AN: Sorry I'm late with this chapter, I've been trying to decide how I wanted Rima to react to the situation at the party. I finally decided she'd probably disengage. I hope it's okay like this... I think I told you guys I'm really bad at writing Shima... -runs away-

For days after the party, Rima avoided her partner. At work, she casually roamed the grounds or immersed herself in books and sketches between shoots, as though she were merely tired of her usual routine. At school, she locked herself away in her bedroom. She did it carefully, without her actions ever seeming intentional, but she let herself drift away whenever Shiki's presence was too close, unable to look into those grey eyes without suddenly, sharply recalling how he'd licked the vice president's fingers clean of blood. Without feeling incredibly frustrated and just a bit uneasy. Without recollecting the mantle of jealousy that perched uncomfortably on her shoulders.

The box of chocolate pocky she perpetually carried with her now gathered dust on her dresser. Carrying it had been a constant reminder of her colleague, so she'd abandoned it there... Now, however, it watched her silently, accusing her every time she entered the room. She ignored it, as she ignored Shiki, and as she ignored her unwanted, abrupt feelings. How annoying. She hadn't asked for this. Why should she be jealous over her colleague? Somehow, she had underestimated him...and herself. Underestimated the way this slimy envy and pestering thirst would haunt her and sneak into the crevices of her mind.

Rima liked aesthetics. This much was true. However, a boring aesthetic was worthless. Originally, that was what she had pegged Shiki for, although now she knew that wasn't really true... Nevertheless, it was inconceivable that she might like Shiki, so what was this thing she felt? What was this thing that ruffled her peace of mind and agitated her bloodlust? If it wasn't attraction, or liking, then what was it?

Her coffee tasted bitter this morning, a side effect of her own bitterness towards the situation. Sour wine would be sweeter than the acrid taste left in her mouth. She didn't want to be troubled by this, or by anything else overly complicated. Why couldn't her days be like her baths; warm, serene and relaxing, conducted in a selfish solitude that didn't have to worry about anyone else? Why had she fallen into this constant preoccupation over her colleague, anyway? It didn't suit her at all. Yet, it seemed she couldn't shake it off, either.

Senri slowed, passing the door to the room that Rima shared with Ruka. His heightened senses did not pick up either of their scents, and he continued on with resignation. How many days had it been since the party? Since... His gaze fell to the carpet. Since Rima had started avoiding him...? He didn't like it. The absence of her presence was strange now, and he felt hungrier than before. Without her scent, without the occasional stick of pocky...it was difficult to swallow down his dry throat.

Had he done something wrong? Offended her? Or had she simply lost all interest in him? He'd thought perhaps they were friends by now...but maybe they weren't... Maybe he'd assumed wrongly. Either way, the air around him, lacking Rima's perfume, was uncomfortable to breathe, unsettling and unsatisfying as it scratched down into his lungs.

Although he knew he should be taking this opportunity to distance himself from her and his own genetic inclinations...somehow, his feet continued to search for her anyway.

Rima sighed, lying her book to the side and craning her head up to the sky, where the night sky was devouring every last drop of sunlight. Night was rather vampiric in nature, so it seemed fitting that vampires belonged to the night. The natural state of the sky was dark...the sun bled fresh life over it each day, but within hours the night had drank it up again hungrily. Every last drop. And so it went on, forever.

Shutting her eyes, she wondered realistically how long she could continue to ignore her coworker. Eventually, she would have to sort through her newly accumulated emotions. Rima wasn't a jealous creature, like Ruka Souen or Hanabusa Aidou. She didn't enjoy this sensation. Moreover...she didn't want to follow the particular train of thought that came with it to the end of its tracks. Jealousy came from wanting...and she didn't want to consider that she might want a person. She wanted to be an actress, to avoid tedium, to fill her centuries with color...but a person? She shook her head. People always brought with them a slew of negative emotions. She had already experienced one: jealousy. Did she really want to invite more?

A sudden weight against her shoulder snapped her away from her thoughts. She stared at Senri Shiki in confusion, just as he stared back up at her with a calm, calculating gaze. Arching a perfectly-curved golden eyebrow, she inquired with disapproval, "What are you doing?"

"You´re avoiding me…" he murmured, the blue in his eyes seemed to penetrate directly into her skull, reading her thoughts.

She hadn´t expected him to notice that she was avoiding him. After all, she did it subtly, carefully, so that no one might realize that quite abruptly she found it difficult to be in her coworker´s presence. The blend of delicious aromas in his blood was enough to drive her crazy, let alone the discovery of strange, inexplicable jealousy she felt whenever he and Ichijou were too close. She disregarded these feelings, however, choosing instead to deny his statement with a vague, "Not particularly…" She shifted her weight in an attempt to dislodge him, peeved by both his invasion of her personal space and how he had effectively thwarted any hopes of escape from the conversation. Get off me.

"Ever since the party…" he remarked, more astute than she would have imagined. "What did I do?"

"Nothing," she negated once more, steadfastly ignoring him as she watched a raccoon dart past.

"Somehow, the party became troublesome, with the guardians and Kaname-sama… But nothing else really happened…" He frowned, giving the matter more thought than she wanted him to.

"I haven´t been avoiding you," she repeated, a tad waspishly, lips curving downward in evidence of her displeasure.

