CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
A Streak in the Sky (I)
Hanabusa was yawning incessantly by the time Cross Academy quieted as night drew closer. His classes wouldn't start for another hour, but he had been awake for twenty four hours now — all of which that had been spent at school. Still, he forced himself not to go back to the dorms to tempt himself with sleep and instead made his way to the chemistry department that had developed the blood tablets he hated so much.
But was necessary. For his hypothesis anyway.
If vampire blood can heal human wounds...in high concentrations, it may be able to cure diseases too, wouldn't it?
He thought about the time he had fed her his blood — he had taken too much of hers. That surely would have made the cones in her retina function properly again. But then she had been asleep...and the blood would have left her system or lose its potency…
So what had happened the day she saw blue? Did it even have anything to do with him — or was it a miracle?"
"Aidou-senpai?"
He looked up. There was a sophomore girl, an aristocrat by the name of Tsukino Haruhi, if he recalled correctly, that had walked out of the lab and into the classroom, carrying a clipboard. She was small and dainty the way most vampires were, and her black hair was parted in two and curled down her shoulders. She blinked when she saw him.
They weren't friends, she wasn't close to Kaname, nor his cousins. Her family had been one of the Ichijou fractions, but it didn't mean that she did not dislike him. His admirers were not simply Day Class girls, after all. He smiled at her. "Tsukino," he said as he straightened up. "I was wondering about something and hoping you could help me with it."
She blinked again, long thick lashes falling over dark green eyes. "Sure, what do you need?"
"You're working on the team developing the blood tablets, aren't you?"
Now she looked a little uneasy. She leaned her hip towards a desk and fidgeted with her pen on top of the clipboard tapping it. "I am," she said slowly, watching him carefully. He smiled again, and it disarmed her completely.
"Do you mind making me a...special type?"
She bit down on her lip and looked over her shoulder to the entrance of the lab. "Aidou-senpai, I can't improve the flavour…"
He almost laughed. "No, not that." Although that would be great, he thought. "Something else. I have a little hypothesis in mind."
She exhaled and then fingered her hair. "What do you have in mind?" she asked. "I can try to help, as long as it's within my power."
They were talking to each other with a desk between them and he bent over, his elbows resting on the mahogany wood, his eyes looking beneath dark gold eyelashes towards her. Vampires could not blush but they did give away the same signals, he observed with a growing smile. "The blood tablets are meant to substitute human blood."
"In theory, yes," she agreed with a shaky nod.
"So, in theory, could we produce one with...vampire blood?"
If she was not suspicious before, she was now.
xx-x-xx
I was absolutely exhausted the next day. I could not sleep at all despite how lazy and slow the afternoon had been. Time had passed by as I streamed movies and next thing I knew, it was morning again. But this time as I got ready I had the notion to put in my red lenses but ended up staring at my reflection in the mirror, and sighing, before deciding to skip on it again. It was for no particular reason, except that I did not want to. I woke up with the school and was on my way along with everyone else to school with the exception of my only companion, Akira. With my headphones and sunglasses on, though, I was completely incognito —
"He-llo!"
I pretended to not hear it, but it was very hard to miss what sounded like a genuinely innocent "I thought you told me she was blind, not deaf". I sighed and looked up from my Ipod. "Yes?" I say, none too cheerily as I stopped and turned around.
"Eh — did you hear that?" the girl laughed shyly with her other two friends. I recognized them — they were seniors, a year older than me but we were in the same English class.
"I wouldn't have responded otherwise," I said. It took me a moment to realize this may have came out wrong but the girls were laughing so I assumed it was fine. I was still too tired, and there was no caffeine in me to event attempt at conversation. Once upon a time ago, I was pretty sure that I would have continued to ignore them and scurry on my way but I felt just a twinge of irritation that I had a feeling would not stop growing if I did not answer.
"Do you know who I am?" asked the brown haired girl, her eyes wide, eyebrows raised.
"Not really."
"Single dorm room, right next to yours?"
I wondered where she was going with this. Shoving my hands deeper into the pockets of my jacket, I waited for her to continue. She scratched her cheek, smiling delightedly once again. "I won't tell Dorm President about this or the prefects, but I thought I heard a noise the other night…" She stopped and giggled again, her curled up hand hovering over her smiling mouth as her bright eyes looked —
Wait. What?
