dull to continue concentration.
Finally, after about 10 more minutes of lecturing, the sound of a bell could he heard throughout every hallway, signaling the haven that every person in the establishment knew as lunch. Immediately, everyone took out their bento boxes of all different shapes and sizes. Shizuku remained in her seat, opening up to a page in a book written entirely in English, so practically no one else in the room could tell what it was.
"Hey, Shizuku, do you want to go outside and eat lunch?" Daisuke asked her while in the company of Riku and Satoshi, but she simply shook her head in response to the question, not even bothering to give any sort of verbal answer. Both Daisuke and Riku saw it as a sign of her in a bad mood, and decided not to question it any further, walking out of the classroom with their lunches in hand.
However, Satoshi decided to stay behind, taking the seat beside Shizuku, causing a few people who were from his fanclub to look over in curiosity, but most of them quickly left in order to join their friends for lunch.
"I want to talk to you." He said rather quietly, but Shizuku stayed in her previous position, and only flipped a page in the book that she was reading. After waiting a while longer, she turned yet another page, completely ignoring Satoshi's presence. In slight frustration of not getting a proper answer, he quickly snatched the book out of her hands, holding it out of her reach. "Now, please."
As she opened her mouth to retort, Satoshi grabbed her wrist practically dragging her out of the classroom while she continuously fought with words, criticizing what he was doing, and even attempted to tug her wrist away, but it was easy to tell that he was stronger than her. After going upstairs, he stopped pulling her once they came in front of a door, in which he checked the handle in case it was locked, but easily swung it open. He lead her inside, and only released her once he had locked the door himself.
"What do you think you're doing? Give me back my book." She snapped at him, obviously annoyed at his actions. Satoshi found himself slightly frown at her words, and moved closer to Shizuku, as she stood her ground in the empty art room. All too suddenly, he grabbed her by the waist and pulled Shizuku in until his lips met hers. Satoshi felt her attempt to lightly push him away and pull back her head at the same time, to which his response was to push her head forward into the kiss, running his fingers through her hair.
I won't let Krad touch her... Never again.
Finally, after they separated, a sharp sound of skin against skin quickly echoed the room, as Satoshi stumbled back from her, holding his now red cheek from where Shizuku had slapped him. He looked at her, both with confusion and disappointment, did it mean that she finally decided that she wanted nothing to do with him? Had the demon inside of him scared her so much that she no longer wanted to be with him? He didn't know, he couldn't read the face of the girl with the blue eyes, wet with tears that she was obviously fighting back.
"S-Satoshi... I'm sorry, but the two of us..." He thought he was prepared for it, rejection already creeping into his heart, and if it was possible, he could feel it hardening at the sight of the one he loved so miserable and afraid, of him.
"...W-We barely know each other."
The clock hanging on the wall of the empty classroom ticked on and on, counting the silent seconds of time that were spent between the two teenagers. Satoshi didn't know what to say, how could she say something like that? The two of them hadn't known each other for a long amount of time, that was true, but they had been through so much together, many of those memories he would rather forget, but the sweet ones, where he could hold her in his arms, were ones that he wouldn't trade for anything.
"What do you mean... we don't know each other?" At that moment, he started to advance towards her once again, except this time, with every step that he made in her direction, Shizuku took one step back. Even she would admit it, she was scared and didn't know what to do, she wanted to run, but something in her body stopped her from doing so.
"Shizuku, I love you. I don't know how it happened, but I fell for you, even if I didn't know it at first. I wanted to protect you, but I couldn't even do that much. I hurt you, I know that." At this point, she had backed up into the wall, and was about to run away to the side, when Satoshi's arm quickly blocked her way. He grabbed her chin, forcing her to look at him, and he saw the look of fear on her face, and he hated it so much. He didn't want her to be scared of him.
"What... What happened to the girl who said she loved me?" At this point, Satoshi was practically shaking, hating himself even more when he saw fresh tears roll down her cheeks. She tried to respond, but for a minute, it only came out as slurs that he couldn't interpret. There was one thing that he could use to prove that they knew each other far more than she claimed. However, he didn't want to stoop so low as to use them.
"I-I don't know what you're talking about... P-Please let me go..."
That was it, he couldn't handle it anymore, her sudden ignorance was driving Satoshi insane. He wanted her to love him again, and he couldn't understand why all of a sudden she was playing dumb. Was this just a way to avoid him? Was she trying to pretend to forget instead of simply saying that she no longer loved him? He couldn't understand.
