Chapter 1
The ride back home was a quiet one. Not only because it was nighttime as was required to keep the driver safe from the sunlight, and not because the little boy in the backseat was soundly asleep, but rather because both his parents sat in utter silence, each hoping the other one would say what surely they were both thinking.
"The new rules are just too cruel!" the woman finally cried out.
"Hana, we can't! They'd kill us" her husband replied, frustrated.
"Not doing anything would kill him either way" she retorted "And we can run away. They'll never catch us!"
"You know they would. And besides, even if we did manage to escape. What then? How would we survive? Should we corner someone in an alley each night and suck him dry? Rob a blood bank?" Haruto tried to reason with his wife, his hands tightening on the steering wheel.
"You could have my blood…" she attempted to provide a solution, though a poorly thought-out one.
"You'd die of Anemia within a week" he said, utterly defeated.
"We can't let him die… I'm sure they'd understand! He's not a dying old man clinging to life or a twenty something scared of getting wrinkles… He's my little boy" her voice trailed off as tears rolled down her cheeks, falling silently then soaking into her pencil skirt, the finest one she owned which she chose to wear that day to the specialist they've gone to see.
She wanted the doctors to consider them as well-off patients, able to bear the costs of whatever treatment they thought might help and not write them off as some village-simpletons. Little did she know there was no amount of money and no sort of treatment that could save her little boy. Not one that the doctors or anyone outside of village of Sotoba was aware of anyway.
Just then a soft rustling sound came from the back seat. She patted her cheeks dry and glanced back to see the child stirring in his seat, rubbing his eyes tiredly.
"Oh no! It's already dark outside!" he exclaimed once he regained awareness of his surroundings.
"Ehm, yes. Why? What's wrong?" she asked, puzzled.
"I wanted to play I-spy! But now it's too dark to see anything" he said with clear disappointment.
"Oh, then maybe we can play next time, o.k.?" she suggested.
"I guess, but can we not go to the hospital next time? I did not like all the tests they made me do" he said.
"You mean the blood-test?" his father joined in on the conversation.
"No. The blood-test was fine. It's just like the blood donation I always do at home. And they didn't take out that much blood anyway, I didn't even need to lay down afterwards" he explained "I'm talking about the big tunnel machine" he continued.
"Oh! The MRI machine!" his mother said.
"Yes! I hated it! It was so scary and I didn't move because they said that if I did we would have do to it all over again but I wanted to call you and daddy and I couldn't! I was so cold and I thought I will stay there forever and ever and no one will come to help me! Like I was dead!" he said, his words triggering tears in both his parents' eyes.
"We will never leave you! Mommy and daddy will always keep you safe!" Hana offered words of encouragement to her son, trying hard to not let her voice crack.
"You promise?" the boy asked.
Just then Haruto reached out and took Hana's hand in his "We promise!" he assured his son.
Author's Note (Do people still do those?):
Just a short chapter to set the tone for later events.
And also – checking the pulse of the Shiki community. It's a rather old anime, but one that I feel is timeless and would always get new audience that, if they're like me, would finish it and find it hard to leave it behind. So I hope these people might find stories like these to help them ease into a post-Shiki world.