My frozen expression made her continue. "And it sounded distinctly familiar to someone that had met you in the library yesterday…"
It was about Hanabusa. And instantly everything made was why I was being stared at. Oh God, no. They thought I was with him, they probably thought I was having sex with him. Who did this girl tell?
Remembering the scene at the library, I suspected everyone in her year.
"I don't understand," I simply lied, staring straight at her. There was this thing that I noticed with people: they assumed the sick or diseased or disordered were saints somehow, as if the colour-blind and others alike could do no sin or harbour any intentions that weren't geared towards health and wellbeing. They were wrong, of course.
"Are you sure?" her other friend asked as she tugged at the brunette's arm. She whispered something harshly into the girl's ear but my headphones were still on and I couldn't hear quite her.
"Quite sure."
"So why was Aidou talking to you?" Her voice changed. From happy and curious to suspicious and doubtful. Otherwise, it was blunt and I appreciated the direct question to which I could give a direct (untrue) answer.
"He helped me find a book," I said. I smiled and prepared to say something about that was along the lines of an apology and a reason to leave because I was rarely good at maintaining conversations with people that, quite frankly, intimidated me, let alone confrontations in the morning.
But the brunette girl smiled again. Too wide, too happy. Her eyes glinting, but presumptuously.
"You're lying."
The moment she said that, I knew exactly how my day was going to play out.
xx-x-xx
I had never been bullied. Never so much as victimized or paid much attention to, in fact.
That was one thing I had always appreciated about Cross Academy — no one viewed disease as synonymous with being a "loser". They were above that. They were more intelligent than that. But then there were fangirls and God knows what went on in their minds.
I had never paid close attention to the infamous Night Class simply because I had always been somewhere deep in the woods with my telescope and I didn't have enough — or any friends — to bestow upon me their wisdom about these beautiful people who had dozens of girls and boys alike to fawn after them. But then somehow, I found myself sitting next to girls who looked at me very closely. My Japanese History class was fine because they were all my year but I had taken the senior English class and I could not escape it.
She told Suzume that she doesn't know Aidou though…
She could be shy.
Look at her, she's completely average...not really cute…
Yeah but she looks a little Western, no? And her English accent is better than sensei's…
There you again, Sayu, worshiping Westerners again!
Oh, shut up…
Somehow it had spread to the entire female population that Aidou was in the Sun Dormitories two nights ago, and he was laughing. Some knew it was in my room, others had heard a broken-telephone version. I was pretty sure I heard something about sex, but I turned away and decided to focus on the class instead.
But when I overheard a little plan to ambush me at the dorm, it was began getting annoying.
She's in the room next to Suzume, we could just wait there and confront her...what if he's with her only so he could sleep with her?! No way in hell can we let that happen...
All plans of me bolting back to my room to sleep disappeared and I almost did not want to go to the library in fear that there would be more girls there but when I ducked my head in after classes were over, it was quiet once again. No one noticed me coming in and I took up one table in the corner away from the librarian and spilled out the contents in my bag.
And now, work.
xx-x-xx
I had been planning to study English when the only rubric I had was a certain amount of words to learn and form into sentences pertaining to the theme of nature bored me to start history instead. It was as I was learning about Japanese Imperialism when a warmth at my shoulder made me jump.
"Hello Kaede," said a pleasantly tired voice.
I started at the breath at my ear and pulled out my earphones. I wasn't very surprised to see Hanabusa — who else would it have been? Still he was the first person I had heard aside from the blaring loud music I kept on for the past five hours. "Oh! I was suppose to meet you...before…" I said, completely forgetting what time he had told me to meet him at.
"It's just eight," he corrected with that same coy smile playing on his lips. "The libraries were closed to Day Class students about half an hour ago."
"I didn't know that." And whoever the librarian was clearly did not care about me. I threw my arm over the chair and looked at him after a deep breath. "So, what did you need to tell me?"
He stared at me for a moment, tilting his head to the side as his eyes flickered down. Then he crossed his arms and looked away. "I don't think you're excited enough," he declared in a teasingly petulant tone.
I stared at him back for a long time before he peeked back at me through one eye and lost his stance. He leaned over the back of the chair and in return I leaned back towards the table. "Still shy?" he asked when the movement did not go unnoticed.
"Newton's third law," I say instead. "Equal and opposite reaction."