Without a second thought, Satoshi grabbed her left wrist, and quickly slid the long sleeve on her school uniform down, revealing the ugly marks that existed down her arm. Shizuku gasped, and made an effort to slid her sleeve back up, but once again, it was easy to tell that Satoshi had control in the situation.
"S-Stop it..."
"If we didn't know each other, how would I know that you had scars here? You always make quite an effort to hide them." He whispered, but he could clearly tell that proving that he knew her wasn't calming her down, or revealing if she had been lying about not knowing him, if anything else, she just seemed more frightened. She flinched and looked at the hand that was clasped around her wrist, noticing this, Satoshi released his grip, only to see purplish-black marks appearing where his fingers once were.
He was so enraged, that he didn't even notice he had only been hurting her. Why? Why was all of this happening to him? He couldn't stop injuring her by accident, even though all he wanted to do was protect her from the one inside of him, yet at the moment, he felt no better than the white winged devil. Satoshi stepped backwards, giving her more space, and no longer making any type of physical contact with her.
All of a sudden, Shizuku bolted past him, and within a matter of seconds, she was out the door and running down the hallway, her footsteps echoing throughout Satoshi's mind. In truth, he knew that his own curse was different than Niwa's, it usually didn't react to his feelings of love, but only shorten his lifeline, much like his ancestors who were short lived. Yet, he could feel the strings of fate pulling him away from Shizuku.
After all, she didn't seem to be faking her loss of memory, and been acting slightly different than in comparison to a couple weeks ago. He didn't know why, but she truly had forgotten her love for him, and it seemed like far too much to bear.
Satoshi had noticed one small abnormality when he had stood close to her, and that was the small presence of magic that clung to her. It was barely recognizable, but it had to be the answer to all of the questions that his mind had been formulating. No matter what, he would find the source of that magic, because he wanted Shizuku back, even if his curse still clung to him like a heavy load.
Later that day...
Shizuku arrived home precisely on time, only to be greeted by a familiar smirking face that was glaring at her hungrily. Most people would probably be disturbed or feel threatened by this person, but for some reason, she was completely calm in his presence.
"Kokubyaku, where's my brother?" She asked innocently, setting her backpack on the couch, while he followed behind her wherever she went. Suddenly, two arms encircled her waist in a comforting manner, and she could feel hot breath on her neck. Shizuku was practically used to it by now, since he did this every single time she saw him.
"Do you trust me, my lovely adolescent?" He asked his question constantly, and refused to leave his current position until he received an answer that he wanted, so of course she always replied yes. As far she she knew, he had done nothing to give her a reason not to trust, besides taking control over her brother, of course, yet he claims that he never does it on purpose.
"What's wrong? Your fear and depression was so strong that it caused my transformation..." He held her just a bit tighter than before, but Shizuku couldn't see how widely the man holding her was smiling, eyes narrowed and a mischievous look was on his face.
"T-There was a boy in my class, who... H-He kept on saying that he loved me, but I barely knew him. I-It really scared me."
It took great difficulty for Kokubyaku to hold back the dark chuckles that were building out inside of him. His plan was already being set into action perfectly, starting with the memory loss of the one that she loved most. The magic of the necklace that she wore around her neck held a powerful magic, yet it was quite easy to conceal. Her misery, her fear, it was all so much to enjoy, it was Shizuku's discomfort and pain that fed his very power after all, and adding love into Kokubyaku's equation didn't quite mix, hence the reason for removing it from her life.
The final phases of his plan would unravel soon enough, and after hundreds of years, he would finally receive what both 'true halves' of the Kokuyoku had yearned for since their very existence. He was practically a forgotten piece of the whole puzzle, a fragment of the original Kokuyoku who never had the strength to so much as emerge into his own form.
But soon he, would indeed have his own body. All thanks to the lovely sibling of his tamer, and once she had accomplished this task for him, she would no longer be needed. After all, she had come from a sinful family, and had even fell in love with the descendant of his monstrous creators.
Shizuku Sakishima was in need of permanent peace and purity, which only a swift death would provide.
A/N: If two people review, I will post the next chapter. Haha, I know I'm mean, but that's going to be my rule for now on, because I really wanna finish this story, but I'm also really selfish. I plan to finish this story as soon as I possibly can! And seriously, I know who you are, and if you don't review, I'll hunt you down.