"I only…" He paused, sitting up then to her relief, and looked at her with an intensity that frightened her. "I only tasted Ichijou-kun´s blood. Could it be…Rima-chan is in love with the vice president?"

His conclusion shocked her into a startled laugh. She was amused enough that she chose to ignore his casual usage of her name, shaking her head as she relaxed. "Yes, I´ve always had a soft spot for old perverts," she commented wryly, reaching for her book to signal that the conversation was finished.

"You don´t like Ichijou-kun´s blood?" She detected mild curiosity in his tone, and with a sigh left her book for the moment.

"Not really," she admitted. "I don´t know how you drank it…" The familiar pang of jealousy snuck its way back into her chest.

He shrugged. "I was hungry…even Ichijou-kun´s blood seemed okay… It would have been a waste."

Even though her mind carefully, logically schooled her to drop the topic, she found herself asking, "It doesn´t taste good to you?"

The silence hung suspended between them, the uncomfortable jealousy stinging against her tongue and down her throat straight into the pit of her stomach. Then, he stated bluntly, "No." A pause. "But it's Ichijou-kun and he's a friend," he added in retrospect.

Her eyes narrowed now, pinning him to the bench as she demanded, "I thought you were taking the tablets?"

"I am," he replied softly.

"And you're still hungry?" It was a question she shouldn't ask. A vampire's hunger was linked to so many things, most of them intimate in nature. But. Shiki was her partner. Shiki was...her friend? Yes...perhaps so... He was her friend, and her concern for him had never diminished over these months. In fact, it had only increased. To be thirsty despite the tablets...to consider ingesting unappetizing blood of all things...such an occurrence indicated, at least to Rima, that something was wrong.

He flinched, and the grey immediately rose up in his eyes, constructing an impenetrable wall, effectively shutting her away. She sucked in a breath, the suspicions solidifying both in her mind and in his gaze. Yes. Something was wrong. But he said nothing, and the silence burned up the empty spaces between them into heavy ash.

He said nothing, and she inhaled, her lips opened, her tongue prepared to voice her treasonous thoughts. To offer... "Then..." The first word came slowly, testing the waters, fighting against her better judgment.

"Rima-chan. Shiki-kun. There you are!" a cheerful voice jolted through the atmosphere. Rima jerked her head up in surprise to see Ichijou waving to them a few yards away. "I was just thinking…" he continued as he approached, then trailed off. "Sorry, am I interrupting something?"

"Yes, actually," Rima stated bluntly, half-disappointed and half-grateful for the vice president´s sudden appearance. A moment later and she might have dared to… She had almost… Almost offered Senri Shiki her blood…

Her coworker stood then, expression impregnable as he murmured distantly to Ichijou, "I have to get a few things from the dorm before class."

"Ah…okay," the blond said uncertainly as Shiki fled down the path. He was strolling casually, hands in his pockets, but Rima knew he was running away from the conversation he hadn´t dared to continue. "Is everything okay?" Ichijou questioned worriedly.

Rima sighed, standing and tucking her novel beneath her arm. "There are certainly a lot of things you haven´t told me about Shiki-san."

The vice president was quiet. Troubled, he at last replied, "I'm sure there are a lot of things that Shiki-kun hasn't told me about himself."

Hm. Yes, she supposed so.

And just like that, she knew tomorrow that everything would revert back to normal. She would cease avoiding him, and her characteristic box of pocky would return to her pocket. Because once again her preoccupations had risen up, effectively overriding the jealousy. She'd forgiven him, anyway, the moment he'd admitted he didn't really enjoy the taste of Ichijou's blood...the moment she'd sensed that something was wrong, something that ran far deeper than a mere fit of bloodlust... From now on, she had to be more perceptive when it concerned her coworker.

Walking back to the dorms, Senri felt cold, a caged bird craving something unattainable beyond these self-constructed, inescapable bars. He had been the one to clip his own wings long ago, for his mother's sake. He had been the one to transform his mattress into a grave of lost dreams that conspired against him in the dead of night, reminding him of the things he had once wanted when he was young and naive. And he had been the one to trample down his loneliness and thirst, to imagine that such feelings did not exist. Yet his dreams betrayed him, lashed across his tongue with unspoken words, resonated hollowly through the seams of his fractured heart.

And the silence of those words consumed him. Poisoned him with the radioactive blue of her eyes. Vibrated through him with the melodic thunder of her voice. Distorted him with color and sensations. Struggling against it, struggling towards it, either way ended in exhaustion. It was too much effort, too high a risk... Yet there, on that bench, in that room they shared to prepare for the shoots, the magnetic attraction pulled at his metallic heart, and he desired to stand in her charged aura, to hear her quiet voice, to feel her power up the cogs of his dusty soul.

But the flicker of such longings died fast. Fearfully, he told himself that they weren't real, that he didn't care. He entombed them within the emptiness behind his face. So close to her energy, he could feel his machinery heart whirring, creaking, and scraping against rib cage, yet... Yet he didn't dare to allow it. It would swallow him whole. Already, his silhouette burned with hunger. Another step further, and everything he had built would shatter. He would shatter every limit he had set for himself, break all of the promises that he had made. Shaking his head, he forced his thoughts away from her. From his thirst. From the dangers of madness and attachment and lust. Now, before he remembered, he must eliminate these treacherous almost-feelings.

If only he could remember how to forget them again...

AN: Hey at least Rima has acknowledged they're friends XD.