He looked extremely, extremely amused at that; he laughed and laughed and laughed with his eyes closed as he doubled over, his hands on his stomach. And before I knew that my remark would ever make him do such a thing, he shot back up — smiled, and kissed me. His lips were soft, and they opened my own — gently pushing on all the nerves I did not know I have there. It didn't take me very long to shut my eyes and pull him closer and I hated that piece of wood that was between us. The chair block. That wood. Not that.
He stood up and pulled me along with him. I gave in to every urge in my body and with my head somewhere else completely, my hands found his back and my nails dug into it. I felt my opened textbook and notebooks beneath my back and arch but that only made us too close and I had to pull back and breathe.
Hanabusa did not feel the same. His mouth trailed down my throat and left kisses there, but it was my spine and neck that felt the chills. "Wait, wait, wait," I said breathlessly as I held him off with hands on his shoulder. He was relentless, and just the way the warm muscles of his shoulder felt beneath my hands made me forgot why I wanted him to wait. Then I blink and psychologically pull back to look around. "We're in a library," I whispered.
His arms were wrapped tightly around me, our bodies pressed close to each other and he did not seem like he wanted to change that particular position. "What did you want to tell me?" I tried again. I felt my cheeks heat up as it finally hit me: I made out with a vampire in the library. It would be an interesting story to tell my grandchildren, I couldn't help but think.
"Hm?" He looked like he was still half asleep — he looked either mesmerized or tired, and I was leaning towards the latter.
"When was the last time you slept?"
"With you? Never, but I'll gladly take the offer."
"That was lame, and you know it." And yet my smile remained.
"I haven't slept since...the night before the last," he said although he sounded unsure. He shook his head as if he would wake him up, but his eyes still held that dreamy look. Then he blinked, and stood up straighter, ruffling his fair hair. He looked all dishevelled and tired and I had never thought him more handsome.
"Maybe you should sleep," I suggested as the burn of my face slowly left me. I turned back around to close all my textbooks and compile everything in a stack and he was watching me still by the time I face him.
What was up with that dream-like face? He was so tired he seemed to be delusional. I wasn't much to look at, I know, but his exhaustion seemed to be playing tricks on him. "I would rather stay here with you. And kiss you."
I sighed for a long time. "My God, you sound ridiculous — you really need to sleep. What's been keeping you up?" I asked. I tucked all my things into my bag and was ready to go. Gently pushing him, I led him through the back doors so that we wouldn't spill out in the main hallway and run into any Night Class students.
"This," he said. He turned around and his back was replaced by his chest beneath my hands. He placed his own over it, and with the other he reached inside his pocket. "I have something for you."
I perked up. "A gift?"
"Something like that." He held up a little tin box.
"A mint?" I raised my eyebrow. "Rude," I commented but he only laughed quietly. Everything about him seemed toned down tonight, with the exception of his...well, his lust. He placed the silver box in my hand and I slid off the cover to see several white little tablets. "What is this, ecstasy?"
He was laughing again, and I concluded that he must really be sleep deprived to find me this funny. "I don't need drugs to get you to want to — " He broke off with a devilish grin. "Well, maybe I do," he remarked. His eyes ran down my body in a way that should have made me uncomfortable but Tired Hanabusa was far less predatory than Normal Hanabusa.
I trusted that Hanabusa would give me something safe, but as I held the powdery tablet between my thumb and finger, I realize that he could be giving me something great. Before I got too excited, I looked at him steadily and asked, "Is this…?"
"For your sight? Yes." Strangely, his smile faltered. "I should warn you that the components in it…" He suddenly looked uncomfortable as he scratched the back of his hair.
"What is it?"
He opened his mouth, and then closed it. I decided that I didn't want to know. "Medicine," I said, more for my sake than his, "it's medicine...and medicine can be weird." Standing by the side of the library with the what pale light coming through the window and past the aisles of book shelves, I could just barely make out his features. Still his hair seemed incredibly pale — everything about him did. "Do I need to put it in water?"
"Ah...no. Best not."
"Side effects?"
"None." At least at that, he sounded confident.
"Then cheers," I say as I held it up in the light before popping it into my mouth. He looked expectant. It was dry as it went down my throat and I had to attractively swallow my own spit before it went down, with him watching me all the while. I felt a spike in my system, and had to cover my mouth with my hands to suppress the cough….
...but nothing.
It has been...almost four months...a little over three...
But thanks for reading! Can you guess what will happen next? (:
Like The Origins, this story is on track to be updated on a biweekly schedule! I do hope you enjoy this chapter. The next will be...interesting. Reviews would be lovely!