BLOOD spilled from the cut in Azusa’s wrist—enough to run down her hand and make a small puddle on the dirt. She let the blood drip from her wrist into Kouya’s mouth where he laid face up.
“Kouya?” Azusa peered into his barely open eyes. His red eyes slowly focused on her. “Is it not enough? Hold on, I’ll make a deeper cut—”
“No need.” Kouya grabbed her hand before she could slice her wrist a second time. He pulled her bleeding wrist toward his mouth.
“Ow!”
A piercing pain rushed through her. The cut she made with the knife burned more than hurt, while this blatantly hurt. Of course it did—Kouya’s fangs were digging deeply into the knife wound on her wrist. The sound of his throat gulping made it register in her mind that he was drinking her blood.
“AKAONI! Get away from Azusa! That’s mine!” Tsukiharu bellowed rabidly. Azusa had never heard him yell. She turned to look at him and saw every object that could be used as a weapon in their vicinity floating in the air, primed to attack. He looked like he could kill someone. Kouya gulped down more blood, ignoring him.
“…!” Tsukiharu was like a wild animal with its fur standing on edge and its back arched up to attack. His eyes filled with seething rage and his entire body quivered.
A single light propelled from Tsukiharu and grazed Azusa’s cheek. A silver knife flung at her faster than the human eye could see. Blood oozed from the slice.
“Azusa. If you don’t get away from him, my attacks will hit you too, you know? You okay with that?”
“If you’ve got the balls to do it, then do it,” Azusa goaded.
“…!”
A silver knife grazed her right shoulder. It sliced through her shirt and skin, spilling blood down her elbow. Azusa bit her lip to endure the pain of her flesh being cut in different places and pulled Kouya onto her lap with her back turned to Tsukiharu. She made that move with the assumption she could keep him from being killed—it only served to grate on Tsukiharu’s nerves.
“Azusa. Did I not tell you that you are my fate and I am yours? I don’t want him to get between us. Get away from him right now. Your blood belongs to me.”
“Stop babbling on about nonsense like fate and take a cold hard look at reality! My blood is mine alone!”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Move aside, Azusa.”
“I won’t!” A knife lodged itself into her left shoulder. “Ah!”
“Doesn’t it hurt? I removed the poison for your sake, Azusa, but it still hurts, doesn’t it? He’s not worth getting hurt to protect. Sure, he came for you, but that’s only to bring you back as their pet guinea pig. He only sees you as a useful tool to advance their experiments. They don’t see you as a person. As you.”
“…Then you’re no different from them! You only see me as a tool for my blood! If my only choice is to be seen as a guinea pig by either party, I choose to be with the side I feel most comfortable with!”
“I told you I’m different from them…” Tsukiharu said dolefully and sent another knife at her. Azusa hunched over and braced herself for the pain as she wrapped her arms protectively around Kouya.
But the knife didn’t pierce her. Azusa warily stared at the knife floating inches in front of her. The next second, Tsukiharu’s body was yanked off the ground, slammed against a tree, flung thirty feet in the air and crashed back onto the ground where it cratered with such speed it seemed like an anvil dropped on him. He stopped moving.
“Eh?”
“Sorry,” Kouya whispered in her ear.
Azusa slowly turned her head. Color had returned to Kouya’s face. The gaping hole in his stomach left by Tsukiharu’s hand cleanly resealed. He looked as healthy as ever. The only difference was his eyes were dyed a very vibrant, glowing red. The red glow swayed like blazing flames and his eyes looked like they were the sunset locked in a marble. He stroked her wrist.
“It must have hurt.” After stroking the length of the cut several times it instantly healed.
“What did you just do?” Azusa asked, bewildered by her flesh repairing itself.
“You count as my kindred familiar now… I can do this much for you,” Kouya explained and slowly stood. He spotted the gory wounds on her shoulders and grimaced. He knelt beside her and gently stroked the cuts on her right shoulder. It only took a few times before the wounds healed, not even leaving a scar behind. The pain faded with it.
“Did you get this from protecting me?” he asked, a dark edge to his voice.
“Hm? Get what?”
“These cuts.”
“It’s not your fault, Kouya! You could say it’s my fault for butting in… Or more accurately, it’s my fault for saying a ton of stuff to tick Tsukiharu off.”
“Sorry. I’ll make it up to you later,” he said and abruptly yanked the knife out of her left shoulder.
“OW!” Blood oozed from the hole left behind. The unceasing blood dyed Azusa’s clothes a deep red. Kouya put his lips to it. “Uh? Eh? Um, Kouya?!”
“What?” The cut on her left shoulder already healed by the time he lifted his face from it. It only took a few seconds. But it was long enough to dye Azusa’s cheeks red for a different reason.
“D-D-Did you just do it with your l-lips?!” she stammered.
“Wouldn’t it be a waste not to?” he answered like it was only obvious.
That’s right, this guy is a vampire. Azusa was finally forced to fully acknowledge what being a vampire meant. Blood is like water and food to them. I guess that’d make it wasteful to let it spill everywhere. But wait a minute—
“Kouya! Blood! You can drink blood? I know I’m in no position to ask that when I forced it down your throat, but still!”
“It was a do or die situation. I was able to get through it somehow.”
“Well yeah, when it comes down to survival.”
His body couldn’t continue its resistance to drinking blood when it was going to die without it. Drinking blood for vampires is the same as eating for humans. His body was abnormal for not drinking any until this point.
“I hope you can keep drinking blood then!”
“Your blood?” he countered.
Azusa was speechless. She wasn’t repulsed by him drinking her blood, but she had reservations about freely offering her blood. Most of all, she was embarrassed just imagining it. She witnessed Subaru and Ichi do it, but she was convinced their calmness over it came from them both being vampires—it was their custom.
“That’s…”
“I’m kidding.” Did Kouya just laugh after seeing her shifting expression? He covered his mouth as if he were coughing and turned his face away.
“You just laughed!”
“I didn’t laugh,” he stated with his usual lack of expression. Azusa got the sense he was actually a more expressive person than she gave him credit for. The momentary peace was shattered by Tsukiharu slowly getting to his feet behind them.