“WHAT? That man was Mr. Akashi’s younger brother? Not his older brother?”
“That’s what surprises you?” Kouya marveled, looking skeptically at Azusa.
Kouya had watched the entire exchange between Azusa and his uncle. She didn’t know how much he overheard, but considering his flustered appearance, he at least caught the part where his uncle started loudly addressing the guests. Azusa was mentally drained, but Kouya looked equally worn-out.
They were currently talking inside the log cabin Kouya brought her to when they reunited in the forest months ago. Walking to the cabin from the mansion made Azusa realize it was closer than she thought. They leisurely sipped at their coffee as they sat across from each other in the living room.
“I can’t deny my surprise at them being brothers, but I was personally more shocked that your uncle, who looks like he’s in his early fifties, is Mr. Akashi’s younger brother. Mr. Akashi looks like he’s in his thirties. His personality is the complete opposite from Mr. Akashi’s calm demeanor too…”
“I don’t know about Father, but Uncle’s mother was human. Vampire siblings tend to have different lifespans based on how powerful they are. As for personality, Uncle doesn’t normally act like that. He was putting on a performance. The Doumeki brothers are both sly old dogs.” Azusa cringed from the dark edge in Kouya’s voice. They were probably the bane of his existence.
“A-Are they? Why would he pretend to be a bad drunk though?”
“He probably was drunk. Well, he likely did it to protect his older brother’s, the Patriarch’s, honor and for…forget the other reason.” Kouya heaved a heavy sigh as if he just remembered something extremely displeasing.
Azusa spoke up cheerfully to pull Kouya out of his depression, “Either way, vampires are a species whose age you really can’t judge by appearances, huh! Oh, is it possible you are much older than you look too, Kouya?”
“…Are you curious?” Kouya asked after a short pause. His expression was the same as always, but he spoke with a teasing tone. Azusa leaned forward in her chair.
“I’m curious!”
“Then I’ll keep it to myself.”
“Hey! That’s mean! What’s wrong with telling me?”
“I’m older than you.”
“Well, duh! You look older as it is!” Azusa complained. Kouya sipped his coffee like he couldn’t care less.
Kouya looked like he was twenty-seven, which clearly made him older appearance-wise than Azusa who was actually seventeen. Azusa kept asking him, but he evasively sidestepped the answer every time, which had her give up on getting it out of him. She arbitrarily concluded he must be much older. She puffed out her cheeks to show her agitation, but her pouting had no effect on him.
“By the way, do you want to contract with me?” Kouya asked to reconfirm her intentions just as she took a sip of her second cup of coffee with pursed lips.
“Contract…”
“Want to do it? Or not?”
“…I want to.”
Azusa didn’t have many complaints about her current lifestyle, but it was considerably tiring to have someone stuck watching her 24/7. If it was possible to free herself from that constraint, she would do whatever it would take.
“Your hand.”
“What about it?”
“Hold it out.”
“Oh, okay.” Azusa put her right hand on his. He took her hand and bit her thumb. She heard the flesh pop as his fang sunk in.
“Ow!”
“…I’m done.”
She pulled her hand back from the pain. She promptly checked the palm of her hand, but a puncture wound was nowhere to be found.
“Just now—”
“The contract has been established between us now. If we were both vampires, you would need to drink my blood too, but seeing as you aren’t, we can skip that step.”
Kouya only drank a drop of her blood, but that counted as bloodsucking too. Azusa honestly found all of it quite anticlimactic. She was embarrassed over her foolishness for imagining him taking her into his arms and piercing his fangs into the nape of her neck in some epic Dracula movie scene.
“When it comes to humans, the act is closer to making you a kindred familiar than a contract partner.”
“What? I’m your kindred familiar now?”
“Officially, yeah. An actual contract system doesn’t naturally exist between vampires. We simply started calling the act of turning each other into kindred familiars a contract to keep up with modernization. This is what happens when one partner can’t make the other their own kindred familiar.”
“That feels too one-sided. It’s not fair.”
“What can we do about it? Don’t worry, I don’t plan on treating you like a familiar.”
“I’m not particularly worried about that part of it.”
“You should be worried about that part,” Kouya advised with exasperation.
What the heck do you want me to do when you tell me not to worry one second and then tell me to worry the next! Azusa swallowed the words before they were out her mouth because she realized he said it out of worry for her.
“Please lend me your hand too, Kouya,” she said instead of complaining and snatched his hand before he could refuse. She mimicked what he did and bit down as hard as she could on his index finger.
“Hey,” he groaned.
“Everyone says my blood is vampiric, so I thought that might even up the playing field for us,” Azusa said, lifting her mouth from his finger for a moment to be faced with Kouya’s bewildered look. She ignored him and shoved his finger back in her mouth for another bite. But the natural difference in their canine teeth made it so she could only leave teeth marks on his finger without piercing through it.
“Hey!” he growled.
“Mm?” Azusa titled her head with his finger still in her mouth. His finger popped out of her mouth. “Aw!”
Her eyes met Kouya’s, his brow furrowed more than usual. Was it just her imagination his ears were a little red?
“Don’t do something so immodest,” he grunted.
“Immodest?”
“Are you a child? …Are you?” The first he said as a retort, the second he mumbled in resignation, confusing Azusa even more.
Kouya deliberately bit his index finger and pushed it inside Azusa’s mouth. The rusty iron taste of blood gradually spread across her tongue.
“You only need to get your saliva into the bloodstream so this will do,” Kouya explained, immediately pulling his finger from her mouth. Azusa’s mouth hung open at the suddenness of it, but her smile quickly returned.